Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Neanderthals

Starting point is 00:00:00 For hundreds of thousands of years, another type of human lived across Europe and Western Asia. They hunted enormous animals, survived brutal ice age climates, made sophisticated tools, cared for their injured, and even left their traces in the DNA of people living today. For much of modern history, people dismiss them as primitive and brutish, but new discoveries have forced scientists to rethink almost everything about them. Learn more about the Neanderthals, who they were and what happened to them. on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Comprehensive.

Starting point is 00:00:46 Witty. Speculative. Critical. Insightful. Profound. Wide-ranging. Hopefully doesn't take itself too, too seriously. I'm David Remnick, and each week on the New Yorker Radio Hour,

Starting point is 00:00:56 my colleagues and I try to make sense of what's happening in this chaotic world. I hope you'll join us for the New Yorker Radio Hour wherever you listen to podcasts. The thoughtful. Exquisite. Just, you know, real. I'm Alan. And I'm Sean, and together we host the prancing pony podcast. Every week I explore Middle Earth with Sean or with other co-hosts lately, with in-depth analysis and plenty of nerd humor.

Starting point is 00:01:23 From The Hobbit to The Lord of the Rings and more, it's a great way for first-timers to experience J.R.R.R. Tolkien's captivating world. And for long-time fans, it's a deep dive into their favorite stories. So if you're ready to take the next step into the most beloved world in fantasy literature... And become a part of a vibrant active community of listeners, then look for The Prancing Pony Podcast, wherever you listen. Neanderthals are what people often refer to as cavemen. The stereotype of a hunched over brute with a very pronounced brow came from recreations of Neanderthal skulls. Yet the more we learn about Neanderthals, the more we realize that the caveman depiction is far from accurate. As you'll see, we know far more about Neanderthals than we do about any other human relative

Starting point is 00:02:13 because they lived alongside humans relatively recently. Neanderthals are generally classified as homo-neanderthalensis, although some researchers have historically classified them as a subspecies of our own species, Homo sapiens Neanderthalensis. Today, treating them as a separate species is common, but the fact that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens produced fertile offspring illustrates just how close the two populations were. generally speaking, if two groups can produce fertile offspring, they are usually considered to be part of the exact same species. So if Neanderthals are not our brothers and sisters, then they're most certainly our very close cousins. The evolutionary lines leading to Neanderthals and modern humans probably separated roughly 500,000 to 700,000 years ago,

Starting point is 00:03:11 although the exact date depends on which fossils and genetic models are used. Neanderthals subsequently evolved primarily in Europe and Western Eurasia, while the lineage leading to Homo sapiens developed largely in Africa. If you remember my Out of Africa episode, modern humans are believed to have left Africa about 70 to 100,000 years ago and probably in multiple waves. Recognizable Neanderthal anatomy appears several hundred thousand years ago. by roughly 130,000 years ago, when anthropologists usually call classical Neanderthals had become widespread. Their territory stretched from Britain and the Iberian Peninsula eastward through

Starting point is 00:03:53 Central Europe, the Balkans, the Caucasus, and into parts of Central Asia and Siberia. Their northern and southern ranges expanded and contracted dramatically as glaciers advanced and retreated. The first Neanderthal fossils were actually discovered before anybody understood what they were. In 1829, fragments of a child's skull were found at the Schmerling caves in Belgium. Another Neanderthal skull was discovered at Forbes Quarry in Gibraltar in 1848. Both were initially regarded simply as unusual ancient human remains. The discovery that changed anthropology occurred in 1856. Workers who were quarrying limestone in the Neander Valley near Dusseldorf, Germany, uncovered bones in the Feldhofer Cave.

Starting point is 00:04:41 The remains included part of a skull, arm bones, ribs, and other skeletal fragments. A local teacher and naturalist, Johann Karl Fulrott, recognized that the bones were extremely ancient and unusual. A local anatomist, Hermann Schlafhausen, subsequently studied them. The skull was particularly striking.

