Neanderthal man

He survived for hundreds of thousands of years, but about 30 years ago, Neanderthal man became extinct. Recent studies hold that it is not extinct and that we actually carry the genes of the Neanderthals

Nitzan Shalom and Ran Barkai Galileo

Neanderthal man developed and appeared in Europe during the Middle Paleolithic period, starting around 400-300 thousand years before today. It lives all over Europe, the Middle East and Western Asia. Anatomically, the Neanderthal man looks a little different from us: with a prominent and massive eyebrow ridge, a large nose and a low, solid body. However, his brain volume was on average larger than ours.

Neanderthal man used fire regularly, hunted large animals, and made tools with sophisticated techniques. It survived for hundreds of thousands of years over vast areas. Nevertheless, about 30 thousand years ago, a few thousand years after the arrival of Homo sapiens in Europe, Neanderthal man became extinct. However, contemporary genetic studies suggest that in fact the Neanderthal man did not become extinct but was assimilated within the Homo sapiens population and that we carry Neanderthal genes with us.

Schaffhausen - Neanderthal, an inferior archaic form of man
The European researchers who first discovered Neanderthal man met a similar but different human type, which posed many questions to them. Its discovery in Germany in the 19th century sparked a heated debate about its identity and its relation to the modern human race. The interpretation given to the figure of the Neanderthal by the various researchers was never objective. Various researchers presented his character in ways that were influenced by their opinions, beliefs and worldviews.

The Neanderthal was first defined after it was discovered in 1856 in a cave in the Nander Valley in Germany. Earlier fossils discovered in Belgium and Gibraltar in the 19s and XNUMXs were not identified as early humans. The Neanderthal discovery took place three years before Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species" was published, at a time when the scientific world was still largely influenced by religious concepts.

That first skeleton was studied by Johann Carl Fuhlrott, a teacher and amateur naturalist. He published the find and claimed that it was indeed an ancient man. The find was passed into the hands of Hermann Schaaffhausen (1816-1893), professor of anatomy at the University of Bonn, who published an anatomical analysis of the find. He stated that it is indeed an archaic form of man "inferior to the most inferior humans living today". The Neanderthals found their place in the evolutionary ladder of Schaffhausen and many researchers of his time, who held the concept of linear development - from savagery to civilization.

Schaffhausen claimed that there is a similarity between the skull of the Neanderthal and that of "primitive" peoples, such as the aborigines from Australia. Nevertheless, he ruled that such an animalistic creature is necessarily wilder and less developed than even the most barbarous tribes on the face of the earth. That is, the Neanderthal is established as an intermediate race between the apes and the humans. The image of the Neanderthal was inspired by ideas that were prevalent even before the first Neanderthal skeletons were found.

Despite the created level of the human races in a kind of developmental ladder, there still remained a gap between the animals and the humans, and it was necessary to find the missing link. Indeed, in the 19th century human beings began to be discovered. The Neanderthal bones discovered in 1856 were the first to be examined with scientific tools, and the time of their discovery was at a time when the debate about evolution was raging, which caused them to receive a lot of attention. The interpretations given to the find were different and varied. Compared to the recognition that this is an ancient person (eg Schaffhausen), some had difficulty recognizing the antiquity of the find.
And his hip refutes Schaffhausen's theory

Rudolph Virchow (Virchow; 1902-1821), one of the leading pathology professors in Germany, rejected Schaffhausen's theory that he was an ancient man. Virech published his research on the Neanderthal in 1872, in which he listed his various pathological characteristics and presented his anatomy as abnormal and not representative of an ancient man. He further claimed that since the person found was old, and in a society of ancient hunter-gatherers the people could not live to such a late age - he could not be very ancient. Vircho claimed that the skull belonged to a sick person, and except for the various pathologies - it does not represent a separate biological species. He refused to recognize a new race based on the sight of a single find, dismissing the Neanderthal idea as a missing link.

Wirchko's opinion on the Neanderthal subject was highly influential due to his academic status, and some believe that his determination that the Neanderthal is not a fossil of an ancient man harmed the progress of research. It is understood that his opinion would not have gained such influence if the scientific community had not been quick to support the idea that the Neanderthal was a single exception, conveniently left out of the human evolutionary scheme.

Other researchers, such as John William Dawson (Dawson) from Canada, agreed with the idea that the Neanderthal did not represent a separate race. Dawson argued that Neanderthal traits are also found among tribes in America and Australia, so there is no reason to consider Neanderthals a separate species from modern humans. He suggested that it was a kind of wild man, retarded and crazy, living on the fringes of barbaric tribal society. Proposals of this kind show how the idea of ​​the rank of races continued to be applied, in this case, while combining with ideas that exist in European folklore about "wild men" living in the forests outside the villages.

