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The Neanderthal (Homo neanderthalensis) or Neandertal was a species of the Homo genus that inhabited Europe and parts of western Asia. The first proto-Neanderthal traits appear in Europe as early as 350,000 years ago , by 130,000 years ago, full blown Neanderthal characteristics had appeared and by 50,000 years ago, Neanderthals disappeared from Europe, although they continued in Asia to 30,000 years ago.

Neanderthals had many adaptations to a cold climate, such as large braincases, short but robust builds, and large noses — traits selected by nature in cold climates, as observed in modern sub-arctic populations. Their brain sizes have been estimated as larger than modern humans, but their brains may in fact have been approximately the same as those of modern humans. On average, Neanderthal males stood about 1.65m tall (just under 5' 6") and were heavily built, and muscular due to their physical activity. Females were about 1.53 to 1.57m tall (about 5'-5'2").

The characteristic style of stone tools in the Middle Paleolithic is called the Mousterian Culture, after a prominent archaeological site where the tools were first found. The Mousterian culture is typified by the wide use of the Levallois technique. Mousterian tools were often produced using soft hammer percussion, with hammers made of materials like bones, antlers, and wood, rather than hard hammer percussion, using stone hammers. Near the end of the time of the Neanderthals, they created the Châtelperronian tool style, considered more "advanced" than that of the Mousterian. They either invented the Châtelperronian themselves or "borrowed" elements from the incoming modern humans who are thought to have created the Aurignacian.

Etymology and classification

The term "Neanderthal Man" was coined in 1863 by Irish anatomist William King. Neanderthal is now spelled two ways: The spelling of the German word Thal, meaning "valley or dale", was changed to Tal in the early 20th century, but the former spelling is often retained in English and always in scientific names, while the modern spelling is used in German.

The Neanderthal or "Neander valley" was named after theologian Joachim Neander, who lived there in the late seventeenth century.

The original German pronunciation (regardless of spelling) is with the sound /t/. (See German phonology.) When used in English, the term is usually anglicised to /θ/ (as in thin), though speakers more familiar with German use /t/.

For many years, professionals vigorously debated about whether Neanderthals should be classified as Homo neanderthalensis or as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, the latter placing Neanderthals as a subspecies of Homo sapiens. However, recent evidence from mitochondrial DNA studies have been interpreted as evidence that Neanderthals were not a subspecies of H. sapiens. Some scientists, for example Milford Wolpoff, argue that fossil evidence suggests that the two species interbred, and hence were the same biological species. Others, for example Cambridge Professor Paul Mellars, say

Discovery

Neanderthal skulls were discovered in Engis, Belgium, in 1829 and Forbes' Quarry, Gibraltar, in 1848 prior to the "original" discovery in a limestone quarry of the Neander Valley (near Düsseldorf) in August, 1856, three years before Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species was published.

The type specimen, dubbed Neanderthal 1, consisted of a skull cap, two femora, three bones from the right arm, two from the left arm, part of the left ilium, fragments of a scapula, and ribs. The workers who recovered this material originally thought it to be the remains of a bear. They gave the material to amateur naturalist Johann Karl Fuhlrott, who turned the fossils over to anatomist Hermann Schaafhausen. The discovery was jointly announced in 1857.

That discovery is now considered the beginning of paleoanthropology. These and other discoveries led to the idea that these remains were from ancient Europeans who had played an important role in modern human origins. The bones of over 400 Neanderthals have been found since.

Anatomy

The following is a list of physical traits that distinguish Neanderthals from modern humans; however, not all of them can be used to distinguish specific Neanderthal populations, from various geographic areas or periods of evolution, from other extinct humans. Also, many of these traits occasionally manifest in modern humans, particularly among certain ethnic groups. Nothing is known about the skin color, the hair, or the shape of soft parts such as eyes, ears, and lips of Neanderthals.

Compared to modern humans, Neanderthals were larger in size and had distinct morphological features, especially of the cranium, which gradually accumulated more derived aspects, particularly in certain relatively isolated geographic regions. Their relatively robust stature is thought to be an adaptation to the cold climate of Europe during the Pleistocene epoch.

