Neanderthal

Neanderthals
H. neanderthalensis La Ferrassie 1 H. neanderthalensis La Ferrassie 1
Conservation status
Prehistoric
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Mammalia Order: Primates Family: Hominidae Genus: Homo Species: H. neanderthalensis
Binomial name
†Homo neanderthalensis King, 1864
Neanderthal range Neanderthal range
Synonyms
Palaeoanthropus neanderthalensis H. s. neanderthalensis

Neanderthal or Neandertal is a relatively recent extinct member of the Homo genus that inhabited Europe and parts of western Asia in the middle to late Pleistocene, first appearing in the fossil record some 200,000 to 400,000 years ago and disappearing about 30,000 years ago. They are a sister group of present-day humans, with whom they came in contact during the later part of their history, from at least 80,000 years ago, and by whom they were displaced. They are variously classified as a species (Homo neanderthalensis) or subspecies (H. sapiens neanderthalensis).

Sequencing of the Neanderthal genome has suggested that Neanderthals, modern humans, and another hominid known as Denisovans descended from a common ancestor several hundred thousand years ago (perhaps 350,000 to 500,000 years ago). The branch giving rise to the Neanderthal/Denisovan lineage is theorized to have migrated from Africa and shortly thereafter split into Neaderthals (which settled in Europe and Western Asia) and Denisovans (which settled further to the east). Later, anatomically modern humans left Africa (perhaps as recently as 50,000 to 100,000 years ago). Distinct Neanderthal DNA found in the genome of living humans has suggested subsequent interbreeding among anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals.

The fossil record shows that Neanderthals lived in Europe and Western Asia, as far south as the Middle East, as far east as Siberia, and as far west as Great Britain. In addition to the discovery of fossil bones, various tools have also been discovered and some evidence has been presented that Neanderthals intentionally buried their dead.

Overview of human evolution

The earliest delineated member of the genus Homo is H. habilis, which lived from 2.33 to 1.44 million years ago, although some authorities do not consider it should be included in Homo, considering it more worthy, for example, to be retained in Australopithecus (Wood and Richmond 2000). Homo erectus is considered to have arrived around 1.8 million years ago, with fossils supporting its existence to 143,000 years ago. Homo ergaster is another early Homo species that has been delineated, and traced to about 1.8 to 1.3 million years ago. H. ergaster is possibly ancestral to or shares a common ancestor with H. erectus, or is the African variety of H. erectus; it is widely considered to be the direct ancestor of later hominids such as Homo heidelbergensis, Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, Denisovans, and even Asian Homo erectus. Homo erectus and H. ergaster were the first of the hominina known to leave Africa. For example, H. erectus is known to have spread as far as Georgia, India, Sri Lanka, China, and Java.

There is also support for the idea that that the numerous distinct species being recognized in the fossil record, such as H. erectus and H. habilis, are actually just morphological variation among members of a single evolving lineage among early members of the Homo genus, and that perhaps even only one species with a lot of variability emerged from Africa (Wilford 2013; Watson 2013; Lordkipanidze et al. 2013).

Modern human beings, Neanderthals, and Denisovans are believed to have shared a common ancestor about 400,000 to 500,000 years ago (Marshall 2013; Green et al. 2010). One theory is that these three groups all descended from Homo heidelbergenesis, which lived between 600,000 to 250,000 years ago (Marshall 2013) (other species suggested as ancestral are H. rhodesiensis and H. antecessor). One branch of H. heidelbergenesis are theorized to have left Africa about 400,000 years ago and split shortly thereafter to become Neanderthals, which settled in West Asia and Europe, and Denisovans, which settled farther to the east (NG 2013).

Neanderthals are considered to have lived from perhaps 400,000 years ago, with their appearance in the European fossil record variously put at 200,000 (Zimmer 2013) to 400,000 years ago (Green et al. 2010). Neanderthals disappeared from the fossil record about 30,000 years ago. Based on the DNA sequences for the nuclear genome of Neanderthals and modern humans, the population split between Neanderthals and modern humans took place 270,000 to 440,000 years ago (Reich et al. 2010).

Archaic Homo sapiens, the forerunner of anatomically modern humans, appeared between 400,000 and 250,000 years ago (O'Neil 2013). Anatomically modern humans are believed to have evolved from archaic Homo sapiens in the Middle Paleolithic, about 200,000 to 130,000 years ago (SA 2005; NG 2013), then migrated out of Africa some 50,000 to 100,000 years ago (Recent African Ancestory Theory) and replaced local populations of H. erectus, H. floresiensis, H. heidelbergenesis, and the Denisovan and Neanderthal populations.

