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                                 Chapter 3

                              The Neanderthals
                                      
   So far all the immense period of time that has passed since the
   appearance of the first hominids has been in the period that
   archaeologists call the Lower Palaeolithic. With the appearance of
   Homo neanderthalensis we are approaching the Middle Palaeolithic
   period and in Britain come across Swanscombe Man. Unlike the
   fraudulent foreigner, Piltdown Man, Swanscombe Man is an authentic
   Englishman, a British fossil claimed by some authorities to have early
   Neanderthal characteristics found on the 30.48m terrace of the Kentish
   bank of the River Thames stratified in a sequence of finds that starts
   with the Clactonian type of tools. They are typically thick flake
   tools, choppers with no bifaces.  At one time it was thought that
   these chopper tools and the bifaces (early Acheulian handaxes)
   characteristic of this time  (between 435,000 and 230,000 years ago)
   were two distinct industries produced by different people but the
   latest hypothesis sees them as facets of a single technology. Above
   the Clactonian tools was a layer containing developed Acheulian
   handaxes associated with the fossil skull of Swanscombe Man.   Early
   Neanderthal skeletons have been found in other parts of Europe dating
   to between 250,000 to 200,000 years BP. Belonging to one of the
   periods of warmer climate known as interglacials, a site has recently
   been discovered near Inden in northern Germany. This interglacial is
   known in Germany as the Eemian, in Britain as the Ipswichian, and
   dates from 128,000 to 117,000BCE. The site consisted of the postholed
   remains of three brushwood shelters and a fireplace with traces of
   fire alongside a scatter of some 600 stone tools  including handaxes,
    knives and serrated blades (Rhineland Commission for Historical
   Sites).

   Homo neanderthalis is the most important figure in the Middle
   Palaeolithic period,  with a brain capacity of up to 1700ml,
   classified as a separate species of Homo. Traces of its activities and
   its fossils are known not only in Europe but in Africa and Asia in
   various environments. The classic Neanderthals of southern Europe
   existed from c115,000BC to c32,000BC, a period covering the last
   glaciation but one during which the climate was intensely cold.

   The chief hunting grounds of the neanderthal people were the European
   plains - wide, flat snow meadows swept by prevailing winds where the
   snow lay a foot or so deep above the edible grasses on which ibex and
   wild horses fed. Other animals of the time included the woolly
   rhinoceros, mammoth and the cave bears who were competitors for the
   shelter of caves in which the Neanderthals lived during the most
   extreme weather.

   Near Ehrinsdorf in Germany, quarries yielded hominid remains dating to
   205,000BP and this so far is the earliest Neanderthal date in Europe
   and, in the usual archaeological time-scale, actually dates before the
   Middle Palaeolithic.

   The most complete record of  Mousterian Neanderthal flint industries
   comes from a cave at Combe Grenal in the Dordogne  (Aquitaine) which
   demonstrates that they comprised a number of differing manufacturing
   traditions. Four of these have been identified by statistical 'factor
   analysis' from an assemblage of 19,000 flints in 64 geological and
   archaeological layers which spanned a period of 50,000 years.

   The 'denticulate' tradition includes tools with a notched edge forming
   a set of teeth that look like a saw blade. The 'Quina' tool-kit has a
   high proportion of so-called Quina scrapers. These two were the most
   commonly used traditions. The excavator puts forward the idea that
   certain tools used for domestic jobs were made by women from flint
   found close to the cave while other tools were made from better
   material collected from further away  were used by the men in their
   hunting activities. These last tools were made employing the
   'Levalloisian' technique which involved the shaping of a piece of
   flint into a tortoise-shaped 'core' so that a standard-shaped flake
   could be struck from it. 

   There was no chronological succession from one industry to another:
   all appeared at a variety of levels in the stratigraphy of the cave
   and apparently were in use during the entire period of 50,000 years.
   Animal remains were dominated by reindeer which was clearly the
   mainstay of the hunters at this time. Similar analyses have been
   carried out in the Dead Sea valley where the Mousterian technology
   comprise five different tool-kits. Climate there was much less extreme
   than in Western Europe.

