It’s a common enough epithet and we’ve all used it. Neanderthal. Its meaning in our parlance is clear: unevolved, knuckle dragging, unthinking, and unintelligent. Our now-extinct cousins are used for ridicule and diminishment. Wikipedia states “In popular idiom the word Neanderthal is sometimes used as an insult, to suggest that a person combines a deficiency in intelligence and a propensity toward brute force, as well as perhaps implying that the person is old-fashioned or attached to outdated ideas, much in the same way as "dinosaur" or "Yahoo" is also used.”
I think this is wrong. Everything I’ve read about our lost cousins tells me they were a fascinating species and that we should remember them. Follow below the squiggle.
This isn’t in response to any new discovery or anything new in the news. It’s just something that’s percolated in my head for some time.
But, the basics. Neanderthals were one of several hominid species that arose over the last two million years. Adapted for cold, they inhabited much of Western Europe eastward into Central Asia. At the time they walked the Earth, they were one of three, possibly more, humanoid species living on Earth, including those that’d become modern humanity. Think about that statement. We shared our planet for a time with other sentient beings who looked almost exactly like us but weren’t us. They were aliens to us, and we probably were aliens to them.
Humans and Neanderthal diverged about 370,000 years ago according to the Neanderthal Genome Project.
They created tools, had families, made art, and could speak. On the last point, there’s still debate over whether they could speak or not. There’s evidence they had rituals, just like we do.
Their adaptations were to the cold—Earth was deep in an ice age when they first evolved. With their stocky and muscular builds I think they’d turn heads if they existed today. Evidence suggests they were far more carnivorous than we tend to be, although they probably did consume vegetable matter according to some recent discoveries. Their adaptations will be important later, and possibly lead to their extinction.
For a considerable time they had Europe pretty much to themselves. Who knows what kind of society (yes, even hunter-gatherers have societies) they developed on their own, with a chilly glacial Europe as their home. But about 150,000 years ago, some newcomers began to walk out of Africa.
They came in waves, moving east initially, into the Middle East. They at first, pushed out the Neanderthal living there (they’d come back after Mt. Toba obliterated itself roughly 74,000 years ago). They made it into India, Southeast Asia, China, Siberia and Central Asia, where another humanoid species was living. We only know of their existence from genetic material extracted from a few fossils. Their genes, though, give us the evidence that they were quite widespread and they and humans interacted. The nature of that interaction is subject to speculation, but some of their genes exist in some modern populations from Asia to the South Pacific. Other hominids existed in Asia too---they were gradually pushed out and then replaced. Many of these populations were possibly obliterated when Mt. Toba erupted 74,000 years ago.
In Europe there was an overlap. Modern humans spread into Europe and perhaps there was a very long period of interaction between Neanderthal and Human. Climate began to get warmer as well, becoming more unstable. The Neanderthals were adapted for cold and over time could not adjust. Food became scarce, especially after a string of volcanic eruptions along the Europe-Africa plate boundary from Italy into the Caucasus Mountains roughly 40,000 years ago. In addition, modern humans simply out-competed them it appears. I often wonder, was this competition violent? Given humanity’s long and bloody global history, I can’t say no to this question. In fact I’d say it’s likely. But they did intermix and apparently learned from one another in some parts of Europe. A portion of our genome comes from them although there are limits to how they mixed---we share no known mitochondrial DNA with Neanderthals. Neanderthal men and human women could have viable offspring. Human men and neanderthal women would have had sterile offspring, according to the Genome Project.
Whatever happened to them, they’re no longer with us. Eventually modern humans would displace, absorb and out-compete all their cousins that existed when they first walked out of Africa. Modern humans would even survive Mt. Toba’s eruption, which possibly reduced the modern human population to a very small number (I say possibly because there’s evidence that it may not be entirely correct, and there’s lots of evidence that many of our still-existing cousins survived it too).
What happened to Them?
I suppose it’s my nature to root for the underdog, and our cousins the Neanderthal definitely are that. I wonder what they were like. How did they perceive the universe? I’m kind of sad that these fascinating individuals did not survive to the modern day. Part of them does survive in some people, mainly Europeans. They deserve more respect than what we give them, I think. They were just fascinating people, with cultures, rituals, families, language, and art.
Perhaps their specific adaptation can be taken as a warning. When their world ended, the climate shifted dramatically and rather quickly, over several hundred years. They couldn’t keep up. Today the same is happening, perhaps even faster, as a result of anthropogenic climate change. Will we be able to keep up? Will we go the way of the Neanderthal, joining our cousins in extinction? Time will tell.
Turning on the news this last week, doesn't look hopeful for us, though.