The transition to behavioral modernity for Homo sapiens with the development of symbolic culture, language, and specialized lithic technology happened around 50,000 years ago according to many anthropologists (Mellars 2006b), although some suggest a gradual change in behavior over a longer time span (Mcbrearty and Brooks 2000). Until about 50,000 to 40,000 years ago, the use of stone tools seems to have progressed stepwise: Each phase (habilis, ergaster, and neanderthal) started at a higher level than the previous one, but once that phase had started, further development was slow. After 50,000 years ago, in what Jared Diamond, author of The Third Chimpanzee, and other anthropologists characterize as a "Great Leap Forward," human culture apparently started to change at much greater speed: "Modern" humans started to bury their dead carefully, made clothing out of hides, developed sophisticated hunting techniques (such as pitfall traps, or driving animals to fall off cliffs), and made cave paintings. This speed-up of cultural change seems connected with the arrival of modern humans, Homo sapiens sapiens. Additionally, human culture began to become more technologically advanced, in that different populations of humans begin to create novelty in existing technologies. Artifacts such as fish hooks, buttons, and bone needles begin to show signs of variation among different population of humans, something what had not been seen in human cultures prior to 50,000 BP.

Fossil discoveries and history

Location of Neander Valley, Germany. (The highlighted areas are the modern federal states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate.)

Fossils of Neanderthals were first found in the eighteenth century prior to Charles Darwin's 1859 publication of The Origin of Species, with discoveries at Engis, Belgium in 1829, at Forbes Quarry, Gibraltar in 1848, and most notably a discovery in 1856 in Neander Valley in Germany, which was published in 1857. However, the earlier findings prior to 1856 were not recognized as belonging to archaic forms, but were widely misinterpreted as skeletons of modern humans with deformities or disease (Gould 1990).

The August day in 1856 when a fossil was discovered in a limestone quarry in Germany is heralded as the beginning of paleoanthropology as a scientific discipline (Kreger 2005). This discovery of a skullcap and partial skeleton in a cave in the Neander Valley (near Dusseldorf) was the first recognized fossil human form (Smithsonian 2007b).

The type specimen, dubbed Neanderthal 1, consists 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 Schaffhausen. The discovery was jointly announced in 1857.

Type Specimen, Neanderthal 1

These, and later, 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.

The term Neanderthal Man was coined by Irish anatomist William King, who first named the species in 1863 at a meeting of the British Association, and put it into print in the Quarterly Journal of Science the following year (Kreger 2005). The Neanderthal or "Neander Valley" itself was named after theologian Joachim Neander, who lived there in the late seventeenth century.

"Neanderthal" is now spelled two ways. The spelling of the German word Thal, meaning "valley or dale," was changed to Tal in the early twentieth century, but the former spelling is often retained in English and always in scientific names. The original German pronunciation (regardless of spelling) is with the sound /t/. When used in English, the term is usually anglicized to /θ/ (as in thin), though speakers more familiar with German use /t/.

Classic Neanderthal fossils have been found over a large area, from northern Germany, to Israel to Mediterranean countries like Spain and Italy, and from England in the west to Uzbekistan in the east. This area probably was not occupied all at the same time; the northern border of their range especially would have contracted frequently with the onset of cold periods. On the other hand, the northern border of their range as represented by fossils may not be the real northern border of the area that they occupied, since artifacts indicative of the Middle Paleolithic have been found even further north, up to 60° on the Russian plain (Pavlov et al. 2004).

In Siberia, Middle Paleolithic populations are evidenced only in the southern portions. Teeth from Okladniko and Denisova caves have been attributed to Neanderthals (Goebel 1999). The transition to the Upper Paleolithic coincides with the appearance of modern Homo sapiens in Siberia. Early Upper Paleolithic sites in southern Siberia, found below 55 degrees latitude and dated from 42,000 to 30,000 Before Present (B.P.) correspond to the Malokheta interstade, a relatively warm interval in the Mid to Upper Pleistocene (Goebel 1999).

The first proto-Neanderthal traits appeared in Europe as early as 350,000 years ago (Bischoff et al. 2003). By 130,000 years ago, full blown Neanderthal characteristics were present. Neanderthals became extinct in Europe approximately 30,000 years ago. There is recently discovered fossil and stone-tool evidence that suggests Neanderthals may have still been in existence 24,000 years ago, at which time they they disappeared from the fossil record and were replaced in Europe by modern Homo sapiens (Rincon 2006, Mcilroy 2006, Klein 2003, Smithsonian 2007b, 2007c).

