The Dawn of Human Culture (20 page)

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6

NEANDERTHALS OUT ON A LIMB

On its way to the Rhine, Germany’s Düssel River flows through the verdant Neander Valley, named for a local seventeenth-century vicar and composer. The bedrock is limestone, and the valley walls were once pocked with caves. By 1856, quarrying had destroyed all but two, and in August of that year, quarry workers set out to remove the stone around the cave known as the Feldhofer Grotto. They enlarged the entrance by blasting, and as they cleared away the rubble inside, someone’s pickaxe clanged against a dark brown skullcap (Figure 6.1).

Other bones—maybe even an entire skeleton—occurred nearby, but the workers retrieved only the skullcap, some arm bones, a pair of thigh bones, a partial pelvis, and some ribs. The quarry owner thought they came from a bear, but he set them aside for a local schoolteacher and natural historian, Johann Fuhlrott. Fuhlrott recognized immediately that they were human but not from anyone like he knew. He was particularly struck by the long, low, flat form of the skullcap, by the 06 Neanderthals.r.qxd 1/29/02 5:05 PM Page 170

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receding

forehead

long, low

braincase

thick, double-arched

browridge

0

5 cm

0

2 in

Feldhofer Grotto Neanderthal

FIGURE 6.1

The fossil human skullcap found in the Feldhofer Grotto, Germany, in 1856 (drawn by Kathryn Cruz-Uribe from photographs) (Copyright Kathryn Cruz-Uribe).

beetling browridge over its eye sockets, and by the thickness of the limb bones. He guessed that the remains represented someone whose body had been washed into the cave during Noah’s Flood.

Fuhlrott transferred the bones to Hermann Schaffhausen, an eminent professor of anatomy at the University of Bonn. Schaffhausen carefully compared them to a range of modern human specimens, and in 1857, he concluded that they represented a “barbarous and savage race” that had inhabited northern Europe before the Germans and the Celts. It was left to Thomas Huxley, Darwin’s most eminent early dis-ciple, to take the next logical step. In 1863, after a careful study of the skullcap, he concluded that it probably represented an extinct kind of human. In 1864, the Irish anatomist, William King, assigned the Feldhofer fossils to a new species, for which he coined the name
Homo
neanderthalensis,
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prefer the vernacular term Neandertal to Neanderthal. Either alternative is acceptable, but for those like us who incline to King’s original diagnosis, the technical name must remain
neanderthalensis
.

Few authorities followed Huxley or King to begin with, and the problem was only partly opposition to the idea of human evolution.

There was also no evidence that the Feldhofer bones were very ancient.

Proof came only in 1886, when archeologists excavated two anatomically similar skeletons at Spy Cave, Belgium (Figure 6.2). Associated stone tools and bones of mammoth, rhinoceros, reindeer, and other animals indicated that the Spy skeletons were very ancient. By 1910, archeologists could point to similar associations from France on the west to Croatia on the east (Figure 6.3), and French archeologists had worked out the basic succession of European stone tool cultures. They globular form

backwards

when viewed

receding

protrusion or

from behind

forehead

“bun” at the

rear of the

skull

brow-

ridge

juxtamastoid

mastoid

crest

elongated depression above the upper limit

process

of attachment for the neck muscles

0

5 cm

0

2 in

Spy 2 Neanderthal

FIGURE 6.2

One of two Neanderthal skulls found at Spy Cave, Belgium, in 1886 (redrawn after A. P. Santa Luca 1978,
Journal of Human Evolution
7, p. 623).

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approximate range

of the Neanderthals

Feldhofer

St. Césaire

Spy, Scladina & Engis

& Marillac

Arcy-sur-Cure

Mladec˘

Le Moustier,

La Ferrassie

La Quina

Predmostí

& Cro-Magnon

La Chapelle Divje Babe

Moula-Guercy

Krapina

&

Mezmaiskaya

Vindija

Lagar Velho

Zafarraya

Shanidar

Uum El Tiel

Kebara

FIGURE 6.3

The European and west Asian range of the Neanderthals showing the approximate locations of the sites mentioned in this chapter.

knew that when Neanderthals and fully modern humans left their tools in the same site, the kinds of tools that Neanderthals made always occurred in deeper layers. It followed that the Neanderthals had been in Europe first, and the stage was set for a controversy that has continued to the present day: did the Neanderthals evolve into modern humans or were they extinguished when modern humans arrived from elsewhere? To us, the issue has now been settled in favor of extinction, and our purpose in this chapter is to explain why we think so.

* * *

Neanderthals Out on a Limb | 173

humans, that is, that they had changed more from the last shared ancestor. We have suggested that this ancestor was
Homo heidelbergensis,
which occupied both Africa and Europe 500,000 to 400,000

years ago. Genetic comparisons that we discuss farther on underscore the likelihood that Neanderthal and modern human lines separated about this time.

In the last chapter, we also stressed that the Neanderthals exhibited some unique features of the face and skull. In combination, these features are unknown in any other human group, and even as isolated traits, they have been found only in the people who lived in Europe just before the Neanderthals. The 300,000-year-old Sima de los Huesos fossils are the prime examples, and it is because the Sima people anticipated the Neanderthals in key respects that we call them Neanderthal ancestors. The absence of Neanderthal specializations in contemporaneous African and Asian populations demonstrates that they were on separate evolutionary tracks.

