Did Neanderthals hibernate?

a reply to: bloodymarvelous

I agree, we tend to glorify summer these days, but for the Ice Age steppe's mega-fauna, winter might have been the best time to hunt.
Frozen lakes and rivers would have facilitated animal migrations.

Not only that, but the meat would freeze quicker for preparations, and be much less likely to spoil.

Of course Homo Sapiens associates winter with extreme discomfort, but for a "sub-species" a bit more accustomed to the conditions, it might have been a boon.

As I imagine: "Oh how boring, it's summer again. Let's go sleep".
And hot weather brings other dangers, like mosquitoes and Malaria.
Which where still common In Europe's marshlands until Roman and even Tudor times (King Henry VIII had Malaria at least twice and never traveled abroad).

a reply to: bloodymarvelous

I wonder if they hibernated in the Winter, or the Summer?

Winter, we hibernate in winter, the summer is for playing!

I also think it's possible that a "semi-hibernation" might have happened.

That is, at least regionally and for certain eras, Neanderthals might not have moved much, and stayed mostly in their shelters, but they weren't really hibernating either.

I mean hibernation implies a loss of consciousness, or being asleep, which cannot be determined by bones.

Although it's very likely that they moved on a need-to basis - I mean hunter-gatherers don't need to go to work every morning.

Especially with a good mega-fauna hunt, they could have gorged themselves for weeks before having to venture out again.
So it's quite conceivable that they went through periods of relative physical inactivity, which might not have been seasonal at all.

originally posted by: halfoldman


Especially with a good mega-fauna hunt, they could have gorged themselves for weeks before having to venture out again.
So it's quite conceivable that they went through periods of relative physical inactivity, which might not have been seasonal at all.

That's an interesting possibility! Kill a mammoth, overeat, get really fat in the course of a few days. Then sit around a fire or something, sleeping it off.

Maybe that's how they adapted to the issue of meat spoilage. The sapiens adaptation was to grow their group size to around 160, so there would be enough mouths to eat a mammoth rapidly. Maybe Neanderthal, with their group size of around 10 or 15 just gorged for a few days straight, and spent the rest of their time basically asleep.

What it was really like?

pixels.com...

Loads of naked butch guys and a mammoth.

Say, I wouldn't have brushed passed you?
Nah, and nobody would have noticed if you did.

You're into the time slip.

Oh, and i thought everyone just got naked, and had a "mammoth party".