The Life and Times of the Neanderthals

Europe in the mid-1850's produced a significant contribution to the understanding of the development of man on earth. Paul Jordan (1999) explains that human remains were found in the Neander Valley that at first were mistaken for the commonly found bear skeletons seen in Western European caves. The valley was named after a seventeenth-century German clergyman who liked to walk the valley near his home. The clergyman, Joachim Neuman, was also a church organist and hymn composer, would sometimes write under the name Neander, the Greek form of his surname. Thus, the valley near Dusseldorf was called Neanderthal or Neumandale in English. In August of 1856, the bones unearthed by quarry workmen in that same valley would come to be named after the location and thus be called Neanderthal bones. There had been earlier discoveries of similar remains. According to O'Neil (2004), part of the skull of a child was seen in Engis, Belgium in 1839. In Spain the skull of an adult female had been found at Gibraltar in 1848, (O'Neil 1), but it was not until the German discovery in a limestone cave deposit the Neander Valley in Dusseldorf, that it became more clear that these bones were not of just strange-looking Moderns. At first skeptical as to what sort of person the bones represented, various scenarios were developed including the idea by some German paleontologists and medical pathologists that the bones were from a Central Asian solider fighting in the Napoleonic wars (2).

It was not until the publication of The Origin of Species in 1859 by Charles Darwin that the bones from the Neander Valley were thought to possibly be from a pre-modern human being (O'Neil 3). The bones retrieved included the skull cap, right clavicle, right and left humorous and femur bones, along with many other bones of the extremities. The remains were placed there as part of a Neanderthal burial.

The bones found near Düsseldorf and other places highlight the fact that anatomical features found in Neanderthal are typical of most humans today. Yet certain specific differences were present. Approximately, four hundred Neanderthals have been found and identified to date (Jordan 46). About half of the skeletons excavated have been of children. Thus the distinct physical qualities of the people were present at an early age. Teeth grew quickly and the brain was almost fully developed at a young age. Though, differing depending on the time period and nation in which the bones were found, Neanderthals tend to share various qualities. The bodies according to Jordan, give an "impression of robustness and heaviness of build, of squat compactness of body with short, powerful and slightly bowed limbs" (47). The bones of the leg were rather curved probably because of the strong muscle attachments, not due to bow-leggedness as others have thought. Also, they had broad feet, which were adapted to walking barefoot on non-uniform terrain, though they were not ape-like with the divergent big toe (48-49). To describe their general appearance they were most likely pale complexioned due to the low sunlight they would have received in their ice age environment, with large noses, small chins, low foreheads, heavy brows and slight chin development (Stringer and Gamble 95).

Additionally, the Neanderthals were not very tall. According to Stringer and Gamble (1993) males were about 196 cm or 5ft 6.5 inches. Females 160 cm or 5ft 3 inches. Though it is difficult to accurately estimate the weight of Neanderthals, using contemporary techniques to determine the weight of modern human beings allows an estimated guess of about 65 kg or 143 lbs for a man and 50 kg or 110 lb for a woman Neanderthal (Stringer and Gamble 91-92).

Popular culture likes to suggest that these early humans were ape-like. This may be due to the descriptions an early 20th century paleontologist gave of the la Chapelle-aux-Saints skeleton of an elderly Neanderthal man. He was described by French scientist Marcellin Boule in 1911-1913 as being ape-like, slow-witted, and hunch-back (O'Neil 6). This is not exactly true. Though they were much more muscular than Moderns (Stringer and Gamble 93, Jordan 47, O'Neil 9) with high density leg bones, they looked similar to modern people. Neanderthals were erect (O'Neil 9) and could use their hands for "delicate operation" (Stringer and Gamble 93). The brains were also larger than those of modern humans (O'Neil 11). Their small stature and large-sized craniums, in the eyes of O'Neil, were well-suited to the cold climate of the ice in which the Neanderthals lived.
From excavations that have been conducted since the 1856 discovery, bones have been found at Skhūl in the Middle East, La Chapelle-aux-Saints, La Ferrassie, Combe-Grenal, the latter three in France, to name just a few places. Remains have also been found in North Africa and one in the South Pacific. The largest set of remains was found in 1905 by D. Gorjanovic-Kramberger in Krapina in northern Croatia. Eight hundred human bones were excavated along with several fireplaces, many animal bones and stone tools. The excavation had taken ten years and was a great find since prior to that time there had only been a few Neanderthal bones seen since the great Neander Valley finding, according to Jolly and White (1995). To date it is the largest finding of such bones with 43 individuals being excavated (344, 355).

