Welcome to the first installment of my new blog! Over the coming months, I’ll be writing and commenting regularly here on the world of archaeology. I’ll take you with me behind the scenes to look at some cool breaking stories, and I’ll share my thoughts on research and controversies that are making the news.

I’d like to kick things off today with a tale of wandering Neanderthals. For years, researchers have debated over whether our ancient kinfolk were simple homebodies or early gadabouts. Some archaeologists suggested that Neanderthal bands seldom ventured much farther than three miles away from their camps and caves–an idea based largely on studies of the quarries that Neanderthals frequented to get stone for their tools. This notion fitted perfectly with old-school views of Neanderthals as lumbering dullards. But other archaeologists have taken issue with this, suggesting that Neanderthals tracked reindeer herds great distances in Ice Age Europe.

Now it looks like some of these ancient humans did indeed ramble and rove. While I was talking last week with Michael Richards, a stable isotope expert at Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, he mentioned an early result from a major new study. Richards and his team are currently looking at the strontium isotope ratios in the teeth of nearly 100 Neanderthals from sites scattered across Europe. Strontium isotopes from the bedrock lace groundwater and soil in telltale ratios, and these values serve as geographical locators. The team published their initial findings in the new issue of the Journal of Anthropological Science, noting that the first Neanderthal they tested had journeyed more than 12 miles as a child. But Richards told me last week that the team was too cautious in this conclusion. He has now discovered that isotopic values from that first Neanderthal tooth point to travels as much as 300 miles away.

So Neanderthals did indeed do some major trekking. Chalk another one up for our much maligned kin.

This entry was posted by Heather Pringle on Monday, June 9, 2008. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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