Neanderthal physical traits
Cranial Sub-cranial
Suprainiac fossa, a groove above the inion Considerably more robust
Occipital bun, a protuberance of the occipital bone that looks like a hair knot Large round finger tips
Projecting mid-face Barrel-shaped rib cage
Low, flat, elongated skull Large kneecaps
A flat basicranium Long collar bones
Supraorbital torus, a prominent browridge Short, bowed shoulder blades
1200-1750 cm³ skull capacity (10% greater than modern human average) Thick, bowed shaft of the thigh bones
Lack of a protruding chin (mental protuberance; although later specimens possess a slight protuberance) Short shinbones and calf bones
Crest on the mastoid process behind the ear opening Long, gracile pelvic pubis (superior pubic ramus)
No groove on canine teeth
Lack of a protruding chin (mental protuberance; although later specimens possess a slight protuberance)
A retromolar space posterior to the third molar
Bony projections on the sides of the nasal opening
Distinctive shape of the bony labyrinth in the ear
Larger mental foramen in mandible for facial blood supply
A broad, projecting nose

Based on a 2001 study, some commentators speculated that Neanderthals exhibited rufosity, and that some red-headed and freckled humans today share some heritage with Neanderthals, however many other researchers disagree.

Language

The idea that Neanderthals lacked complex language was widespread until 1983, when a Neanderthal hyoid bone was found at the Kebara Cave in Israel. The hyoid is a small bone that holds the root of the tongue in place, a requirement to human speech and, therefore, it seems to imply the presence of anatomical conditions for speech to occur. The bone that was found is virtually identical to that of modern humans.

Aside from the morphological evidence above, neurological evidence for potential speech in neanderthalensis exists in the form of the hypoglossal canal. The canal of neanderthalensis is the same size as modern humans, which are significantly larger than the canal of modern chimpanzees and australopithecines. The canal carries the hypoglossal nerve, which supplies the muscles of the tongue with motor coordination. Researchers indicate that this evidence suggests that neanderthalensis had vocal capabilites similar to modern humans.

A research team from the University of California at Berkeley, led by David DeGusta, suggests that the size of the hypoglossal canal is not an indicator of speech. His team's research, which shows no correlation between canal size and speech potential, shows there are a number of extant non-human primates and fossilized australopithecines which have equal or larger hypoglossal canal.

Many people believe that even without the hyoid bone evidence, it is obvious that tools as advanced as those of the Mousterian Era, attributed to Neanderthals, could not have been developed without cognitive skills encompassing some form of spoken language.

A recent study conducted on the Neanderthal hyoid found that due to the physical characteristics of Neanderthals and the fact that their larynx would have been stouter than that of the modern human, the average note emitted by Neanderthals would have been high pitched and sharper than that of modern man, contrary to the media stereotype of Neanderthals having ape-like grunts.

The base of the Neanderthal tongue was positioned higher in the throat, crowding the mouth somewhat. As a result, Neanderthal speech would most likely have been nasalized.

Tools

Neanderthal (Middle Paleolithic) archaeological sites show a smaller and different toolkit than have been found in Upper Paleolithic sites, which were perhaps occupied by modern humans that superseded them. Fossil evidence indicating who may have made the tools found in Early Upper Paleolithic sites is still missing.

There is little evidence that Neanderthals used antlers, shell, or other bone materials to make tools; their bone industry was relatively simple. However, there is good evidence that they routinely constructed a variety of stone implements. The Neanderthal (Mousterian) tool kits consisted of sophisticated stone-flakes, task-specific hand axes, and spears. Many of these tools were very sharp. There is also good evidence that they used a lot of wood, objects which are unlikely to have been preserved until today.

