Who killed the Neanderthals?
The disappearance of the Neanderthal Man has raised unsettling questions ever since the discovery of the first skeletons of this race that evolved parallel to ours. Was the Cro-Magnon truly responsible for this genocide?
A shadow of infamy seems to hover over Man, at least since the discovery of the first remains of Neanderthal Man in the second half of the 19th century. A human being in every respect, stronger, more robust, and more intelligent than our ancestors: a specific type of human that inhabited Europe and Asia from around 380,000 to 24,000 years ago. A species older than our current one, Homo sapiens sapiens, which coexisted with the lineage of men known as Cro-Magnon, characterized by a modern physical and mental structure, for at least ten thousand years.
According to paleoanthropologists, our species appeared around 200,000 years ago in Africa and differed markedly from the already existing species of Neanderthals in several minor yet significant physical characteristics. The shape of the skull, some bones arranged differently, and different anatomical features led scientists to believe that Neanderthals were a separate species from ours, and to some extent, they were. But since there is no trace of this Pleistocene inhabitant today, as they mysteriously disappeared around 30,000 years ago, the question of what happened to them remains.
Could coexistence with Cro-Magnon sapiens, who began to inhabit Eurasia around that time, have somehow marked their end? There are numerous hints suggesting human "guilt" related to the extinction of these evolved brothers of ours, but none seem decisive. And it is no small matter because if our species had destroyed another culture that was superior to ours in many aspects, we would carry an indelible stain on our collective conscience. But did Man really kill the Neanderthals? And if not, who was the genocidal murderer of the first evolved and civilized species on this planet?
Speaking of civilization certainly seems excessive, as the Neanderthals did not leave us cities, writing, or myths. We do not even have the certainty that they were aware of themselves as an autonomous species or as a people. But these considerations reflect the enormous racism that, since the discovery of the first skull by the paleontologist Johann Fuhlrott in 1856 (found in a cave in Feldhofer in the Neander Valley in Germany, in the Düsseldorf area), has plagued studies regarding these men.
And from the 19th century to today, prejudice is hard to eradicate: it has been said that these humans were not human but monstrous cannibals, that they fed on their own children, that they could not speak and had no language, that they ate raw meat because they did not know fire, among other absurdities. More recently, when a wide range of intellectual faculties was attributed to the Neanderthals, there were always those who doubted these abilities, for example, "they could speak, yes, but like a five-year-old child." Even today, studies occasionally emerge that tend, in my opinion, to diminish the stature of our predecessors, often in bad faith.
But fortunately, there are also research efforts conducted in a more neutral manner that do not devalue the knowledge of the Neanderthals but make groundbreaking discoveries about their physical characteristics and abilities.
For example, the news dated December 30, 2008, in which a group of Spanish researchers from CSIC, the National Research Council, identified the type of blood that flowed in the veins of some Neanderthals through the DNA of fossils of two Homo neanderthalensis found in the El Sidrón cave in Asturias and dated 200,000 years ago.
Like early humans, Neanderthals also had Type O blood, which is characteristic of populations particularly suited to the digestion of meat and hunting products. In a way, it was predictable that an ethnicity of hunters would have characteristics similar to those typically found in humans who obtain their food in the same way today, such as the Bushmen, Pygmies, Eskimos, and all Native Americans from Alaska to Patagonia. Their immune system was strong and reactive, capable of destroying any biological aggressor, including both pathogenic germs and beneficial intestinal flora. The O group adapts poorly to changes in diet and environment, always preferring the same foods, thus requiring a largely stable life. To feel good, the organism needs to feel full of energy and therefore requires a large amount of meat, fish, and a few types of vegetables and fruits, demonstrating a strong intolerance to both dairy products and legumes and cereals.
These insights reveal an essential characteristic of the Neanderthals in these few sentences: in a certain sense, they were comparable to so-called "primitive" human populations, finding the key to their survival in balance with Nature and the surrounding environment. Neanderthals, therefore, "naturally" developed a harmony with the creatures they hunted, with Nature and the seasonal rhythms, in a different way from our pagan ancestors, who were more tied to the summer-winter cycle due to agriculture.
