A new study from Israel is shedding new light on how extinct relatives of modern humans hunted large animals, and how such strategies might have determined their fate when they later shared landscapes with Homo sapiens.
Researchers investigating the Middle Paleolithic site of Nesher Ramla in the Levant focused on deposits dating to around 120,000 years ago, a period when archaic humans such as Neanderthals and other early Homo groups most likely first encountered modern humans. Contrary to some long-standing ideas, the team found no evidence that these archaic populations practiced large-scale mass hunting. Instead, the archaeological record shows evidence of carefully planned, small-scale, and selective hunting of wild cattle known as aurochs, the now-extinct ancestors of modern cows.
Excavations in Unit III of the Nesher Ramla karst depression uncovered a high density of aurochs bones and stone tools, all of which were preserved within a relatively short and clearly defined time span. Evidence of cut marks, bone breakage, and signs of consumption clearly indicate that the animals were hunted, butchered, and processed by humans in the nearby area. One remarkable discovery — a healed flint fragment within an aurochs leg bone — indicates that at least one animal survived an earlier hunting injury, providing rare insight into repeated, targeted hunting attempts.
They analyzed the animals’ age and sex profiles, tooth wear, and chemical signatures preserved in their teeth to test whether this assemblage resulted from mass hunting or repeated individual events. Regardless of the method, most of the hunted animals were prime-aged females, deliberately selected rather than killed indiscriminately by a single herd slaughter. Dental microwear indicates that the aurochs were killed during the dry season, and isotopic analysis reveals that the animals originated from different herds and grazing areas. In combination, these findings rule out a single coordinated hunt.
For archaeologists, mass hunting is one of the crucial signifiers of large social networks, complex planning, and wide-scale cooperation, as it often involves more than one group. Such practices are well documented among Homo sapiens later in prehistory, especially after about 50,000 years ago. The lack of similar evidence from Nesher Ramla supports the commonly held perspective that Middle Paleolithic archaic humans lived in smaller, more dispersed, and less interconnected communities.
This social structure could have had deep implications. While selective hunting does suggest detailed ecological knowledge and skill, it might also indicate limited population sizes and reduced cooperation. In places such as the Levant, where archaic humans and modern humans coexisted, these lower levels of connectivity may have placed archaic groups at a disadvantage compared to the more networked populations of Homo sapiens.
Although the authors note that mass hunting cannot be completely excluded for the Levant as a whole due to the rarity of comparable sites, Nesher Ramla offers the best window into the organization of hunting during this key period. The results strengthen the idea that differences in social organization, rather than technology alone, played an important role in the evolutionary trajectories of ancient human groups.
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