Timeline

Skull, found in 1886 in Spy, Belgium

Frontal bone of a neanderthal child from the cave of La Garigüela

Skull from La Chapelle aux Saints

Semi-frontal view of a neanderthal skull from Gibraltar

• 1829: Neanderthal skulls were discovered in Engis, in present-day Belgium.
• 1848: Neanderthal skull Gibraltar 1 found in Forbes' Quarry, Gibraltar. Called "an ancient human" at the time.
• 1856: Johann Karl Fuhlrott first recognized the fossil called "Neanderthal man", discovered in Neanderthal, a valley near Mettmann in what is now North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.
• 1880: The mandible of a Neanderthal child was found in a secure context and associated with cultural debris, including hearths, Mousterian tools, and bones of extinct animals.
• 1886: Two nearly perfect skeletons of a man and woman were found at Spy, Belgium at the depth of 16 ft with numerous Mousterian-type implements.
• 1899: Hundreds of Neanderthal bones were described in stratigraphic position in association with cultural remains and extinct animal bones.
• 1899: Sand excavation workers found bone fragments on a hill in Krapina, Croatia called Hušnjakovo brdo. Local Franciscan friar Dominik Antolković requested Dragutin Gorjanović-Kramberger to study the remains of bones and teeth that were found there.
• 1905: During the excavation in Krapina more than 5 000 items were found, of which 874 residue of human origin, including bones of prehistoric man and animals, artifacts.
• 1908: A nearly complete Neanderthal skeleton was discovered in association with Mousterian tools and bones of extinct animals.
• 1925: Francis Turville-Petre finds the 'Galilee Man' or 'Galilee Skull' in the Zuttiyeh Cave in Wadi Amud in The British Mandate of Palestine (now Israel).
• 1926 Skull fragments of Gibraltar 2, a four-year-old Neanderthal girl, discovered by Dorothy Garrod.
• 1953–1957: Ralph Solecki uncovered nine Neanderthal skeletons in Shanidar Cave in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq.
• 1975: Erik Trinkaus' study of Neanderthal feet confirmed they walked like modern humans.
• 1987: Thermoluminescence results from Israeli fossils date Neanderthals at Kebara to 60,000 BP and humans at Qafzeh to 90,000 BP. These dates were confirmed by electron spin resonance (ESR) dates for Qafzeh (90,000 BP) and Es Skhul (80,000 BP).
• 1991: ESR dates showed the Tabun Neanderthal was contemporaneous with modern humans from Skhul and Qafzeh.
• 1993: A 127.000 years old DNA is found on the child of Sclayn, found in Scladina (fr), Belgium.
• 1997: Matthias Krings et al. are the first to amplify Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) using a specimen from Feldhofer grotto in the Neander valley.
• 1998: A team led by pre-history archeologist João Zilhão discovered an early Upper Paleolithic human burial in Portugal, at Abrigo do Lagar Velho, which provided evidence of early modern humans from the west of the Iberian Peninsula. The remains, a largely complete skeleton of an approximately 4-year-old child, buried with pierced shell and red ochre, is dated to ca. 24,500 years BP. The cranium, mandible, dentition, and postcrania present a mosaic of European early modern human and Neanderthal features.
• 2000: Igor Ovchinnikov, Kirsten Liden, William Goodman et al. retrieved DNA from a Late Neanderthal (29,000 BP) infant from Mezmaiskaya Cave in the Caucasus.
• 2005: The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology launched a project to reconstruct the Neanderthal genome, working with Connecticut-based 454 Life Sciences.^{[citation needed]} In 2009, the Max Planck Institute announced the "first draft" of a complete Neanderthal genome is completed.
• 2010: Comparison of Neanderthal genome with modern humans from Africa and Eurasia shows that 1–4% of modern non-African human genome might come from the Neanderthals.
• 2010: Discovery of Neanderthal tools far away from the influence of H. sapiens indicate that the species might have been able to create and evolve tools on its own, and therefore be more intelligent than previously thought. Furthermore, it was proposed that the Neanderthals might be more closely related to Homo sapiens than previously thought and that may in fact be a sub species of it. Evidence has more recently emerged that these artifacts are probably of H. sapiens sapiens origin.
• 2012: Charcoal found next to six paintings of seals in Nerja caves, Malaga, Spain, has been dated to between 42,300 and 43,500 years old. The paintings themselves will be dated in 2013, and if their pigment matches the date of the charcoal, they would be the oldest known cave paintings. José Luis Sanchidrián at the University of Cordoba, Spain believes the paintings are more likely to have been painted by Neanderthals than early modern humans.
• 2013: A jawbone found in Italy had features intermediate between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens suggesting it could be a hybrid. The mitochondrial DNA is Neanderthal.
• 2013: An international team of researchers reported evidence that Neanderthals practised burial behavior and intentionally buried their dead.

DNA analysis

Early investigations concentrated on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which, owing to strictly matrilineal inheritance and subsequent vulnerability to genetic drift, is of limited value in evaluating the possibility of interbreeding of Neanderthals with Cro-Magnon people.

