Archaeologists have recreated the stone tools made by Neanderthals, and found them to be as useful and efficient as those made by the earliest Homo sapiens, who survived while the Neanderthal line died off. The new research is one of many recent studies claiming that Neanderthals weren’t just dumb brutes that were out-competed by early humans. Says lead researcher Metin Eren: “When we think of Neanderthals we need to stop thinking in terms of ’stupid’ or ‘less advanced’ and more in terms of ‘different’” [Guardian].
Other recent studies have argued that Neanderthals hunted and communicated as well as the early Homo sapiens who arrived in Europe, where the Neanderthals already lived, about 45,000 years ago. But some archaeologists still believed that Homo sapiens had a technological advantage, because they used long stone tools called blades, as opposed to the Neanderthals’ disk-shaped flakes. In the new study, Eren’s team spent spent three years recreating blades and flakes, then measured their cutting power, durability and the amount of effort needed to produce them [Wired News]. In the end, Eren determined that the Neanderthals’ tools may have even had a slight edge over Homo sapiens tools.
Disc flakes, Eren’s team discovered, waste less rock, suffer fewer breaks and have more cutting edge for their mass compared with straight blades. “We found that with every respect the Neanderthal technology was just as efficient, if not slightly more efficient, than modern Homo sapiens blade technology,” he says. “This was a very strong indication that Neanderthals did not go extinct because of any cognitive inferiority” [New Scientist].
The study, which will be published in the Journal of Human Evolution [subscription required], found only one possible advantage to Homo sapiens’ blades: They could be easily attached to a shaft to make a spear or projectile. Eren doesn’t believe that difference is enough to explain the disappearance of the Neanderthals from Europe by about 30,000 years ago, but other archaeologists have proposed it as a contributing factor.
One such theory involves Neanderthals’ tools and abrupt climate changes in early Europe; read about it in the DISCOVER article, “Who Killed the Neanderthals?”
Image: Metin Eren
Related Post: Give Neanderthals Some Credit: They Made Nice Tools
August 28th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
The tools may be different sizes because the two groups hunted different animals. They hunted different animals because the two groups lived in different geographic regions, with the Neanderthals in higher elevations, where there are larger mammals, hence the larger flakes. Early Homo sapiens probably hunted smaller animals like wild turkey, rabbits, deer, quail, fish, using smaller, more narrow blades.
September 9th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Neanderthals did not make the tools..
Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons were both top level predators—> Hunters.
The Neanderthals hunted first by Smell/then by Sight
The Cro-Magnon/Man hunted by Sound/Sight
The Neanderthal’s nose/muzzle is enlarged. The Neanderthal brain case is of the shape and size indicative of development necessary to analyzing and acting on olfactory information. The Neanderthal had a well developed cerebrum and other structures adapted to processing smell.
The Cro-Magnon brain is of the size and shape indicative of a Sound Hunter. Man has a well developed Cerebral Cortex necessary for analyzing and acting upon Sound sensory input.
1) Neanderthals did not have language or music. The Neanderthals were not responsive to sound. The organization of the Neanderthal brain did not have the structures necessary to process Sound nor did Neanderthal take such delight in the meanings and patterns of Sound that Man does.
2) The Neanderthal did not mate with Humans. Neanderthal would have identified potential mates by Smell. A human female would not have aroused a Neanderthal Male and a Neanderthal female had the strength to fend off any unwanted amorous advances by human males. It is unlikely that the Neanderthal recognized Humans either visually or by smell as bearing a resemblance to Neanderthals.
3) Neanderthals did not bury the dead. Humans, and possibly Neanderthals, cache food, especially in caves and other areas that may be visited by other animals. Man is particularly fond of burying and covering his dinner with rocks or in shallow cairns. Burial takes many forms and the least representative of funerary practices is “caching.”
4) Neanderthals did not make tools. The Neanderthal, being a specialized smell hunter, would have had less capacity than a Chimpanzee to carry out the complex task of tool making. Neanderthal may have used sticks or stones on a “spur of the moment” basis to strike but the “significant differences” between Man and Neanderthal would preclude the appreciation and ability to recognize and create complex patterns.
