When President Reagan was discovered to have cancer in his colon, one major newspaper printed a poll in which people were solemnly asked if they thought the cancer would be cured, would recur, or would go into remission. Now, not even the enthusiasts of ultrademocracy would maintain that there could be any popular insight into the state of affairs in Reagan's bottom (Hitchens, 2001: 79)
Perhaps it would be fruitful to face some less contentious claims at
the outset. When it comes to questions of identity, it is easy to
arouse people's insecurities. Secondly, in probing a paucity of
evidence, it is perfectly possible for different groups to pattern
mutually incompatible backstories.
For
better or worse, in asking questions of one of our nearest Homo
relatives, the Neandertals, we confront both of these problems.
Mocking characterisations of “dim-witted ogre[s] lurking behind the
evolutionary threshold of humanity” become ripe for fawning
anthropocentrists, yet one of the more interesting – and perhaps
difficult to answer – enquiries become what the early modern
Europeans thought of their Neandertal contemporaries: were they “just
another group of … hunter-gatherers, fully as human as themselves?”
If so, did this earn them any respect when they came in to close
proximity, or were they instead driven to conflict over resources,
with our own ancestors left as the only remaining survivors? (Wang,
2001: 29, 33)
On
an evolutionary basis, it seems tempting to suggest that if the
Neandertals were forced into extinction by their neighbours on the
phylogenetic tree, they must have been inferior.
This is too simplistic an assessment. Unlike, say, the standard
pedagogical natural selection example of the peppered moth, where
colouring was the arbiter of the fate of entire (sub-)populations,
both early modern humans and Neandertals were sufficiently complex
that discerning a single fatal characteristic may be impossible.
Learning, a facility both clearly share given their tool construction
and use, is a kind of adaptation that affects individuals within
their lifetime. Mutations are a force for species adaptation only
between the lives of parents and their progeny.
Regarding
more modern wars, between what we would agree were extremely
genetically close groups – closer than early modern humans and
Neandertals – we could at best say that a winning faction had
superior strategy, greater numbers, better weaponry, and so on. While
it might be useful for one side psychologically to dehumanise
the other, this says little for their actual humanness.
So while it is possible that Neandertals were confronted by
individuals of superior cognitive faculties, it is as – if not more
– conceivable that their culture hadn't helped them proliferate in
the same ways. It could also be that both situations were true, so
evidence for each needs to be evaluated.
Some
uses have been suggested Neandertals had for their Mousterian
tools (named for their French provenance of Le Moustier), from
analysing wear patterns, including animal butchering, woodworking,
bone and antler carving, and working of animal hides. Some wear
patterns even indicate the “friction of a wooden shaft against a
stone spear point.” Neandertals could have been the first to haft a
stone point, which suggests impressive forethought & reasoning
ability. The finding of a “Neanderthal-made stone point lodged in a
neck-bone of a prehistoric wild ass” seem to support these
findings. (Feder & Park, 2007: 303-304) (Wang, 2001: 33)
As alluded to already, there has been a clear tendency for some
circles to downplay Neandertal achievements in various areas, sadly
forgetting that those who can not now speak for themselves deserve
more lenience and reserve so long as evidence is scanty.
When
researchers have found signs of cultural sophistication on
Neandertals' part, more anthropic explanations seem to spring
reflexively from various groups. For example, when “a wealth of
complex bone and stone tools, body ornaments and decorated objects []
were found in association with Neandertal remains,” and early
modern Europeans were known to have had a “comparable industry
known as Aurignacian,” it was in turn suggested that the local
stratigraphy was later mixed by natural forces, depositing
“Aurignacian artifacts into the Neandertal-associated levels.” Or
take the alternate hypothesis that it was a kind of cultural
diffusion: with Neandertals picking up ideas by collecting, trading,
or imitating tools manufactured by moderns, “without really
grasping the underlying [symbolism]
of some
of the objects.” (Zilhão
and d’Errico, 2001: 34)
For
now disregarding whether it's somehow a problem if they did, the
former hypothesis has been dismissed by the finding of both the
finished artefacts and “by-products of their manufacture in the
same stratigraphic level.” More temptingly, it appears the
Neandertals used techniques “different [to] those favoured by the
Aurignacians.” Sites of other findings have lead researchers to the
same conclusion: an autonomous – if not independent –
development. (Zilhão
and d’Errico, 2001: 34)
There
has been some support for the independent development of
these so-called Châtelperronian
tools. These Neandertal cultures have been found to have emerged in
Europe around 40,000 years ago, with the Aurignacian only intruding
around 3,500 years later.
(Zilhão
and d’Errico, 2001: 35).
Conclusions
on Neandertal speech ability have been similarly divisive. Based on a
reconstructed vocal tract revealing a higher-placed larynx, one group
observed that they could not have vocalised the full gamut of human
vowel sounds. The significance of this is questionable, as many human
languages have different numbers of symbols or phonemes and this does
not seem to disproportionately handicap certain groups. Another group
of researchers working in Israel who found a hyoid bone - “a
horseshoe-shaped bone in the throat” - were led to believe that
they could indeed
make all the sounds that we can. There appears to be consensus that
their culture, as sophisticated as it seems, would have depended
on oral language to ever be able to have materialised the way it did.
(Feder & Park, 2007: 308)
While
perhaps it is not too surprising to see Neandertals caring for
injured comrades - as the skeleton of a man from Shanidar in Iraq has
shown - given that you fairly often see signs of altruism in the
animal kingdom, it is
somewhat intriguing to uncover evidence of intentional burial.
Some
instances originally considered burials have now been attributed to
more natural causes; still, there are "at least thirty-six
Neanderthal sites show evidence of intentional interment of the dead,
and in some graves there were remains of offerings – stone tools,
animal bones, and, possibly flowers." (Feder & Park, 2007:
304)
More
hotly debated is whether these findings reveal any ritual
significance. Is it possible to know whether they tell us Neandertals
“believed in an afterlife or [revered the] physical remains of the
deceased, or were [they] simply disposing of a corpse?” (Feder &
Park, 2007: 304-305)
People
have tried to explain the remains of flowers in these burials in
various ways. The pollen found in the aforementioned Shanidar site
could have shaken off rodents as they were burrowing, have been
carried in by water, or have blown in with a gust. It doesn't seem
like the presence of stone tools could be justified similarly, as
different as their symbolic value may have been. (Feder & Park,
2007: 306)
While
it wouldn't speak of a great distinction between Neandertals and our
own species, given that its practice has continued in some areas in
to modern times, signs of cannibalism have been found at some
Neandertal sites: “Moula-Guercy in France and Krapina and Vindija
in Croatia.” These findings – “stone-tool cut marks [on at
least six Neandertal individuals] in the same anatomical locations as
those found on [nearby] goats and deer” – invite speculation;
they could be the vestige of “ritual (ingesting part of, or ashes
of, a group member at a funeral ceremony) or gustatory (eating the
flesh as food)” actions, … assuming they weren't just defiling
cadavers for amusement. (Feder & Park, 2007: 307-308)
References
Feder,
K.L. And M.A. Park. 2007. Human
Antiquity. An Introduction to Physical anthropology and Archaeology
(5th
edition). Mountainview: Mayfield Publishing.
Hitchens,
C. 2001. Letters
to a Young Contrarian.
New York: Basic Books.
Wang,
K. 2001. “Who Were the Neandertals?” Scientific
American
282(4): 78-87.
Zilhão
and d’Errico. Quoted in Wang, K. 2001. “Who
Were the Neandertals?” Scientific
American
282(4): 78-87.