Also, while they had weapons, none have yet been found that were used as projectile weapons. They had spears, in the sense of a long wooden shaft with a spearhead firmly attached to it, but these were not spears specifically crafted for flight (perhaps better described as a javelin). However, a number of 400,000 year old wooden projectile spears were found at Schöningen in northern Germany. These are thought to have been made by the Neanderthal's ancestors, Homo erectus or Homo heidelbergensis. Generally, projectile weapons are more commonly associated with H. sapiens. The lack of projectile weaponry is an indication of different sustenance methods, rather than inferior technology or abilities.

Although much has been made of the Neanderthal's burial of their dead, their burials were less elaborate than those of anatomically modern humans. The interpretation of the Shanidar IV burials as including flowers, and therefore being a form of ritual burial,Solecki, R. S. (1975) Shanidar IV, a Neanderthal flower burial in N. Iraq Science 190 (28) 880 has been questioned.Sommer, J.D. (1999) The Shanidar IV 'Flower Burial': A Reevaluation of Neanderthal Burial Ritual, Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 9 127-129. On the other hand, five of the six flower pollens found with Shanidar IV are known to have had 'traditional' medical uses, even among relatively recent 'modern' populations. In some cases Neanderthal burials include grave goods, such as bison and aurochs bones, tools, and the pigment ochre.

Neanderthals performed a sophisticated set of tasks normally associated with humans alone. For example, they constructed complex shelters, controlled fire, and skinned animals. Particularly intriguing is a hollowed-out bear femur with four holes spaced like four holes in the diatonic scale, claimed by many to have been deliberately bored into it. This flute was found in western Slovenia in 1995, near a Mousterian Era fireplace used by Neanderthals, but its significance is still a matter of dispute.

See also: prehistoric music and Divje Babe.

Habitat and Range of the Neanderthals

Ritual defleshing or cannibalism

Intentional burial and the inclusion of grave goods is the most typical representation of ritual behaviour in the Neanderthals and denote a developing ideology. However, another much debated and controversial manifestation of this ritual treatment of the dead comes from the evidence of cut-marks on the bone which has historically been viewed as evidence of cannibalism. Neanderthal bones from various sites (Combe-Grenal and Abri Moula in France, Krapina in Croatia and Grotta Guattari in Italy) have all been cited as bearing cut marks made by stone tools. However, re-evaluation of these marks using high-powered microscopes, comparisons to contemporary butchered animal remains and recent ethnographic cases of excarnation mortuary practises have shown that perhaps this was a case of ritual defleshing. Fragments of bones from Krapina bear marks that are similar to those seen on bones from secondary burials at a Michigan ossuary (14th century AD) and are indicative of removing the flesh of a partially decomposed body. At Grotta Guattari, the apparently purposefully widened base of the skull (for access to the brains) has been shown to be caused by carnivore action, with hyena tooth marks found on the skull and mandible.

Pathology

Within the west Asian and European record there are five broad groups of pathology or injury noted in Neanderthal skeletons.

Fractures
Neanderthals seemed to suffer a high frequency of fractures, especially common on the ribs (Shanidar IV, La Chapelle-aux-Saints ‘Old Man’), the femur (La Ferrassie 1), fibulae (La Ferrassie 2 and Tabun 1), spine (Kebara 2) and skull (Shanidar I, Krapina, Sala 1). These fractures are often healed and show little or no sign of infection, suggesting that they were taken care of during times of incapacitation.
Trauma
Particularly related to fractures are cases of trauma seen on many skeletons of Neanderthals. These usually take the form of stab wounds, as seen on Shanidar III, whose lung was probably punctured by a stab wound to the chest between the 8-9th ribs. This may have been an intentional attack or merely a hunting accident, either way the man survived for some weeks after his injury before being killed by a rock fall in the Shanidar cave. Other signs of trauma include blows to the head (Shanidar I and IV, Krapina), all of which seemed to have healed, although traces of the scalp wounds are visible on the surface of the skulls.
Degenerative Disease
Arthritis is particularly common in the older Neanderthal population, specifically targeting areas of articulation such as the ankle (Shanidar III), spine and hips (La Chapelle-aux-Saints ‘Old Man’), arms (La Quina 5, Krapina, Feldhofer) knees, fingers and toes. This is closely related to degenerative joint disease, which can range from normal, use-related degeneration to painful, debilitating restriction of movement and deformity and is seen in varying degree in the Shanidar skeletons (I-IV).
Hypoplastic Disease
Dental enamel hypoplasia is an indicator of stress during the development of teeth and records in the striations and grooves in the enamel periods of food scarcity, trauma or disease. A study of 669 Neanderthal dental crowns showed that 75% of individuals suffered some degree of hypoplasia and the nutritional deficiencies were the main cause of hypoplasia and eventual tooth loss. All particularly aged skeletons show evidence of hypoplasia and it is especially evident in the Old Man of La Chapelle-aux-Saints and La Ferrassie 1 teeth.
Infection
Evidence of infections on Neanderthal skeletons is usually visible in the form of lesions on the bone, which are created by systematic infection on areas closest to the bone. Shanidar I has evidence of the degenerative lesions as does La Ferrassie 1, whose lesions on both femurs, tibiae and fibulae are indicative of a systematic infection or carcinoma (malignant tumour/cancer).

