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This is what happens when people who aren't archaeologists or anthropologists write about the human past - they pretty much get every single thing wrong. I'm actually sick of it - why and how does this crap get published? https://theconversation.com/war-in-the-time-of-neanderthals-how-our-species-battled-for-supremacy-for-over-100-000-years-148205?utm_medium=amptwitter&utm_source=twitter
First, @LeMoustier 's recent book which he links to Kindred is incredible. If you haven't bought it already, get onto that. She IS a Neanderthal expert (which the author of this piece clearly isn't) and summarises what we know amazingly eloquently. https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Rebecca-Wragg-Sykes/Kindred--Neanderthal-Life-Love-Death-and-Art/21741289
Now - onto the weapons. Neanderthal spears are hunting tools. They are found WITH butchered animals including horse and elephant. The Lehringen spear was found underneath an elephant. Hunting does NOT equate to violence. It is a subsistence behaviour.
There's no evidence of 'warfare' here. Equating trauma with human-human violence let alone 'war' is really VERY dodgy. It brings us back to the same old Hobbesian tropes about human nature and violence that @davidwengrow & others are banging on about as deeply problematic.