Many scientists have associated Neanderthal man with races that were considered inferior, and many comparisons have been made between Neanderthals and Australian aborigines, blacks, and others. There were those who even presented the Neanderthal as a wild animal. Be that as it may, descriptions of the Neanderthal as a backward and inferior creature were not dictated by reality, but stemmed from the researchers' prejudices.

The discovery of additional Neanderthal bones during the 19th century, along with the discovery of ancient Homo sapiens bones, whose anatomical characteristics are identical to those of humans living today, made it clear that the Neanderthal cannot be a pathological case or a sick or retarded individual. The new discoveries forced the researchers to start treating the Neanderthal as representing an ancient man. From the moment this opinion was received, the question arose - what is his connection to us?

Early 20th century: key figures

At the beginning of the 20th century, the perception of the Neanderthal changed - from a pathological and non-primitive form, to an ancient race that must be placed in the process of human evolution. The anthropologist Gustav Schwalbe (1916-1844) supported the idea of ​​human development in three stages: from Pithecanthropus (Homo-Erctus), through the Neanderthal to Homo-Sapiens. But many scientists had trouble accepting the seemingly inhuman-looking Neanderthal as part of our evolution. Research in the first decades of the 20th century was concentrated in France, where Neanderthal remains were discovered at sites such as La Moustier, La Chapelle-au-Sainte, La Cine and La Perassie.

The skeleton discovered at La Chapelle-au-Sainte was the most complete Neanderthal skeleton discovered up to that time, and it received the most public attention. The study published about him was considered for years as the publication that defined what a Neanderthal is. In the research carried out by Marcel Boule (1942-1861) on the skeleton, he determined that the Neanderthals represent a separate branch that became extinct without contributing to the development of Homo sapiens.

The discovery of the Neanderthal from La Chapelle-au-Sainte and the research that was carried out were not without ideological motivations. On August 3, 1908, three Catholic priests uncovered the burial of an elderly man, along with the bones of extinct animals and stone tools typical of Neanderthals. The priests passed the bones into the hands of Marcel Boll, who was the director of the paleontology laboratory at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. Boll conducted the most careful analysis of the Neanderthal that had been carried out up to that time. Bull's reconstruction established the image of the Neanderthal as the 'ultimate other' and it was used by scientists and journalists ever since as the basis for the caveman caricature.

The research carried out by Ball and its results are not separated from the background in which he operated. At the end of 1908 Boll presented his interpretation of the find, according to which the Neanderthal represents a separate biological species. Unlike Schwalbe, Bull rejected the possibility that the Neanderthal was an ancestor of modern humans. In his publication, which over the following decades shaped the scientific and popular image of the Neanderthal, he emphasized the ape-like features of the skeleton, and stated that his posture was not completely upright but bent.

Part of the reason for this reconstruction was the degenerative arthritis that the LaChapelle Neanderthal suffered from. Ball was aware of this condition, but chose not to emphasize the effect of the disease on the skeleton. Re-examinations of the famous restoration have raised many questions about it. Mainly, it was suggested that it was the arthritis that caused the spine of the skeleton to be relatively straight and not curved enough to allow an upright posture. The conclusion from this was that it was a pathological deformity and not a fixed morphological condition for all Neanderthals. Ball chose to highlight this and other features to increase the morphological distance between Neanderthals and modern humans.

In the scientific reconstruction of the skeleton published by Ball in 1913, he compared the Neanderthal skeleton to that of an Aboriginal individual to show the striking differences. He was interested in proving that even the primitive humans of his day are more advanced than the animalistic Neanderthal, who is closer to apes than humans. Even compared to Homo sapiens, which Boll claims lived in Europe at the same time as the Neanderthals and had a rich culture that included complex tools and art, the Neanderthal seems inferior. Both of these comparisons served Ball's purpose of excluding the Neanderthal from the modern human lineage.

Religion vs. Kadma

Ball's research was carried out against the background of a struggle between science and religion in France at that time. In the second half of the 19th century in France, under the conservative rule of Napoleon III, who worked in cooperation with the Catholic Church, the theory of evolution was received with suspicion. Darwin's book "The Origin of Species" did not have the same impact in France as it had in other European countries.

It was only in the seventies and eighties of the 19th century that opinions among the scientific community in France began to change. The political change during the Third Republic and the rise of secularism and materialism promoted science. The Catholic Church, identified with the old regime, was seen as an enemy of the republic and an obstacle to its progress. This atmosphere supported the spread of evolutionary theories such as Lamarckism, which suited the idea of ​​progress.

