Updated 15 March, 2022 - 13:59 Nathan Falde

How Rabbits Led to Neanderthal Extinction in

Iberia and Elsewhere

There were undoubtedly many reasons why the Neanderthals finally went extinct in Europe 40,000
years ago. One hypothesis states that the inability of the species to adapt to hunting small animals
when large mammals decreased in numbers played a big role in their ultimate demise.

This theory was explained in a landmark 2013 study that was published in the peer-reviewed Journal of
Human Evolution .

This particular study, which was carried out by a team of scientists from universities in Spain and the
United Kingdom, focused on the extinction of Neanderthals on the Iberian Peninsula. The scientists
concluded that Neanderthals were doomed in Iberia because they were unable to successfully hunt
rabbits, the prey species that was most widely available in that region 40,000 years in the past. This
was in contrast to modern humans, who migrated to the Iberian Peninsula 42,000 to 45,000 years ago
and quickly adapted to what the land could provide.
 The rabbits came to prehistoric Iberia or modern-day Spain, and this led to Neanderthal extinction
because they were not so good a trapping or catching smaller prey! ( Subbotina Anna / Adobe Stock)

Elusive Rabbit Prey Led to Neanderthal Extinction In Iberia

Between 160,000 and 40,000 years ago, Neanderthals who belonged to the Mousterian culture lived on
the Iberian Peninsula, which is comprised of modern-day Spain, Portugal, and southern France. For
most of that period they got all the animal protein they needed to survive from hunting larger animal
species like mammoths and rhinoceros.

In the latter part of that period, however, populations of large game animals in Iberia began to decline
significantly. This may have been caused by changes in the climate, or from overhunting that occurred
when humans migrated to Iberia and joined the Neanderthals in hunting those species. Conversely,
rabbit populations soared during this same time period.

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“High dependence on the hunting and consumption of large mammals by some hominins may have
limited their survival once their preferred quarry became scarce or disappeared,” the study authors
wrote in their Journal of Human Evolution article. “Adaptation to smaller residual prey would have been
essential after the many large-bodied species decreased in numbers.”
For Mousterian Neanderthals, that should have meant an increasing focus on hunting rabbits.

“Unlike the Italian Peninsula and other parts of Europe , in Iberia the rabbit has provided a food
resource of great importance for predators including hominins,” the scientists explained.

Human hunter-gatherer groups were able to make such an adjustment. This is shown by studies of
animal bone deposits taken from archaeological sites in caves in Spain and southern France, which
showed that Homo sapiens were killing and eating rabbits in ever increasing numbers between 40,000
and 30,000 years ago.

But animal bone deposits found at ancient Neanderthal sites on the Iberian Peninsula told a different
story. While rabbit hunting wasn’t unheard of among Iberian Neanderthals, it was apparently too rare
for rabbit meat to meet a substantial percentage of the Neanderthals’ daily caloric needs. The problem
became especially acute right around the time Neanderthals disappeared from the Iberian Peninsula for
good, during that 30,000 to 40,000 years ago time frame.

“We suggest that hunters that could shift focus to rabbits and other smaller residual fauna, once larger-
bodied species decreased in numbers, would have been able to persist,” the scientists wrote in their
Journal of Human Evolution article.

The implication of this statement is that those who were unable to adapt—like the Mousterian
Neanderthal hunter-gatherers—would not have survived in the long run.

According to a remarkable 2013 research study, Neanderthals excelled at bringing down large prey with
advanced spears, but when the big animals were gone they were unable to adapt their hunting
methods for smaller animals and thus went extinct. ( nicolasprimola / Adobe Stock)

Why Neanderthals Living Everywhere Were Ultimately Doomed

If it is indeed true that Neanderthals in Iberia suffered and ultimately died out because they didn’t kill
and eat enough rabbits, it raises an obvious question: Why they didn’t adjust their hunting habits to take
advantage of what was available?

The researchers involved in the 2013 study believe the problem lay not with an unwillingness to hunt
rabbits, but an inability to do so.

Neanderthal hunters 50,000 years ago relied on spears to hunt large mammals. These animals made
large targets, which made it easier to kill them with long, sharpened sticks that could either be thrown at
them with force or thrust into them at close range.

Unfortunately for the Neanderthals, this methodology wouldn’t have worked with rabbits. They were too
small, quick, and elusive. It wouldn’t seem that this was an insurmountable problem, but the
archaeological record indicates that Neanderthals living in Iberia never did have much luck hunting
rabbits. While humans who lived in Iberia 30,000 to 40,000 years ago were able to smoothly transition
to hunting rabbits when other sources of animal protein disappeared, for whatever reason it seems the
Iberian Neanderthals couldn’t do the same.

"I think modern humans had more technologies to catch these fast-moving smaller prey items, like nets
or traps,” study co-author John Stewart, a professor of Evolutionary Paleoecology at Bournemouth
University, told the BBC in 2020. “Certainly when times got tough modern humans always had more at
their disposal."

Nets and traps for catching small animals was something Neanderthals weren’t very good at but Homo
sapiens, on the other hand, figured this out and survived. ( EXARC)

This suggests that in at least this one area, Neanderthals lacked the ability to adapt to changing
environmental circumstances as efficiently as humans. This implies a difference in intelligence, and it
also suggests that modern humans and Neanderthals living in Iberia at the same time weren’t sharing
secrets or trading technologies (otherwise the Neanderthals could have learned how to hunt rabbits by
watching or learning from their human neighbors).
A lack of success hunting rabbits for food may have been the problem in Iberia. But John Stewart
believes their struggles in this regard revealed a more generalized limitation in Neanderthal
adaptability.

“I think the rabbit was just a symptom [of their extinction] rather than the cause,” Stewart said.
“Neanderthals were more vulnerable because they had less tricks up their sleeve, less breadth of
possibilities.”

In other words, wherever Neanderthals were living the disappearance of large land mammals would
have put them it a difficult position. Smaller prey of all types might have been around, but they wouldn’t
have known how to exploit those resources for food to a sufficient degree to guarantee their survival.

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This wouldn’t have been the only reason why they ultimately died out. A 2019 study revealed that
fertility declined among Neanderthals in the latter stages of their existence. This could have been
influenced by a lack of food and the bad health that caused, and by greater levels of inbreeding as
Neanderthal populations decreased.

Abrupt shifts in climate from cold to hot and back again put more strain on the Neanderthals over the
last 50,000 years or so of their existence, as they struggled to feed themselves in the harsher
conditions brought on by these changes.

As a result of these multiple factors, one by one the various Neanderthal groups living in different areas
vanished from the face of the earth. Fortunately, they left behind bones and artifacts that archaeologists
and historians could use to reconstruct their fascinating history, ensuring that their existence would not
be overlooked.

Top image: Researchers over the last decade have narrowed in on the cause of Neanderthal extinction
in prehistoric Spain and the answer is that they were unable to trap or capture smaller prey, especially
rabbits. Source: Akkharat J. / Adobe Stock

By Nathan Falde