In 1997, geneticists were able to extract a short sequence of DNA from Neanderthal bones from 30,000 years ago. The extraction of mtDNA from a second specimen was reported in 2000, and showed no sign of modern human descent from Neanderthals.

Scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology extracting the DNA.

In July 2006, the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and 454 Life Sciences announced that they would sequence the Neanderthal genome over the next two years. This genome is expected to be roughly the size of the human genome, three-billion base pairs, and share most of its genes. It was hoped the comparison would expand understanding of Neanderthals, as well as the evolution of humans and human brains.

Svante Pääbo has tested more than 70 Neanderthal specimens. Preliminary DNA sequencing from a 38,000-year-old bone fragment of a femur found at Vindija Cave, Croatia, in 1980 showed Neanderthals and modern humans share about 99.5% of their DNA. From mtDNA analysis estimates, the two species shared a common ancestor about 500,000 years ago. An article appearing in the journal Nature has calculated the species diverged about 516,000 years ago, whereas fossil records show a time of about 400,000 years ago. A 2007 study pushes the point of divergence back to around 800,000 years ago.

Edward Rubin of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory states recent genome testing of Neanderthals suggests human and Neanderthal DNA are some 99.5% to nearly 99.9% identical.

On 16 November 2006, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory issued a press release suggesting Neanderthals and ancient humans probably did not interbreed. Edward M. Rubin, director of the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Joint Genome Institute (JGI), sequenced a fraction (0.00002) of genomic nuclear DNA (nDNA) from a 38,000-year-old Vindia Neanderthal femur. They calculated the common ancestor to be about 353,000 years ago, and a complete separation of the ancestors of the species about 188,000 years ago.

Their results show the genomes of modern humans and Neanderthals are at least 99.5% identical, but despite this genetic similarity, and despite the two species having coexisted in the same geographic region for thousands of years, Rubin and his team did not find any evidence of any significant crossbreeding between the two. Rubin said, "While unable to definitively conclude that interbreeding between the two species of humans did not occur, analysis of the nuclear DNA from the Neanderthal suggests the low likelihood of it having occurred at any appreciable level."

In 2008 Richard E. Green et al. from Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany published the full sequence of Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and suggested "Neanderthals had a long-term effective population size smaller than that of modern humans." Writing in Nature about Green et al.'s findings, James Morgan asserted the mtDNA sequence contained clues that Neanderthals lived in "small and isolated populations, and probably did not interbreed with their human neighbours."

In the same publication, it was disclosed by Svante Pääbo that in the previous work at the Max Planck Institute that "Contamination was indeed an issue," and they eventually realized that 11% of their sample was modern human DNA. Since then, more of the preparation work has been done in clean areas and 4-base pair 'tags' have been added to the DNA as soon as it is extracted so the Neanderthal DNA can be identified.

With 3 billion nucleotides sequenced, analysis of about ⅓ showed no sign of admixture between modern humans and Neanderthals, according to Pääbo. This concurred with the work of Noonan from two years earlier. The variant of microcephalin common outside Africa, which was suggested to be of Neanderthal origin and responsible for rapid brain growth in humans, was not found in Neanderthals. Nor was the MAPT variant, a very old variant found primarily in Europeans.

However, an analysis of a first draft of the Neanderthal genome by the same team released in May 2010 indicates interbreeding may have occurred. "Those of us who live outside Africa carry a little Neanderthal DNA in us," said Pääbo, who led the study. "The proportion of Neanderthal-inherited genetic material is about 1 to 4 percent. It is a small but very real proportion of ancestry in non-Africans today," says Dr. David Reich of Harvard Medical School, who worked on the study. This research compared the genome of the Neanderthals to five modern humans from China, France, sub-Saharan Africa, and Papua New Guinea. The finding is that about 1 to 4 percent of the genes of the non-Africans came from Neanderthals, compared to the baseline defined by the two Africans.

This indicates a gene flow from Neanderthals to modern humans, i.e., interbreeding between the two populations. Since the three non-African genomes show a similar proportion of Neanderthal sequences, the interbreeding must have occurred early in the migration of modern humans out of Africa, perhaps in the Middle East. No evidence for gene flow in the direction from modern humans to Neanderthals was found. Gene flow from modern humans to Neanderthals would not be expected if contact occurred between a small colonizing population of modern humans and a much larger resident population of Neanderthals. A very limited amount of interbreeding could explain the findings, if it occurred early enough in the colonization process.

While interbreeding is viewed as the most parsimonious interpretation of the genetic discoveries, the authors point out they cannot conclusively rule out an alternative scenario, in which the source population of non-African modern humans was already more closely related to Neanderthals than other Africans were, due to ancient genetic divisions within Africa.

