The footprint is ghostly but unmistakable: the shallow impression of a toddler’s foot, just 11 centimeters long, pressed into damp sand. The heel is faint, the arch not yet formed — a sign of a very young child finding their balance in the world. But this footprint wasn’t made on a beach holiday. It was left around 80,000 years ago, on a windswept dune in what is now Portugal. And its maker was a Neanderthal.
This tiny track, alongside those of an older child and at least one adult, is at the heart of a remarkable discovery. For the first time on the Portuguese coast, scientists have found fossilized Neanderthal tracksites. The tracks preserve not just their presence, but a fleeting, intimate glimpse of family life. These aren’t scattered bones or tools, but a direct record of action, a literal “snapshot of life” that challenges old stereotypes.
A Unique Find
For anthropologists, fossil footprints are a special kind of evidence. They are extremely rarely preserved. Bones and tools usually survive far better, while footprints need extremely specific conditions to fossilize. They survive only when the ground is just right, quickly buried before erosion wipes them away. But footprints capture something different: a moment of life.
At Monte Clérigo in southern Portugal, researchers uncovered a 22-square-meter canvas of such frozen moments. Etched into a steep, 35-degree dune slope are the trackways of at least three individuals. By studying their size and depth, the team could reconstruct who left them: an adult male (about 1.7 meters, or 5’7”), a child of 7–9 years, and most remarkably, a toddler under two years old.
Etched into a steep, 35-degree dune slope are the trackways of at least three individuals. By analyzing the size and depth of the prints, the team could paint a vivid picture of the group. One set of tracks was made by an adult, likely a male standing between 1.69 and 1.73 meters tall (about 5 feet 7 inches). Another belonged to a child, estimated to be between 7 and 9 years old. Most remarkably, a third set of tiny prints, just 11 centimeters long, reveals the presence of a Neanderthal toddler under the age of two.
Foraging at the Beach
We have no idea if this was a father with his children or something else, but this does suggest a small family situation. The very presence of a toddler scrambling on a dune suggests the family’s campsite was likely nearby. You don’t typically take a two-year-old on a long-distance expedition. Because the footprints were going to and from the shore, they were likely foraging for food. He could also be doing something else (like keeping watch, for instance), but the presence of two children alongside the adult suggests a relatively safe and carefree activity.
The toddler’s footprints are particularly revealing. They show a flatter foot, without the clearly defined arch seen in the adult prints. This is precisely what we see in modern human children, whose arches only become fully established after their first few years of growth. The find reinforces that Neanderthal children developed in ways strikingly similar to our own.
The tracks show a remarkable level of forethought. Instead of charging straight up the steepest part of the dune, the Neanderthals took a more strategic route, walking in a diagonal, curving trajectory that would have lessened the slope and made the climb easier.
But Weren’t Neanderthals Big Game Hunters?
The diet of Neanderthals was way more sophisticated and diverse than initially thought.
Early excavations across inland Europe consistently unearthed sites dominated by the skeletal remains of large animals like mammoths, horses, and deer, proving Neanderthals were proficient top-level hunters. This created a strong narrative, which was further supported by stable isotope analyses of Neanderthal remains from northern regions. This early evidence suggested a diet where protein came almost exclusively from large, animal-based food sources.
This was such a convincing and simple narrative that it naturally overshadowed more subtle clues. Naturally, this led to the widespread scientific and popular image of a species that subsisted solely on large terrestrial prey. This is not the case.
At Monte Clérigo, footprints were found crisscrossing the tracks of hoofed animals, likely large red deer. This fits with the idea that Neanderthals were chasing and hunting deer. But the footprints at the beach show that Neanderthals were highly flexible and opportunistic foragers with a much broader diet. They hunted game and probably fished as well. They looked for mussels and crabs skillfully, capitalizing on local biodiversity and adapting their diet to whatever resources their immediate environment offered.
Sure, Neanderthals were good hunters, but they didn’t limit themselves to that. The evidence points to them eating tortoises, birds, and a variety of marine life, including mollusks, crabs, fish, and even seals. This adaptability was key to their success.
The Image of the Neanderthal Brute Needs to Go
This new evidence from Portugal powerfully refutes the outdated image of Neanderthals as brutish, inflexible specialists who were outcompeted by modern humans. This is far from the only study to suggest this.
A growing body of research shows Neanderthals systematically used varied ecosystems and were every bit as sophisticated as early humans. Evidence for their complex cognition extends beyond subsistence, with other studies pointing to their symbolic use of art and trinkets, a behavior once thought to be unique to modern humans. The Portuguese tracks fit perfectly within this revised understanding.
The Neanderthals thrived for tens of thousands of years in the coastal refuges of southern Iberia, a region that may have been one of their last strongholds.
The ghostly prints at Monte Clérigo and Praia do Telheiro are more than just fossils tell a part of this story. For a brief, breathtaking moment, they close the 80,000-year gap between us, allowing us to see our ancient cousins not as primitive caricatures, but as a family walking together on a beach, surviving, planning, and maybe even enjoying themselves.
The study was published in Nature.
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