Analysis of a Neanderthal skeleton known as Shanidar 3 found in the late 1950s shows that the he likely died from injuries incurred by a thrown spear, which scientists speculate was thrown by a modern human, according to a study published in the Journal of Human Evolution.
Although a nicked rib on his left side provided a hint as to what killed Shanidar 3, scientists remained stumped on the details for decades. To find a probable cause of death for the Neanderthal, the researchers used a specially-designed crossbow to fire stone-age projectiles at precise velocities at pig carcasses…. At kinetic energies consistent with a thrown spear, the pig’s rib bore damage consistent with Shanidar 3’s isolated rib puncture [Time]. Higher kinetic energies that matched a knife or spear thrust produced more massive rib damage than that sustained by Shanidar. The scientists also found that the weapon entered Shanidar’s body from about 45 degrees above his body, provided the 5-foot-6-inch Neanderthal was standing at the time.
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A 35,000-year-old flute made of vulture bone found in a cave in southwestern Germany is the world’s oldest known musical instrument. The artifact suggests music may have been one advantage our ancestors had over their cousins, the now-extinct Neanderthals, according to a report published in the journal Nature.
The five-holed flute, which is fully intact and made from a griffon vulture’s radius bone, was discovered with fragments of other flutes crafted out of mammoth ivory. The bird-bone instrument was found in a region in which similar instruments have popped up lately, says lead author Nicholas Conard, but this flute is “by far the most complete of the musical instruments so far recovered from the caves.” … Until now the artifacts appeared to be too rare and not as precisely dated to support wider interpretations of the early rise of music [The New York Times]. To make sure the newly discovered instruments were dated correctly, samples were tested independently and using different methods at facilities in England and Germany. Both found the bone to be at least 35,000 years old, during the Modern Paleolithic era.
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Early humans and Neanderthals may have clashed violently during their brief coexistence in Europe, a new study suggests, and humans may have either eaten their Neanderthal opponents or taken their teeth as trophies. Anthropologist Fernando Rozzi and his colleagues conducted a new analysis of a jawbone found in a cave in southwest France. They say that the jawbone probably belonged to a Neanderthal, and that it shows cut marks similar to those found on reindeer that were butchered by early humans.
Rozzi believes that the jawbone was cut in the process of removing flesh and the tongue, a technique also used on the deer that early humans frequently fed on. He believes this proves that Neanderthals were fair game for human consumption, too. “Neanderthals met a violent end at our hands and in some cases we ate them,” Rozzi said…. “For years, people have tried to hide away from the evidence of cannibalism, but I think we have to accept it took place,” he added [The Guardian]. But his theory is likely to provoke intense argument from other researchers, who believe that humans and Neanderthals had little interaction.
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The oldest known fossil of a human child with a skull deformity has been discovered, suggesting that early humans did not kill or abandon their abnormal offspring, as has been commonly assumed. A research team reconstructed the 530,000-year-old skull, the first pieces of which were unearthed in Spain in 2001, and determined that the child likely suffered from craniosynostosis, a debilitating genetic disorder in which some pieces of the skull fuse too quickly, causing pressure to build in the brain [Wired] and interfering with brain development. The severity of the deformity is not clear, but researchers say the child probably had learning difficulties and other mental health issues, and certainly would have required extra care.
The child belonged to the species Homo heidelbergensis, who lived in Europe 800,000 years ago and may have been the direct ancestors of Neanderthals. Humans are thought to be unique in the way they care for sick individuals. Researchers call it conspecific care, but most laypeople would probably call it compassion. Other primates don’t display similar behavior, so we know humans evolved the ability at some point, even if scientists can’t quite pinpoint when. The work could mean that humans as far back as half a million years ago had differentiated from our primate ancestors [Wired].
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After years of seemingly endless research, scientists have completed a first draft of the Neanderthal genome.
Nature reports that a team of scientists at the Max Planck Institute in Germany has sequenced 60 percent of the genome of a Neanderthal, the closest relative of modern humans. After analyzing more than a billion fragments of ancient DNA, the researchers constructed the genome mostly with DNA strands from a 38,000-year-old fossilized leg bone found in a cave in Croatia. They also used material from older remains, some up to 70,000 years old.