Among the genes shown to differ between present-day humans and Neanderthals were RPTN, SPAG17, CAN15, TTF1 and PCD16.

Anatomy

File:Neanderthall cranial anatomy.JPG

Neanderthal cranial anatomy

Comparison of crania, sapiens (left) and neanderthalensis (right)

Neanderthal brain sizes have been estimated to be larger than modern humans, although such estimates have not been adjusted for their more robust builds. On average, Neanderthal males stood about 1.65 m tall (just under 5' 5") and were heavily built with robust bone structure. Females were about 1.53 to 1.57 m tall (about 5'–5'2").

Neanderthals had a compact body of short stature. Males averaged 1.7 m (5ft 5 in) tall and were an estimated 84 kg (185 lb.), and females averaged 1.5 m (5 ft) tall and an estimated 80 kg (176lb) (Smithsonian 2007c). Neanderthals also had a large cranial capacity, estimated at 1500cc, which is slightly larger on average than modern humans (1350 to 1450cc range).

Neanderthals also differed from modern humans in that they had a low forehead, double-arched brow ridge, larger nasal area, projecting cheek region, weak chin, obvious space behind the third molar, heavily-built bones, broad scapula, short lower leg and arm bones relative to the upper portions, occasional bowing of the limb bones, the hip joint rotated outward, a long and thin pubic bone, and large joint surfaces of the toes and long bones (Smithsonian 2007c).

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 (Carey 2005).

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 basic cranium	Long collar bones
Supraorbital torus, a prominent, trabecular (spongy) browridge	Short, bowed shoulder blades
1200-1750 cm³ skull capacity (10 percent 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
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

Neanderthals appear to have had many adaptations to a cold climate, such as large brain cases, short but robust builds, and large noses.

Classification and origin

For many years, professionals have vigorously debated whether Neanderthals should be classified as Homo neanderthalensis or as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, the latter placing Neanderthals as a subspecies of Homo sapiens.

The original reconstruction of Neanderthal anatomy was flawed and exacerbated the distinction between Neanderthals and humans (Smithsonian 2007b, 2007c). Based on a nearly complete skeleton of an elderly male found in France, the reconstruction showed bent knees and a slouching gait (Smithsonian 2007b, 2007). This image, which led to a standard and lingering view of crude cavemen, was mistaken, as Neanderthals apparently walked fully upright without a slouch or bent knees (Smithsonian 2007c). They also had a larger cranial capacity than modern humans and were culturally sophisticated in terms of tool making, symbolic ritual, and burying their dead.

As a result of anatomical similarities and cultural aspects, it was popular through the 1970s and 1980s to consider Homo neanderthalensis as a subspecies of Homo sapiens.

However, there were also many differences between Neanderthals and modern populations. They had a low forehead, double-arched brow ridge, larger nasal area, projecting cheek region, heavily-built bones, short lower leg and arm bones relative to the upper bones, and so forth (Smithsonian 2007c). Based on these characteristics, many scientists concluded that the Neanderthals were a different species than H. sapiens.

Recent evidence from mitochondrial DNA studies has been interpreted as evidence that Neanderthals were not a subspecies of H. sapiens and did not interbreed (Hodges 2000). Other scientists, for example Milford Wolpoff, argue that fossil evidence suggests that the two species, in fact, did interbreed, and hence were of the same biological species. Some scholars, such as Cambridge Professor Paul Mellars, say "no evidence has been found of cultural interaction" (AFP 2005).

Comparison of the DNA of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens suggests that they diverged from a common ancestor between 350,000 and 400,000 years ago. This was probably Homo heidelbergensis. Heidelbergensis originated between 800,000 and 1,300,000 years ago, and continued until about 200,000. It ranged over east and South Africa, Europe and west Asia. Between 350,000 and 400,000 years ago the African branch is thought to have started evolving towards modern humans and the European branch towards Neanderthals. Scientists do not agree when Neanderthals can first be recognised in the fossil record, with dates ranging 200,000 and 300,000 years BP.

Mayr claims that Neanderthals arose from Homo erectus, arguing, "There is little doubt that…the western populations of H. erectus eventually gave rise to the Neanderthals" (2001).

Tools, burial, and other cultural aspects

Neanderthals made finer tools than earlier humans and are considered the first to bury their dead and to have symbolic ritual (Smithsonian 2007c). This practice of intentional burial is one reason given for the finding of so many Neanderthal fossils, including skeletons (Smithsonian 2007c).

File:Neandertal.jpg

Neanderthal Tool Maker

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

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. They typically used 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 utilized the Châtelperronian tool style, which is 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 style.

The Mousterian flake and simple biface industry that characterize the Middle Paleolithic, wherever found with human remains, are found with Neanderthals, and wherever Aurignacian style is found with remains, those remains are of modern humans (West 1996).

