Images of Neanderthals revised downwards

Press, 1 December 1987, Page 41

Images of Neanderthals revised downwards

By NANCY ROSS-FLANIGAN of Knight-Ridder Newspapers Detroit Say “Neanderthal” and most people picture a brutish dullard with Fred Flintstone looks and a blank stare. Anthropologists scrapped that stereotype years ago in favour of a more sophisticated image. If Neanderthal man wasn’t quite Flintstone, the scientists said, he certainly wasn’t the ape-man depicted in museum murals. Instead, Neanderthals probably looked a lot like us and lived a life that included rituals, hunting and using fairly complex tools. In this reconsidered view, Neanderthals “went from being animals to being just like everybody else,” said a University of Michigan professor of anthropology, Milford Wolpoff. But recent evidence is forcing anthropologists to think again about Neanderthals. The issue is not so much what they looked like, but what they did.

Take their use of tools. In the 19505, a French researcher sorted primitive flaked-stone tools — the kind used by Neanderthals — into more than 60 different kinds. By his interpretation, Neanderthals had quite a varied tool kit. Recent studies by a University of Pennsylvania anthropologist, Harold Dibble, questioned that conclusion. What looked like a wide assortment of tools actually might be only a few different kinds in various stages of wear and resharpening, Dibble believed. Yet another find complicates the picture. Neanderthal remains discovered in France in 1980 were found with tools typically associated with more moden humans. Other evidence suggested the person lived some 10,000 years later than Neanderthals were thought to have lived. What this means is unclear. “One viewpoint is this proves Neanderthals had the same mental processes as other upper

paleolithic people,” - Wolpoff said. “Maybe they evolved into them, or maybe they just copied their ways. But the fact that they could even copy their ways shows the mental processes are the same.” At the other extreme is the notion that more advanced people kept Neanderthals as pets. The image of the Neanderthal as mighty hunter may go the way of old museum murals, too. In sites typical of more modern humans, archaeologists find complete skeletons of large animals, “suggesting a pattern of deliberate and successful hunting,” said Alan Mann, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. In contrast, Neanderthal sites yield mostly bones of small mammals. When bones of larger mammals were found, they tended to be only the lower parts of limb bones — parts that originally were covered with skin and very little flesh, Mann said. This may mean that

Neanderthals acted as scavengers, raiding carcases killed by other animals and dragging off pieces that were missed by the teeth and claws of other meat-eaters. It is known that Neanderthals buried their bead, but how much ritual accompanied their burials is another unsolved question. At one dig site in Iraq, researchers found a large amount of pollen from local wildflowers in the soil around the body. Perhaps bouquets of wildflowers were buried with the body during funeral rites, archaeologists suggested. But it was also possible that workers excavating the site walked through wildflowers on their way to work and dragged the pollen in with them, Mann said. The Neanderthals’ looks aren’t entirely unimportant in understanding their habits. New interpretations of fossils suggested these brawny people “were more apt to do muscular strength things than modern humans,” said Mann.

Their heavy, well-muscled bodies might be evidence "that their culture, their behaviour, was much more limited than ours and therefore their bodies were in much more direct interaction with their environments.” Another intriguing — although not well accepted — suggestion comes from studies of Neanderthal pelvises, which were larger than those of modern humans. The University of New Mexico anthropologist, Erik Trinkaus, believed this might be a clue that Neanderthal babies spent 11 or more months in the womb and so were born larger than modern infants. With the longer gestation, “the infant would come out that much more developed and mature and would not have to have the level of dependency characteristic of modern human children,” Mann said. That could be important in a group of people that lacked the social system needed to care for helpless, dependent infants.