The Neanderthal face was unique in its extraordinary forward projection along the midline, that is, the line that divides the face equally between right and left halves. If a living human had totally plastic features, he or she could achieve a roughly similar appearance by placing fingers on opposite sides of the nose and pulling forwards about two inches. The cheekbones and everything else along the midline would then sweep sharply backwards. The tooth rows would be pulled forwards, and a large gap would open up between the rear edge of the lower wisdom tooth (the third molar) and the fore edge of the ascending branch of the lower jaw, the part that rises to articulate with the base of the skull (Figure 6.4). Anatomists call such a gap a

“retromolar space,” and it is known only in Neanderthals and their 06 Neanderthals.r.qxd 1/29/02 5:05 PM Page 174

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long, low

braincase

Neanderthal

(La Chapelle-aux-Saints)

long face

mounted in

front of the

braincase and

juxtamastoid

projecting far

crest

forward along

mastoid

the midline

process

large gap behind

3rd molars

no chin

0

5 cm

short, high

0

2 in

braincase

Cro-Magnon

(Cro-Magnon 1)

short, flat

face mounted

below the

front of the

braincase

chin

FIGURE 6.4

Reconstructed skulls of a classic Neanderthal and a classic Cro-Magnon (drawn by Kathryn Cruz-Uribe from casts). The term Cro-Magnon is commonly extended to all early modern, Upper Paleolithic Europeans.

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immediate ancestors. The Neanderthal face was further unusual, if not unique, in other aspects, including its extraordinary length from top to bottom, the large size of the nasal opening, the great round orbits (eye sockets), and the strong, double-arched browridge just above the orbits.

The braincase was exceptional in its tendency to bulge outwards at the sides, so that it resembled a globe when viewed from behind (Figure 6.2). It was further singular in a depressed area of roughened bone on the back (occiput) just above a bar of bone to which the neck muscles attached and in a peculiar array of bumps and crannies in the vicinity of the mastoid process below and behind the ear.

One of these bumps, known as the juxtamastoid crest, lay just inside the mastoid process and usually exceeded the mastoid process in size (Figure 6.4). In other features, such as the long, low outline of the braincase in profile and the tendency for the rear of the skull to bulge backwards like a bun, the Neanderthals were less sharply differentiated from some other fossil people, though when these traits are united with others that are peculiar to the Neanderthals, they serve to emphasize just how distinctive these people were. Recall also that Neanderthal braincases were very large. Internal (endocranial) volume ranged from 1245 to 1750 cubic centimeters (cc), with an average near 1520 cc, or roughly 120 cc beyond the average in living people.

Neanderthal bodies were also remarkable, although in this case, the distinctions were more quantitative than qualitative. They place the Neanderthals on a continuum with living humans, though a bit outside the historic human range. Thus, the Neanderthals had broad trunks and short limbs like the Inuit (or Eskimo), but in both features, they were more extreme. The so-called distal portions of their limbs, meaning the forearm bones between the elbow and the wrist and the shin bone (or 06 Neanderthals.r.qxd 1/29/02 5:05 PM Page 176

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tibia) between the knee and the ankle, were especially short (Figure 6.5).

And their limb bones tended to be extremely thick-walled with large articular ends, bowed shafts, and strong muscle markings. The bottom line is that their distinctive heads rested on fireplug-like bodies, and in the buff, Neanderthals would garner stares in any modern health club.

It has sometimes been said that if they were properly dressed, they would go unnoticed on the New York subway, but even this is doubtful, unless their fellow riders were also Neanderthals, or unless, like many New Yorkers, they made a point of minding their own business.

Anthropological attempts to explain Neanderthal distinctions have focused mainly on possible functions. Thus, chips, scratches, microfractures, and peculiar wear show that the Neanderthals often used their front teeth as clamps or vises, and the long, forwardly projecting face may have enhanced the ability to clamp down hard. Some of the bumps and crannies in the mastoid region might be related, if they provided insertions for muscles that stabilized the lower jaw and head during firm clamping. A functional explanation like this cannot be dismissed, but it faces at least two challenges. First, traditional Inuit often used their front teeth as clamps for processing skins, and the teeth often show similar, if less extensive, chips, fractures, and so forth. Yet the Inuit did this with none of the specializations that distinguish Neanderthal skulls. Second, and more forceful, the fossils from the Sima de los Huesos and other European “pre-Neanderthal” sites exhibit some Neanderthal specializations, but not all, and the ones they exhibit vary from site to site (or from skull to skull). This suggests that the specializations did not evolve as an integrated, functional complex. The most plausible alternative is that they resulted from genetic drift—

chance genetic change—in small isolated populations. Chance change 06 Neanderthals.r.qxd 1/29/02 5:05 PM Page 177

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broad trunk

over broad

hips

short

forearm

short

lower leg

Neanderthal

early modern

European

(Cro-Magnon)

FIGURE 6.5

The reconstructed physiques of a Neanderthal and of a Cro-Magnon or Upper Paleolithic European (redrawn after J.-T. Hublin 1999,
Pour la Science
255, p. 115).