for National Geographic News
Scientists have been pondering the question posed by the Neandertalswho were they, and what happened to themsince the first fossil remains were found in Germany's Neander Valley in 1856.
By combining what can be told by fossils and artifacts with what has been learned by geneticists, we're getting closer to answering those questions, said Richard Klein, a paleoanthropologist at Stanford University, California.
As little as a decade ago, the idea that humans and Neandertals interbred was considered a possibility. Today, genetic evidence indicates fairly conclusively that Neandertals were the immediate predecessorsbut not ancestorsof modern humans.
"Neandertals evolved exclusively in Europe, while modern humans were evolving in Africa," said Klein. "Modern humans replaced the Neandertals with little or no gene exchange."
And it's time we gave the Neandertals the respect they deserve, said Ian Tattersal, a paleoanthropologist and curator of the division of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
"Until we stop thinking of Neandertals as a bush-league version of ourselves, thinking of them as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, we'll never dignify them in an appropriate way as an evolutionary entity in their own right, with their own evolutionary history," he said. "Neandertals did very well for hundreds of thousands of years, and were very adaptable. They probably did the maximum that could be done with intuitive thinking. I just don't think they had the ability to think symbolically."
By 130,000 years ago, the Neandertals were living in Europe in isolated pockets that extended from Spain to western Russia, and Homo sapiens were living in Africa. While early humans probably made a few forays out of Africa prior to about 50,000 years ago, they didn't successfully begin to colonize Europe until around 45,000 years ago.
When they did, Neandertals start disappearing from the fossil record. By 30,000 years ago, they were extinct. The question for paleoanthropologists has always been why? What was the competitive advantage wielded by modern humans that allowed us to thrive? Neandertal brains were the same size or possibly slightly larger than ours. Physically, they were far more robust.
The human ability to think symbolicallyto plan ahead, innovate, and adapt to changing conditions and environments is likely the advantage humans had.
Until about 50,000 years ago, Neandertals in Europe and humans in Africa shared many cultural traits. Both had full control of fire, diets heavily based on meat, and the ability to flake stone to make tools. Both groups buried their dead, at least occasionally, and took care of their injured.
But the gap between the two cultures widened rapidly during the roughly 15,000 years that humans, colloquially known as Cro-Magnons after the place in France where the first fossils were found, and Neandertals coexisted in Europe, said Klein.
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