Neanderthals and the cult of the Sun Bird
Introduction
The Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) is widely distributed across the Holarctic (del Hoyo et al., 1994) and it would have coincided with humans across large tracts of non-tropical areas of their range. It has held a special place in many human cultures of the northern hemisphere (Watson, 2010; Finlayson, 2019). Throughout history this eagle has been celebrated as the link between terrestrial mankind and the celestial deities (Armstrong, 1958). To the Greeks and Romans this bird was regarded as a messenger of the gods (Watson, 2010) and in Native American culture it flew above all the creatures of the world and saw everything. It was a holy bird - the Solar or Sun Bird - and its feathers were regarded as the rays of the sun (Mails, 1972).
The Golden Eagle, with a weight range of 2.8–6.4 kg, is one of the largest raptors of the northern hemisphere, surpassed in size only by vultures and the White-tailed Eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla) across much of the Palaearctic Region (Ferguson-Lees and Christie, 2001) and by few other raptors in localised regions, for example Steller's Sea Eagle (Haliaeetus pelagicus; 4.9–9 kg) in coastal areas of north-eastern Asia (del Hoyo et al., 1994).
Until recently Neanderthals, and other contemporary “archaic” hominins, were not considered to have been predators of birds, lacking the technology and know-how required to catch prey with abilities to escape with speed, including flight (Klein, 2000; Stiner, 2001; Stiner et al., 1999, 2000; Stiner and Munro, 2002; Steele and Klein, 2009). The idea of a broad spectrum revolution, by which the modern humans who replaced the Neanderthals were able to diversify the range of prey which they exploited, was linked to the exploitation of small prey by these authors. Birds were key among the small prey alongside rabbits and hares. The idea of the broad spectrum revolution, therefore, linked with the concept of a modern human cognitive revolution (Mellars, 1991, 2007) and the replacement of all archaic hominins by cognitively superior modern humans. Linked to these questions is a debate that continues to the present. It is the question of whether apparently modern forms of behaviour among late Neanderthals were independently invented or, instead, were the product of acculturation by newly arrived modern humans (d’Errico et al., 1998; Mellars, 1999; Zilhao & d’Errico, 1999).
This assessment is rapidly changing as significant evidence is emerging showing that Neanderthals did indeed catch birds and that the practice was geographically and temporally broad (e.g. Blasco and Fernandez Peris, 2009; Peresani et al., 2011; Blasco et al., 2014). Importantly, this new evidence shows that Neanderthals not only took small to medium-sized birds for food, but also large birds of prey in order to take their flight feathers (Peresani et al., 2011; Finlayson et al., 2012; Finlayson and Finlayson, 2016) and talons (Morin and Laroulandie, 2012; Radovcic et al., 2015). The inference from these results is that these large raptors were taken to use their body parts for symbolic purposes. This implies higher cognitive abilities in the Neanderthals and not just in modern humans. One raptor species which appears to have been taken most frequently is the Golden Eagle (Finlayson, 2019). In this paper we explore the evidence of Golden Eagle exploitation by Neanderthals and discuss its implications for our understanding of Neanderthals and their capacities. These results have direct implications for our understanding of Late Pleistocene human evolution by debunking the idea of an exclusive modern human cognitive revolution which led to the replacement of Neanderthals by modern humans.
Section snippets
Methods
We compiled a database of Palaearctic human occupation sites with presence of raptors (Accipitridae) and corvids (Corvidae; see Finlayson and Finlayson, 2016) based on information in Tyrberg (1998, 2008). We compare the presence of different raptors with presence of Neanderthals and Modern Humans. In the case of Neanderthals, we use the Mousterian culture (154 sites; 125-32 kyr) as proxy while in the case of Modern Humans we use the Aurignacian, as the culture closest to the Neanderthals in
Results
The main raptor and corvid species which have been shown to have taphonomic evidence direct exploitation by Neanderthals are shown in Table 1. In this table, the Rock Dove (Columba livia) has been added as it is the only non-raptor or corvid that compares with them in terms of frequency of examples of exploitation by Neanderthals.
The Golden Eagle emerges as the species that, to date, has been shown to have been intervened by Neanderthals the most times (i.e. nine cases) even though it is not
Discussion
Our results show that there is a group of bird species that appears to have been targeted by Neanderthals above all others, and these are the largest diurnal raptors that were available to them, along with a group of medium-sized corvids and the Rock Dove, that were frequent at Neanderthal sites. It is very likely that the medium-sized birds were readily available because they inhabited rocky habitats, which they shared with the Neanderthals, and they are all highly social and form large
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