‘Neanderthal’ no longer works as an insult Think early humans were a wildly superior species to their Neanderthal cousins? We’re more closely related than you realise

Nobody wants to be called a Neanderthal. Ever since their skeletons were first unearthed in the Neander valley near Düsseldorf in 1829, they have been cast as our knuckle-dragging and dim-witted evolutionary cousins, wiped out as Homo sapiens went on to inherit the earth.

In 1866, the German biologist Ernst Haeckel proposed they be called Homo stupidus. The name didn’t stick, but the sentiment did. Marcellin Boule, a French paleontologist, published the first scientific description of the Neanderthal species in 1911. Clearly destined to fail in the game of “survival of the fittest,” the shape of their skulls indicated “the predominance of functions of a purely vegetative or bestial kind”.

But over the last few years our understanding of Neanderthals has been turned on its head. Research has gathered such a pace that we must now face up to the fact that many of us are part Neanderthal – with their genes continuing to affect us today.

The i newsletter cut through the noise Email address is invalid Email address is invalid Thank you for subscribing! Sorry, there was a problem with your subscription.

Cultural practices

Last week, the notion that Neanderthals lived dangerous, violent lives compared to homo sapiens was refuted, with the discovery that early modern humans and Neanderthals both suffered the same level of head trauma – meaning we were all as violent, or not, as each other.

“The commonly cited Neanderthal behaviours leading to high injury levels, such as violent behaviour and inferior hunting capabilities, must be reconsidered,” said the study’s lead researcher Katerina Harvati, a paleoanthropologist.

It was another breakthrough in a series of scientific and archaeological discoveries that have shown Haeckel and Boule to be off the mark. We now know that Neanderthals were hunter-gatherers who buried their dead with care, crafted stone tools, used medicinal plants, looked after their old and sick, created art, had the ability to speak, and interbred with the humans they lived alongside.

In other words, Neanderthals were capable of many of the social and cultural practices we tend to think of as being unique to our species. Though stronger and stockier than us – another study from this August found they had a greater lung capacity than us – they were not so very different.

Piecing together the past

But, extinct for around 30,000 years, their reputation depends on modern humans’ ability to piece together the remains of the distant past.

In 1957, anthropologists digging in Shanidar Cave in northern Iraq found the remains of eight adults and two infant Neanderthals that appeared to have been purposefully buried some 60,000 years ago. Fossilised pollen suggested that the dead had been buried with flowers. Some of the adult skeletons showed evidence of injuries that had been tended and healed.

Until a few years ago, bones and fossils like those found in Iraq were all that could be used to learn about Neanderthals.

Today, the definition of “well preserved” evidence has shifted from full skeletal remains that allow us to reconstruct Neanderthal’s faces and bodies, to fragments of finger and toe bones with a high density of surviving DNA that can be extracted and analysed.

In 2010, genetic analysis found that non-African humans have 1 to 4 per cent Neanderthal DNA in their genetic makeup, showing that our Homo sapien ancestors interbred with Neanderthals. It was an idea went wholly against the scientific consensus, demonstrating that Neanderthals and the earliest modern humans were closely related enough to produce offspring, who, in turn, were functional enough to be integrated into human society and healthy enough to have children of their own.

Close relations

The genetic study team reached their conclusion after comparing the genomes of five living humans from China, France, Papua New Guinea, southern Africa and western Africa against an available “rough draft” of the Neanderthal genome.

“It was a turning point in showing how closely related we are, and that the genetic legacy of the Neanderthals lives on in most of us today,” says Professor Chris Stringer, Britain’s foremost authority on human evolution. He was not involved with the study but says that its findings have impacted his work.

“When I give talks, people are constantly surprised to hear how Neanderthal DNA is affecting us today – this is a rich field of research in areas like medicine and mental health, with many more surprises to come.”

For example, we now know that one length of Neanderthal DNA is linked to a sunburn hazard called keratosis, a greater risk of depression and nicotine addiction.

Studying genomes is throwing light upon some mysteries, but many questions about Neanderthal behaviour remain. “Personally I would like to know how complex their language was,” says Professor Stringer. “Also, how we interacted with the Neanderthals. Did interbreeding happen largely by force, or by more friendly encounters?”

A conscious impact

Fortunately, DNA analysis isn’t the only tool to hand. Earlier this year, a team of researchers offered compelling evidence that Neanderthals could paint cave art – one of the chief hallmarks of mental sophistication.

Using recently improved technology, researchers dated calcite crusts that had grown on top of ancient art works in three caves in Spain, previously thought to have been drawn by early humans. The artists had drawn painted hands, bison, horses and mammoths. The team found that some of the art was more than 64,000 years old, about 20,000 years earlier than the first evidence of modern humans in Europe.

“Our results are tremendously significant, both for our understanding of Neanderthals, and for the emergence of behavioural complexity in the human lineage,” wrote Chris Standish, a Postdoctoral Fellow of Archaeology at University of Southampton and Alistair Pike, Professor of Archaeological Sciences at the University of Southampton afterwards. Both were part of an international team led by researchers in the UK and Germany.

“Neanderthals undoubtedly had the capacity for symbolic behaviour, much like contemporaneous modern human populations residing in Africa,” they said. Like them, and us, they could dream, imagine and make a conscious impact upon the world.”