Anatomically modern humans—Homo sapiens—began to migrate from their homelands in Africa perhaps as early as 80,000 years ago and during the next 60,000 years came to occupy nearly all of the climatic and ecological zones of the planet. While other animals have generally adapted themselves to different climates and ecological niches through the process of biological evolution—their physical bodies have changed through natural selection—modern humans have adapted to a wide variety of climates with culture.
Culture is an integrated package that includes technology (tools, domesticated fire, clothing, housing, and so on), social organization, language, and religion. Instead of interacting directly with the environment, modern humans use culture to allow them to live in a wide variety of different habitats. Culture can be rapidly modified to allow humans to adjust to new environments.
Neandertals—Homo neanderthalensis—originally evolved in Europe at a time when the climate of this region was much colder than it is today. Neandertals adapted themselves to this cold climate through biological evolution: they were anatomically better suited to the cold than are Homo sapiens. With regard to their anatomical adaptation to a cold climate, Robin Dunbar writes in his book Human Evolution:
“Neanderthals developed a particular body form that was especially well adapted to high-latitude habitats, and in particular the cold climates that began to engulf Europe and northern Asia as the Ice Age gathered momentum. Their short-limbed, rather heavy build is not unlike that of contemporary arctic specialists like the Inuit (or Eskimo)—designed to minimize heat loss from the extremities.”
Another part of their physical adaptation to a cold environment can be seen in the large nose and sinus areas. In his book Humans: From the Beginning, Christopher Seddon writes:
“The large nose and sinuses of the Neanderthals might have been a climatic adaptation that helped to warm and moisten the dry, cold air of northern latitudes, in turn protecting the brain and aiding respiration.”
While Neandertals were very different from Homo sapiens, they were human and did use technology as a way of adapting to their cold environment. Bernard Campbell, in a chapter in the Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution, reports:
“The neanderthalers of western Europe are the first hominids associated with a periglacial fauna, and were possibly the first to cope with what we would call near-arctic conditions. To do so, they had developed a technology far ahead of anything known before that time.”
While they had domesticated fire, there is little evidence that they had tailored or sewn clothing. While they occupied caves and rockshelters, they did occasionally camp in open-air sites to carry out short-term activities. In her chapter on Neandertal extinction in Becoming Human: Our Past, Present and Future, Kate Wong writes:
“…needles left behind by modern humans hint that they had tailored clothing and tents, all the better for keeping the cold at bay. Neandertals, meanwhile, left behind no such signs of sewing and are believed by some to have had more crudely assembled apparel and shelters as a result.”
The analysis of the isotopes in Neandertal bones shows that they had a diet that consisted almost entirely of meat. In their book From Lucy to Language, Donald Johanson and Blake Edgar write:
“Such a dietary specialization, requiring a high level of kilocalories suggests that Neandertals would have consumed some two kilos of meat per day. Such a diet it is assumed would have demanded a high level of oxygen uptake, perhaps explaining the enlarged chests and presumably large lungs of Neandertals.”
Donald Johanson and Blake Edgar also write:
“Such a specialized diet requiring significant daily caloric intake may have made Neandertals prone to periods of starvation as is indicated in the preponderance of growth defects evident on Neandertal teeth that are called hypolasia.”
As hunters, the Neandertals used heavy spears which were often tipped with triangular stone points. Robin Dunbar reports:
“These would most likely have been used in confrontational ‘ambush hunting’ in which the hunters spear the prey from close quarters. Unlike the spears used later by modern hunters, Neanderthal spears were not designed to be thrown like javelins, but were used more like pikes for thrusting.”
With regard to social organization, Neandertals lived in small isolated groups, probably only a dozen people, and there is little evidence which suggests long-distance social networking. The lack of social networking means that Neandertals did not have access to material resources (such as stone for toolmaking) from distant regions, and, perhaps more importantly, new ideas, new technology, and new forms of social organization could not easily diffuse among them. Whether or not Neandertals had a fully developed language is an issue which is currently debated by paleoanthropologists.
Another area in which there were differences between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals is in maturation—the time it takes a child to reach adulthood. In his book The Gap: The Science of What Separates Us from Other Animals, Thomas Suddendorf writes:
“Dental growth patterns suggest that Neanderthals may have grown up more quickly than modern humans (and even faster than the earlier archaic Homo), which would indicate less time to educate the young.”
Faster maturation means that the process of enculturation must be limited which, in turn, suggests that Neanderthal culture, assuming that they had culture, would have had to be fairly rudimentary.
In general, Neandertal culture appears to have been significantly less flexible and creative that the cultures of the Homo sapiens who replaced them. Geneticist Svante Pääbo, who helped decode the Neanderthal genome, in his book Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes notes:
“Throughout their entire existence their technology did not change much.”
The Neandertals flourished in Europe for more than 200,000 years and during this time, the climate changed a number of times. In response to these climatic shifts, all of which were fairly gradual, the Neandertals adapted by migrating to warmer areas. However, just before Homo sapiens began their European invasion the nature of the climatic shifts changed. In an article in Becoming Human: Our Past, Present and Future, Kate Wong explains:
“Starting perhaps around 55,000 years ago, climate in Eurasia began to swing wildly from frigid to mild and back again in the span of decades. During cold snaps, ice sheets advanced and treeless tundra replaced wooded environments across much of the Neandertals’ range.”
With regard to the unstable climate, Kate Wong writes:
“So rapid were these oscillations that over the course of an individual’s lifetime, all the plants and animals that a person had grown up with could vanish and be replaced with unfamiliar flora and fauna. And then, just as quickly, the environment could change back again.”
To adapt successfully to these rapid climatic oscillations, Neandertals would have had to have a culture which was flexible and could quickly change. Currently, evidence suggests that Neandertal culture may have lacked the creativity to overcome the challenges of living in a rapidly changing environment. Thus many paleoanthropologists suggest that climate change was one of the major factors in Neandertal extinction.