Since its discovery more than 160 years ago, knowledge about Neanderthals has not stopped growing. News about findings related to them make headlines all the time, and it’s easy to get lost in all this tangle of data. Based on the most up-to-date information, the archaeologist and researcher at the University of Liverpool Rebecca Wragg Sykes has wanted to trace, in her book Neanderthals. The life, love, death and art of our distant cousins (Ed. GeoPlaneta, 2021), a complete portrait of these fascinating hominids.
Neanderthals have always seemed to us the ‘dumb cousins’ of the ‘sapiens’, the losers of evolution. Why is this not true? Do you think our vision has changed in recent years?
This is false for two reasons. First, over the past few decades there has been a revolution in archeology and in our understanding of all aspects of Neanderthal life. We have realized that they were much more sophisticated than previously thought : they used stone tools, but they were also skilled carpenters, used materials such as bones or shells and even invented the first synthetic material, birch tar, which they used as glue. . In addition, they were expert butchers and extracted the largest and most nutritious parts from their pieces. Their diet was very varied, as in addition to hunting larger game they fed on rabbits, birds, shellfish and plants. As if that were not enough, we have more and more evidence of an emerging aesthetic sense that involves the use of color and, even, the mixture of pigments.
And the second reason we cannot consider Neanderthals as evolutionary ‘losers’ is that today we know that there was miscegenation: Neanderthals were not totally replaced by the first Homo sapiens , but are still in our DNA. Most importantly, the first groups of sapiens to reach Eurasia are actually more extinct than Neanderthals, since these pioneer populations did not leave behind any genetic offspring. In short, the picture that we have today about Neanderthals and that I present in my book is much more complex and fascinating than the one we had forty years ago.
Gathering all the evidence we have about their diet, social organization and ways of living, could you briefly describe what a day was like in a ‘Neanderthal family’?
We probably cannot speak of a typical Neanderthal ‘family’. Keep in mind that they lived for more than 300,000 years and in extreme climates ranging from cold glacial periods to warm interglacial periods like today. Furthermore, they not only occupied present-day Europe, they were rather ‘Western Eurasians’: we have found traces of their presence between Wales and Spain, Palestine and Siberia. This implies that they had to adapt to a wide range of landscapes, environments, geology, fauna and flora.
Even so, it is true that they had some things in common, and one of them is that they probably lived in small nomadic groups. I would expect most days to wake up at dawn, drawn in by the smell of the smoky fires left from the night before in search of warmth and safety. One of the daily tasks would be collecting fuel, pine on many occasions, and maybe they would use some leftover marrow for breakfast. The children would be playing all the time, and in those games they probably dragged an adolescent or adult to explore the environment and look for plants.
Some of the adults, probably men and perhaps some women, would spend a day or several hunting outside the settlement, and would return with their pieces wrapped in skin. These pieces would be processed at night, in the heat of the fireplace. The children would eat using tools to cut the meat and would watch the adults to learn how to clean the skin. As it got dark, everyone would settle in the back of the cave while the embers of the fire remain lit.
Did Neanderthals have language? Do we know anything about how they organized and cooperated?
Thanks to the latest archaeological finds and the analysis of fossils, our view on this matter has changed quite a bit. Current evidence we have for their anatomical features suggests that Neanderthals could probably make pretty much the same sounds we do. And, equally important, analysis of the anatomy of their ears suggests that they picked up the same sound frequencies, and thus human speech, a trait that was probably also shared, at least in part, by our common ancestor. So they surely had some kind of vocal communication.
But what were the Neanderthals talking about? It is impossible to know the complexity of their language, if they were wondering, for example, what they had dreamed of the night before. But archeology shows us that their society was based on organized social groups that closely cooperated and shared resources. Language would probably be key in all this, as well as in the learning and transmission of complex technologies from generation to generation.
In addition to language, do we know if Neanderthals shared with us some of those traits that differentiate us from other animals, such as the sense of beauty or abstract thinking?
Neanderthals were not only interested in the materials they used for their activities with a practical purpose, I think that today we have a lot of evidence of a kind of emerging ‘sense’ of aesthetics. Archaeologists tend to be very cautious when drawing these kinds of conclusions, as in the case of mineral pigments, which are found at various sites and often have many practical applications. For example, ocher can be used on working animal skins or as sunscreen, but there are some cases that make us suspect a certain aesthetic sense. This is the case of the Fumane cave, in Italy, where traces of red pigment have been found on the surface of a fossil shell that have no clear explanation. The shell was not a remnant of food, but was found more than a hundred kilometers away from its geological source. And, furthermore, the pigment came from another area forty kilometers away in another direction. Everything suggests that the shell was deliberately transported from its original location and colored with pigment, perhaps to be used as an ornament . These characteristics are common to other potential aesthetic objects that have been found, such as stone engravings. And even some of these shell remains could represent simple counting or notation systems.
Other cultural manifestations that go beyond the practical sense have to do with death and the desire for transcendence. What do we know about this?
