Clearing things up about Neanderthals

Jewelry, the Cave Bear Cult & your DNA

In 2018 I went on a dig. The highlight of my dig was finding a small piece of flint. It was green and shiny when my professor wiped the dirt away with his freshly licked thumb. Why was this rock so cool interesting? This tiny rock was fascinating because the last person to touch it before I was a Neanderthal about 40 thousand years ago. The site I excavated was Scladina Cave in a tiny town in rural Belgium. The cave is the resting place of a 7-year-old Neanderthal girl — Scladina child — whose remains were found in 1993.

There are MANY misconceptions about Neanderthals (Pronounced Ne-an-der-tall unless you’re British, then it’s pronounced Ne-an-der-thal). A big misconception is that we (Homo-Sapiens, modern humans) evolved from Neanderthals (Homo Neanderthalensis). When really we were more like first cousins. We lived simultaneously; Neanderthals went extinct about 30 thousand years ago, and Homo-sapiens have been around for about 200 thousand years. There is some significant overlap, and we even have some hybrid babies to show for it.

Neanderthals lived in (what is now) Europe to Central Asia. When we (Homo-Sapiens) interbred with them, it was mainly in the Middle East.

I can’t help but feel a little protective over Neanderthals because they are thought to be unmannered, uncultured, and brutal. Early illustrations of them didn’t help this narrative; very hairy and hunched over. Neanderthals did have very robust bodies. They also had very pronounced brow ridges. They had ‘cold weather’ faces; their face shape actually warmed the air they were breathing. However, they probably were not like the ‘caveman’ drawn in cartoons. This brings me to the second thing I will clear up: Neanderthals did not live IN caves — more likely, around them.

What we know about Neanderthals we learn from their fossils. These give us morphology and DNA. For instance, this is how we know Scladina child is Neanderthal. We also have material culture found in their sites dated to their time. For this post, I will skip the more mundane stuff & get to the unexpected.

1. They wore Makeup and Jewelry. Well, we are not 100% sure. BUT evidence from sites such as Combe Grenal, Les Fieux, and Arcy-sur-Cure (France), and Cueva de Los Aviones (Spain) indicate that Neandertals may have been using pigments and wearing Jewelry or even feathers.

At Fumane Cave, Italy, a site dated to 44 thousand years ago, there were 660 bird bones from 22 species. Evidence of cutting, peeling, and scraping marks on the wings suggests that Neanderthals removed the flight feathers intentionally. This wouldn’t happen if they just wanted to eat the bird meat.

We can see the removal of Raptor talons at the other sites that could have been worn as jewelry. We know that early Homo-Sapiens wore claws too.

2. They used projectile weaponry. Neanderthals were killing their prey by throwing 6–7 foot-long spears. This may not come off as a surprise, but what is really interesting is HOW we know this. We see these thrusting spears at a couple of sites associated with (archaeology term for ‘next to’) prey animals. We also know they were throwing because of how their bones look. Their right upper arm is up to 50% more robust in many male Neandertals than their left! This tells us that they were using this arm in a particular way a lot. Bone reacts to stress, and fossils can show us what a person did in their life even thousands of years later.

3. They had funerals. In Neandertal burials, high amounts of pollen are found, indicating flowers being buried with the individual.

4. Neandertals could have type O blood. Lalueza-Fox et al. (2008) recovered fragments of the ABO gene using DNA samples from two male Neandertals from El Sidron Cave, Spain. The mutation associated with blood group O is shared by Neandertals and modern humans and probably arose about 1.15 million years ago

5. The cave bear cult has been debunked. Have you heard of this? Some people thought that Neanderthals used to worship the Cave Bear. Some archaeologists thought this to be true because many cave bear bones were arranged in a cave in Switzerland. The skulls were in a perfect circle. But that doesn’t mean a Neanderthal put them like that and was worshiping them. The archaeologist who found this, Bachelor, was insufficient with the data he took and was also inconsistent. It’s possible there was a slight embellishment going on. There is no way for us to know the religion of past Neanderthals if they had one at all.

6. Their brains were bigger than ours. Neandertals developed much more slowly than modern humans, which is why their brains ended up being more giant in size. Their brains were about 1410 cm3, and ours are 1300 cm3. Although bigger in size, Neanderthals had a smaller cerebellum, less projecting parietal areas, smaller olfactory bulbs, and temporal lobe poles, a narrower orbitofrontal cortex. Our cognition is most likely more advanced — however, that does not mean they were not sophisticated or intelligent creatures. Nor is it definitely the reason we outlived them.

7. You might be part of Neanderthal! Non-African populations (outside Oceania) carry between 1.8 and 2.6% Neanderthal DNA, while East Asians have 2.3 to 2.6%. So cool! except… this might actually explain some of your problems… Alleles that were adaptive (good) in ancient environments might now be maladaptive (harmful) since our environment is so different. This is called an evolutionary mismatch. Some Neanderthal-induced traits can be depression, negative response to long-lasting artificial light, addiction to tobacco, hypercoagulation, malnutrition, actinic keratosis, and urinary tract disorders.

8. They played music. In Divje babe, an archaeological park in northwestern Slovenia, a “flute” was found with two intentional holes carved into hollow Cave bear bone. There is no way to know for sure if they used it to play music, but we know the holes were intentionally placed.

These are 8 points I hope cleared some things up about Neanderthals for you. It would be nice to know everything about the Neanderthal that brought that piece of flint to my dig site, but it's impossible at this point. However, technology in archaeology is moving fast, and its potential is incredible, so fingers crossed!

Sources:

Dr. Melanie Chang, Anth 394 Lecture, University of Victoria, BC Canada, 2018.

Lalueza-Fox, Carles, et al. “Genetic characterization of the ABO blood group in Neandertals.” BMC evolutionary biology 8.1 (2008): 1–5.