Enough of the cheap jibes: Neanderthals may have been just as clever as modern humans. Anthropologists have already demolished the idea that Neanderthals were dumb brutes, and now a review of the archaeological record suggests they were our equals.
Neanderthals were one of the most successful of all hominin species, occupying much of Europe and Asia. Their final demise about 40,000 years ago, shortly after Homo sapiens walked into their territory, is often put down to the superiority of our species.
It鈥檚 time to lay that idea to rest, say at the University of Colorado in Boulder and at Leiden University in the Netherlands.
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Just as smart as you
For instance, there is evidence that Homo sapiens could use fire to 70,000 years ago, but Neanderthals were performing similarly complex chemical syntheses .
And although 70,000-year-old engraved ochre from South Africa is seen as evidence that , .
What鈥檚 more, Neanderthals . Late last year we learned that our extinct cousins had a hyoid, a small bone in the neck that plays a big role in speech, very like ours.
Evidence has even emerged that Homo sapiens may have learned some skills by copying Neanderthals. Yet despite all of this evidence, the idea that Neanderthals were our inferiors still persists.
Fossilised behaviour
Archaeologists are reluctant to accept evidence of advanced behaviour if it is attributed to extinct hominins, says Roebroeks. This prevailing attitude influences our ideas about the causes of the Neanderthal extinction.
Villa and Roebroeks say this is not the case for other transitions in the archaeological record, such as the arrival of farming in Europe and the subsequent disappearance of Europe鈥檚 hunter-gatherers. Our ideas about the disappearance of European hunter-gatherers do not assume that they were less intelligent than farmers.
Villa and Roebroek are right to apply the same standards to Neanderthal and human archaeological sites, says at the University of Bordeaux in France. 鈥淭his makes their argument in favour of equal cognitive abilities more robust than previous attempts.鈥�
However it may be that the archaeological evidence simply isn鈥檛 good enough to identify the differences between Neanderthal and modern human behaviour, says at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. 鈥淚 believe there were significant differences between Neanderthals and moderns and that this is why we have the replacement of one by the other,鈥� he says. 鈥淏ut it is still a challenge to see this in the archaeological record and demonstrate it properly.鈥�
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