Home-range size in large-bodied carnivores as a model for predicting neandertal territory size.
Adult human foragers expend roughly 30-60 kcal per km in unburdened walking at optimal speeds.(1,2) In the context of foraging rounds and residential moves, they may routinely travel distances of 50-70 km per week, often while carrying loads.(3) Movement on the landscape, then, is arguably the single most expensive item in the activity budgets of hunter-gatherers. Mobility costs may have been greater still for Neandertals. They had stocky, short-limbed physiques that were energetically costly to move(4) and lived in relatively unproductive Pleistocene environments(5) that may have required greater movement to deal with problems of biodepletion and resource patchiness.(6) But just how mobile were the Neandertals?
Steven Emilio
SE
Churchill
Christopher Scott
CS
Walker
Adam Michael
AM
Schwartz
D000818:Animals; D000885:Anthropology, Physical; D049690:History, Ancient; D006702:Homing Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D008954:Models, Biological; D059125:Neanderthals / Q000502:physiology*; D019596:Wolves / Q000502:physiology*
Micoquian; Mousterian; Pleistocene; mobility