New Thoughts On Neanderthals
Health Care? Art and Spirituality? Simple Brutes No More…
Health Care? Art and Spirituality? Simple Brutes No More…
“So easy, even a Caveman could do it!” — GEICO’s “Caveman” commercials in the early 2000’s featured Neanderthal-looking Cavemen — alive in the modern world — taking offense at the ad’s inferences, to great comic effect.
Turns out? If Neanderthals did suddenly reappear, they just might be offended by still commonly held images of them as brutes and beasts.
Our understanding of our prehistoric Neanderthal ancestors, enhanced by new discoveries, has changed and deepened over the last fifty years. Academia no longer regards Neanderthal as primitive, animalistic almost-humans. But this knowledge hasn’t yet truly filtered down into public awareness. This new thinking will surprise some.
We’ve known about the Neanderthal for a long time. Their remains were first discovered in Germany in 1856, in the Neander Valley near Düsseldorf. Thanks to the preservative qualities of the limestone caves they lived in, we’ve since found many more remains. Neanderthal are the best-known archaic humans, the archetypal “cavemen.”[i]
But mind the bias which contributed to our current, popular conception of the Neanderthal as a primitive beast. Science doesn’t operate in a societal vacuum. The contemporary academic, cultural conceit of White, Western European, racial superiority — the institutionalized racism of the nineteenth century which led into eugenics in the twentieth — informed the early, ongoing assessment of these proto-humans as something less than ourselves — less than human. This was obviously wrong.
What more do we know now?
As the timeline for Homo sapiens — Early Modern Humans — has pushed further back (See Relearning History for more on that fascinating topic), the timeline for Homo neanderthalensis — Neanderthals — has ticked further ahead. We’ve discovered them to be more contemporary with ancient modern humans than once suspected, to have intermingled and interbred with them. They were a complex race, and by no means the dull-witted grunters they were depicted as in the past.
Our impression of the Neanderthal began to change with the discoveries of archaeologist Ralph Solecki in Iraq in the late 1950s. In a cave in Shanidar, Solecki discovered nine nearly complete Neanderthal skeletons. Non-fatal fractures and bone damage in the skeletons showed the Neanderthals cared for their injured and kept them alive.
Solecki also interpreted pollen residue found among the skeletons to mean the Neanderthals not only buried their dead, but also left flowers on their graves or buried their dead with them. This interpretation was challenged and discounted by some, but found increasing support over time.
Some Anthropologists and archaeologists still argue against the Neanderthal’s use of symbols and burial rituals, but “most researchers agree that Neanderthals were skilled hunters and craftsmen who made tools, used fire, buried their dead (at least on occasion), cared for their sick and injured and even had a few symbolic notions. Likewise, most researchers believe that Neanderthals probably had some facility for language, at least as we usually think of it.”[ii]
We’ve also discovered the Neanderthal were — in part — our ancestors. Early Modern Humans and Neanderthal interbred. Many of us today still have Neanderthal DNA. “Eurasians generally carry about 2 percent Neanderthal nuclear DNA.”[iii]
Neanderthals also interbred with the more recently discovered Denisovans (See Our Emerging Ancestors — The Denisovans for more on our other recently discovered ancient ancestor). We learned this from studies of our modern human DNA, but concrete confirmation came in 2018 when scientists identified a first-generation Denisovan/Neanderthal interbred female from DNA in a fragment of bone found in Denisova cave, with a Neanderthal Mother and Denisovan father.[iv]
Abstract Thinking and Creativity
In 2018, European cave paintings were attributed to Neanderthals, based on the fact they pre-dated the arrival of early modern humans in Europe by twenty-thousand years — Neanderthal authorship was implied. D.L. Hoffman and his co-authors used Uranium-thorium Dating, which reaches further back than traditional Carbon 14 Dating, to test the age of the carbonate crusts which had built up on top of the paintings over time.”[v]
This contributes to a growing idea that Neanderthals were creative beings, more like modern humans than before conceived.
The researchers tested dates “for a red linear motif in La Pasiega (Cantabria), a hand stencil in Maltravieso (Extremadura), and red-painted speleothems in Ardales (Andalucía). Collectively, these results show that cave art in Iberia is older than 64.8 thousand years (ka). This cave art is the earliest dated so far…”[vi]
If it holds up, this is a major conclusion, for it implies that the Neanderthals thought abstractly and created art. As Hoffman pointed out,”These paintings are the oldest dated cave paintings in the world. Importantly, they predate the arrival of modern humans in Europe by at least 20,000 years, which suggests that they must be of Neandertal origin.”[vii]
“The cave art comprises mainly red and black paintings and includes representations of various animals, linear signs, geometric shapes, hand stencils, and handprints. Thus, Neandertals possessed a much richer symbolic behavior than previously assumed.”[viii]
But this dating has recently been challenged.[ix] Science News reported that an international group of 44 researchers concluded that the — in their estimation — controversial age estimates needed to be independently confirmed using other dating techniques, including radiocarbon dating and thermoluminescence dating, which estimates the time since sediment was last exposed to sunlight. They insisted that “Until that occurs, ‘there is still no convincing archaeological evidence that Neandertals created [southwestern European] cave art.’[x]”
Additionally, the early dating alone may not be enough to attribute the cave artwork to Neanderthals as timelines shift. A discovery announced earlier this year suggested early modern humans may have made their way out of Africa and into Europe much earlier than originally supposed. Part of an anatomically modern human skull found in Greece was said to be dated to 210,000 years ago. [xi]
Discounting the cave art’s attribution doesn’t eliminate all the evidence for abstract thinking by the Neanderthal, however. There have been several other discoveries which reflect creativity and even — perhaps — spirituality.