The archaeologist Gabriel de Mortillet (de Mortillet; 1898-1821) was one of the important supporters of the theory of progressive evolution. In addition, he was involved in politics, and came out against the influence of the church on education and science. He also helped found the School of Anthropology in Paris (École d'Anthropologie). His political and social views were intertwined in his scientific work and in his conception of linear evolution: from a hypothetical ape-man, through the Neanderthal, to Homo-Sapiens. With the death of de Mortier and many of his colleagues towards the end of the century, opposition to the linear concept of evolution began to take root in French anthropology.

It should be noted that when the bones were uncovered, the priests had the option of sending them to the School of Anthropology in Paris, but in view of the political and anti-religious positions expressed in this institution, they preferred to send the find to Marcel Ball, who had connections with the clergy.

Ball's research was all context-dependent. Boll operated in a certain research tradition, which stood in contrast to other traditions. Mainly he wanted to challenge the dominant position of the late 19th century, which supported linear evolution from De Mortier's seminary. De Mortier believed that cultural and physical evolution had a linear direction of development. The Neanderthal, in his view, was morphologically more primitive than the Homo sapiens and therefore his predecessor and ancestor.

Boll attacked de Mortier's simplistic model for 20 years, even before he got hold of the LeChapelle Neanderthal. LaChapelle's skeleton was used by Boll to definitively discredit de Mortier's theory of evolution which dominated French research at the end of the 19th century.

From a socio-political point of view, Ball was not only opposed to de Mortier's linear model, but also to his use of prehistoric research for his political needs. Ball wanted to increase the scientific community and narrow the gap between the clergy and the supporters of evolution, believing that even among the clergy there are enlightened people who can contribute to the scientific field. Under these circumstances the LaChapelle skeleton served Bull's purpose well. The presentation of a branching model of evolution through the skeleton undermined the status of the linear model, and the negation of the Neanderthal from his status as an ancestor also allowed the clergy to contain the new evidence about the origin of man.

The press of the time demonstrates well how the Neanderthal image served various ideological purposes. The various newspapers published Bull's reconstruction and gave him a public stage, but on the other hand they also changed the image Bull created and adapted it to their needs. In doing so, they took an active part in shaping the popular image of the caveman. Most newspapers preferred to see the Neanderthal as a real missing link between the ape and man, in accordance with the progressive spirit of the time. On the other hand, in the anti-evolutionist press, the denial of the Neanderthal's status as an ancestor matched a creationist idea of ​​human origin.

An unsuccessful experiment of nature on the way to the appearance of the "real" humans

The monograph that Ball published in 1913 was intended to help clarify his position regarding the skeleton and prevent "distortions" of his interpretation. Indeed, after the publication, some newspapers began to describe the Neanderthal as a species that was not an ancestor of Homo sapiens, but was replaced by it. The Neanderthal was presented as a kind of unsuccessful experiment of nature on the way to the emergence of the "real" and "perfect" humans. Its status as a missing vertebra was possible, according to Ball, solely from the anatomical point of view - when the skeleton presents a sort of intermediate state between ape and man, but not from a genetic point of view.

This position also allowed the religious and reactionary press to integrate the skeleton into its ideological framework. The Catholic press found two different ways to accept the find so that it would not endanger its worldview: it returned the Neanderthal as an animal or as a person, never something in between. If it is an animal, it is possible that it was created before man and there is no prohibition according to the Bible that some animals were similar to humans. If it is a person who is not our ancestor, then it does not reduce the gap between man and ape.

The tools he created, the size of his brain and the fact that the skeleton was found buried in a burial that apparently indicates some kind of religion, indicate that this was a human being, even if primitive. Its primitiveness is explained by the fact that its morphology and culture degenerated, as happened to other human races that lived on the margins.

Opposition to the Neanderthal extinction theory could have come from the powerful German scientific community, led by people like Schwalbe, who believed that the Neanderthal was indeed an ancestor of modern humans. But with the intensification of political tensions between France and Germany in the years before the outbreak of the First World War, the discussion was diverted from the subject of the Neanderthals to mutual defamation between the scientific communities, with the aim of protecting national honor. After the war, the field of paleontology in Germany had difficulty recovering, and Boll's conclusions about the skeleton from La Chapelle remained unchallenged in the following decades.
Roto - Neanderthals were eaten by humans

Another researcher who worked in those years and used prehistoric research to explain the reality of his day in accordance with his ideological views is the Belgian archaeologist Emma Rutot (1933-1847). Ruto was one of the most well-known archaeologists in Europe in the first two decades of the 20th century, but fell from his greatness, and after his death was considered a marginal figure.

