by Bill Schutt
As we sat surrounded by fossilized bones, ancient artifacts, and a small population of lifelike hominid replicas, I asked Tattersall if he thought that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens had interbred and hybridized, the central tenet of the Multiregional (or Regional Continuity) hypothesis.
“Not to any biologically significant extent, no,” he replied. “Neanderthals were incredibly different, and I think they viewed the world very differently, too. Now there may have been a bit of Pleistocene hanky-panky that went on, but I don’t think it was anything that would have affected the future trajectory of either population.”
“So you don’t subscribe to the ‘Neanderthals-R-Us’ hypothesis?”
“Look, you’re a zoologist,” Tattersall replied. “You’re not tainted by the perceived wisdom of certain paleoanthropologists. Just have a look at these guys and make your mind up for yourself. Structurally, anatomically, and presumably behaviorally, too, Neanderthals and modern humans were very, very different. If you didn’t have all these preconceptions we have from paleontological tradition, if you were comparing a Neanderthal and a modern human, you’d probably put them in different genera. They’re very distinctive. They looked different and they behaved different. So they may have interacted to some extent, and they may have even exchanged the odd gene or two, but they certainly didn’t just blend into each other. I just don’t think that that’s plausible at all.”
As evidence, Tattersall cites the fact that in many places in the Middle East and Mediterranean Basin, Neanderthals and modern humans coexisted as morphologically distinct populations “for something like 50,000 years . . . so the idea of a gigantic, late-Pleistocene love-in among morphologically differentiated hominids simply defies every criterion of plausibility.”
Supporting this stance are recent morphological and mitochondrial DNA studies that indicate a clear distinction between modern humans and Neanderthals. Further support came from Swiss researchers Mathias Currat and Laurent Excoffier. In 2011, they used admixture/competition models to calculate the amount of inbreeding that would have occurred when previously separated populations of Neanderthals and Paleolithic humans begin encountering each other. Modeling results showed that low levels of Neanderthal ancestry in Eurasians (2 to 3 percent of the genome) were compatible with an extremely low incidence of interbreeding, with successful couplings between Neanderthals and Paleolithic humans estimated to take place only once every 23 to 50 years.
But whatever hypothesis anthropologists choose to support concerning interactions between Neanderthals and modern humans, and the ultimate demise of the former, Neanderthals are no longer depicted as knuckle-dragging brutes. Instead, studies have shown that they were highly intelligent, with some specimens exhibiting a cranial capacity (i.e., brain volume) 100 to 150 milliliters greater than the 1,500-milliliter capacity of modern humans! Researchers have also learned that Neanderthals used fire, wore clothing, and constructed an array of stone tools, including knives, spearheads, and hand axes.
The possibility that Neanderthals practiced cannibalism was briefly argued in 1866 and again in the 1920s, after a fossil skull discovered in Italy was observed to have a gaping hole above and behind the right eye. The wound was initially interpreted as evidence that the skull had been broken open by another Neanderthal intent on extracting the brain for food, but researchers now believe that a hyena caused the damage.
More recent and significantly stronger evidence for Neanderthal cannibalism came from multiple sites in northern Spain, southeastern France, and Croatia. In each instance, Neanderthal bones exhibited at least some of the characteristics interpreted by anthropologists as “patterns of processing.” This term refers to the telltale damage found on the bones of animals that have been consumed by humans. This Neanderthal-inflicted damage includes some combination of cut marks, which result when a blade is used to remove edible tissue like muscle; signs of gnawing or peeling; percussion hammering (abrasions or pits that result from the bone being hammered against some form of anvil); burning; and the fracturing of long bones, presumably to access the nutrient-rich marrow cavity.
But even when these patterns of processing are observed, researchers must proceed with caution before making claims about the occurrence of cannibalism. While these forms of bone damage can be strong indicators of human activity, they can also result from human behavior or phenomena completely unrelated to cannibalism. According to anthropologist Tim White, “Bodies may be buried, burned, placed on scaffolding, set adrift, put in tree trunks or fed to scavengers. Bones may be disinterred, washed, painted, buried in bundles or scattered on stones.” In what is known as secondary burial, bodies that have already been buried or left to decompose are disinterred and subjected to additional handling. For the ancient Jews this involved placing the bones into stone boxes called ossuaries. For some Australian aboriginal groups and perhaps the ancient Minoans, secondary burial practices included the removal of flesh and cutting of bones. Rituals like these make it extremely difficult to distinguish between funerary rites and cannibalism, especially if the group in question no longer exists or if the rites are no longer practiced.
Cut marks on bones may be the result of violent acts related to war or murder. If you can imagine someone unearthing the skeleton of a soldier killed by a bayonet or sword, they might misinterpret the cut marks on the bones as evidence of cannibalism.
Clearly, then, blade marks and other damage inflicted on Neanderthals by conspecifics and other ancient human groups may have been caused by a variety of actions. Archaeologists now consider this type of osteological damage to be strong evidence for cannibalistic behavior only when it can be matched to similar damage found on the bones of game animals uncovered at the same site. The implication is that if animal and human bodies were processed in the same manner, and if the remains were discarded together, it is reasonably certain that cannibalism took place.