Just this November, archaeologists produced evidence that Neanderthals in southern Europe could have been making necklaces out of eagle talons, based on finding eagle toes with the talons deliberately removed, all across the region. “The talons were obviously being collected, but they probably weren’t being used as food or tools.”[xii]
Earlier discoveries of at sites like Cueva de los Aviones in Spain of seashell beads and ocher were thought to suggest their use “as talismans or as visible markers of social standing, group membership, or some other aspect of a person’s identity.”[xiii] In the case of the talons, usage is speculative, as the talons themselves have yet to be found. “The talons may have been pendants, earrings, or just something people carried; without the talons themselves, there’s no way to know.”[xiv]
And though lead archaeologist Antonio Rodriguez was loathe to speculate on the spiritual aspect, telling Ars Technica “To know, or try to imagine, the significance for Neanderthals is out of science,” according to Ars, he planned “to study eagle-talon ornaments from indigenous Australian and North American cultures to compare patterns of cut marks and wear, as well as how each culture used those objects and what they meant to the people who wore them.”[xv]
Many human cultures developed avian mythologies, in part influenced by the stunning appearance of the Milky Way and the constellation we now call Cygnus in the night sky, such as the Path of Souls concept now attributed to some Native American mound-building tribes.[xvi] To attribute such beliefs to Neanderthals is perhaps outside of science, but the possibility remains, and the implications are stunning.
The End?
The Neanderthal disappeared some 40,000 years ago, and we don’t yet know for sure why. Dueling studies — also from this past November — suggested either that meeting up with Early Modern Humans and their diseases wiped them out (and that we and our diseases killed all our other brother and sister human species as well)[xvii] — or by contrast, that their own inbreeding did them in.[xviii] Murder or Suicide? That jury is apparently still out.
Evidence mounts that there was much more to the Neanderthal than once believed. From finding in the fifties that they buried their dead and placed flowers, to the more recent discoveries of shells, talons and other totems, much suggests they engaged in ritualistic mortuary behavior — and perhaps possessed a belief in an afterlife.
We’ve found they cared for their sick and their injured, and lived in family groups. And speaking of family —remember, they are more us than we once knew, too, as some modern humans share 2% of our DNA with Neanderthal forebears.
There is a great deal of new thinking going on. But the idea of the primitive caveman is so ingrained in popular culture, it’s difficult for this newer knowledge to penetrate the zeitgeist.
Even as the Neanderthals themselves appear not quite so simple nor so primitive as once thought.
Mike Luoma is a writer, podcaster, audio book narrator, comic book creator, and publisher from Vermont. His work can be found at http://glowinthedarkradio.com.
[i] Encyclopedia Britannica Online. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Neanderthal.
[ii] Rethinking Neanderthals, By Joe Alper, Smithsonian Magazine, June 2003.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/rethinking-neanderthals-83341003/
[iii] Encyclopedia Britannica, Above.
[iv] The genome of the offspring of a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father — Viviane Slon et al. Nature — volume 561, pages 113–116 (2018). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0455.
[v] U-Th dating of carbonate crusts reveals Neandertal origin of Iberian cave art, Hoffman et al, Science 23 Feb 2018: Vol. 359, Issue 6378, pp. 912–915. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6378/912.
[vi] Ibid.
[vii] Ibid.
[viii] Ibid.
[ix] Still no archaeological evidence that Neanderthals created Iberian cave art — Randall White et al — Journal of Human Evolution online. 21 October 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2019.102640.
[x] Dating questions challenge whether Neandertals drew Spanish cave art. By Bruce Bower. Science News. October 28, 2019. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/dating-questions-challenge-whether-neandertals-drew-spanish-cave-art.
[xi] “A Skull Bone Discovered in Greece May Alter the Story of Human Prehistory”, New York Times, July 10, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/10/science/skull-neanderthal-human-europe-greece.html.
[xii] Did Neanderthals make eagle talon necklaces 120,000 years ago? The evidence is indirect, but a recent find suggests the answer may be “yes.” By Kiona N. Smith — November 20, 2019. https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/11/did-neanderthals-make-eagle-talon-necklaces-120000-years-ago/.
[xiii] Ibid.
[xiv] Ibid.
[xv] Ibid.
[xvi] aka The Southeastern Ceremonial Complex (SECC). See Encyclopedia of Arkansas: Mississippian Life. https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/mississippian-period-544/.
[xvii] Scientists link Neanderthal extinction to human diseases. By Ker Than, Stanford University. Phys.Org. November 7, 2019. https://phys.org/news/2019-11-scientists-link-neanderthal-extinction-human.html.
[xviii] No humans needed: Neanderthals possibly responsible for their own extinction. Leiden University News, November 27, 2019. Citing paper ‘Inbreeding, Allee effects and stochasticity might be sufficient to account for Neanderthal extinction’ by Krist Vaesen, et al. PloS ONE, 27 November 2019. https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/news/2019/11/no-humans-needed-neanderthals-possibly-responsible-for-their-own-extinction.