Neanderthals Revisited

 

Anthony Harrigan

      Anthony Harrigan is co-author or editor of twenty books. He has lectured at Yale University, Vanderbilt University, the University of Colorado and the National War College.

      One of the most significant events in the history of our planet took place about 28 thousand years ago. This was when the ancient human beings we know as Neanderthals became extinct. Their last redoubt most probably was southern Spain, or so many scholars of the very ancient past believe.

      Modern man first became aware of the existence of Neanderthals when fossils of the ancient humanoids were discovered in the Neander Valley in Germany in 1856. For more than a century these humanoids were slandered, described as unthinking brutes. Only a few months ago a television program was broadcast in which one of the characters said to another character, “You have a Neanderthal brain.” The scriptwriter obviously did not know that the brain of a Neanderthal was as large or larger than the brain of modern man, homo sapiens.

      In the last quarter century, however, paleo anthropologists have been reappraising Neanderthals. And well they might because these people were tremendously successful, having appeared in Europe 120,000 years ago. They endured through periods of enormous climatic change, flourishing despite the rigors of the Ice Age. Modern man has yet to match their record. They demonstrated both great physical strength and intelligence, albeit a somewhat different kind of intelligence than our own.

      “Rethinking Neanderthals,” an article by Joe Alper in the Smithsonian, June 2003, summarizes the reappraisal of the Neanderthals currently taking place. Overall, the reappraisal evidences new respect for these very human beings who disappeared so long ago.

      However, every aspect of their existence is the subject of intense controversy. First of all, there is controversy over the question of whether we share a common heritage with them, or whether they are a distinct and separate species. There is evidence that cuts both ways. There are distinct physical differences between Neanderthals and modern man, chiefly the different shape of the skull. On the other hand, the skeletons of the two human types are remarkably similar. The differences, apart from the skull, include a slightly shorter neck and shorter forearms and lower bones of the leg—all of which gave the Neanderthals greater strength. But with contemporary clothing, a haircut and shave, a Neanderthal could “pass” as a modern man in a social setting today, albeit regarded as ugly. Many modern types, are just as unusual and unattractive. After all, there is considerable variety of form and gait among those whom scientists deem the same species.

      Among the ideas about Neanderthals which are being reappraised is the idea that they had little or no ability to communicate, that the sound-producing structures in their mouth were not adequate for conversation. This idea seems unsound, however. It is hard to believe that Neanderthals were around for 150,000 thousand years and lacked the ability to verbally communicate with one another. It may be that the structures in the mouth were less developed than those in the mouths of modern men. But they surely had the ability to communicate with those in their small group or nearby groups with which they had a relationship—such as the finding of mates. Their need for speech, however, was limited in the main to intragroup communication and speech dealing with hunter-gathering. Speech, after all, is not a universal key. In our own time people are separated by language and dialect. A Londoner has difficulty understanding someone from the North of England. Speech for the Neanderthals must have been adequate. They were hunter-gatherers, not philosophers.

      It is hard to comprehend the rigors of life on the edge of the Ice Cap. Mr. Alper notes that the Neanderthal fossils show numerous fractures of the arm and leg. But this is a phenomenon of many ancient peoples who lived in an environment with many rock hazards or who were engaged in building stone structures, such as the people of prehistoric Britain of four or five thousand years ago. Of course, we can’t be sure what terminated the Neanderthals, though we speculate that it was inadequate nutrition or other causes. It is truly amazing that the Neanderthals endured through so many millennia when the environment in Europe was so incredibly harsh, eking out an existence and reproducing in the terrible cold of glacial periods. We can hardly begin to comprehend or appreciate what early humans went through in order to continue to live.

      Bill Bryson, writing in A Short History of Nearly Everything, points out that modern man and the Neanderthal during his long life history “has been miraculously fortunate in his personal ancestry.” He said:

Every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so.

He added that

Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded or otherwise deflected from its quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations.

      Modern human beings—homo sapiens, that is—moved into the coal regions about 40,000 years ago. That means the Neanderthals had a history of dealing with the climatic challenges that was about four times longer. This is the most extraordinary success story.

      This history was dismissed by early archeologists who regarded Neanderthals almost as subhumans. Attitudes have changed, however. Dr. Fred Smith of Loyola University now says that researchers believe Neanderthals were

. . . highly intelligent, able to adapt to a wide variety of ecological zones and capable of developing highly functional tools to help them do so. They were quite accomplished.