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) toolkits 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, although such artifacts would likely not have been preserved (Henig 2000).

Middle Paleolithic industries in Siberia (dated to 70,000 to 40,000 years ago) are distinctly Levallois and Mousterian, reduction technologies are uniform, and assemblages consist of scrapers, denticulates, notches, knives, and retouched Levallois flakes and points. There is no evidence of bone, antler, or ivory technology, or of art or personal adornment (Goebel 1999).

While Neanderthals had weapons, no projectile weapons have yet been found. 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 (such 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 one of Neanderthal's ancestors, either 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. The situation is identical to that of native New Zealand Maoris—modern Homo sapiens who also rarely threw objects, but used spears and clubs instead (Schwimmer 1961).

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 1975), has been questioned (Sommer 1999). On the other hand, five of the six flower pollens found with fossil Shanidar IV are known to have had traditional medical uses, even among relatively contemporary populations. In some cases Neanderthal burials include grave goods, such as bison and auroch 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 that contains holes that may have been deliberately bored into it. This bone was found in western Slovenia in 1995, near a Mousterian fireplace, but its significance is still a matter of dispute. Some paleoanthropologists have postulated that it might have been a flute, while some others have expressed that it is natural bone modified by bears.

Language

The issue of whether Neanderthals had a complex language is unsettled, but there are morphological suggestions that such was possible.

The idea that Neanderthals lacked complex language was widespread, despite concerns about the accuracy of reconstructions of the Neanderthal vocal tract, until 1983, when a Neanderthal hyoid bone was found at the Kebara Cave in Israel. The hyoid is a small bone that connects the musculature of the tongue and the larynx, and by bracing these structures against each other, allows a wider range of tongue and laryngeal movements than would otherwise be possible. Therefore, it seems to imply the presence of the anatomical conditions for speech to occur. The bone that was found is virtually identical to that of modern humans (Arensburg et al. 1989).

Furthermore, the morphology of the outer and middle ear of Neanderthal ancestors, Homo heidelbergensis, found in Spain, suggests they had an auditory sensitivity similar to modern humans and very different from chimpanzees. Therefore, they were not only able to produce a wide range of sounds, they were also able to differentiate between these sounds (Martinez et al. 2004).

Aside from the morphological evidence above, neurological evidence for potential speech in neanderthalensis exists in the form of the hypoglossal canal. The canal of Neanderthals is the same size or larger than in modern humans, which are significantly larger than the canal of australopithecines and modern chimpanzees. 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 capabilities similar to, or possibly exceeding that of, modern humans (Kay et al. 1998). However, a research team from the University of California, 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 (living) non-human primates and fossilized australopithecines that have equal or larger hypoglossal canal.

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

Many myths surround the reconstruction of the Neanderthal vocal tract and the quality of Neanderthal speech. The popular view that the Neanderthals had a high larynx and therefore could not have produced the range of vowels supposedly essential for human speech is based on a disputed reconstruction of the vocal tract from the available fossil evidence, and a debatable interpretation of the acoustic characteristics of the reconstructed vocal tract. A larynx position as low as that found for modern human females may have been present in adult male Neanderthals. Furthermore, the vocal tract is a plastic thing, and larynx movement is possible in many mammals. Finally, the suggestion that the vowels /i, a, u/ are essential for human language (and that if Neanderthals lacked them, they could not have evolved a human-like language) ignores the absence of one of these vowels in very many human languages, and the occurrence of "vertical vowel systems" which lack both /i/ and /u/.

More doubtful suggestions about Neanderthal speech suggest that it would have been nasalized either because the tongue was high in the throat (for which there is no universally accepted evidence) or because the Neanderthals had large nasal cavities. Nasalization depends on neither of these things, but on whether or not the soft palate is lowered during speech. Nasalization is therefore controllable, and scientists do not know whether Neanderthal speech was nasalized or not. Comments on the lower intelligibility of nasalized speech ignore the fact that many varieties of English habitually have nasalized vowels, particularly low vowels, with no apparent effect on intelligibility.

One anatomical difference between Neanderthals and humans that deserves consideration regarding human speech is the mental tubercle on the mandible (the point at the tip of the chin), which is the attachment point for the depressor labii inferioris muscle and the mentalis muscle. These two muscles provide fine motor control of the lower lip and are essential in controlled speech. The mental tubercle is pronounced in humans and is absent in Neanderthals, suggesting that they had a more gross motor control of the lower lip. However, more research needs to be conducted in this area.

