Were Neandertals Lovers or Fighters?

Paleoanthropologists I know seem pleased that the insurance giant Geico has been doing its part to bring caveman awareness to modern Americans. But since Neandertals are both the most recognized fossil human ancestor and remain sadly misunderstood, I’m going to provide some additional background on our much-maligned cousins.

The first fossil Neandertal was found in the Neander valley. Perhaps you think I mean Neanderthal. As is happens, “thal” is “valley” in German, but pronounced “tal,” leading to years of pronunciation-confusion until the Americanized spelling recently started dropping the “h.”

One of the first nearly complete skeletons of a Neandertal was found in 1899 in France. When Marcellin Boule reconstructed the skeleton, he unfortunately failed to recognize that its hunch-back was caused by old age and arthritis, and assumed that all Neandertals had been stooped, club-wielding idiots. Hundreds of reproductions used his reconstruction (left) and the image quickly became popularized by movies and comics. Most Neandertals stood slightly shorter than many modern humans, but weren’t all arthritic, or stupid for that matter: the average brain size in Neandertals was equal to that of modern humans. They do show more broken and healed fractures than most modern humans, similar to levels seen in rodeo riders. Their hunting tools consisted of short-range spears, which had to be thrust into prey (mostly mammoth) from a close distance. Modern humans invented a spear thrower called an atl-atl, which allowed them to stay a safer distance from their prey and thus keep more of their bones in tact.

Neandertals and Homo sapiens (a.k.a. modern humans) co-existed on the planet for 170,000 years. For the most part, Neandertals were hanging out in Europe while modern humans were in Africa, but around 40,000 years ago, Homo sapiens moved into Europe, too. Just 10,000 years later, Neandertals were extinct.

What happened? Perhaps if Neandertals and humans had mated regularly, the species might have survived. It’s often noted that modern human males will mate with just about anything, so how could two large-brained, bipedal apes living at the same place and time not engage in some hanky panky? Ancient DNA obtained from Neandertals seems to contradict this scenario—most modern humans are far more similar to each other than any is to a Neandertal. The average number of differences in mitochondrial DNA between humans is around 8 base pairs (the basic unit of the gene), while the difference between any human and a Neandertal is closer to 25. For comparison, the difference between humans and chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, is around 55. This indicates that if any inter-species infidelity occurred in the Pleistocene, it left little genetic evidence in the philanderer’s descendants.

If they didn’t make love, what about war? While no Neandertal has ever been found with a modern human spear point in its back, a recent paper investigated the cause of a Neandertal’s broken rib and found the anatomical details reflect the wound was likely caused by a thrown spear rather than a spear thrust at close-range. This implicates modern humans and their atl-atls, but of course, one case does not a hypothesis prove.

The best-supported theory is one that isn’t nearly as sexy as the Jean Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear scenarios or as gruesome as all-out Planet of the Apes warfare. The lack of thrown hunting weapons probably increased the death rate of Neandertals during any hunting raid. (They often minimized their risk of death by chasing herds of prey off cliffs, wiping out far more meat than they needed.) The slightly higher death rate combined with drastic overkill, as well as the change in environment brought on by the end of the Ice Age, is what more likely spelled disaster for the Neandertals.