There are no deities that cyclically resurrect, nor a Mother Earth that nourishes her children, but the God and Goddess become the very animals hunted, similar to the North American totems. In the totem of a specific animal, for example, the bison, there is a mixture of reverence and utilitarianism, of spirituality and necessity. The animal is killed because eating it allows survival, but it is respected because it is known that the survival of the entire species may depend on its demise. It was no coincidence that the decline of the Native American populations, the so-called Red Indians, began when white settlers realized that killing off the vast herds of bison would drastically reduce the tribes' prosperity. Without warriors, without children, the Natives would be forced to accept the semi-slavery of the Reservations.
The example of Buffalo Bill, who reportedly fired a million bullets at bison in his lifetime, is illustrative in this regard. Therefore, this respect, this veneration towards their victims and the natural enemies of Neanderthal Man led them to develop a religiosity manifested through artistic forms far superior to those of contemporary humans.
As some anthropologists argue, it is noteworthy how the oldest cave paintings of Homo sapiens sapiens depict stylized individuals, sketched in their forms, as if there were no form of self-awareness.
Later, paintings began to appear in caves depicting deformed, bizarre, almost caricatured human beings. Even when they reproduce gods, they have strange, if not unsettling, features. In Neanderthal murals, however, one finds a precision of forms, an artistic ability that can be defined as "impressionist," capable of precisely reproducing both themselves, human forms, and the animals they hunted. A pictorial precision achieved by humans only around 35,000 BCE, with the first examples of cave art found in Altamira, Lascaux, and so on.
Seventy thousand years of difference between the caricatured graffiti of the Combe-Capelle Man, the race of sapiens sapiens of that time, and the graceful harmony of the creations of sublime artists like those Cro-Magnon who perhaps learned the visual technique from their Neanderthal neighbors. The two species coexisted in Europe for over 10,000 years, and the initial technological level was undoubtedly in favor of the Neanderthals.
Professor Metin Eren of the University of Exeter in Great Britain explains that
"When we think of Neanderthals, we must stop thinking of them in terms of 'stupid' or 'less advanced' and more in terms of 'different.' […] Indeed, in some situations, the use of blade-shaped tools [by the Neanderthals] was superior to the flake-shaped tools [of Homo sapiens]."
Moreover, the cranial capacity of the Neanderthals was on average about 10% greater than that of humans, ranging from 1200 to 1750 cm3. This implied a greater capacity for rationalization and, at the same time, a great "mathematical" artistic ability.
It is no coincidence that musical wind instruments made of bone or horn were found, created by the Neanderthals: like the flute found in Slovenia, perfectly tuned with four notes of the Greek diatonic scale! In my opinion, it is clear that much of what these neighbors of ours possessed was transmitted to our ancestors. In a Europe covered by ice for half the year, is it believable that the Cro-Magnon mercilessly exterminated a population that was spiritually more evolved, more intelligent, and more technologically advanced than they were?
The robustness of the Neanderthals, their adaptability to the environment, does not make the possibility of war, of genocide, very logical, especially because there are no signs of these battles, no weapons, no bones shattered by human spears tipped with flint flakes, which are so prevalent in the remains of prey and natural enemies like cave bears. It is clear that there was no direct confrontation with them. And what if such a conflict was economic?
Modern hypotheses speak of an economic competition between a society based solely on hunting for the Neanderthals and a commercially oriented one for the Cro-Magnons. This idea was proposed in 2005 by Jason Shogren, an economist at the University of Wyoming.
I would like to ask Professor Shogren why he speaks of commercial economics in an era, 30,000 BCE, when according to his fellow scientists humans were semi-primitive cannibals. If there was an organized society at that time (and it probably was), it is not understood how it could interact so deeply with that of the Neanderthals, because even modern industrial cultures have not had completely devastating impacts on primitive-aboriginal cultures of various conquered countries, for example, by imperial colonial Great Britain. It does not seem to me that a commercial civilization necessarily had to exclude the hunting one, unless there was such an extent of this Cro-Magnon culture that it could be considered global and absolutist, and I do not believe that this was the case.
