NEANDERTHAL MAN HAD A THING FOR BIG EAGLES -- AND HYENAS

But we haven’t found evidence that Neanderthals were much interested in dogs
NEWS DECEMBER 20, 2022

Although technically a dog expert, Mark Derr has given some thought since the 1990s to Neanderthal man who seems to get smarter each time we study him:

For instance, Neanderthal appears to have mastered and used fire for a variety of purposes including cooking after their appearance in Eurasia some 300,000 or more years ago. They also made carvings into ivory, and they almost certainly communicated using speech. To show how slowly attitudes change, I have recently seen people speculate that Neanderthal may have only seasonally had fire, but in general were incapable of igniting tinder on their own. This view recently received what would appear to be a mortal blow when Ceren Kabukcu and colleagues revealed that Neanderthal not only had fire throughout the year, but also used fire to cook a wide variety of foods which they consumed.

While we don’t know if Neanderthals tried falconry, as it is called, it’s well established that they used the eagles’ feathers and talons “perhaps as religious totems, perhaps as icons of personal strength.” (Audubon News, June 21, 2019). Researchers think that Neanderthal use of raptor emblems in this way is an instance of symbolic expression, implying an intellectual life. (PLOS, March 5, 2012) Neanderthals also incorporated corvids (crows, for example) into their symbolic life. The crow, like the eagle, is rich in symbolism in many human cultures.

But now, what about the hyenas? There’s a story in that: Neanderthals are not thought, based on current evidence, to have had much interest in dogs, Mietje Germonpré, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences told Derr: “archeological evidence suggests that modern humans had a special interest in canids, while such an interest seems absent in Neanderthals.”

More:
https://mindmatters.ai/2022/12/neanderthal-man-had-a-thing-for-big-eagles-and-hyenas/

(I absolutely always believed hyenas were dogs!)