The fate of the Neanderthals

The Neanderthals began to be displaced around 45,000 years ago by modern humans (Homo sapiens), as the Cro-Magnon people appeared in Europe. Despite this, populations of Neanderthals apparently held on for thousands of years in regional pockets, such as modern-day Croatia and the Iberian and Crimean peninsulas. The last known population lived around a cave system on the remote south-facing coast of Gibraltar, from 30,000 to 24,000 years ago.

There is considerable debate about whether Cro-Magnon people accelerated the demise of the Neanderthals. Timing suggests a causal relation between the appearance of Homo sapiens in Europe and the decline of Homo neanderthalensis.

Both the Neanderthal's place in the human family tree and their relation to modern Europeans have been hotly debated ever since their discovery. A common perspective among scientists, based on ongoing DNA research, is that Neanderthals were a separate branch of the genus Homo, and that modern humans are not descended from them (fitting with the single-origin thesis).

In some areas of the Middle East and the Iberian peninsula, Neanderthals did, in fact, apparently co-exist side by side with populations of anatomically modern Homo sapiens for roughly 10,000 years. There is also evidence that it is in these areas where the last of the Neanderthals died out and that during this period the last remnants of this species had begun to adopt—or perhaps independently innovate—some aspects of the Châtelperronian (Upper Paleolithic) tool case, which is usually exclusively associated with anatomically modern Homo sapiens.

There are various scenarios for the extinction of Neanderthals.

Extinction scenarios

Rapid extinction

Jared Diamond has suggested a scenario of violent conflict, comparable to the genocides suffered by indigenous peoples in recent human history.

Another possibility paralleling colonialist history would be a greater susceptibility to pathogens introduced by Cro-Magnon man on the part of the Neanderthals. Although Diamond and others have specifically mentioned Cro-Magnon diseases as a threat to Neanderthals, this aspect of the analogy with the contacts between colonizers and indigenous peoples in recent history can be misleading. The distinction arises because Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals are both believed to have lived a nomadic lifestyle, whereas in those genocides of the colonial era, in which differential disease susceptibility was most significant, resulted from the contact between colonists with a long history of agriculture and nomadic hunter-gatherer peoples. Diamond argues that asymmetry in susceptibility to pathogens is a consequence of the difference in lifestyle, which makes it irrelevant in the context of the analogy in which he invokes it.

On the other hand, many pre-European contact Native Americans were not nomadic, but agriculturalists, such as Mayans, Iroquois, and Cherokee, and this still did not protect them from the epidemics brought by Europeans (Smallpox). One theory is that because they usually lacked large domesticated animal agriculture, such as cattle or pigs in close contact with people, they did not develop resistance to species-jumping diseases like Europeans had. Furthermore, the nomadic Eurasian populations, such as the Mongols, did not get wiped out by the diseases of the agriculturalist societies they invaded and took over, like China and eastern Europe.

Gradual extinction

There are also gradual extinction scenarios to account for the decline of Neanderthal population over the course of some 10,000 years.

The problem with a gradual extinction scenario lies in the resolution of dating methods. There have been claims for young Neanderthal sites, younger than 30,000 years old (Finlayson et al. 2006). Even claims for interstratification of Neanderthal and modern human remains have been advanced (Gravina et al. 2005). So the fact that Neanderthals and modern humans coexisted at least for some time seems certain. However, because of difficulties in calibrating the C14 dates, the duration of this period is uncertain (Mellars 2006a).

Assimilation

There have been claims both that Neanderthals assimilated with modern human beings and that they did not assimilate.

It is possible that the Neanderthals, with their small numbers, could have been absorbed by the much larger populations of modern Homo sapiens. In November 2006, a paper was published in the United States journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, in which a team of European researchers suggest that Neanderthals and humans interbred, citing distinct human and Neanderthal features in a 30,000 year-old fossil found in Romania. Co-author Erik Trinkaus from Washington University explains, "Closely related species of mammals freely interbreed, produce fertile viable offspring and blend populations. Extinction through absorption is a common phenomenon" (Hayes 2006).

One skeleton that has led some researchers to claim that it shared Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon features has been found at Lagar Velho in Portugal. This may suggest the two species may have interbred. The child skeleton does seem to be more robust than what we would expect for modern humans. While it is uncertain whether this is in fact a hybrid of the two species, or simply an extreme individual of one or the other, most researchers think that it represents extreme variation within modern humans.

Assimilation is difficult to prove as genetic differences between Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons were far more minute than the morphological differences between the two species might seem to indicate. Tests comparing Neanderthal and modern human mitochondrial DNA show some dissimilarity.

According to genetic studies, Neanderthals and modern humans diverged genetically 500,000 to 600,000 years ago, suggesting that, though they may have lived at the same time, Neanderthals did not contribute genetic material to modern humans (Krings et. al. 1997). Subsequent investigation of a second source of Neanderthal DNA supported these findings.

