Neanderthals come out of the shadows

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, anthropology, archaeology, neanderthals

Le Monde published an article about a decade ago when it was becoming clear that most of us have a few percent of Neanderthal DNA. In other words, the Neanderthals weren't necessarily "wiped out" by Cro-Magnons (archaic humans) but more likely were assimilated.

The facial features of both figures are exaggerated. All but a few scientists are still shaking off the prejudice against Neanderthals, that they were degraded ape-men, which is how they were portrayed for at least a century and a half.

I can think of no better education in the reality of Neanderthals, as now known (and more is yet to be learned!), than Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art by Rebecca Wragg Sykes. The book is big (400pp), and I read it closely, which explains the long delay since my last review.

In the Acknowledgements and elsewhere, Dr. Sykes credits the novels of Jean Auel with first kindling her interest in archaeology and Neanderthals in particular. I've read a couple of them also, and I recall thinking, "I bet the real Neanderthals weren't as hidebound as they are portrayed." In Kindred we find that they were definitely not that hidebound, but rather creative, innovative, explorative… in short, fully on a par with "us". It is most likely an accident of history that those we call Neanderthals are not the archaeologists wondering about the demise of "those inferior, skinny, flat-faced Cro-Magnons".

Inside the front cover of Kindred we find a map showing 99 locations of Neanderthal remains, from northeast Siberia to Gibraltar. These are selected from quite a longer list. Inside the back cover, a very tentative breeding tree shows how both Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA might have become incorporated in the DNA of modern humans. Astonishingly, one fossil has been shown to be a first-generation offspring of a Denisovan father and a Neanderthal mother.

Our current knowledge of Denisovans, other than the DNA results, is about at the level that the Neanderthals were known in 1860, except no decent skulls have been found. Stay tuned!

I must confine myself to a few items of note. Firstly, innovation and creativity. The tool kits (plural!) used by Neanderthals, and the ways they were at times mixed-and-matched, show that they were thinking about how to improve their stone tools, and sometimes bone tools.

Let me be clear: the main tools were stone, but the tools used to make the stone tools frequently included bones or certain kinds of bone fragments. This reminds me of the time I was a machinist. I was taught by a real master. Once he showed me a tool he was making—from scratch, beginning with a block of metal—that was intended to enable him to make the parts he had been assigned to produce. Then he showed me one of the tools he was using to make the new tool, saying, "First I had to figure out how to make this, so I could make the other one." We see that level of creativity in the stone tools Neanderthals made, in the stone and bone "retouchers" used to sharpen them, and in the tools used to produce the retouchers.

Tools made of less durable materials, such as wood used for spears, doesn't preserve well, so we have very, very few non-stone and non-bone artifacts. Examining the stone "points" and "blades", however, and analyzing traces of adhesives on certain ones, we can surmise that Neanderthals had both thrusting and throwing spears, and also arrows. For example, a tiny 2 cm (3/4") point is no good on a spear; it had to be an arrow point. And the varying shapes indicate that Neanderthals were experimenting with the best way to make a small point that caused maximum loss of blood after penetrating; you want the struck animal to weaken quickly.

Secondly, what they did with the dead. The tremendous variety here indicates multiple groups of Neanderthals had cultural differences. In all cases, just as for us, the tragedy of a death, particularly an early death, is a hugely emotional period. The earlier assumption that they ignored their dead is dramatically off base. However, their responses to death ranged from apparently tender burial to dismemberment and the retention of "memorial pieces", and also consumption of portions of the deceased.

Thirdly, compassion. They also clearly helped those injured or ill among them, who sometimes survived terrible traumas by months or years; they could not have survived so long on their own.

Fourth and finally, food. Neanderthals were omnivores, as are all apes. They were perhaps more intensively carnivorous than the usual ape; this is true of certain human cultures also. We all know a Redneck or two who react to being offered a salad, "That's food my food eats!" But Neanderthals didn't just chase down woolly mammoths and spear them. They were much more likely to target horses in one part of Eurasia, cave bears in another, and deer and elk in another. They also ate birds, but the remains are ambiguous: were they killing birds to eat, or to use their feathers and claws symbolically (I could have gotten into Art, but I must refrain)? Coastal Neanderthals ate fish and mollusks and other offerings of the sea. Considering that most of the places they frequented near the coastlines are now 10-50m under water, it will take a lot of risky SCUBA archaeology to learn more in that direction. They also ate their vegetables. Because veggies don't have bones, researchers learn of the Neanderthal diet by analyzing the tartar on their teeth! Just as it is for us, a diet of exclusively lean meat is so imbalanced it can kill.

These are just a few of the subjects in the 16 chapters of Kindred. Do get this book and meet your kindred!

Afterword: I do have a quibble about language usage. Dr. Sykes is prone to writing sentences such as this one about weapons and the wounds they cause:

"Rather than being thrown, both wounds match experimental damage from being rammed in with a lunging action."

I don't recall ever throwing a wound, do you? Adding two words would save this dramatic solecism:

"Rather than being from thrown spears, both wounds match…"

Such mismatches of subject and predicate occur frequently. Dear Dr. Sykes, do spend some time with a grammarian. A couple of hours will do.