22/10/2015
Not so dumb
cavemen
Studies suggest that Neanderthals weren't
intellectually inferior to Homo Sapiens
f you thought Neanderthals
were simple-minded brutes
that were driven to extinction
by the intellectually superior
ancestors of modern humans,
it may be time to think again.
Neanderthals thrived in a large
area of Europe and Asia between
350,000 and 40,000 years ago, but
died out after the arrival of
‘anatomically modern’ humans
from Africa. It has traditionally
been suggested that this was due
to the newcomers’ more advanced
hunting and communication
skills, and ability to innovate and
adapt. But a review of recent
studies on Neanderthals carried
out at the University of Colorado,
Boulder has challenged this
long-standing assumption.
“The evidence for cognitive
inferiority is simply not there. What
we are saying is that the
conventional view of Neanderthals
is not true,” said Paolo Villa, a
curator at the University’s Museum
of Natural History. Villa cites
evidence that Neanderthals
probably herded bison,
mammoths and woolly
rhinoceroses to their deaths by
steering them off cliffs. This
implies that Neanderthals could
plan ahead and communicate
effectively as a group. Ochre – a
kind of pigment that may have
been used for body painting – and
ornaments have also been found
at Neanderthal sites, suggesting
they carried out complex cultural
rituals and used a symbolic
communication system.
“Researchers were comparing
Neanderthals not to their
contemporaries on other
continents, but to their
successors,” says Villa. “That
would be like comparing the
performance of Model T Fords,
widely used in America and
Europe in the early part of the
last century, to the performance of
a modern Ferrari, and concluding
that Henry Ford was cognitively
inferior to Enzo Ferrari.”
When it comes to mental
capacity, Neanderthals may
have been judged unfairly