The first fossil human form recognized in Europe was that of Homo sapiens’s closest relative, the Neanderthal, named after the Neander River valley in Germany, where the first specimen, a skullcap, was found in 1856. There is still disagreement as to whether the Neanderthals represent a distinct species from Homo sapiens—that is, Homo neanderthalensis— or a subspecies of Homo sapiens. Their morphology (body shape) differs from that of humans—particularly their massive physique and extremely heavy bones. Yet they are more like modern humans than any other hominid found. In fact the early specimens were thought at first to be the bones of diseased humans; only in 1864 was the classification Homo nean-derthalensis proposed.
Evidence for Planning and Forethought in Neanderthals
Early Neanderthals from around 200,000 years before the present (b. p.), transported raw materials for tool making much farther than did Homo heidelbergensis, as much as 200 miles. They remained at sites long enough to create well-defined hearths, often in caves, which are surrounded by a debris of stone chips and animal bone, evidence that people sat in a circle around the fire eating and working. Other sites lack such patterns, however; many seem to show that groups were opportunistic, using whatever resources they found when they arrived at a site.
By about 180,000 b. p more signs of forethought appear, for example, at the site of La Cotte on the island of Jersey in the English Channel, where selected parts of mammoth bones—mostly skulls, shoulder blades, and pelvises—were taken to a central camp. They were probably gathered from the bodies of mammoths that had been stampeded over the nearby cliff, which is a prominent landmark in the area. There is evidence from this period of more elaborate stoneworking techniques, including reworking of the edges of tools for
Dwellings
After 60,000 b. p. Neanderthals were making more elaborate hearths and shelters—or perhaps only windbreaks—of mammoth skulls and reindeer antlers, “a quantum leap” away from living space arrangements of earlier times. The distances they traveled differed greatly in different regions, being much greater in the north and in the continental interior than in the southwest in modern-day France and the Iberian Peninsula, probably because of greater seasonal change there and the greater impact of the fluctuations of climate from glacial to interglacial that occurred during the Ice Age. Sites in the north and central regions were seldom occupied long enough to accumulate more than a single horizon of artifacts, whereas in the southwest many were occupied continuously over long periods. During the period 60,000-40,000 b. p Neanderthals were moving for the first time into the North European plain and the plains of Russia and Ukraine.
Stone Tool Industries of Neanderthals and Modern Humans
Neanderthals, of whom the latest fossil skeleton dates from around 28,000 years ago, probably coexisted with modern humans for thousands of years in Ice Age Europe. In addition to finds of fossil bones, stone tool types have been used to determine which species lived at a site, even in the absence of bones. The stone tool industry that is associated with the first modern humans in Europe is called the Aurignacian. The earliest industries of western Europe showing some Aurignacian characteristics (not yet fully Aurignacian) have been dated to
38.000 to 42,000 years ago. They have been found in modern-day Belgium, southern Germany, northern Spain, and northern Italy. Some scholars believe that the sites in southern Germany in the Danube basin are evidence that this was a major migration route.
Yet there is disagreement over whether these pre-Aurignacian industries were made by modern humans or by Neanderthals. Entry of modern humans at a later period,
30.000 to 35,000 years ago, is supported by the sudden appearance at this time of a distinctly new art style of anthropomorphic (humanlike) animal figurines, such as the beautiful figure of a lion-headed man carved from mammoth ivory found in southern Germany and dated to 30,000 years old. This figurative art is usually associated with Aurignacian tools. The earliest fossil remnants generally accepted as modern, consisting of a frontal (forehead) bone from Hahnofersand, Germany, is dated to 36,300 years old. Other fossil remains dating some 30,000 years back have been found in England and northern Spain.
Question of Symbolic Behavior in Neanderthals
Far more specimens of Neanderthals exist than for any other hominid because they lived relatively recently. Some paleontologists believe that so many skeletons survived intact because their survivors deliberately buried them, possibly even strewing flowers over them. If that is true, such burials would be the first unmistakable evidence of the awareness of death and of symbolic behavior. This interpretation is far from accepted by most researchers, however, who point out that the apparent burials can be explained as chance depositions; even the flower pollen found with the skeletons could have percolated through overlying sediments or could have been carried there by rodents. The burials are found only in caves, where the sheltered cave environment might have preserved them, whereas in open settings, where burials of modern humans have been found and where the effort involved in digging deep graves provides clearer evidence of intentionality, no Neanderthal bodies have been found.
Perhaps a more powerful argument against symbolic behavior of the Neanderthals are the scarcity of artifacts such as animal teeth, bones, and shells fashioned to be worn as ornaments and the lack of figurative art such as that of the Aurignacian toolmakers. Although Middle Paleolithic Neanderthals are associated with symbolic items such as red ochre pigment, tooth pendants, exotic shells, and carved bones and stones, far fewer of them have been found at Neanderthal sites than at those of modern humans.
Such artifacts, evidence of cultural objects as bearers of symbolic meaning used in the codification and transmission of culture, are found in Homo sapiens sites over a broad area after about 40,000 B. P.; some archaeologists refer to a cultural “explosion” among modern humans at this time. It seems unlikely that the ability to think symbolically would have emerged among the Neanderthals without a similar explosion. They may be better understood as “tool-assisted” hominids than as “culture-using,” and the similarity of stone tool styles among them, as well as tooth pendants and carved bone, may have been the result simply of imitation, of copying by seeing rather than by being told and instructed. Cultural continuity among modern humans directly results from the fact that certain styles of dress, tools, and behavior take on symbolic meaning, becoming symbols of belonging to a distinctive group. The European “peoples” we follow in this book derive their existence as much or more by these symbolic distinctions as by genetic lineage. Such cultural distinctiveness appears not to have been a characteristic of the first Europeans, the Neanderthals.
Social Organization of Neanderthals
The last interglacial warming period began around 130,000 B. P. In England the warming generated mixed oak forests and abundant big game, which were thinly dispersed through the forests. The same was true over the North European and Russian plains. But the Neanderthals were absent. Apparently they were unable to cope with such conditions. Some paleontologists suggest that their massive physique was an adaptation to cold and that they were unable to survive in a temperate climate. Another possibility is that they lacked the social organization needed for the more difficult task of hunting in forests; theirs has been called a “face to face” social organization in which group cohesion, in the absence of language, could be maintained only when individuals were close together. Language assists in projecting the future, particularly among members of a group. The sort of extended hunting expeditions undertaken by modern human hunter-gatherers, in which the hunters depart the main group for weeks at a time as they roam the forests in search of game, may have been beyond the ability of Neanderthals.
The Last Neanderthals
In 1999 it was determined that pieces of Neanderthal skulls found in a cave in Vindija, Croatia, are as recent as 28,000 years old. The tools in the cave include some made from bone, which had been thought to be an innovation of Homo sapiens. Whether the Neanderthals obtained these tools by trade with Homo sapiens or by imitation, their presence implies some degree of interaction between the two hominids. Late skulls from the cave seem to have some modern human characteristics. On the other hand a 24,500-year-old early modern human child unearthed in Portugal had distinctive Neanderthal characteristics, an indication of interbreeding. The extinction of the Neanderthals, whether it came about by displacement or population absorption by modern humans, or by some other factor, was a slow and geographically mosaic process. As we learn more about Neanderthals, their differences from modern humans in basic behavior and abilities increasingly appear to have been more subtle than striking.
World History
