Neanderthals hunted enormous elephants that fed 100 people for a month

The extinct straight-tusked elephant was even larger than modern African elephants, making it unclear if Neanderthal hunters could take one down, but a newly analysed trove of bones suggests it was possible

Neanderthals regularly hunted and butchered elephants in Europe thousands of years ago, according to an analysis of marks made by stone tools on a trove of bones.

The find suggests the ancient humans either lived in larger groups than previously suspected or that they had ways of processing the flesh so it didn’t spoil, says Wil Roebroeks at Leiden University in the Netherlands, given the amount of meat involved. “These elephants are really big calorie bombs.”

There has long been debate over whether Neanderthals, distant cousins of modern humans, could have hunted the straight-tusked elephants (Palaeoloxodon antiquus). These extinct giants stood 4 metres tall, making them larger than modern African elephants and woolly mammoths.

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