William wrote:

> IIRC the question was how did the bones of neanderthal man come to show so
> much damage?
> Could be several answers, none that I can think of provable.
> They might have taken a more direct approach,

That's what I read about: neanderthals uses a quite brute force hunting,
attacking large animals with spears on the ground.
They didn't have bows and arrows and apparently didn't throw the spears.
Bows were a technology developed only recently (40k years or so).
The latter may have to do with the size of the animals.

> Methods of acquiring meat could be an answer, and the man-made cliff is one
> possiblility. Would archaeologists recognise what they see? Note this hole
> would not be associated with human remains.

The cliffs were identified by piles of bones found at the bottom.
Holes should show up in the fossil record. A hole can be identified
quite good. It fills up with different material and this is what leaves
the hole visible later. You even find hearth places 300k years old. On
the flat ground! These are just stone circles with a little ash in the
middle.
I've never heared of a prehistoric trap hole - with bones nearby.
Maybe they were too inefficient or hard to create.
How would you dig a hole large enough  to catch a horse - for example?
I mean without a spade and a shovel.
Before iron they had wooden spades. And these yould have been hard to
make with hand-axes only - and not very endurable.
I think for early cro magnon or even homo xyz 1 mio years back hole
trape were not an option.

regards

Amadeus