Neanderthals-the Latest News

▪ 2005

      In the nearly 150 years since Neanderthal (or Neandertal) fossil remains were first discovered in Germany, dozens of whole and partial skeletons of this hominid type have been recovered. Though many questions about their behaviour, ecology, and biology remained unanswered in 2004, researchers in a variety of fields uncovered clues to help understand the relationship and possible interaction between Neanderthals and modern Homo sapiens.

 Neanderthals flourished from roughly 200,000 to 30,000 years ago; the Neanderthals known as “classic Neanderthals” appeared after about 100,000 years ago. Fossil remains of Neanderthals are found from Atlantic Europe to Central Asia. (See Map—>.) In physical characteristics, the Neanderthals closely resembled modern H. sapiens. Neanderthals had a brain that was as large as that of most modern human populations, and their bodies, while heavy-boned and robust, differed only in degree, not in kind, from the bodies of modern humans. Nonetheless, there is considerable disagreement about the taxonomic relationship between Neanderthals and modern H. sapiens. Recent tests of sequences of mitochondrial DNA recovered from several Neanderthal fossil specimens show that they are quite different from that of any known modern human population. Some researchers argue that this difference justifies assigning Neanderthals to a separate species (H. neanderthalensis), but others believe that they should be considered a subspecies of H. sapiens.

      Many geneticists interpret the distributions of certain genetic markers among living human populations as evidence that their ancestors dispersed rapidly out of Africa sometime in the past 100,000 years. Most geneticists believe that invading modern humans either wiped out the Neanderthals or quickly absorbed them within their own populations and that Neanderthals contributed little or nothing to the modern human genome. Archaeological and fossil evidence shows, however, that some Neanderthals survived in places such as the Iberian Peninsula and the Caucasus Mountains until as late as 30,000 years ago, more than 10,000 years after modern humans are believed to have first entered Eurasia. Archaeological evidence also reveals that the Neanderthals were capable of behaviour more sophisticated than formerly believed— behaviour that might have helped them resist the expansion of H. sapiens into the areas where Neanderthals lived. Most Neanderthal fossils are associated with distinctive forms of flaked stone tools that are identified with Middle Paleolithic technologies. Using these simple tools, Neanderthals probably hunted large game animals, including deer, wild horse, and wild cattle. A chemical analysis of the fossilized bones of Neanderthals suggests that Neanderthals were largely, if not exclusively, carnivorous. The Middle Paleolithic was followed by Upper Paleolithic culture in most of Eurasia after 45,000 years ago. Archaeologists for many years considered the Upper Paleolithic—whose artifacts include complex multipart tools, personal ornaments, and representational art—to be the product of modern H. sapiens exclusively. At two sites in France, however, Neanderthal fossils were found to be associated with early Upper Paleolithic artifacts, including ornaments and tools of bone and antler. Some researchers subsequently argued that these Upper Paleolithic Neanderthals were simply imitating the more sophisticated cultures of the modern human groups they had begun to encounter. The Aurignacian, a widespread early Upper Paleolithic culture, is often cited as the source of many innovations. Recently, researchers learned that some associations that had been made between anatomically modern skeletons and Aurignacian artifacts were based on an erroneous reconstruction of geologic stratigraphy, opening up the question of who gave rise to Aurignacian culture. Some archaeologists have suggested it was late Neanderthals who produced the Aurignacian and that Neanderthals, therefore, underwent rapid behavioral development independently of groups of H. sapiens living at that time. Research continues in an effort to clarify the cultural and genetic relationships between Neanderthals and coexisting modern humans.

Steve Kuhn

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