Humans
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Neanderthals were oddly obsessed with golden eagles, much more so than any other animal. They went to great lengths to hunt them, crafting personal ornaments from their talons and adorning themselves with their feathers. Could this point to something like a "cult of the Sun Bird?"
It’s a wild idea, but perhaps not as unimaginable as you might think. Many human cultures (of the Homo sapiens variety) have shared this fascination with golden eagles. With their impressive 2-meter (6.6-foot) wingspans and ferociously elegant beaks, it's not hard to see why they inspire such awe.
Human cultures and golden eagles
To the ancient Greeks and Romans, these raptors were messengers of the gods. In the mountain cultures of Japan, the species is tied to ancient traditions and may have inspired the Tengu, a mythical winged beast in Shinto belief.
For Native American tribes of the Midwest and Great Lakes region, eagle feathers were likened to rays of the Sun, woven into headdresses and used to consecrate sacred objects. Around the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi Valley, tribes would adorn the landscape with giant petroglyphs of the so-called “thunderbird.”
Even William Shakespeare couldn't shut up about them. The golden eagle is referenced more than 40 times within his world-famous works, although he calls them a variety of different names, including the "Roman eagle," "Jove's bird," "holy eagle," and "royal bird."
The cult of the Sun Bird
According to some archaeologists, there’s evidence that Neanderthals were equally infatuated with the great golden eagle. In fact, they might have even lionized them in a cult-like practice that was passed on down generations and onto Homo sapiens.
This is an argument of a 2019 study by archaeologists from the Gibraltar National Museum, an organization that’s been involved in the study of some of the world’s last Neanderthal populations on the Iberian Peninsula. They make the claim that some Neanderthals may have practiced a "cult of the Sun Bird."
To build this bold argument, the researchers point to a few strands of evidence. First and foremost, they explain how the remains of raptors, especially golden eagles, are surprisingly common at Neanderthal sites across Eurasia. The frequency suggests they weren’t just opportunistically hunting the birds whenever they came across them in the wild, but they were actively going out of their way to track them down.
Why did Neanderthals collect eagle remains?
Archaeologists had once assumed that Neanderthals were incapable of systematically catching birds, especially large birds of prey, but this doesn't seem to be the case. The most likely method was ambush: Neanderthals would identify a carcass being scavenged by eagles, watch patiently, and strike when the bird was distracted by its meal.
Still, this would have been dangerous work. Golden eagles are powerful predators, and getting close enough to one would have required both courage and skill. These animals aren’t easy to hunt. Their nests are typically found on cliff edges, they’re smart, and they’re armed with incredibly sharp talons. If they were simply interested in their meat, it would be much easier to catch another species of bird, like, for example, a seagull (even if it tastes a little fishy).
So why bother? The researchers argue that the real prizes weren't the bird's flesh but its feathers and talons, which could be used as personal ornaments, medicine, and objects of reverence.
"The Golden Eagle was one of the targeted species, it would seem both for feathers and talons. It appears, from current evidence reviewed in this paper, that the Golden Eagle was the main target of the Neanderthals. It was certainly so among the group of large diurnal raptors," the study authors wrote.
"This new evidence shows that Neanderthals not only took small to medium-sized birds for food, but also large birds of prey in order to take their flight feathers and talons. The inference from these results is that these large raptors were taken to use their body parts for symbolic purposes. This implies higher cognitive abilities in the Neanderthals and not just in modern humans," they added.
The researchers even ponder whether human cultures' reverence for the golden eagle may be a symbolic tradition passed down from Neanderthals to Homo sapiens.
Not everyone agrees with these imaginative interpretations, though. In 2022, another team of archaeologists commented on the study and said it "illustrates the pitfalls of such sapienscentrism." In other words, the team are projecting modern human behavior onto long-extinct Neanderthals.
"While we agree with the assertion that hominin-raptor relationships were most likely culturally significant, we strongly caution against overly eager continuity propositions based on decontextualised analogies, naïve evolutionist and diffusionist premises, as well as problematic understandings of culture and society as antipoles to ‘nature’," the authors write in the 2022 study.
Did Neanderthals have religion?
One of the big questions is whether Neanderthals had religion or some kind of organized spirituality. Without being able to interview one, we're left scrapping around in the dirt, forced to draw conclusions from bones and prehistoric objects.
What does seem clear is that both Neanderthals and Homo sapiens share a deep, recurring relationship with the golden eagle. Whether this could be considered a "cult of the Sun Bird" is a matter of interpretation, but the obsession is evidently ancient.
"The combination of large size, wide geographical distribution, nesting in rocky habitats, which were frequented by Neanderthals and other humans, of coming down to carcasses outside the breeding season and its aggressive nature, capable of driving away even the largest raptors, was a potent one; it repeatedly made this eagle, the Sun Bird, the subject of awe, reverence and admiration by countless generations of humans, Neanderthals included," the researchers of the 2019 study conclude.
