Archaeologists Discover NEW Evidence of Neanderthals in England and Wales

Neanderthals, Homo neanderthalensis, first entered Britain around 400,000 years ago. They were highly skilled hunters and toolmakers who adapted to a wide range of climates, yet they did not occupy Britain continuously. Long stretches of time passed when the islands were empty of humans, either because ice made them uninhabitable or rising seas made them inaccessible. The Cerny Wick site in the Cotswolds is being excavated for the last time before it becomes a quarry pond. The site contains ice age remains about 214,000 years old, including possible new species and bones from ice age wolves, rhinos and lions. Archaeologists have been focusing on flint tools found alongside mammoth remains, identifying them as clear evidence of Neanderthal activity based on their distinctive napping techniques. These tools were discovered in the same dated layers as the animal bones, strongly suggesting Neanderthal presence at the site with hopes of eventually finding human skeletal remains. Archaeologists have uncovered a rich record of early human occupation in Britain, revealing that the islands were home to repeated waves of ancient humans over hundreds of thousands of years. This long history includes some of the earliest known settlers in northern Europe and the arrival, disappearance and reappearance of the Neanderthals, colloquially referred to as Homo Britannicus. Among the most remarkable chapters in this story is that of the Neanderthals in England and Wales, with evidence from sites such as Pontnewydd Cave in Wales providing direct glimpses into their lives, including teeth and stone tools and evidence of hybridisation with Neanderthals and modern humans. Pontnewydd Cave in Denbighshire, north Wales, contains some of the most northwesterly Neanderthal remains ever found. Excavations there have revealed 17 teeth and a partial jaw from at least five individuals, including an 11-year-old boy. These remains date to about 230,000 years ago. The teeth display torridontism with enlarged pulp cavities and short roots, a feature common in Neanderthals. Pontnewydd shows that during warm intervals, Neanderthals could occupy regions far from their central European heartlands. They hunted animals such as deer and processed their kills using stone tools, exploiting both open grasslands and wooded valleys. By about 180,000 years ago, a new glaciation forced humans from Britain. The climate deteriorated sharply and ice sheets expanded. Britain remained unoccupied for tens of thousands of years. Even during the unusually warm interglacial around 130,000 years ago, which lasted about 15,000 years and supported hippos, lions, elephants, hyenas and deer, there is no evidence for human presence. This absence may reflect the low population density of humans in northwest Europe at the time. Fossil evidence from Swanscombe in Kent shows that early Neanderthals were present about 400,000 years ago. These individuals lived during a warm phase of the Ice Age cycle when the climate supported a wide variety of animals and plants. Neanderthals hunted large game, processed carcasses with finely made stone tools and survived in an environment that would later be completely transformed by glacial ice. Swanscombe offers another crucial window into the lives of early Neanderthals in Britain, with remains dating to about 400,000 years ago. The site has yielded three fragments of a human skull belonging to a young woman, along with stone tools and faunal remains, placing her among the earliest Neanderthal populations in northwest Europe. The Swanscombe skull retains features transitional between early and later classic Neanderthals, illustrating the evolutionary changes taking place in Europe during the Middle Pleistocene. The associated tools, largely hand axes and flake implements, suggest a community adept at exploiting local flint resources and processing a range of animal prey. The landscape at the time was a rich floodplain along the Thames, teeming with game and bordered by wooded areas, an ideal setting for the highly mobile hunting bands who crossed from the continent during favourable climatic windows. Ironically, the site was discovered by one of the men who helped uncover the Piltdown fraud, though his claims were dismissed. Indeed, when most people think of Europe's ancient human story, they picture the famous finds of continental archaeology. Germany has given us the first Neanderthal bones, France has produced spectacular Ice Age cave art, and for decades Britain was best known for Piltdown Man, a celebrated fossil find that turned out to be a deliberate fake. That image has changed dramatically in recent decades. The site of Boxgrove in West Sussex preserves an extraordinary snapshot of life in Britain nearly half a million years ago, during a warm interglacial period when early Neanderthals hunted large game on open grasslands. Excavations have uncovered finely made flint hand axes, butchered animal bones, and even the tibia of an early Neanderthal, providing one of the most complete pictures of lower Paleolithic life in Europe. The animal remains, including horse bones bearing cut marks, show that these hunters worked cooperatively to kill and process large prey. The surrounding environment, reconstructed from sediments and fossil pollen, was a mosaic of open plains, patches of woodland, and freshwater lakes, supporting herds of deer, bison, and wild cattle. Boxgrove's finds reveal a population of skilled tool makers and hunters who could exploit Britain's rich resources during periods when the climate and geography made it accessible from continental Europe. The Clacton Spear, also known as the Clacton Spear Point, is the tip of a wooden spear discovered in 1911 at Clacton-on-Sea in Essex. Made from yew wood, it measures 15 inches in length and was originally about 1.5 inches in diameter, though it shrank and warped slightly after excavation before being stabilized. Dating to around 400,000 years ago, it is the oldest known worked wooden implement in the world. The carefully shaped point was probably made using a curved flint tool from the local Clactonian industry found at the same site. While some early scholars doubted whether humans of that time could make and use such weapons, later finds such as the Schöningen Spears in Germany confirm that early humans were capable hunters. The Clacton Spear shows that Britain's early inhabitants were skilled in working perishable materials as well as stone and that wooden weapons were an important but rarely preserved part of their technology. During this period, Britain was connected to Europe and Neanderthals could follow herds of mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, horse, and reindeer into the region. They set up temporary hunting camps and also for obtaining flint for tools, returning year after year as conditions allowed from around 240,000 years ago until they disappeared. The Channel Island of Jersey, now separated from France by sea, was for much of the Ice Age part of a broad landscape that joined to the continent. On