Starting point is 00:05:01 It had an enormous brow ridge, a low forehead, and a long low brain case. At first, some scientists argued that the individual was simply a diseased or deformed human. Others proposed that he may have been a Cossack who had died during the Napoleonic Wars. But evidence for human antiquity was accumulating rapidly. In 1864, the Irish geologist William King proposed that the remains remained a separate species and called it Homo Neanderthalensis. It became the first fossil hominid formerly recognized

Starting point is 00:05:35 as a species distinct from living humans. The name Neanderthal, comes from the Neander Valley, or Neanderthal in the older German spelling, as Tall means valley. Ironically, once scientists understood what Neanderthals looked like, they realized that the Belgian and Gibraltar fossils discovered decades earlier had also been Neanderthals. If you dressed a Neanderthal in modern clothes and encountered one at a distance, you would unquestionably recognize the individual as human. Up close, however, several different differences would become obvious. Neanderthals were generally shorter and much more robustly built than modern humans. Adult males were probably around 5 feet 5 inches or 165 centimeters on average,

Starting point is 00:06:25 while females were somewhat shorter. Their bodies were exceptionally muscular with thick bones and strong muscle attachment points. This compact body shape was probably advantageous in cold environments because it reduced surface area relative to body volume and therefore conserved heat. Their skulls were distinctive as well. Neanderthals had enormous brow ridges, a long low brain case, a projecting middle face, a weak or absent chin, and a very large nose. Their front teeth were also unusually large. One surprising difference concerns their brains. Neanderthal brains were not smaller than human brains. The average cranial capacity was roughly comparable to, or slightly greater than modern humans, commonly around 1,400 to 1,500 cubic centimeters. A larger brain,

Starting point is 00:07:18 however, does not automatically imply greater intelligence. Neanderthals also had larger bodies, and the internal organization of their brains may have somewhat different from ours. That being said, brain size alone provides no basis for portraying Neanderthals as intellectually primitive. One of the biggest debate surrounding Neanderthals, which I hinted at earlier, is whether they can be considered Homo sapiens. The debate really comes down to what you consider a species. Neanderthals and homo sapiens were anatomically and genetically distinct populations, but they could successfully interbreed. Modern genetics has demonstrated this conclusively. Researchers began sequencing Neanderthal DNA in the 1990s, and in 2010, a draft Neanderthal genome was available.

Starting point is 00:08:09 Today, most people outside Sub-Saharan Africa carry roughly 1 to 3% Neanderthal ancestry, although the percentage varies by population and individual. And this includes Aboriginal Australians who settled Australia about 50,000 years ago. So, why don't you? many Africans have Neanderthal DNA. It's because once the Neanderthals left Africa and spread throughout Eurasia, they never came back to Africa. The event responsible for much of the Neanderthal ancestry in today's non-African populations appears to have occurred roughly 45,000 to 49,000 years ago, probably somewhere in Western Eurasia or the Middle East. The genetic exchange was not

Starting point is 00:08:54 entirely one way. Neanderthal genomes contain evidence that some earlier Homo sapien populations contributed DNA to Neanderthals. This means the traditional picture of two completely separate species, meaning once, is very simplistic. Archaeology has taught us a lot about how Neanderthals lived. Neanderthals lived as hunter-gatherers. Their communities were probably small, often perhaps, just a few dozen people, with individuals moving between groups. Their population was never enormous. Genetic evidence suggests relatively low population densities and frequent periods when small communities were genetically isolated. Neanderthal groups probably followed migrating animals, visited known sources of water, gathered seasonal plants, and repeatedly returned to favored caves, river valleys,

Starting point is 00:09:47 and hunting locations. Contrary to their stereotype, Neanderthes, Neanderthals did not simply live permanently inside of caves. Caves simply preserve archaeological material extremely well, which gives them an outsized importance in the archaeological record. Neanderthals also occupied open-air camps and probably constructed temporary shelters. Neanderthals were accomplished toolmakers. One important technique they used was the Levelwa method. Instead of simply striking random flakes from Iraq,

Starting point is 00:10:20 a skilled napper carefully shaped a stone core so that a final strike produced a flake of a predetermined size and shape. This required planning several steps ahead, which showed the ability for some complex thought. We also know that they created a host of tools that Stone Age humans used as well, including scrapers, knives, hand axes, woodworking tools, and spear points. Some spear points were attached to wooden shafts with bindings and natural adhesives. suggesting that Neanderthals also worked with materials that usually disappear over time, including wood, animal hides, and plant fibers. Evidence suggests they hunted a wide variety of animals, including reindeer, horses, bison, rhinoceruses,

Starting point is 00:11:04 and occasionally mammoths. Cut marks, hunting injuries and prey animals, and archaeological hunting sites demonstrate that they engaged in active hunting, not just scavenging carcasses left by predators. Neanderthals also unquestionably used fire. Their archaeological sites contain hearths, burn bones, and heat-altered stone. Neanderthals also probably wore clothing. We don't have any direct evidence because organic material doesn't survive well over time, but it would almost be impossible to live in cold climates without it.