      In considering the world of the Neanderthals, we are looking at an almost unfathomable stretch of time. In our study of human history we study the actions of people over hundreds of years or over a couple of thousand years at the most. But the story of the Neanderthals stretches over 150 millennia. It closes with the extinction around 30,000 years past.

      Given their tremendously long run, it is amazing that they should become extinct 28,000 years ago. They were completely displaced by homo sapiens. The literature about Neanderthals is voluminous.

      The most interesting and valuable explorations are set down in two recent works—The Neanderthal Enigma by James Shreeve (Avon Books, 1995) and The Last Neanderthal by Jan Tattersall (Westview Press, 1999).

      Mr. Shreeve makes the point that “two distinct human lineages shared the same region for thousands of years.” That is something not well understood until recent years. Something happened, but what? That is the great unknown. Perhaps the answer lies in the different nature and behavior of the Neanderthals and homo sapiens. His book is especially valuable in describing the mind and behavior of Neanderthals. In his view, the purpose of knowledge to a Neanderthal

. . . would not be to gain control but to increase intimacy, not just between individuals but between the individual mind and whatever it sees, touches, smells, and remembers.

      He said “I imagine Neanderthals possessing a different kind of self and a different kind of consciousness.” He added that “Neanderthal society would be new adverse . . . uncurious about the unfamiliar beyond its borders.” In other words, he regards the Neanderthals as a gentler, kinder breed, where homo sapiens, our ancestors, from the beginning, were ambitious, aggressive, and desirous of changing the human and natural scene, often through the use of violence. If he is correct, we have been very wrong in trying to dehumanize Neanderthals. They may have been our moral superiors. In any case, however, this characterization of the Neanderthals doesn’t explain how two very different humanoid types managed to co-exist in the same territory for ten thousand years.

      Mr. Shreeve raises the possibility of their extended survival in some isolated mountain pockets in Europe. He points out that the Neanderthals apparently hung on longer in what is Spain than elsewhere in Europe, adding that

. . . if this was possible 28,000 years ago, why not, say, 20,000? Or 15,000? Is it impossible that evidence of their extended survival might turn up in some other isolated mountain pocket in Europe, perhaps in the Caucasus Mountains, the Zagros or Urals? What if they were still alive, unknown and unknowing, when the first agriculturists planted their seeds 12,000 years ago? Or when the Greeks destroyed Troy in 1230 B.C.?

      This is speculation of the most extreme kind. There is no evidence to support it. But one has to remember that the record of Neanderthals, who lived so long ago, is so scanty that it is necessary to speculate.

      The secrets of the Neanderthal character and society and their extinction are important for us to discover and comprehend. After all, the Neanderthals, the other human species, is a very big part of the overall story of intelligent life on this planet. They were what has been described as a parallel human race. Professor Juan Luis Arsuaga, author of The Neanderthal’s Necklace (Four Walls, Eight Windows Press, 2001) says that they provide a surprising mirror on modern day humanity. They were, he says, “very much like us but not quite the same.” Understandably, we very much want to know how and why this parallel human type disappeared.

      All sorts of questions arise from study of Neanderthals and their extinction. If we can fathom their traits, we can estimate what we, modern men, need in order to survive as a species. We know, for example, that modern man is very competitive and aggressive. Are these the qualities which Cro-Magnon man had that caused Neanderthals to succumb? Were the Neanderthals too nice? Does the American expression “nice guys finish last” have an evolutionary basis?

      The Neanderthal story is too complicated and too remote in time for modern people to hastily seize on any single explanation of why they became extinct. However, there have been and will be commentators who argue that violence was involved, violence committed by Cro-Magnons against the other breed.

      Edwin Windschutle, the Australian historian, reviewing Steven LeBlanc’s book The Myth of the Peaceful Noble Savage, notes

. . . that the author is only the second writer to unequivocally argue that during most of their existence, homo sapiens have waged, almost constantly, war on their own kind and that primeval society was far more warlike than any of its civilized successors.

Mr. LeBlanc quoted Dr. Lawrence Kelley as saying that the skeletal remains of early man show that a high proportion of the deaths were inflicted by spears, arrows, swords, and clubs. Dr. Kelley also said that “prehistoric massacre sites were common.”

      Be that as it may, other factors may have been involved. Perhaps paleo-anthropologists at least will reach a consensus on the only other highly developed humanoid to live on this planet and in proximity to our ancestors. Perhaps the consensus will be that it would have been a happy development if the Neanderthals had survived as they would have provided an example of a very different type of human behavior from which we could have learned and had a constructive impact on modern man. Unfortunately, survival of the Neandrthals did not happen. It is our loss.     Ω