Dr. Roebroeks and his colleagues concluded

 Dr. Roebroeks and his colleagues concluded

 that at least some Neanderthals lived in substantially larger groups than is often hypothesized. The researchers estimated that a group of 25 foragers working in tandem would have required three to five days to skin and carve up a single 11-ton elephant, and an equal amount of time to process it. The yield: more than 2,500 daily portions of 4,000 calories per portion.

The team calculated that an extended family of 25 could go three months before going hungry, 100 foragers could eat for a month, and 350 people could eat for a week, provided they had cultural knowledge and mechanisms to store food over that period by drying, freezing or caching. Traces of

 charcoal fires have been found at the site, suggesting that the Neanderthals may have dried meat on racks and roasted it. (The researchers also assumed that even a Neanderthal on a Paleo diet would have needed more than meat to survive without nutrient deficiencies.)