Fate of the Neanderthals

No one knows why neanderthals became extinct. There are currently three theories as to why neanderthalensis, which persisted for 200,000 years are no longer extant.

Unable to adapt

As the European populations of neanderthalensis were adapted for a cold environment, it is possible that they were unable to adapt to the warming climate at the end of the most recent ice age.

Unable to compete

It is possible that Neaderthals were unable to compete with H. sapiens as they moved into neanderthalensis territory in Europe. This could have taken the form of direct competition (open conflict and warfare between the species) or indirect competition (reduced access to resources).

Introgression into H. sapiens

It is likely that there was contact between Neanderthal and Cro-magnon populations (see "Multiregional hypothesis"), but the absence of Mitochondrial DNA traceable to the Neanderthals in modern humans has been taken to suggest a species barrier between Neanderthals and Cro-magnons. Some studies using European DNA suggest that there was an introgression of Neanderthal DNA into the modern human genome over long time period, but other studies contradict those findings.

Key dates

  • 1848: Skull of an ancient human is found in Forbe's Quarry, Gibraltar. Its significance is not realised at the time.
  • 1856: Johann Karl Fuhlrott first recognizes the fossil called “Neanderthal man.”
  • 1880: The mandible of a Neanderthal child is found in a secure context and associated with cultural debris, including hearths, Mousterian tools, and bones of extinct animals.
  • 1899: Hundreds of Neanderthal bones are described in stratigraphic position in association with cultural remains and extinct animal bones.
  • 1908: A nearly complete Neanderthal skeleton is discovered in association with Mousterian tools and bones of extinct animals.
  • 1953-1957: Ralph Solecki uncovers nine Neanderthal skeletons in Shanidar Cave in northern Iraq.
  • 1975: Erik Trinkaus’s study of Neanderthal feet confirms they walked like modern humans.
  • 1987: New thermoluminescence results from Israeli fossils date Neanderthals at Kebara to 60,000 BP and modern humans at Qafzeh to 90,000 BP. These dates are confirmed by Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) dates for Qafzeh (90,000 BP) and Skhul (80,000 BP).
  • 1991: New ESR dates show the Tabun Neanderthal to be contemporaneous with modern humans from Skhul and Qafzeh.
  • 2000: Igor Ovchinnikov, Kirsten Liden, William Goodman et al. retrieve DNA from a Late Neanderthal (29,000 BP) infant from Mezmaikaya Cave in the Caucausus.
  • 2005: The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology launches a project to reconstruct the Neanderthal genome.

Popular culture

Popular literature has tended to greatly exaggerate the ape-like gait and related characteristics of the Neanderthals. It has been determined that some of the earliest specimens found in fact suffered from severe arthritis. The Neanderthals were fully bipedal and had a slightly larger average brain capacity than a typical modern human, though it is thought the brain structure was organised differently.

