Long before the rise of ancient Greece and Rome, Europe was a continent of hunter-gatherers. For hundreds of thousands of years, they used stone tools and hunted large game like European bison and reindeer, but Trent’s Dr. Eugène Morin has shown that they hunted smaller animals like rabbits too.

Hunting small, difficult to catch animals means that Neanderthals had broader diets and were more concerned with efficiency than they’re usually given credit for.

“Neanderthals have always been of interest to me,” says Professor Morin, an associate professor in the department of Anthropology.

“In some ways, we feel we're close to them. In other ways, we don't feel that close. My research reassesses assumptions about their cognitive abilities. I want to see whether their behaviours are consistent with those of contemporary hunter-gatherers, and also how they differ relative to these people.”

In to the very distant past: Studying life half a million years ago

Prof. Morin studies animal remains to determine human behaviour. His research focuses on sites in France and Montenegro, where the bones of hunted animals have been preserved in caves that shield them from sun and rain. While some of the evidence dates back only to the last ice age, some remains date as far back as 500,000 years ago.

“Bones and teeth preserve better in a cave than in the open air. So, it's usually a very good place to look for remains,” Prof. Morin says.

But because the sites are so old, bones and teeth are all that remains. To determine how an animal was hunted and consumed, Prof. Morin examines the animal remains under a microscope to identify cut marks or other clues about how the animal was hunted and consumed.

Small clues can reveal major changes

“Among other things, I’m interested in issues of demography,” says Prof. Morin.

“You can imagine that a population that’s under severe stress due to relatively high population density might exploit carcasses differently. If they are under severe stress, they might exploit carcasses more thoroughly than they would if prey was abundant.”

Early hominids also had to deal with a changing climate. This could be particularly dramatic when ice ages took hold and during certain climatic episodes known as Heinrich events, when ice altered water circulation in the oceans.

“The range of changes is really large during certain time periods,” Prof. Morin says.

“We talk about a change of 2°C over a century today, but in some cases, there were changes of 7-10°C within only a few decades. By studying these changes, we can learn how people were using the environment, and how they adapted to changes in animal biomass.”

Prof. Morin’s research also views his research as a window in to ourselves. The ancestors of modern humans spent far longer as hunter-gatherers than we have as farmers or urbanites.

“We're not hunting anymore, and when we study these animal remains, we learn a little bit more about this aspect of life,” says Prof. Morin.