Starting point is 00:11:40 One of the most revealing aspects of Neanderthal technology is evidence that they sometimes cared for individuals who could not possibly have survived alone. The famous Neanderthal specimen known as Shanadar I discovered in Iraq suffered severe injuries. He had major damage to one arm, impaired vision, and other physical problems, yet survived for years. Other Neanderthal skeletons show healed fractures and degenerative diseases. Such individuals almost certainly receive food, protection, or assistance from other members of their community. Another big question is whether Neanderthals produced art. This is much trickier.

Starting point is 00:12:21 We know Neanderthals used pigments such as red ochre. They also collected unusual objects, including shells, feathers, and eagle claws, and some objects appear to have been modified for ornamentation. One extraordinary site demonstrates that their behavior could be surprisingly complex. At the Bernickel Cave in southern France, people broke hundreds of stalagmites and arranged them into a large circular structure more than 300 meters inside a cave. The structure dates to about 176,500 years ago, long before Homo sapiens ever arrived in Western Europe. Language is even trickier than art because archaeology can't provide evidence of spoken

Starting point is 00:13:04 language. Scholars assume that they must have had some sort of spoken language or languages is to facilitate toolmaking, trade, and hunting. However, we have no way of knowing what that language was, how complex it was, or whether it was related to human language. The final great question surrounding the Neanderthals is what happened to them. The archaeological record suggests that Neanderthal populations disappeared at different times in different regions, rather than retreating southward as a single population. There probably wasn't a single cause of Neanderthal extinction, but several contributing factors have been put forward. One of the most popular explanations is competition with humans. Modern humans arrived in Europe

Starting point is 00:13:51 in significant numbers more than 45,000 years ago, resulting in several thousand years of overlap with Neanderthals. Homo sapiens may have possessed demographic advantages. They may have maintained larger social networks, exchanged resources over greater distances, and developed more specialized tools. Even small differences in reproductive success could have enormous consequences over thousands of years. But most importantly, modern humans did not have to systematically kill Neanderthals. Suppose a homo sapient population grew by only a fraction of a percent faster per generation than Neanderthals did. Over dozens or hundreds of generations, that advantage could replace a smaller competing population. Diseases could have played a role. Contact between previously separated

Starting point is 00:14:42 populations could have introduced unfamiliar pathogens, and humans may have been the vehicle for that transmission. But another possibility, and I think quite a good one, is that Neanderthals never technically went extinct at all. We know that Neanderthals that humans could interbreed. If the human population grew faster, or if they had a technological advantage, they might have simply absorbed smaller Neanderthal bands into their own population. And this is reflected in the tiny amount of Neanderthal DNA that most humans have today. As Neanderthal populations vanished from eastern central and northern Europe, some of the last surviving groups in the archaeological record appear to have persisted in southwestern Europe, particularly in the Iberian Peninsula.

Starting point is 00:15:30 Many mysteries still surround Neanderthals, and one of the biggest is why the group with the highest amount of Neanderthal DNA is found in East Asia, even though there has never been any evidence of Neanderthals living there. Neanderthals were not a primitive version of humanity, but a remarkably successful human or closely related population that survived for hundreds of thousands of years in some of the harshest environments on Earth. They hunted, made sophisticated tools, cared for each other, and adapted to repeated climatic upheavals. Neanderthals may have vanished as a distinct people, but they did not disappear completely. Part of the Neanderthal story still survives today in the DNA of billions of people on Earth.

Starting point is 00:16:23 The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Otkin and Cameron Kiefer. My big thanks go to everyone who supports the show, on Patreon. Your support helps make this podcast possible. And I also want to remind everyone about the community groups on Facebook and Discord. That's where everything happens that's outside the podcast. And links to those are available in the show notes. As always, if you leave a review on any major podcast app or in the above community groups, you too can have it read in the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Neanderthals

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