Moreover, if it is not a genetic cause, if it is not an economic cause, then why did the Neanderthals become extinct?
The question should be turned around. Are we really sure that the Neanderthals became extinct? Is it not possible that their DNA merged into that of modern humans?
Science categorically answers no to this question.
Analyses conducted by American, German, and Swedish scientists (at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany) and by Italians (the group of geneticists coordinated by Prof. Guido Barbujani from the Department of Biology at the University of Ferrara and Davide Caramelli from the University of Florence) are explicit in stating that there is no trace of Neanderthal DNA in modern human DNA. In fact, the two species differ by 0.5% (which means that 99.5% of the DNA is identical), a divergence rate indicating they descend from a common ancestor who lived 516,000 years ago and have genetically diverged since then.
Further research by Edward Rubin from the Lawrence National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, indicates that the Neanderthal genome is 99.9% similar to ours. Can a 0.1% difference explain the emergence of a new species? Or is it instead exclusively a distinct race with exaggerated characteristics? A group of researchers coordinated by Erik Trinkaus from Washington University in Saint Louis, Missouri, described the discovery in Romania of fossil remains characterized by a mixture of distinctive anatomical traits of modern humans and Neanderthals.
"The narrow nasal opening and lightly developed brow ridges are attributable to our species, while the receding forehead and occipital bun recall the Neanderthal"
says Prof. Trinkhaus.
The bones, found at Pestera Muierii in southern Romania, were dated using radiocarbon dating: they are estimated to be 30,000 years old, and they correspond with remains identified at Vindija in Croatia, dated between 42,000 and 38,000 years ago, which similarly exhibit more graceful features than classic Neanderthals.
One explanation could be that these Neanderthals were hybridizing with Cro-Magnons present in the region. Excavations also revealed that the Neanderthals at Vindija were developing stone tool manufacturing methods very similar to those of Homo Sapiens Sapiens tribes. Therefore, the existence of contacts, even physical ones, between the two populations seems demonstrable.
Although some consider the offspring of Sapiens and Neanderthals to be sterile (essentially like mules), there is no evidence that they actually were, and the two lineages could have merged without significant issues. However, in my opinion, there is a startling and potentially decisive fact in this controversy: the fact that Neanderthals, at least in Europe, had red hair and very fair skin, similar to Cro-Magnons who even in recent times are characterized by these features. All populations descended from Cro-Magnons have reddish-brown hair, very fair skin, and minor characteristics such as many freckles and so on.
It's not a necessary physical trait in nature; the disadvantages of light phenotypes outweigh those of dark ones, but evidently, it's a typical trait linked to environmental factors not yet understood. If, in theory, Cro-Magnons originally came from Africa (presumably with darker skin), how could this particular pigmentation become the standard for this lineage? Probably, only through the hereditary transmission of this particular genetic modification from Neanderthal DNA. A minor modification, moreover recessive and therefore not particularly noticeable to modern geneticists!
But the most interesting evidence at the moment comes from John Hardy of the National Human Genome Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. Professor Hardy studies genetic mutations that cause so-called "neurofibrillary tangles," characteristic of some neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's. These mutations inexplicably affect only the Caucasian population, and the most likely cause is that someone carrying the disease transmitted it to Cro-Magnon ancestors. The only plausible population is that of the Neanderthals, who evidently suffered from these diseases in ancient times.
Therefore, Neanderthals did not become extinct: the most logical solution is that they mixed with Homo Sapiens Sapiens, forming a uniform human nucleus. Their genetic characteristics occasionally emerge among the born.
Who doesn't have friends, relatives, acquaintances who strikingly resemble a Neanderthal depicted in prehistory books? These are traces of our heritage, the DNA of our ancestors that emerges, with their culture and sensitivity, from the folds of our past.
