TOOLS TEST DEBUNKS ‘DUMB NEANDERTHALS’ THEORY
By E.J. Mundell
U.S. News & World Report
althday/2008/08/27/tools-test-debunks-dumb-neander thals-theory.html
Aug 27 2008
DC
Technological inferiority didn’t spur their demise, researchers say
TUESDAY, Aug. 26 (HealthDay News) — Homo sapiens’ long-extinct
cousins, the Neanderthals, weren’t the slow-witted losers in the
evolutionary race they’ve been made out to be, new research suggests.
The finding comes after scientists used Stone Age methods to recreate
and use the respective flint tools favored by each species.
"In contradiction to a 60-year assumption in archaeology, we’ve
managed to show that Neanderthal stone tool technologies are no less
efficient [in a number of respects] than Homo sapiens’ stone tool
technologies. This suggests that Neanderthals did not go extinct
because of inferior intellect or technology," said study author
Metin I. Eren, a graduate student in archaeology at the University
of Exeter in the United Kingdom, and in anthropology at Southern
Methodist University, in Dallas.
His team published its findings in the Aug. 26 issue of the Journal
of Human Evolution.
"I think this [study] is very important, in that it is helping move
Neanderthals out of that dark box that they have traditionally been
confined to," said Jeffrey Laitman, an anthropologist and director
of anatomy at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, in New York City. "They
are not just dumb, limited versions of ourselves, but highly advanced,
very intelligent cousins. Different does not mean inferior."
The Neanderthals evolved in Ice Age Europe and are believed to have
been a distinct species from Homo sapiens, who evolved in Africa and
only later spread northward about 40,000 to 50,000 years ago.
To survive in the cold European climate, Neanderthals evolved to be
stockier and more robust than modern humans; they also had slightly
larger brains, bony ridges over their eyes, flattened, elongated
skulls and larger noses. The last Neanderthals died out about 28,000
years ago, and experts believe there was a 10,000-year period where
both species co-existed in Europe.
But why did the Neanderthals disappear? For most of the history of
modern anthropology, experts have assumed that Neanderthals were
simply outsmarted by the newcomers arriving out of Africa.
"There’s been a longstanding historical bias against the Neanderthals,
in any number of categories — technological prowess, hunting prowess,
intelligence, reproductive abilities and success," said one expert
in Neanderthal culture, Daniel Adler, an assistant professor of
anthropology at the University of Connecticut. "The roots of this
go back to the nineteenth century, and it’s taken us a long time to
shake this bias," he said.
Over the past few decades, however, the pendulum has swung back in
favor of the Neanderthals, and numerous studies, including Eren’s,
"have put a whole bunch of nails in the coffin of this idea,"
Adler said.
In their study, Eren’s team used a process called flint knapping to
create stone tools, just as Neanderthals or Homo sapiens would have
done tens of thousands of years ago. "Flint knapping is essentially
chipping or flaking certain types of stone — flint, chert, obsidian —
that have predictable fracture patterns," Eren explained.
At about the time Neanderthals went extinct, they favored a broader
stone tool archaeologists have called a "flake." On the other hand,
Homo sapiens of the time were busy creating a narrower tool, dubbed the
"blade." For most of the 20th century, anthropologists assumed that
the blade was a technological advance over the Neanderthals’ flake.
"This assumption was published in all the textbooks but has never
been tested thoroughly," Eren said. Therefore, his team decided to
create both tools from scratch and then pit the flake against the
blade in terms of efficiency and utility.
The result: No clear winner. In fact, in some instances, the
Neanderthals’ flake worked slightly better than the Homo sapiens’
blade, Eren said.
So, the "intellectual advantage" theory of why modern humans survived
and Neanderthals did not has taken yet another blow, the experts said.
Adler pointed out that, for a period of time much earlier in their
history, Neanderthals and even pre-Neanderthals had also used
"blades," so the technology certainly wasn’t new to them. "In fact,
I just started excavating a site in Armenia this summer that has
blades from 200,000-400,000 years ago," he said.
However, it’s possible that sharing a distinct type of tool might
have served a social purpose that gave Homo sapiens a survival edge,
Eren said. He theorizes that the shared "blade" technology may have
drawn the species together culturally into larger and more cohesive
groups. It’s well known that, by the time of the Neanderthals’ demise,
Homo sapiens greatly outnumbered Neanderthals in Europe. In fact,
even at their peak population, fewer than 10,000 Neanderthals lived
across the whole of Europe and Central Asia, Adler said.
"It is [also] hypothesized, sometimes, that the reproduction levels
of Homo sapiens were much higher than that of Neanderthals," Eren
noted. "This might have resulted in Homo sapiens simply outpopulating
the Neanderthals out of existence."