   A cave not far off in the Dordogne at La Ferassie contained nine
   little mounds arranged neatly in a row. One of these covered a
   still-born infant, the others, nothing. Near the infant's grave were
   the graves of three children and two adults. Perhaps it was a family
   cemetery. It was the adult male skeleton that together with another
   from La Chapelle-aux-Saints provide the standard description of the
   typical Neanderthal anatomy. At Teshik Tash, Uzbekistan is a cave
   which contained the body of a young boy, his head surrounded by six
   pairs of horns of mountain goat stuck into the ground, thus providing
   an another early example of purposeful burial. Probably the most
   poignant of these Neanderthal burials was in a cave at Shanidar in the
   Zagros mountains of Iraq. Seven Neanderthal skeletons were found, one
   laid down with special ceremony 60,000 years ago. Flowers, identified
   by pollen evidence, had been placed with the body, others were
   arranged together with a wreath of woven branches. Several of the
   plants were still used until recently in local herbal medicine. More
   sinister was a cave in Yugoslavia where a collection of the remains of
   at least a dozen Neanderthals was found, some with bones charred and
   cut, suggesting to the excavator the practice of cannibalism. In a
   cave a fossil discovery at Le Moustier was that of the body of a boy
   of 15-16 who had been placed on his right side with his knees drawn up
   and his head resting on his forearm. A pile of flints formed a pillow,
   a stone axe lay near his hand and close by were the remnants of
   charred wild-cattle bones, perhaps a final food-offering. . Flint
   tools associated with the find were in the tradition that was named
   after the site.

   From what has been described it is possible to suggest that some
   Neanderthal people had a concern for their dead and perhaps for a
   spirit that lived on after death. If this is so, it is the first
   evidence we have of religious feeling and may be linked to a cult
   involving the cave-bear at Regourdou (Aquitaine) where a cave
   contained a skeleton, a rectangular pit covered by a flat stone
   weighing nearly a ton and the remains of more than twenty cave-bears.
   In eastern Austria we are told that a cave contained seven bears'
   skulls placed so that all faced the cave entrance.

   We can also conclude that the Neanderthals were one of the most
   successful races of big-game hunters who ever lived. In caveless parts
   of Russia where traces of semi-permanent dwellings have been
   identified, one site included a ring of mammoth tusks perhaps intended
   as supporting posts for a circular hut. Inside the ring were bones of
   horses, rhinoceroses, bison and brown bears, 27,000 flints and fifteen
   hearths. It was probably the camping place of a large hunting party
   whose prey was not restricted to any particular quarry.

   But, successful as the Neanderthals undoubtedly were, they did not
   survive as a species in competition with the earliest Homo sapiens.
   Nobody knows why but after 40,000BP their hegemony was done. In
   western Europe, modern humans appeared around 33,000BP and the two
   species appear to have co-existed for some millennia but may not have
   interbred.

   Evidence from Israel in two caves at Mount Carmel suggests that the
   neanderthal people and early modern humans existed side-by side there
   using the same Levalloiso-Mousterian tool technology while the cave at
   Skhul contained the remains of a group of ten or so early modern
   people alongside that at Tabun, only yards away that contained two
   neanderthal individuals.

   From Spain and western France comes evidence of the Chatelperronian
   flint industry that contains elements that were copied by the
   neanderthals from Homo sapiens  technology.  Chatelperronian is
   sometimes referred to as Lower Perigordian. Until recently it was held
   that this technology which dates to the beginning of the Upper
   Palaeolithic had been the invention of Homo sapiens. Now, a good many
   authorities attribute it to the last Neanderthals. Elements in the
   industry such as the production of blades from a core and in the
   life-style like the appearance of shelters in the camping sites of the
   users (e.g.  the tent-like structure at Arcy-sur-Cure (Burgogne)), are
   put down to imitation of the Homo sapiens sapiens' way of life for it
   is now generally held that the Neanderthals survived in Europe for
   some time after the appearance of Homo sapiens and indeed, in the
   light of the above evidence, must have lived in close proximity to
   them. At Roc de Combe and Piage in south western France and at the
   Châtelperronian cave itself, recent finds of Châtelperronian and
   Aurignacian tools in alternating levels also make the point about
   contemporaneity. The RC dating of the 3000-year sequence at the latter
   site fits into the 43,000 to 40,000BCE time bracket, some 12000 years
   before the  Neanderthals died out at around 28,000 years ago.
   Recent work at Munich on DNA on fossil bone from an individual found
   in the Neander valley indicates that the Neanderthals and modern man
   were not closely related. A recent conclusion holds that the
   Neanderthal line evolved from that of Heidelberg Man in Europe and
   into Homo sapiens in Africa. These changes are described as
   anagenesis. Ultimately, H. sapiens moved out of Africa into Europe and
   Neanderthal Man died out soon afterwards, probably between 230,000 and
   30,000 years ago. First discoveries in the Neanderthal genome sequence
   indicate that some individuals were red-haired and light-skinned and
   that it is possible that they used a form of language.
   Study of an eight-year old child's tooth from Belgium reveals that it
   was equal in development to that of a 10-12 year-old child suggesting
   that Neanderthals were intermediate in speed of development  between
   early members of our genus (e.g. homo erectus) and living humans.


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