The Neanderthals are Coming!!

Neanderthals are back in the news.  Evidence has been found that seems to locate Neanderthals in the caves of Gibraltar some 28,000 years ago.  This is news because it was thought that the Neanderthals had become extinct two thousand years earlier.  There is poignancy to the discovery; the researchers describe the caves as the "last stand" of the Neanderthals in Europe, and thus on planet Earth.

The last stand against what?  No adversary is named.  The press release describes the caves as providing shelter and "last refuge" from eventual "displacement," but the question remains.

The findings, which show that Neanderthals lived alongside modern humans for thousands of years, bring fresh evidence to the debate on what happened to our evolutionary cousins, and whether modern humans drove them to extinction.

"Living alongside our cousins" sounds so neighborly.  How sad that somehow our neighbors the Neanderthals were "driven" to extinction.

I've encountered this language before in writings about the Neanderthals and their extinction.  The extinction is usually described as just happening over the course of time, coincidental with the appearance of Modern humans in the same regions.  Were the Moderns responsible for the extinction of the Neanderthals, and if so, how?

When I was younger, Neanderthals were depicted as hairy and primitive.  They were the typical cavemen, grunting, low-slung, and hitting things with clubs.  The Moderns, so obviously more sophisticated, "advanced" into West Asia and Europe, "displacing" the hapless Neanderthals, who apparently just withered away at the sight of such superiority.

Today, the picture is a little different.  Neanderthals are understood to have been much more complex than we thought.  They weren't as hairy, were excellent hunters, had a social organization that cared for the injured and elderly, and practiced burial rites.  They might have had some language, they created and possibly traded cultural artifacts, and even learned from the Moderns. 

The shortfalls of the Neanderthals are described in much more technical terms:  they were less able to adapt to the cooling climate of the time; their hunting techniques were less effective than those of the Moderns; their diet was less adaptable maybe; they didn't migrate as readily and thus engaged in much less trade than did the Moderns.

So it wasn't that the Moderns were so superior, it's just that the Neanderthals didn't quite have what it took to "compete."  They simply dwindled away, died off, the poor things.

Here's a typical way the story is told*:

Jan. 27, 2004  -  In a prehistoric battle for survival, Neanderthals had to compete against modern humans and were wiped off the face of the Earth, according to a new study on life in Europe from 60,000 to 25,000 years ago.

-  -  -

"My general take on Neanderthal extinction was that they were in competition with anatomically modern humans at a time when there was increasing severe cold stress that was not only affecting them, but also the food resources they relied on," said Leslie Aiello, head of the University College London Graduate School, and an expert on Neanderthal response to weather.

-  -  -

Paul Pettitt, a Neanderthal expert at the University of Sheffield who agrees with the new study findings, said, "[Early Modern human] toolkits reveal a very sophisticated range of weaponry.  Far from general purpose spears deployed in the hand, we now see specialist projectile weapons (javelins) perhaps thrown with the aid of spearthrowers to increase effective range," Pettitt told Discovery News.

-  -  -

With such technologies, our ancestors won the prehistoric battle for survival.

Notice that there is no overt mention of how the Neanderthals were "wiped off the face of the Earth."  They simply failed to "compete."  As if the little Neanderthal children just didn't score as well in school.  Or they couldn't afford to keep their caves heated.  And yet there seems to be some gloating about the "sophisticated range of weaponry" that allowed Moderns to "win."

Given your own understanding of modern Modern humans, and what they tend to do with sophisticated weaponry, can you begin to guess how the Neanderthals became extinct?

Paul Pettitt, the Neanderthal expert quoted above, writes less equivocally for his peers**:

It must have seemed, in some areas, that Neanderthals had little to offer modern humans - except competition.  In these areas, the attitude may have been to kill first, ask questions later.  For too long we have regarded the extinction of Neanderthals as a chance historical accident.  Rather, where Neanderthals and modern humans could not coexist, their disappearance may have been the result of the modern human race's first and most successful deliberate campaign of genocide.

So not everyone is afraid to come right out and speak the obvious:  Modern humans killed off the Neanderthals.  There is no mystery to their extinction at all, and I'm afraid that any poignancy we express is just alligator's tears.  But why would we be so circumspect about human behavior that is so obviously evident?

BC

*Discovery Channel news brief, 1/26/04.

**Paul Pettitt's essay in British Archaeology is excellent, but revolves around a finding that is somewhat more in question now than it was back in 2000.

Jared Diamond (author of the wonderful Guns, Germs, and Steel) also brings up the genocide argument.
Here's Wikipedia on Neanderthal extinction.