Passage II

SOCIAL SCIENCE: This passage is adapted from the article "Rethinking Neanderthals" by Joe Alper (©2003 by Smithsonian Institution).

Neanderthals, traditionally designated Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, were not only "human" but also, it turns out, more "modern" than scientists previously allowed. "In the minds of the European anthropologists who first studied them, Neanderthals were the embodiment of primitive humans, subhumans if you will," says Fred H. Smith, a physical anthropologist at Loyola University in Chicago who has been studying Neanderthal DNA. "They were believed to be scavengers who made primitive tools and were incapable of language or symbolic thought." Now, he says, researchers believe that 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."

Contrary to the view that Neanderthals were evolutionary failures—they died out about 28,000 years ago—they actually had quite a run. "If you take success to mean the ability to survive in hostile, changing environments, then Neanderthals were a great success," says archaeologist John Shea of the State University of New York at Stony Brook. "They lived 250,000 years or more in the harshest climates experienced by primates, not just humans." In contrast, we modern humans have only been around for 100,000 years or so and moved into colder, temperate regions only in the past 40,000 years.

Though the fossil evidence is not definitive, Neanderthals appear to have descended from an earlier human species, Homo erectus, between 500,000 to 300,000 years ago. Neanderthals shared many features with their ancestors—a prominent brow, weak chin, sloping skull and large nose—but were as big-brained as the anatomically modern humans that later colonized Europe, Homo sapiens. At the same time, Neanderthals were stocky, a build that would have conserved heat efficiently. From musculature marks on Neanderthal fossils and the heft of arm and leg bones, researchers conclude they were also incredibly strong. Yet their hands were remarkably like those of modern humans; a study published this past March in Nature shows that Neanderthals, contrary to previous thinking, could touch index finger and thumb, which would have given them considerable dexterity.

Neanderthal fossils suggest that they must have endured a lot of pain. "When you look at adult Neanderthal fossils, particularly the bones of the arms and skull, you see [evidence of] fractures," says Erik Trinkaus, an anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis. "I've yet to see an adult Neanderthal skeleton that doesn't have at least one fracture, and in adults in their 30s, it's common to see multiple healed fractures." (That they suffered so many broken bones suggests they hunted large animals up close, probably stabbing prey with heavy spears—a risky tactic.) In addition, fossil evidence indicates that Neanderthals suffered from a wide range of ailments, including pneumonia and malnourishment. Still, they persevered, in some cases living to the ripe old age of 45 or so.

Perhaps surprisingly, Neanderthals must also have been caring: to survive disabling injury or illness requires the help of fellow clan members, paleoanthropologists say. A telling example came from an Iraqi cave known as Shanidar, 250miles north of Baghdad, near the border with Turkey and Iran. There, archaeologist Ralph Solecki discovered nine nearly complete Neanderthal skeletons in the late 1950s. One Neanderthal’s injuries were so severe that researchers believe that he could not have survived long without a hand from his fellow clan members.

"This was really the first demonstration that Neanderthals behaved in what we think of as a fundamentally human way," says Trinkaus, who in the 1970s helped reconstruct and catalog the Shanidar fossil collection in Baghdad.(One of the skeletons is held by the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History.) “The result was that those of us studying Neanderthals started thinking about these people in terms of their behavior and not just their anatomy."

As Neanderthals retreated into present-day southern Spain and parts of Croatia toward the end of their time, modern human beings were right on their heels. Some researchers believe that Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon humans probably mated, if only in limited numbers. The question of whether Neanderthals and modern humans bred might be resolved in the near future by scientists studying DNA samples from Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon fossils.