Most researchers adhere to a view that has the European Neanderthals either interbreeding and being absorbed or having been marginalized by invading Homo sapiens until they died out, leaving no genetic legacy (Kreger 2005). Few believe that Neanderthals evolved into modern Europeans. Kreger notes that the fate of Neanderthals in terms of modern human phylogeny is still very much questioned and debated, and "whether they left a large heritage in modern humans or an insignificant one is a question that might not be answered satisfactorily for a long time."

Unable to adapt

Shows the pattern of temperature and ice volume changes associated with recent glacials and interglacials

European populations of H. neanderthalensis were adapted for a cold environment. One view on their extinction is that they may have had problems adapting to a warming environment. The problem with this idea is that the glacial period of our ice age ended about 10,000 years ago, while the Neanderthals went extinct about 24,000 years ago.

Another possibility has to do with the loss of the Neanderthal's primary hunting territory: Forests. It is speculated that their hunting methods (stabbing prey with spears rather than throwing the spears) and lack of mobility could have placed them at a disadvantage when the forests were replaced by flat lands. It is also suggested that they mainly ate meat, and thus were less adaptable. Homo sapiens, which hunted large prey but did not depend on them for survival, may have indirectly contributed to their extinction this way.

Division of labor

In 2006, anthropologists Steven L. Kuhn and Mary C. Stiner of the University of Arizona proposed a new explanation for the demise of the Neanderthals (Wade 2006). In an article titled "What's a Mother to Do? The Division of Labor among Neanderthals and Modern Humans in Eurasia," Kuhn and Stiner theorize that Neanderthals did not have a division of labor between the sexes (2006). Both male and female Neanderthals participated in the single main occupation of hunting the big game that flourished in Europe during the ice age, like bison, deer, gazelles, and wild horses. This contrasted with humans who were better able to use the resources of the environment because of a division of labor with the women going after small game and gathering plant foods. In addition, because big game hunting was so dangerous, this made humans, at least females, more resilient.

Genome

At three billion base pairs, the Neanderthal genome is roughly the size of the human genome and likely shares many identical genes. In July 2006, the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, together with the 454 Life Sciences Corporation, announced that they would be sequencing the Neanderthal genome over the next two years. It is thought that a comparison of the Neanderthal genome and human genome will expand understanding of Neanderthals as well as the evolution of humans and human brains (Moulson 2006).

Some comparisons have already been done. Two studies of the DNA extracted from the femur of a 38,000-year-old Neanderthal specimen found in a cave in Croatia—one involving more than 1 million base pairs and the other 65,000 pairs—yielded 99.5% identical base pairs (Than 2006). The findings also found no evidence that Neanderthals and humans interbred, finding no mixing of genes 30,000 to 40,000 years ago in Europe.

Key dates

• 1829: Neanderthal skulls were discovered in Engis, Belgium.
• 1848: Skull of an ancient human was found in Forbes' Quarry, Gibraltar. Its significance was not realized at the time.
• 1856: Johann Karl Fuhlrott first recognized the fossil called “Neanderthal man,” discovered in Neanderthal, a valley in what is now North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.
• 1880: The mandible of a Neanderthal child was found in a secure context and associated with cultural debris, including hearths, Mousterian tools, and bones of extinct animals.
• 1899: Hundreds of Neanderthal bones were described in stratigraphic position in association with cultural remains and extinct animal bones.
• 1908: A nearly complete Neanderthal skeleton was discovered in association with Mousterian tools and bones of extinct animals.
• 1953-1957: Ralph Solecki uncovered nine Neanderthal skeletons in Shanidar Cave in northern Iraq.
• 1975: Erik Trinkaus’s study of Neanderthal feet confirmed that they walked like modern humans.
• 1987: New thermoluminescence tests on Palestine fossils date Neanderthals at Kebara Cave to 60,000 BP and modern humans at Qafzeh to 90,000 BP. These dates were confirmed by Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) dates for Qafzeh (90,000 BP) and Es Skhul (80,000 BP).
• 1991: New ESR dates showed that the Tabun Neanderthal (Israel) was contemporaneous with modern humans from Skhul and Qafzeh.
• 1997 Matthias Krings et al. are the first to amplify Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA using a specimen from Feldhofer grotto in the Neander valley. Their work is published in the journal Cell.
• 2000: Igor Ovchinnikov, Kirsten Liden, William Goodman et al. retrieved DNA from a Late Neanderthal (29,000 BP) infant from Mezmaikaya Cave in the Caucausus.
• 2005: The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology launched a project to reconstruct the Neanderthal genome.
• 2006: The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology announced that it planned to work with Connecticut-based 454 Life Sciences to reconstruct the Neanderthal genome.

See also

• Human evolution
• Homo erectus

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