The Cave Painters
Page 4
Though sometimes they might have the good luck to be able to drive game over a cliff, their best weapons for hunting were wooden spears that they smoothed and sharpened with stone tools. The spears couldn't be thrown effectively. Instead the Neanderthals thrust them into their prey at short range. Contrary to past opinion, which held that they preferred to attack animals that were injured, sick, old, or very young, it now appears that they liked to target prime adults, which made hunting at such close quarters very dangerous. Neanderthal bones contain so many healed fractures, particularly around the head and neck, that one influential paper compared the pattern of Neanderthal injuries to that of modern rodeo cowboys and found that they were remarkably similar. The authors of the paper concluded that the similarity implies that Neanderthals, like cowboys, had “frequent close encounters with large ungulates unkindly disposed to the humans involved.”
The Neanderthals’ great muscle mass, while an advantage in many ways, took constant effort to maintain. Their muscles required so many calories each day that they would have needed to stuff themselves with animal fat, bone marrow, brains, and the like. Their clothes and shelters were apparently rudimentary, so just staying warm, especially at night, meant keeping all those great muscles in constant motion to generate heat. So much intense activity might explain why they died so young. They simply wore out.
We don't know with certainty whether they could speak or not, but their society remained primitive. In their camps they never marked off any area for ceremonies or social occasions. The routine of their life—hunting, dressing meat, building fires, making tools—never varied, and there is little or no evidence that they had ways of symbolizing such activities or making them part of a rite or tradition that would add a meaning beyond the repetition that was necessary just to stay alive. Their groups remained small, probably because they didn't create the cohesive cultural patterns that make large groups possible—notions of authority and status, a respect for extended kinship, the ways of dressing and acting that show an individual's membership in the group as well as rank and status. The Neanderthals were hominids, but they did not act in ways we think of as human.
Except in one way. They buried their dead. Usually they dug a grave in a cave or under an overhanging rock and placed the body on its side with the knees drawn up to the chest in a fetal position. The burials are the reason why so many Neanderthal bones survive.
But the bones are all that do survive. The grave seldom contains anything but the corpse. There are no offerings or special preparations or even sentimental gifts for the departed one, so these burials aren't evidence of a developed culture or of religious beliefs, except in one unique case. A grave in a cave named Shanidar in Iraq contained clumps of flower pollen. The pollen could mean that the corpse had been decorated with flowers, and that in turn would imply a religious ritual preparing the dead for an afterlife. The Shanidar burial inspired the notion of the Neanderthals as the first flower children. Unfortunately, it's just as likely that rodents brought in the pollen, since the grave was latticed with their burrows. Unless someone should discover a similar burial site, the meaning of the Shanidar cave can never be determined.
But all Neanderthal burials, even without special offerings, do prove that the Neanderthals had just enough feeling for one another and had developed just enough of a social structure to want to recognize the death of a member of their group. They took the time to carry the body to a cave and dig a hole even though all they had to dig with were their hands, rocks, and sticks. Then they laid the body carefully inside the hole before covering it with dirt and rocks. Their careful burials reveal a glimmer of the potential the Neanderthals had for a richer life, a potential they began to realize after the humans arrived in their territory.
Jean-Pierre Bocquet-Appel and Pierre-Yves Demars are two French researchers who published a study in 2000 in the British archaeological journal Antiquity. Three sets of maps are the core of the paper. The first set begins with a map showing those places where there is evidence of Neanderthals from 40,000 years ago. The next map shows the places with evidence of Neanderthals from 37,500 years ago. The sequence continues with a new map for every 2,500 years down to 27,500 years ago. The first map shows the Neanderthals spanning Europe from Iberia to the Balkans. In the second-to-last map, they have disappeared from everywhere but a sliver at the foot of the Pyrenees in southern France and a toehold in the far southwestern corner of Spain. In the next map, the final one in the first set, from 27,500 years ago, they have disappeared completely.
The second set of maps covers the same period of time, but instead of tracing the Neanderthal contraction, it shows the spread of modern humans east to west across Europe until they—we— had spread all across the continent from the Balkans to Spain, advancing as the Neanderthals retreated.
The third set of maps shows the areas where humans and Neanderthals lived in the same place at the same time. This set of maps proves that it would be a mistake to assume that the modern humans were swooping down on the Neanderthals and driving them relentlessly west into the Atlantic. First of all, there were so few people and so few Neanderthals in such a vast expanse of land that the times when they actually saw each other were probably rare. It's also possible that when the modern humans saw Neanderthals, they avoided them and simply pressed on to new territory. There was plenty to go around. In fact, the third set of maps shows that there was only one area where the Neanderthals and modern humans coexisted for an extended period of time. From about 35,000 until 27,500 years ago they lived together between the foothills of the Pyrenees and the valley of the Vezere River in southern France—exactly the area where the cave paintings first appeared.
And here, too, the first few seeds of Neanderthal creativity bloomed for a short time even as the Neanderthals themselves diminished in number and finally disappeared. Why did they disappear?
One theory holds that the Neanderthals did not become extinct at all. Instead they interbred with humans and became part of our ancestry. This idea is part of the “multiregional” theory of human origins. The theory rejects the view that modern humans originated in Africa and migrated out from there into the rest of the world. Instead, it holds that modern humans evolved more or less simultaneously in many regions across the globe from the existing populations of older hominids. The multiregional theory is the minority opinion, but it has not been refuted entirely and it is buttressed by the archaeological record, such as it is, of hominids in eastern Asia, Australia, and the Pacific.
