Most examples relating hominin behavior to more detailed and continuous records of environmental change involve the transformation of late Pleistocene or early Holocene vegetation through the use of fire. Burning practices by hunter-gatherers are widespread across almost all biomes worldwide. Australian studies suggest that fire use has measurable benefits in terms of prey density and habitat diversity, and depends on regular burning. One recent study proposes that early modern humans were using fire around northern Lake Malawi in Africa by around 85,000 years ago, another that human activities have shaped nearly three-quarters of terrestrial nature for at least 12,000 years.
     A new study presents paleoenvironmental and archaeological data from the Last Interglacial period of Neumark-Nord, about 190 kilometres southwest of Berlin, near Halle, where comparative data strongly suggest that Neanderthals had a role in vegetation transformation. The site complex represents a long phase of distinct vegetation openness that correlates with an approximately 2,000 year period of significant hominin presence in the area.
     After a long period of abandonment, when major parts of the northern European plain were covered by ice sheets, hunter-gatherers moved back into this region at the beginning of the Last Interglacial. In the rain shadow of the Harz mountains with relatively low precipitation, the basin has become well known for the discoveries of numerous virtually complete skeletons of large mammals such as straight-tusked elephants, rhinos, bison, horses, deer, boar, aurochs, lions, hyenas, and bears, with and an abundance of faunal remains interspersed with traces of Neanderthal activities - including substantial evidence for fire use - in a diverse environment comprising both forested patches and large open areas, with a climate broadly comparable to today.
     While the butchering of large herbivores created a highly visible archaeological record at Neanderthal sites in general, nutritional studies strongly suggest that plants played an important role in Neanderthal diets, possibly reflected by the few charred remains of hazelnut, acorn, and blackthorn in the Neumark-Nord landscape, where an increase in upland herbs and grasses including wild relatives of wheat and barley would have enabled easy access to a now well-established component of the Neanderthal diet.
     Traces of Neanderthal presence are well documented for the wider area around Neumark-Nord, and increasingly also in northwestern France, which could suggest locally higher hominin densities and a less mobile lifestyle during interglacial periods. Evidence for Neanderthal landscape modification points to an important and previously unknown aspect of Neanderthal behaviour, and is older than comparable evidence for Homo sapiens.

Edited from Science Advanced (15 December 2021)