In popular idiom the word neanderthal is sometimes used as an insult, to suggest that a person combines a deficiency of intelligence and an attachment to brute force, as well as perhaps implying the person is old fashioned or attached to outdated ideas, much in the same way as "dinosaur" or "Yahoo" is also used. Counterbalancing this are sympathetic literary portrayals of Neanderthals, as in the novel The Inheritors by William Golding and Jean M. Auel's Earth's Children series, or the more serious treatment by palaeontologist Björn Kurtén, in several works including Dance of the Tiger, and British psychologist Stan Gooch in his hybrid-origin theory of humans.

Science fiction has depicted Neanderthals in several ways:

  • In The Ugly Little Boy by Isaac Asimov, a Neanderthal child is brought into the present via time travel.
  • Michael Crichton's 1976 novel Eaters of the Dead places a small Neanderthal population in Europe as the source of the battles recorded in Beowulf.
  • In the Riverworld series, Philip José Farmer introduces a prominent Neanderthal character named Kazz, who interacts with modern humans. Jose Farmer's novella The Alley Man concerns a Neanderthal whose family has survived into modern times.
  • Robert Sawyer's Neanderthal Parallax trilogy portrays contact with an alternate world where Neanderthals, not Homo sapiens, became the dominant species. The first book in this series, Hominids, won the Hugo Award in 2003. (Sawyer's 1997 novel Frameshift used Neanderthal DNA as an element of a plot set in modern-day America.)
  • In John Darnton's 1996 novel Neanderthal a group of surviving Neanderthals is discovered in the mountains of Afghanistan. In the novel Neanderthals are said to possess the ability to read minds due to their larger cranial capacity.
  • In Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear (winner of 2003 Nebula Award), a phenomenon which caused the Neanderthals to die off now threatens modern humans.
  • In the 1989 Doctor Who serial Ghost Light a Neanderthal named Nimrod is a butler. He shows good intelligence throughout the serial. Neanderthals also appear in the 2005 New Series Adventures spin-off novel Only Human where they also show good intelligence but struggle with concepts such as fiction and lies, and they appear to not understand why humans 'are always making things up'
  • Neanderthals are portrayed as having been brought back from extinction to fill low paying jobs in Jasper Fforde's novel Lost in a Good Book, as well as later novels in the series.
  • Hindu Epic Ramayana mentions human-like apes and bears resembling Neanderthals.
  • A character in Sergio Bonelli's comic book, "Martin Mystère", is a Neanderthal called Java. He is a part of the last surviving Neanderthal population, living in a hidden city in Mongolia.
  • A Neanderthal named Java also appeared as a supporting character in the adventures of Metamorpho the Element Man by DC Comics. The name of this character and the 'Java' from Martin Mystère are both inspired by the Java Man remains.
  • Down in the Bottomlands by Harry Turtledove is set in an alternate timeline where Europe is still inhabited by Homo neanderthalensis, referred to in the story as "Strongbrows" and described as "shorter, stockier, fairer," than the "Highhead" people (presumably analagous to Homo sapiens).
  • Neanderthals appear as characters in Jean M. Auel's "Earth's Children" Series
  • Philip K. Dick's novel "The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike" uses as a plot device the discovery of a Neanderthal skull in the United States. Neanderthal were also shown as living in primitive towns in the rural areas of the former United States in his book The Simulacra
  • Colin Wilson discusses evidence and theories of Neanderthal survival into the modern age, including the possibility of their recent breeding with humans, in his book "Unsolved Mysteries". He notes that Stan Gooch holds the theory that the Jews are the modern descendants of the Neanderthal (while pointing out that Gooch, himself, is a Jew).

See also

External links

  • BBC.co.uk - 'Neanderthals "mated with modern humans": A hybrid skeleton showing features of both Neanderthal and early modern humans has been discovered, challenging the theory that our ancestors drove Neanderthals to extinction', BBC (April 21, 1999)

References

early hominids | European archaeology | Pleistocene extinctions | Pleistocene mammals

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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Neanderthal".

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