Though exactly how many Neanderthals lived is uncertain, what is known is that their lives were extremely difficult compared to those of most modern human beings. As their skeletons have indicated there was considerable disease suffered by many, including the man studied by Boule in France. Old by Neanderthal standards, the forty-year-old individual, was afflicted by arthritis of the spine, skull, jaw, hip and feet. He also had a lost many teeth and suffered a rib fracture (Stringer and Gamble 94-95). Due to the difficult life of the Neanderthals, it is easy to see why they were afflicted with ailments. In fact, during no such time in human history outside "of forced labour camps of the ancient empires and the modern tyrannies" did living conditions pull so much from a people as the Neanderthals lives did. Shanidar 1, a skeleton found in the Middle East, has head injuries including a blinded left eye. He apparently died from being hit by a falling cave rock. Some modern illnesses also affected the Neanderthals. A male excavated from La Ferrassie shows signs of lung cancer (76). Disease did not prevent them from conducting their daily activities, however. The Shanidar 1 man as well as the one from La Ferrassie were injured but were thought to have died until much later.

The main activities of the Neanderthals included hunting. Spears using flint tools were the method most often employed. The types of spear points they used are described as Mousterian after Moustier, France where some of the earliest Neanderthal remains had been found (Jolly and White 344). These tools are commonly seen at Neanderthals sites. Made from stone, they are created by using a core and striking the core with another rock so as to fashion the point. Large herd animals such as those typical of the Paleolithic period, like wild donkeys and bison, were killed using these points. Additionally, there is evidence to suggest that mass killing of such animals was done. The largest discovery of such bones was seen in Il'skaya, Hungary where the remains of 1,200 bison were found. Though seemingly effective, the tools of the Neanderthals did not change much from the ones they used 150,000 years ago. There was greater change from their Crô-Magnon man successors, as stated by Caird and Foley (1994), which helps to underlie their statement that "The Crô-Magnons were for all practical purposes modern humans" (151-152,140) in spite of some notable muscular differences. They outlived the Neanderthals to become modern human beings. In spite of this, these early people did have some practices typical of modern humans. Neanderthals were the first people to engage in burial. The man at La Chapelle-aux-Saints had been carefully laid where he was. According to Rowley-Conwy (1993) other sites in Iraq, Israel and France attest to this fact (70). However, they indicated that many significant other qualities of a modern culture such as art were not present among the Neanderthals.

Though their societies existed throughout Europe, parts of North Africa and Asia, the Neanderthals ultimately died out. The main theory for their disappearance is that an increasingly colder climate caused their demise, according to Gamble and Stringer (197) and O'Neil (18-19) who highlights the theory of Leslie Aiello of University College London. She states that Neanderthals were used to temperatures around 0˚ Fahrenheit. Anything below that would be difficult to survive in since their technology was not advanced enough to deal with below-freezing temperatures. Thus as the last ice age began to get colder, the Neanderthals could not adapt to the environment.

By comparing the behavior of Neanderthals to humans some conclusions as to whether the former were our ancestors can be made (18). Moderns act differently than the Neanderthals, as Gamble and Stringer state. There was no "structured organization of living space...be it a rockshelter or an open site (199). Additionally, there is little ornamentation of material instruments used by ancient people, including the Neanderthals. Many of the northern European Neanderthals lived in caves "which could be called their homes," according to Jordan (78). Their burial sites were also different than those of moderns. The Levantine moderns were more sophisticated than the Neanderthals when it came to burials. As stated by Jordan, they had a greater understanding of an afterlife due to the manner in which they buried their dead. In contrast to the Neanderthals, these moderns would have certain items like animal bones or flowers at the site of the burial. In Israel, the remains of a man were found with the skull of a wild boar in his arms. Remains of another younger modern had the antlers of a deer in its arms. No such symbolism was seen in Neanderthal burials. They must not have had a concept of an afterlife, in Jordan's view (196). Art, a quality of human invention, is absent until the upper Paleolithic Period, a much later section of time in the evolution of human development. Blade development is not a good indicator of the relation between humans and technology, as was once thought. Modern humans who migrated to Australia, for instance, did not make the types of refined instruments found in other areas, yet they were moderns nonetheless. More fundamentally there were differences in verbal, visual and symbolic communication which distinguish the Moderns from the Neanderthals. Thus, in the eyes of Gamble, Aiello, Stringer, and others we are not descended from them. Others, however, are of a different mindset. C. Loring Brace (1995) feels that "Because full modern cranial capacity and more had been attained, presumably indicated intellectual capabilities at least the equivalent to those of modern humans, it would not be justifiable to regard the Neanderthals as specifically distinct from people of today. Formally, then this makes them homo sapiens with at most a subspecific appendage of neanderthalensis" (231). Thus to Brace they were our ancestors, but to others the Neanderthals were simply a link in the evolutionary chain with no successors and forever a mystery.

Works Cited

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Prentice Hall.
Caird, Rod. (1994). Ape Man. New York: Macmillan.
Jolly, Clifford and Randall White. (1995). Physical Anthropology and Archeology. (5th
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Jordan, Paul. (1999). Neanderthal. Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing Limited.
O'Neil, Dennis. (2004). "Neandertals." neandertal.htm> (2004, May 15).
Rowley-Conwy, Peter. (1993). "Was there a Neanderthal Religion?" In Göran
Burenhult (Ed.) The First Humans: Human Origins and History to 10,000 BC (p. 70) HarperSanFrancisco: SanFrancisco.
Stringer, Christopher and Clive Gamble. (1993). In Search of the Neanderthals. New
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