Last of the Archaics: the Late, Great Neandertal

Overview 
•	Dating: ~ 200 000 yrs to 30 000 BP
•	Major Anatomical Changes:
•	Brain size surpasses modern 
•	Robust post-cranial adaptation
•	“Classic” Neandertals, 80 - 40 000 BP
•	Confined to Europe and the Levant
•	Increasing development of Technology and evidence of greater cognitive capacity
Distribution of Neandertals, their culture and related technologies
•	INSERT FAGAN MAP P 107 HERE
The Neander Valley
•	First Neandertal specimen from Feldhofer Cave, near Dusseldorf Germany in 1856
•	Initial picture of Neandertals was badly distorted by Marcellin Boule’s incorrect reconstruction in the 1920s
•	
Boule’s Reconstruction
Blashchke’s Reconstruction
Modern Reconstructions
General Morphology
•	Cranium:
•	~ 1500 ml (modern human 1450)
•	Morphologically different
•	Sloping forehead
•	Elongated and lower in profile
•	Face:
•	Protruding mid-face
•	Still has large brow ridges
•	Larger nasal cavities
•	Dentition:
•	Modern in form, often heavily worn
•	Post-cranial attributes:
•	Bodies are short and stocky, reducing total body surface for better heat retention
•	Bones have thicker walls and very large muscle attachment areas
•	Unusually high frequency of healed major injuries and evidence for malnutrition
Teeth used as a tool
Dental wear and post-cranial comparison
Why the major injuries?
Neandertal Injuries Compared to 
Rodeo Clown Injuries
Subsistence
•	Stone spear tips frequent at sites
•	Mostly carnivorous
•	Hunting and scavenging
•	Ambush hunting
•	Dietary stress

The New Technology
•	Emergence of Lavallois technology marks a greater shift to the use of flake tools about 100 000 yrs ago
•	Increasingly efficient use of raw materials
•	More tool types
•	Hafting of points 

Efficient use of raw material
Levallois Production
A Levallois flake detached from the core

Mousterian Technology

Neandertal Behaviour
•	Theories have gone through a series of changes since the initial 1856 discovery
•	From brute with no capacity for symbolic behaviour or language . . . 
•	To Neandertal “tribes” with capacity for abstract thought and complex symbolic thought mid-century
Why the change of position?

Burial of the Dead
•	In 1910, French archaeologists at La Ferrassie found a series of burials that seemed to be arranged in a geometric pattern
•	The Shanidar “Flower burial” in Iraq
•	More than fifty recorded burials in the Middle Paleolithic

Kebara Cave
•	Kebara Cave,
Israel, 60 000 BP
	lacking only cranium, right leg and both feet
Care for the Injured
•	Unlike hominid predecessors, Neandertals left evidence that they cared for their wounded and disabled
•	The “Old Man” from La-Chappelle-aux-Sainte
•	The Shanidar I specimen

National Geographic artists at work
Other Human Behaviour
 - Cannibalism
		- Broken, burnt bones at Krapina,
		 Croatia 
Other Human Behaviour (continued)
•	Linguistic abilities
•	Hyoid bone found at Kebara
•	Sophisticated Communication

The Chatelperronian
36 000 - 32 000 BP
A “transitional” industry
Upper Paleolithic (35,000-10,000 BP)
A Preview
•	Toolkits are more diversified (addition of burins, endscrapers, bladelets, etc.)
•	Blades, instead of flakes, are now the prevalent toolmaking product
•	Fully developed bone technology
•	Art is expressed in representations (in caves: Lascaux and Altamira) and on portable items (pendants, “Venuses”, etc.)
•	Social organization probably similar to modern hunter-gatherers

Upper Paleolithic Assemblages
Neandertals disappear
Multiregional Evolution
Population Replacement Model
What is the Neandertal’s Relationship to Modern Humans?
•	‘Out of Africa’ or Population Replacement
•	Modern humans evolved once, in Africa, and spread to conquer the world with no interbreeding with other hominids
•	Genetic Replacement
•	Modern humans evolved in Africa, radiated out to Europe and Asia, interbreeding with extant Archaics around the globe
•	Multiregional Hypothesis
•	Gene flow between hominids worldwide since the initial radiation of Homo erectus around the globe has allowed modern humans to evolve in different places. 

Evidence for the competing models
•	Earliest morphologically modern specimens from South Africa at 100 000 BP
•	MtDNA studies support Out of Africa
•	Early modern tool assemblages not more sophisticated than Mousterian
•	Neandertals found with “modern” tools
•	Morphological continuity in Asia

Implicit conceptual issues and their effects:
“At times, these differences [preconceptions, assumptions, and biases] were so great as to preclude any common basis for discussion”
					- Geoffrey Clark

Philosophical Problems:
•	What does Middle Paleolithic tool morphology mean in terms of hominid behaviour?
•	Current division between Lower, Middle and Upper Paleolithic may obscure more than clarify
•	Three classifications for fossil hominids (relatedness, adaptation and combination of both)
•	Definition of social processes in the Paleolithic frequently obscure and uncritical

A Solution?

•	No one-to-one correlation between a subspecies type and a type of assemblage (e.g. Mousterian-Neandertals; Blade technology-Modern Homo)
•	Neandertals and modern Homo show probably a high regional variation in their biology due to local adaptation. Changes in social organization and language capabilities translated into increased alliance networks, possibly related to the subsistence, may explain the transition