Have Neandertals been given a fair trial?

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 (5^th 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.