Neanderthals are thought to have been proficient at crafting basic tools and weapons, and died out shortly after Homo sapiens migrated to Europe, but the precise connection between the species has always been unclear. The Neanderthal genome sequence will clarify the evolutionary relationship between humans and Neanderthals as well as help identify those genetic changes that enabled modern humans to leave Africa and rapidly spread around the world, starting around 100,000 years ago [PhysOrg].
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Neanderthals living in coastal caves in Gibraltar hunted and feasted on seafood, researchers say, adding another piece of evidence to the argument that Neanderthals weren’t outmatched and driven to extinction by more skilled and sophisticated Homo sapiens. “I don’t think that the success of one or the other had to do with subsistence, with the way they hunted or fed,” [researcher Clive] Finlayson said. “There may be other factors coming into this, or it may just have been a question of luck” [National Geographic News].
The discovery of seal, dolphin and fish remains in the caves dating from 60,000 to 30,000 years ago provides the first evidence that Neanderthals ate sea mammals as well as land grub. Archaeologists found the mammals’ remains among Neanderthal hearth sites in Vanguard and Gorham’s Caves on the Rock of Gibraltar. The bones of some of the animals have cut marks that were likely made by Neanderthals using flint knives, also found on site, to cut the meat off [LiveScience].
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A new analysis of the skulls of three Neanderthal babies shows that the cranium of a newborn Neanderthal was about the same size as that of a newborn Homo sapiens, and that the Neanderthal children grew faster than modern humans in the first few years of life. The report on the young skeletons, which date from between 45,000 to 50,000 years ago, adds fuel to the debate over how similar Neanderthal culture was to that of our early Homo sapiens ancestors.
A big-headed infant skeleton found in Russia suggests that childbirth was no easy task for for Neanderthal women. Neanderthal mothers had slightly larger birth canals, but the prominent face of Neanderthal babies made it just as hard to push out as a modern human. This suggests that both groups had the social structures needed to help with childbirth [New Scientist].
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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.
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For the first time, scientists have sequenced the mitochondrial DNA of a Neanderthal. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, analyzed the genetic material from a 38,000-year-old leg bone found in Croatia and published their findings today in Cell.
The mitochondria are only passed down the female line, so can be used to trace the species back to an ancestral “Eve”, the mother of all Neanderthals. The team analysed the DNA of 13 genes from the Neanderthal mitochondria and found they were distinctly different to modern humans, suggesting Neanderthals never, or rarely, interbred with early humans. The genetic material shows that a Neanderthal “Eve” lived around 660,000 years ago, when the species last shared a common ancestor with humans [Guardian].
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Cro-Magnon people and Neanderthals may have shared their European habitat from 45,000 to 30,000 years ago, but new evidence suggests that they didn’t get more intimate than that. Italian researchers sequenced mitochondrial DNA from Cro-Magnon bones dating from 28,000 years ago and found no trace of Neanderthal DNA, suggesting that the two early hominids did not interbreed to create modern humans.
The fate of the Neanderthals, who vanish from the fossil record around 30,000 years ago, has been fiercely debated. One theory, known as the Out of Africa hypothesis, holds that modern humans, whose ancestors had recently migrated from Africa, drove the Neandertals extinct, possibly through warfare, disease, or cognitive advantage. But the competing multiregional hypothesis argues that Neandertals and modern humans interbred and that Neandertals were absorbed into our gene pool [ScienceNow Daily News].
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Neanderthals don’t have the best reputation. In the public mind, the heavy-browed hominids are thought of as a stupid species that couldn’t compete with brighter Homo sapiens, as the also-rans that therefore went extinct. But a newly discovered trove of Neanderthal tools in Sussex, England may help rehabilitate their image. The tools, which date from the end of the Neanderthal era at around 30,000 B.C., show surprising sophistication, archaeologists say.
“The tools we’ve found at the site are technologically advanced and potentially older than tools in Britain belonging to our own species,” said [University College London]’s Matthew Pope. “It’s exciting to think that there’s a real possibility these were left by some of the last Neanderthal hunting groups to occupy northern Europe,” he added. “The impression they give is of a population in complete command of both landscape and natural raw materials with a flourishing technology — not a people on the edge of extinction” [Discovery News].
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