The relationship of Neanderthals with their dead is one of the great topics on which I have tried to gather all the updated information in the book, because it is much more interesting and varied than it might appear at first glance. Today we have growing evidence that Neanderthals sometimes left entire bodies protected in prepared areas. Other times, instead, they were processed, divided or even eaten. And there are not always simple explanations for these actions, such as a famine.
Instead, everything seems to indicate that we are facing a complex version of other behaviors that we have seen in chimpanzees, which interact with the bodies of their relatives and friends, clean them, and have even been seen to use a toothpick in the deceased. It may sound strange to us today, but the custom of keeping parts of the dead is well documented throughout later prehistory in Homo sapiens , and it still happens in some not-so-distant cultures: the religious relics of the saints or the same ritual of the Eucharist are very clear examples.
We retain a percentage of Neanderthal DNA, and there is evidence that crosses occurred at various times. There are authors who even go so far as to say that Neanderthals are not a species per se, that ‘sapiens’ and Neanderthals are the same species. What do you think?
This debate is a reflection of the difficulty of dealing with fossils compared to the reality of living organisms. Biologists can observe the behavior of closely related species that interbreed, such as polar bears and grizzlies, or cows and yaks. In the case of Neanderthals, DNA tells us that there was interbreeding for more than 200,000 years, and some of these hybrids would be fertile . This should not come as a biological surprise, as we share a common ancestor that is less than 700,000 years old. Even animals like the beluga and the narwhal, which are less related to Neanderthals than we are, can interbreed and have offspring. But, going back to the fossils, what they show us is that, despite the interbreeding, both species remained very differentiated on a physical level, we did not ‘merge’ into one. And this means something important: while sex may have been a common outcome between meetings between Sapiens and Neanderthals, as well as between Neanderthals and other close relatives such as Denisovans, such meetings could also have been very sporadic for hundreds of millennia.
Much has been said and discussed about the extinction of Neanderthals, and there are many hypotheses about it. What do we know and what we don’t know about it? Did the competition with ‘Homo sapiens’ have something to do with it?
We do not have a simple answer to this question. The only thing that is clear to us is that there are no fossils or archaeological remains of Neanderthals from the last 40,000 years . Perhaps the weather had to do with it, more than cold because it was a period of very rapid and unpredictable temperature changes. It is true that Neanderthals had already survived similar conditions in the past, but this time things could be different.
Today we also know that the first Homo sapiens were already dispersing from Africa to Eurasia much earlier than previously thought (at least 180,000 years ago), but only in the last 55,000 are there remains of a distinctive archeology with more symbolic elements . Genetics also show us that these groups of Homo sapiens , although not numerous, were better connected to each other on a population scale than were Neanderthals. Those stronger and more extensive social networks, more than having or not having greater intelligence, may have made the difference that made our species survive in difficult times. But, as I have mentioned before, some of those pioneer populations of H. sapiens are even more genetically extinct than Neanderthals… there are still many questions to be answered.
Why do you think humans have such a strong fascination for Neanderthals? What makes them so special?
Neanderthals have been with us since the beginning of our journey discovering human origins. They were the first hominids to be recognized as such (in 1856) and, therefore, they represent the “other”, in the sense of another form of humanity. We cannot avoid using them as a mirror to understand ourselves. But this also says a lot about ourselves, as the things we think and feel about Neanderthals have changed, not just because of archeology over the last 160 years, but also because of our own expectations and desires.
This changing relationship is also appreciated in the way we have represented them in paleo-artistic reconstructions. Today’s Neanderthals stare back at us, smile, and hug their children. They are still fascinating because they symbolize our innate curiosity: we would like to meet them, get to know them. But they also symbolize our fears about what it means to be human and that survival and extinction can sometimes have more to do with luck than intelligence.
What is, in your opinion, the most fascinating discovery that has been made in recent years regarding Neanderthals?
I would stick with two impressive finds. One has to do with the cognitive complexity of their technology: A recent discovery showed that in addition to birch tar glue, Neanderthals were also making adhesive recipes with pine and beeswax. This involves experimentation, material curiosity, and fits into the larger picture of their understanding of the physical properties of things around them.
The second discovery is impressive and strange: in the Bruniquel cave, in France, two huge circles made with broken stalagmites were found, with two other large piles in the middle and some burned parts. The pieces were carefully selected based on their size, some were stacked and others were balanced on others, like a miniature Stonehenge. It was a job that must have taken hours, and it is located deep in a hill, in a place too dark to be habitable, and is 174,000 years old. It’s weird, monumental, and it doesn’t look at all like anything – at least that we know of – that was made by any hominid until many years later.
And what is the question regarding Neanderthals that you would like an answer to be found to?
I would like to know what they carried with them when they moved from one place to another. It sounds simple, but the answer would be very revealing because it would tell us things about how they anticipated the future, whether they shared their burdens, and what things were valuable to them. Would they bring stone to carve tools and food for the next stop? Or perhaps they would take their things ‘from house to house’, like their favorite leatherworking tools or their leather mats? And how can we explain such special objects as Fumane’s shell that was transported from so far away? Maybe one day, if we find a frozen Neanderthal in the Siberian permafrost, we can ask all these questions….