This appears to have been precisely what happened at a Neanderthal cave site known as Moula-Guercy in southeastern France. An excavation begun there in 1991 revealed the remains of six Neanderthals and at least five red deer (Cervus elaphus) dating to approximately 100,000 years before the present. The bones were distributed together and butchered in a similar fashion. The long bones and skulls were smashed, and telltale cut marks on the sides of the skulls indicated that the large jaw closure muscles had been filleted. There were also characteristic patterns of modification on the lower jaws, providing evidence that the tongues had been removed. Both Neanderthal and deer bones also exhibited peeling and percussion pits. Lastly, there were distinctive patterns of cuts indicating that bodies from both species had been disarticulated at the shoulder, a process that would have made carrying and handling them easier. According to Tim White, “The circumstantial forensic evidence [for cannibalism at Moula-Guercy] is excellent.”
Of course there is always the possibility that this type of damage to the animal bones took place during butchery, but that the same types of stone tools were also used to deflesh and disarticulate human remains during non-cannibalistic mortuary practices. Echoing what Mark Norell would have considered “the smoking gun” for dinosaur cannibalism, anthropology writer Paul Bahn wrote that, “The only definitive evidence for prehistoric cannibalism would be the discovery of human remains inside fossil faeces or inside a human stomach.”
But among anthropologists, even this type of evidence sparked a controversy.
In 2000, researchers working in the Four Corners region of the American Southwest reported that human myoglobin (a form of hemoglobin found in muscles) had been identified from a single fossilized coprolite described as being “consistent with human origin.” The petrified poop had evidently been deposited onto a cooking hearth belonging to prehistoric Puebloans (Anasazi) sometime around 1150 CE. Together with defleshed human bones and butchering tools coated with human blood residue, the 30-gram fecal fossil was used to support the claim that cannibalism had taken place at the southwestern Colorado site known as Cowb
oy Wash. It is a finding that has been the subject of considerable debate, with some researchers insisting that the bone and blood evidence could also have resulted from corpse mutilation, ritualized executions, or funerary practices.
These scientists also point out that while the myoglobin in the coprolite was certainly human in origin, the animal that produced the feces was never positively identified. This raises the possibility that a coyote or wolf consumed part of a corpse and subsequently defecated in the abandoned cooking hearth.
Even with a set of paleoanthropological safeguards in place, mistakes can still occur. Some of these have been the result of bad writing, while in other instances, further research led to the discovery of additional non-cannibalism-related alternatives, these having nothing to do with animal or human interactions.
“In many cases you’re finding bones in the normal paleontological environment,” Ian Tattersall explained. “That is to say, they’ve all been scattered and they’ve been concentrated by water or whatever’s happened to them, which had nothing to do with the actual human activities that may or may not have been carried out after they were deceased.”
To envision how this “scattering” or concentration of fossils can occur, picture a stream cutting through a fossil-containing layer of rock. As the stream walls gradually wear away, fossils are exposed, washed out, and deposited into the stream bed randomly and over time. Similarly, different parts from the same organism might be exposed at different times, which can also lead to fragments from a single individual being scattered across a wide area.
This water-assisted movement can also take place before the specimens are fossilized. For example, the bodies of creatures that died along the length of an ancient body of water—or in it—may have been carried away by currents and deposited together due to gravity or the physical properties of the stream or river. If sediments covered the bodies rapidly enough, they may have become fossilized, but their final location may have little or nothing to do with the behavior and associations that took place when the organisms were alive. For this reason, archaeologists must be cautious when animal and human bones are found mixed together. The mélange does not necessarily prove that humans did the mixing.13
One instance in which the evidence for human cannibalism remains solid involves Homo antecessor (“pioneering man”), the reputed ancestor of Neanderthals. The first fossils of this species were uncovered in the 1980s in Atapuerca, a region in northern Spain. Initially, spelunkers found the bones of extinct cave bears at the bottom of a narrow 50-foot-deep pit. Excavation of the pit, now known as Sima de los Huesos (Pit of the Bones), was initiated in 1984 by paleontologist Emiliano Aguirre. After his retirement, Aguirre’s students continued to work at the site, and in 1991 they began emerging from the stifling heat and claustrophobic conditions with well-preserved hominid bones.
Since then, the site has yielded more than 5,000 bone fragments from approximately 30 humans of varying age and sex. The researchers noted that some aspects of the skull and post-cranial skeleton appeared to be Neanderthal-like (including a large pelvis that someone christened “Elvis”). Eventually, though, the remains from Atapuerca exhibited sufficient anatomical differences from Neanderthals to warrant placing them into a separate species.
According to Ian Tattersall, Homo antecessor was “almost Neanderthal but not quite. . . . These guys were on the way to becoming Neanderthals.” To the surprise of researchers, the remains of Homo antecessor recovered from Sima de los Huesos were dated to a minimum of 530,000 years, indicating that the Neanderthal lineage had been in Europe 300,000 to 400,000 years before the first Neanderthals, far longer than anyone imagined.