The main part of his research focused on a collection of flints, which were called Aeolian. Ruto claimed that these are the most ancient tools created by man, through which it is possible to reconstruct the mental abilities and lifestyle of the people who created them. According to Ruto, the person who created these tools was a passive creature, with a static mentality, the tools he created were instinctive - they were created not in accordance with cultural conventions and in a way that did not require the ability to plan. On the other hand, the Paleolithic tools, whose shape is intentional, testified to the emergence of a new, creative and active being.

Ruto hypothesized that there was a parallel, and probably hostile, existence of the two groups for a certain period. He even proposed the idea that the previous humans served the new race as slaves. He also explained the relationship between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, which he believed existed in Europe at the same time, in the same terms, and claimed that Neanderthals were a hunted race that was enslaved and even eaten by the more developed humans.

Ruto claimed that the descendants of those ancient humans continued to exist until his time: the aborigines in Tasmania, who were driven to extinction by the arrival of European settlers, were in his opinion their last descendants. Ruto expressed his sorrow that "the last living specimens of that fossil race" were lost to science.

Ruto was interested in the Tasmanian race, whose fate he believed foretold the future of other races (such as the Pygmies, the Bushmen, the Indians and others), who did not go through the same developmental stages that the white race went through. Like many researchers of his time, Ruto believed that their extinction was the result of their biological and social primitiveness. Violent colonialism is therefore seen as part of the process of natural selection.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the inter-racial conflicts were a significant factor in shaping the evolutionary models. William Sollas (1849-1936), a British geologist and anthropologist, built an evolutionary model that suited the imperialist spirit of his time. The encounter with the non-white races under the rule of the empires, and finally the First World War, influenced the perspective of the anthropologists in their examination of human nature and evolution. The process by which human races compete with and replace others seems natural, and imperial expansion seemed logical in the context of the struggle for the survival of the fittest.

Marcel Boll's reconstruction established the image of the Neanderthal as the 'ultimate other' but the research
that he carried out and his results are not separated from the background in which he operated: the connection with the church. Illustration: Shutterstock
Solas - the Australian aborigines and Neanderthals share a common origin

In his most influential book Ancient Hunters and Their Modern Representatives (ancient hunters and their modern counterparts), first published in 1911, Solas focused on the migrations of peoples and argued that from the stage when Neanderthals and Homo sapiens co-existed onward, developed races pushed less developed races from their territory. Such exchanges resulted in the fact that in favored regions such as Europe there was an increased development from a morphological and cultural point of view. According to this model, the marginalization (if not extinction) of "inferior" races is a means of evolutionary development. In the eyes of Solas, this model also suited the description of his days.

In 1908 Solas published an article in which he made a connection between the Neanderthals and the aborigines. Based on the similarity in the skull, he argued that the Australian aborigines and Neanderthals probably had a common origin. His theory focused on the idea that advanced races migrated and spread, marginalizing less advanced races. According to this idea, some Neanderthal tribes were driven out of Europe due to competition with more developed forms. The tribes migrated as far as Australia. There, the Neanderthals pushed the ancestors of the Tasmanians into Tasmania.

The aborigines living in Australia, according to Solas, are the descendants of the Neanderthals, equal to them in culture, and also similar to them physiologically. On the extinction of the last Tasmanians due to British settlement, Sollas commented that it was a sad case, which hopefully will be for the benefit of human evolution.

According to Solas, the various existing races underwent a long-term and separate development, and he links each of them to a different fossil race. In doing so, he creates a distance between the Europeans and the savages who live on the margins and turns them into the Other, which is almost inhuman. Prehistory, history and the present are presented by Solas as a continuous picture in which racial violence and imperialist behavior are central elements. The violence in ancient times is used by Solas to explain, and perhaps even justify, the imperialist violence of his day.

Solas clarifies in his writings that each race has the responsibility to realize its full potential, through cultural innovation, reproduction or warfare. A race that does not do this will fall into the hands of a more advanced society in a way that is in effect a fulfillment of natural selection. This means: the past and the present are part of one continuum in which imperialism is a natural element. Solas operated in a time of growing nationalism and white supremacy ideology. Under these ideological influences he created an imperialist and racist model of human evolution.
Changing perception

After World War II the classification into races became unacceptable. The denial of the preoccupation with the issue of race affected the way scientists studied the past. Early hominids were seen as more similar than different. Australopithecus, discovered in 1925, was generally seen as more ape than man, and only after the war was it "elevated" to the rank of hominid.