5) Neanderthals did not make or control fire. Neanderthals were cold adapted, having a very thick and heavy fur coat. Man is not cold adapted and must of necessity make and control fire when he is out of his native, tropical range. Where there is fire, there is Man. Neanderthals did not tan hides or wear clothes. Neanderthal was a cold climate animal, not a migrant from the tropics who could only survive by the use of artificial and complex technologies such as shelters, clothes, and fire.
November 23rd, 2008 at 3:57 pm
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November 23rd, 2008 at 3:57 pm
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November 27th, 2008 at 9:02 am
X –
Areas of the brain relating to olfaction are decreased in primates in general, and more so in great apes. I see no reason to postulate (without evidence) that neanderthals hunted by scent — this is pure speculation, and would be a reversal of the trend we see in the lineage that led to neanderthals and humans. The larger nose size was most likely an adaptation to a colder climate, heating the air more before it entered the lungs — this is an adaptation we see in modern humans. Africans tend to have flatter, wider noses, while Slavic peoples tend to have longer, more bulbous noses closer to those of neanderthals.
1 — We don’t know if neanderthals had music, neither do we know which structures might have been present in the neanderthal brain. Again, your assertion is nothing but conjecture. However, they did have a descended larynx, indicated by the find of a neanderthal hyoid bone in 1938, I believe, which is both necessary to speech and leaves the throat vulnerable to attack: it is unlikely that this structure would be selected for if the neanderthals did not have speech. Hence they probably did have some linguistic ability.
2 — You say neanderthals identified mates by smell. This is guesswork based on your previous misunderstanding concerning the neanderthal nasal structure. So far the matter of whether our two species interbred is still undecided, but attempting to work out the details of neanderthal courtship (let alone their brain structure) based on reasoning so naive as “neanderthals had big noses, therefore olfaction must have been their dominant sense” is absurd.
3 — I’m not entirely sure what you mean here. Are you saying that burying the dead is a way of protecting food from scavengers, thus implying that both ancient humans and neanderthals were cannibals? Although there are signs that cannibalism was practice by both species, there is also evidence that skeletons were defleshed BEFORE burial (whether the flesh was then eaten is a matter of debate), indicating that the burial was not to prevent the flesh from being scavenged.
4 and 5 — Both tools and evidence of fire use have been found in sites which predate homo sapiens by millions of years. Homo habilis, for example, is thought to have been the first hominid species to create stone tools. If you’re claiming that neanderthals were incapable of creating tools (again, something which you have only based, without explaining the connection, on your unsupported assumption that the neanderthal sensory sphere was dominated by olfaction), then how do you explain tools which predate H. sapiens? Same goes for fire.
December 7th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Take that X. Thanks Y.
December 7th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
lol homo
December 7th, 2008 at 7:05 pm
X is clearly a creationist who wants to believe that Neanderthals were simply animals and not to be considered human, which is why he asserts that they couldn’t make tools, speak, make music, breed with humans, or bury their dead. Thus he is a racist, and only by Crichtonesque restoration of our oppressed Neanderthal race to their rightful positions of power and respect can our dream be fulfilled: the day when a man is judged, not by the thickness of his fur, but by the sharpness of his tool.
December 13th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
It seems that the mater of extinction of the Neanderthal population could come down to the amount of intelligence of the species. For adaptation depends upon intelligence.
From what has been discovered it looks as if Neanderthal was at least as intelligent as Cro-Magnon(our excepted ancestors ).
Given the speed at which we can adapt if required and that eminent starvation would be a strong motivator, then by assuming that Neanderthal did not adapt. We are either forced to accept that.
1.They were not as intelligent as assumed which seems unlikely given the size of their brain and the complexity of there society, mirroring in many ways that of the Cro-Magnon of the same period.
2. They refused to change their prey items, and hunting practices. or their weapons, which researcher claim led to their extinction.
I submit that if such circumstances faced us, we would adapt very rapidly in fact within hours or at most days.
History gives us an analog as we have throughout recorded watched arms races, as well as other survival strategies.
We know we must adapt or die. These individuals must have adapted repeatedly over their long existence ( much longer than we have to this point existed).
Our studies of humans reaction when coming into contact with other societies is marked with love and war.
Not only do we kill those who are different from us but we also interbreeding with them.
In summery It seems that total extinction because of the inability to adapt or destruction of preferred habitat deserves a fresh look.
Well entrenched notions are difficult to abandon. But isn’t that what science is all about?