THE NEANDERTHALS

The Neandertals

At one time they were considered brutish, hunched-over, dim-witted members of a dead-end side branch of human evolution. At other times they have been thought of as just an ancient, slightly different-looking form of modern Homo sapiens.

Brain size mean 1,478 ml Mousterian Technique

A toolmaking tradition associated with the European Neandertals

Neandertals

An extremely muscular people living from approximately 30,000 to 125,000 years ago in Europe and southwestern Asia.

With brains of modern size, Neandertals possessed faces distinctively different from modern humans. Their large noses and teeth projected

forward. They had bony brow ridges over their eyes. On the back of their skull, there was a bunlike

bony mass for attachment of powerful neck muscles.

Neandertals

One of the first Neandertals was found in a cave in the Neander Valley near Düsseldorf, Germany, in 1856—before scientific theories to account for human evolution had gained acceptance.

Examination of the fossil skull, a few ribs, and limb bones revealed that the individual was a human being, but it did not look “normal.”

Evidence indicates Neandertals were nowhere near as brutish and apelike as originally portrayed.

Some scholars now see them as the archaic H. sapiens of Europe and Southwest Asia, ancestral to the more derived, anatomically modern populations of Europe and Southwest Asia of the last 30,000 years.

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Neandertals

As this face-off between paleoanthropologist Milford Wolpoff and his reconstruction of a Neandertal shows, the latter did not differ all that much from modern humans of European descent.

Middle Paleolithic Culture Adaptations to the environment by Homo from

the Middle Paleolithic were both biological and cultural, but the capacity for cultural adaptation was superior to earlier members of the genus Homo.

Possessing brains of modern size, these members of the genus Homo had greater cultural capabilities than their ancestors.

In addition to the Levalloisian traditions the Middle Paleolithic also included the development of the Mousterian tradition.

Mousterian Tradition

Tool-making tradition of the Neandertals and their contemporaries of Europe, western Asia, and northern Africa.

Named after the Neandertal site of Le Moustier, France.

Tools were lighter and smaller than the Levalloisian and included hand axes, flakes, scrapers, borers, wood shavers, and spears.

Mousterian peoples buried their dead, cared for the disabled, and made objects for symbolic purposes.

Mousterian Tools

Burial

The position of the body and the careful removal of the skull indicate that the fossil from Kebara Cave in Israel was deliberately buried there about 60,000 years ago.

The First Musical Instrument?

There is a strong possibility that this object, found in trash left by Neandertals, is the remains of a flute made of bone.

Speech and Language in the Middle Paleolithic Paleoneurologists, working from

endocranial casts, are agreed that Neandertals had the neural development necessary for spoken language. The size of the hypoglossal canal in

Neandertals is like that of modern humans and unlike that of apes.

An expanded thoracic vertebral canal suggests the increased breath control required for speech.

Archaic Homo sapiens AndModern Human Origins Multiregional Hypothesis - all

populations of archaic H. sapiens are easily derivable from earlier populations of H. erectus from the same regions.

“Eve” Hypothesis - transition from archaic to anatomically modern H. sapiens took place in one population, probably in Africa.

Archaic Homo sapiens AndModern Human Origins Multiregional Hypothesis - all

populations of archaic H. sapiens are easily derivable from earlier populations of H. erectus from the same regions.

“Eve” Hypothesis - transition from archaic to anatomically modern H. sapiens took place in one population, probably in Africa.

Mousterian and Aurignacian Traditions

Between 30,000 and 36,500 years ago, Upper Paleolithic industries developed from the Mousterian tradition by European Neandertals co-existed with the Aurignacian industry, usually associated with anatomically modern humans.

Mitochondrial DNA

The 16,569 bases in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) are organized into circular chromosomes present in large numbers in every cell.

The human mtDNA sequence has been entirely sequenced with functional genes identified.

Modern Humans

With modern anatomy came further advances in technology and expressions of modern behavior patterns. Although much of the tool technology of early moderns resembles that of archaics, artifacts from one of the oldest anatomically modern sites do show an important advance.

From Klasies River Mouth in South Africa, dated at perhaps 120,000 ya, come long, bifacially worked spear points made from stone blades. These were flaked from cores by the punch technique.