By 1994, researchers were claiming that Homo antecessor remains showed evidence of having been cannibalized. In this case, the fracture patterns, cut marks, and “tool-induced surface modification” were identical to the damage found on the bones of non-human animals that had presumably been used as food. All of the bones (human and non-human) were randomly dispersed as well. The researchers at Atapuerca concluded that the H. antecessor remains came from “the victims of other humans who brought bodies to the site, ate their flesh, broke their bones, and extracted the marrow, in the same way they were feeding on the [animals] also preserved in the stratum.”
Interestingly, the presence of so many types of game animals led the same researchers to suggest that Atapuerca did not represent an example of stress-related survival cannibalism, and Tattersall agreed. “Sometimes the environment was pretty rich and you wouldn’t necessarily need to practice cannibalism to make your metabolic ends meet, as it were. You’d be able to relatively easily find sources of protein otherwise.”
Accordingly, the Neanderthal ancestors living at Atapuerca were likely not prehistoric versions of the Donner Party—stranded in horrible conditions and compelled by starvation to consume their dead. Instead, Homo antecessor, like many species throughout the animal kingdom, may have simply considered others of their kind to be food. In other words, they may have eaten human flesh because it was readily available and because they liked it.
No one is absolutely certain when the transition from Homo antecessor to Neanderthal Man took place, but it probably happened sometime around 150,000 years ago. If one does not subscribe to the idea that Neanderthal genes were eventually overwhelmed through interbreeding with their more intelligent cousins, then Homo neanderthalensis appears to have gone extinct approximately 30,000 years ago. I asked Tattersall to elaborate.
“Neanderthals and modern humans [i.e., Homo sapiens] managed to somehow partition the Near East among themselves for a long, long period of time, at a time when modern humans were not behaving like they do today.”
“How did these humans differ from us?” I asked him.
“They left no symbolic record [e.g., depictions of their behavior and beliefs]. As soon as they started leaving a symbolic record, the Neanderthals were out of there.”
I told Tattersall that I still didn’t see the connection, so he explained it further. “I think that by the time the Neanderthals’ homeland in Europe was invaded by modern humans, humans were behaving in the modern way and had become insuperable competitors.”
Given what we know about modern humans and their treatment of the indigenous groups they encountered, it’s difficult to argue against Tattersall’s conclusions. In all likelihood, the Neanderthal homeland was indeed invaded by an advanced, symbolism-driven species and, as we’ll see in the following chapter, it would have been more of a surprise in fact if Homo sapiens hadn’t raped, enslaved, and slaughtered the Neanderthals and other groups they encountered there.
* * *
11 In the early 20th century, “Thal,” the German word for “valley” was changed to “Tal.” As a consequence, “Neandertal” is a common alternative to “Neanderthal.” Since the scientific name for the species (or subspecies) remained neanderthalensis, most scientists do not use the new spelling. Soon after the name was coined, researchers determined that two other collections of strange bones found decades earlier in Belgium and Gibraltar (and unnamed by those who discovered them), were also the remains of Neanderthals.
12 Today, even among scientists and academics, calling someone a Neanderthal rarely implies that we’re referring to a skilled hunter who uses his oversized brain to fashion and employ an array of sophisticated tools.
13 Similarly, cave collapses also appear to have caused the demise of a number of Neanderthals whose fossilized bones were initially thought to exhibit percussion pits.
9: Columbus, Caribs, and Cannibalism
The captain . . . took two parrots, very large and very different from those seen before. He found much cotton, spun and ready for spinning; and articles of food; and he brought away a little of everything; especially he brought away four or five bones of the arms and legs of men. When we saw this, we suspected that the islands were those islands of the Caribe, which are inhabited by people who eat human flesh.
—Dr. Diego Álvarez
Chanca
The quote above came from Dr. Diego Álvarez Chanca, a physician from Seville who accompanied Christoffa Corombo (a.k.a. Christopher Columbus) during his second voyage to the New World in 1493. Columbus had come ashore on the island he would name Santa María de Guadalupe. As the landing party entered a small village, the local inhabitants fled in terror, leaving behind everything they owned. It was a response that had taken them a little over a year to develop.
During his first voyage in 1492, Columbus referred to all of the native people as índios, but by a year later a distinction had been made between the peaceful Arawaks (also called Taínos) and another group known to the locals as the Caribes (or more commonly, Caribs). What Columbus would never know was that the indigenous inhabitants were actually a diverse assemblage that had been living on the islands for hundreds of years. Their ancestors had set out from coastal Venezuela, where the out-flowing currents of the Orinoco River carried the migrants into the open sea and far beyond. At each island stop, these settlers developed their own cultures and customs, so that by the time the Spaniards arrived, the entire Caribbean island chain had already been colonized, with settlements extending as far north as the Bahamas.
Columbus, though, cared little about local customs or history. Instead he noted that the Arawaks were gentle and friendly, and he wasted little time in passing this information on to his royal backers in Spain. “[The Arawaks] are fitted to be ruled and to be set to work, to cultivate the land and do all else that may be necessary.”
