Plants played a central role in the life of Neanderthals

Madrid. Research carried out at the University of Murcia combines paleobotany and paleoart to show the central role of plants in the life of Neanderthals.

The study, funded by the State Research Agency (AEI) within the framework of the Knowledge Generation R&D&I Projects (2022), proposes a profound change in the way of visually and scientifically reconstructing the life of Neanderthals and other hominids, placing vegetation and landscape at the center of the story thanks to scientifically based paleoart.

Under the title Homedscape: Paleobotany and Paleoart in the understanding of plant landscapes and evolutionary scenarios in the genre Homo With emphasis on the Mediterranean basin, the project, led by José S. Carrión, professor of Evolutionary Botany and international reference in paleobotany, integrates paleoecological data, such as fossil pollen, plant remains, charcoal and other records, with rigorous visual reconstructions for which it relies on the artistic work of several researchers, including the paleoartist Gabriela Amorós.

The result is not only new iconography, but a scientific tool capable of generating questions, detecting gaps in knowledge and reviewing consolidated hypotheses. “We do not represent a single plant that is not supported by the fossil record, we translate data such as pollen frequency, the ecology of species, their association in the landscape into visual scenes based on evidence, with a very limited creative margin,” Carrión emphasizes.

The visual images, beyond the clearly informative and artistic content, are allowing new questions to be asked that arise in view of the elements that are represented and the hypotheses that have been considered valid until now.

This is the case of the Neanderthals who have been represented in steppe spaces, with a predominant image of the animals of the time. It is this zoocentric vision of the past with large animals, hunting scenes and open, hostile landscapes that is being modified with the works published under the auspices of Homedscape, which show that Neanderthals inhabited much more diverse environments, including temperate forests and Mediterranean landscapes.

“The Neanderthal has always been drawn as a species associated with cold, treeless steppes. But paleoecological data indicate that they lived for thousands of years in forest and semi-forest landscapes, which also fits with what we know today about their anatomy and their way of hunting,” explains the researcher.

Vegetation conditioned behavior

The visual reconstructions developed in the project show how vegetation conditioned the availability of resources, mobility, subsistence strategies and the behavior of the hominids themselves.

Plants were not a simple scenic background, but a source of food, shelter, microclimate and ecological stability. Faced with images of Neanderthals that have been historically conditioned by prejudices inherited from the 19th century and presented them as primitive figures doomed to evolutionary failure, the research highlights their cognitive sophistication, their symbolic capacity and their role as ecological actors fully integrated into their landscapes.

Far from being a decorative illustration, paleoart is presented here as a methodological extension of paleoecology. By “thinking by painting,” as both researchers recognize, images allow us to detect inconsistencies, uncertainties and new questions that do not always emerge in tables or graphs.

“When we see a complete scene, like a snapshot of the past, we are able to identify flaws in the scientific process or gaps in the fossil record,” they point out, in this way, the drawing becomes a form of “additional verification.”

This approach has allowed, for example, to rethink the location of glacial refuges, traditionally located only in the extreme south of Europe.

The data indicate the existence of forest refuges also in interior and mountainous areas, with important implications for the understanding of migrations and the persistence of human populations.