Jersey, the cave site of La Cotte de Saint-Brelard preserves one of the longest and richest records of Neanderthal life in the British Isles. Neanderthals occupied the site intermittently for around 200,000 years, using it as a base for hunting and processing game. Sir Arthur Smith Woodward, co-discoverer of Piltdown Man, reviewed some of the material from this site but was too busy with the hoax for a real archaeological find. Archaeologists have even found teeth at the site of La Cotte that have both modern human and Neanderthal traits, dating to 48,000 years ago, suggesting they came from a hybrid child. La Cotte is famous for two massive heaps of bones from mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses found at the base of a cliff. For decades archaeologists believed these were the result of Neanderthals driving herds over the cliff edge in mass kills, a dramatic image that became popular in documentaries and books. The idea drew comparisons to the way some Native American groups hunted bison by driving them over cliffs. Recent research has shown that this interpretation is almost certainly wrong. Surveys of the ancient landscape revealed that the plateau leading to the cliff was rocky and uneven, making it extremely unlikely that large animals such as mammoths would have climbed onto it in the first place. Even if they had reached the plateau, Neanderthals would have had to force them down a steep dip and back up again before they could fall from the cliff edge. Such manoeuvres would have been physically impossible given the size and strength of the animals. Archaeologist Becky Scott of the British Museum has pointed out that she cannot imagine any way in which Neanderthals could have driven mammoths into such a position. The terrain simply did not allow for it. Superficially looks like the perfect ground for a game drive, however every time we come up here and we actually walk the ground it becomes apparent that there are enormous challenges involved in ever getting an animal the size of a Instead the evidence suggests that Neanderthals hunted individual animals in the surrounding landscape or scavenged carcasses and then brought selected bones back to the cave. The location offered excellent views over the open plain where herds of mammoth, woolly rhinoceros and horse would have moved. The surrounding ravines and gullies would have been ideal places for ambushes. The heaps of bones at La Cotte may have been collected for several reasons. Neanderthals could have used them for food, breaking them to extract marrow and meat. Some of the bones show signs of burning, indicating that they were also used as fuel. The bones might even have served as building material for shelters. Layers of burnt bone and charcoal in older sediments support the idea that bones were deliberately gathered and used in camp activities. When Neanderthals finally abandoned La Cotte, fine silt blew over the site and preserved the remains. Archaeologists have been excavating there since the mid-19th century and the volume of artifacts and bones from the site exceeds that of all other Neanderthal sites in the British Isles combined. The new interpretation of the bone heaps not only changes our understanding of Neanderthal hunting strategies but also removes one of the more sensational but misleading images from the public imagination. The debunking of the mammoth drive myth at La Cotte is an important reminder that interpretations must be grounded in the realities of terrain, animal behavior and the archaeological record. The image of Neanderthals as simple brutes is long outdated. The real picture is one of complex, resourceful humans who could thrive at the very edges of the habitable world. These discoveries show that Britain's prehistory was shaped by dramatic climate shifts and changing sea levels. Sometimes the land was connected to continental Europe via a vast plain known today as Doggerland, allowing humans and animals to move freely across. At other times rising seas turned Britain into an island, cutting it off entirely. The climate alternated between warm interglacials when hippos, lions and elephants roamed and harsh glaciations when ice sheets covered the north and tundra reached far south. Humans came and went in rhythm with these cycles. The Neanderthals of Britain and the Channel Islands lived in environments that could change drastically within a few generations. They were adept hunters who targeted the large mammals of the Ice Age, including mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, horse, red deer and reindeer. They also gathered plants, used fire and made a variety of stone tools for cutting, scraping and working hides. The bout coupe hand axe tradition of late Neanderthals in Britain is particularly striking. It shows that these groups had distinct cultural traditions and possibly limited contact with other populations on the continent. Fire use is attested by the presence of burnt bone at Lakot and other sites. Elevated caves and headlands were chosen not only for shelter but also for their strategic value in hunting, providing commanding views over surrounding plains. Doggerland was a vast lowland plain that connected Britain to Europe during periods of lower sea level. Rivers, lakes and marshes made it a rich hunting ground. For Neanderthals it may have been a core territory, with Britain itself as a seasonal extension. When ice sheets grew and sea levels fell, Doggerland expanded. When the climate warmed, melting ice raised the seas, shrinking the plain and sometimes cutting Britain off entirely. This shifting geography explains the intermittent nature of Neanderthal presence in the archaeological record. Neanderthals returned to Britain during marine isotope stage 3, between about 60,000 and 42,000 years ago. The climate then was variable but included warmer phases when forests and open plains provided good hunting conditions. These later Neanderthals made a distinctive type of hand axe known as the boot coupe, a form unique to Britain. The distribution of this tool suggests that these groups were not seasonally migrating back and forth from the continent but may have had a core territory that included parts of Doggerland and extended into Britain during favourable seasons. The Neanderthals of Britain and Wales were not marginal wanderers on the edge of their range. They were skilled, adaptable people who repeatedly entered and re-entered a challenging landscape, surviving by ingenuity and cooperation. Sites such as Pontduid Cave and La Cotte de Sembrelade preserve not only their tools and bones but also the story of how climate, geography and human resilience interacted over hundreds of millennia. Neanderthals vanished from Britain around 42,000 years ago. Shortly afterwards modern humans arrived, bringing new tools, hunting methods and symbolic behaviour. Whether Neanderthals were out-competed, absorbed through interbreeding or succumbed to other pressures is still debated. What is clear is that their disappearance from Britain was part of the wider extinction of the species across Europe within a few thousand years.