This approach was also problematic for the research because it limited it. Already in 1944, the well-known geneticist and evolutionist Theodosius Dobzhansky claimed that more than one hominid species had never lived at the same time, and this opinion became widespread. There was a certain concern that pointing to the existence of several separate lineages would open the door to "racism" in the form of rejecting one or another lineage from the sequence leading to humans living today.

Today there are various models that try to answer the question of the origin of modern man and the place of the Neanderthals in this picture. The various theories have significance regarding the fate of the Neanderthal, and these theories are also influenced by the ideology of those who hold them.

The supporters of the multi-regional evolution theory, led by the American anthropologist Milford Wolpoff, claim that the Neanderthals are part of the ancestors of humans in Europe and oppose the attempt to present the Neanderthal as "other". They see no reason to assume the extinction of the Neanderthals by the Homo sapiens, but rather believe that the Neanderthals assimilated with them. Supporters of the out-of-Africa theory, on the other hand, argue that the multi-regional theory of evolution again pushes the formation of inter-racial differences to ancient times.

The American anthropologist Jonathan Marks claims that since the question of interaction and the ability to hybridize between the Neanderthals and Homospiens is theoretical, and probably unsolvable, it must be assumed that the Neanderthals could have assimilated with Homospiens, and this is to reduce the differences between the races that exist today and to avoid creating separations between Humans for scientific reasons, as was done in the past. Recently, a series of studies dealing with the ancient DNA of Neanderthals were published, which claim that a genetic contribution of Neanderthals has been identified among humans living today. These studies tip the scales in favor of those who hold the opinion that Neanderthals and Homo-Sapiens were members of the same biological species, and that they assimilated into each other, although the last word has not yet been said on this controversial issue.

Arguments related to racial differences influenced the interpretation of the hominid finds before World War II, and continued to influence them after it as well. The animal image of the Neanderthals that was painted at the beginning of the 20th century is not correct in many ways, but it seems that their reconstruction as a kind of flower children, as was done in the Shanidar cave in Iraq in 1969 (as the book by Ralph Solecki, American archaeologist, the digger of the site - Shanidar, the first flower people), is also unrealistic and influenced by prejudices.

Researchers still mix questions about the status of the hominids in the past with opinions about equality between the different races in the present. The ideology, according to which racist opinions should be avoided, is very present in the scientific discussion about the origin of man, and the position of Neanderthals in relation to Homo sapiens.
Findings and interpretations, science and ideology

During the last 150 years our information about Neanderthal man and his place in the scheme of human evolution has changed many times. At the same time, the reality in which this information is interpreted has also changed significantly. From the initial discovery of the Neanderthal fossils until the beginning of the 20th century, paleontologists tended to see the various hominids as representatives of side branches of the "real" human species. Added to this was a desire to see the split and differentiation of today's human lineage as something that occurred in prehistoric times. This paradigm went hand in hand with a somewhat racist sorting of contemporary human types, and the presentation of the non-European peoples as separate and less developed lineages.

After the Second World War, the practice of separating into races was considered unacceptable, so new models were developed to describe the evolution of man and the place of the Neanderthals in the picture. Just as the interpretation of the findings at the beginning of the study was inseparable from the social background in which it was created, so too the re-acceptance of the Neanderthal today as equal or similar to Homo sapiens, or even as a member of the same biological species, may also stem from the spirit of the time - our time.

Nitzan Shalom is an undergraduate student in the Department of Archeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures and the Department of Hebrew Culture Studies at Tel Aviv University.
Dr. Ran Barkai is a lecturer in the Department of Archeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures at Tel Aviv University. An archeologist of prehistoric times, has been excavating in recent years in a cave of magic near Rosh Ha'Ain.

for further reading

Drell, JRR (2000). "Neanderthals: A History of Interpretation." Oxford Journal of Archeology 19(1): 1-24

Eiseley, LC (1954). "The Reception of the First Missing Links." Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 98(6): 453-465

Graves, P. (1991). "New Models and Metaphors for the Neanderthal Debate." Current Anthropology 32(5): 513-541

Hammond, M. (1982). "The Expulsion of the Neanderthals from Human Ancestry: Marcellin Boule and the Social Context of Scientific Research." Social Studies of Science 12(1): 1-36

Sommer, M. (2005). "Ancient Hunters and Their Modern Representatives: William Sollas's (1849-1936) Anthropology from Disappointed Bridge to Trunkless Tree and the Instrumentalisation of Racial Conflict." Journal of the History of Biology 38(2).

Sommer, M. (2006). "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Neanderthal as Image and 'Distortion' in Early 20th-Century French Science and Press." Social Studies of Science 36(2): 207-240.

The full article was published in Galileo magazine, June 2012