But the multiregional explanation that the Neanderthals melded into modern humans appears to be mistaken. In 1997 an international scientific team managed to extract a small sample of DNA from the first Neanderthal skeleton ever found. In 2000 a different international team recovered a second DNA sample from the skeleton of an infant Neanderthal. Analyses of the two samples yielded identical results that proved there is no trace of specifically Neanderthal genes in our DNA. Perhaps modern humans never or rarely had sex with Neanderthals, despite living close to one another for thousands of years, because of a social taboo on one side or the other or both. Or perhaps individuals from the two groups did have sex but could not conceive. Or if Neanderthals and humans could conceive, then their mixed-species children must have been sterile. Either way, the fact remains that Neanderthals did not become our ancestors and that means they must have faded into extinction.
Until well into the twentieth century, the assumption was that we—modern humans—had killed them off and it was a good thing that we had. In 1921 the popular novelist H. G. Wells published The Grisly Folk, whose theme was exactly that. But, battered as Neanderthal bones often are, there is no hard evidence of violence inflicted by either humans or other Neanderthals. One skeleton does reveal a stab wound, but it wasn't fatal and could have been the result of a hunting accident. And if the humans were so bloodthirsty toward the Neanderthals, how could the two groups have lived together in southern France for more than seven thousand years?
Some papers, filled with careful mathematics, show how even a slight difference in birth rate or life expectancy could have destroyed the Neanderthals in less than a thousand years without any overt action by the modern humans. Even if the Neanderthals simply took longer to wean their children, that slight advantage multiplied over generations would have ensured that the modern humans would prevail. Another theory is that we had a broader diet than the Neanderthals and thus survived. A number of large mammals died out about 30,000 years ago, and perhaps the Neanderthals were merely one such species. Or, when the climate grew more severe, as it did around 30,000 years ago, modern humans were able to adapt because of our larger, more efficient, and more cohesive communities, while it may be that the Neanderthals in their small bands could not.
The trouble with these theories is that the Neanderthals had survived in Europe for more than 100,000 years, weathering every swing in the climate from bitter to benign to bitter again, no matter what their birth rate and whatever the size and complexity of their communities. They faltered only after we arrived. Something we did, either intentionally or unintentionally, sealed their doom.
And certainly some of it was intentional. Certainly some of it was violent. Throughout history there has been violence whenever a stronger population on the move finds a weaker group living on desirable land. It is naive to suppose that in prehistory violence seldom occurred or that it had little overall effect on the extinction of the Neanderthals. Azar Gat of the University of Tel Aviv had the courage to publish a paper in 1999 that said as much, but he stands alone in the great debate.
It's true that there wasn't a great difference between the weapons on either side, and that the Neanderthals were physically stronger and had the initial advantage of complete familiarity with the territory where they lived. But the newcomers, or perhaps we should even call them the invaders, were able to organize. We know from observing hunter-gatherer societies that still survive that no matter where they live, whether in the desert or tropical forests or the arctic ice, they have family groups of 10 or 20, then associated groups of 150 to 175, and then a larger regional group of about 500 individuals. It's reasonable to assume that the first modern humans lived in a similar family and social organization of about the same size, especially since the archaeological evidence is consistent with that assumption. The Neanderthals, meanwhile, lived in their small groups of maybe 15 to 30. Strong as they were, 30 poorly organized Neanderthals would have been no match for 150 to 500 humans who were organized enough to cooperate in a fight.
There must have been attacks. Presumably the Neanderthals fought back. But much more often the Neanderthals probably just retreated and that is why no evidence of violence remains. Among the surviving hunter-gatherers, as among the tribes in North America before the arrival of Europeans, intimidation, threats, and boasting displays are much more frequent than actual combat. The invading humans would quickly have learned that a threatening display of their superior numbers would make the Neanderthals flee into the far distance.
The Neanderthals spent their last 7,500 years mostly around the Pyrenees and elsewhere in northern Spain and southern France. It's a land cut by hills, mountains, and river valleys into small sections that are isolated from one another. That meant the Neanderthals and modern humans could each occupy different territories and live without much contact with one another, especially since the population of both groups was so small. Still, there must have been at least some occasional contact, and it produced the Neanderthals’ most poignant legacy.
It was most likely clear to them that nearly everything the new humans had was better than what they had—better tools, better clothes, better camps and shelters, better hearths, and better methods of hunting. Also, the newcomers had things like jewelry, beads, and carved pendants. Seeing that there was, somehow, a better way, the Neanderthals began to copy, or try to copy, their rivals.
Neanderthal remains in France, especially at a site named Arcy-sur-Cure in Burgundy, include these first desperate efforts to transform themselves. There are awls, pins, and other artifacts carved from bone and ivory, materials only the modern humans had used before. These Neanderthals painted bones and made notches in them, perhaps their first rude efforts at decoration. They made ivory rings and they carved grooves at the base of teeth from wolves, foxes, reindeer, hyenas, and other animals and presumably hung the teeth from their necks or garments. And they carved grooves in long bones for some lost, unknowable reason of their own.
There are 125 sites containing such remains in France and northern Spain. Although they date from the same epoch, they are distinct from the modern human sites in the same area—another proof that in all the time Neanderthals and modern humans lived closely together, they never merged. The Neanderthals were forced into ever more remote and unproductive places as their numbers dwindled. They lasted the longest in a rocky wasteland in southwestern Spain.
Since an individual Neanderthal would have been formidable to a single human, it's easy to imagine—and imagining is all it is— the modern humans warning their children against these strange neighbors. Their warnings would have come from real concern, but it is an easy step from there to using the warnings as a disciplinary tool—”The bogeyman will get you if you don't watch out.” In many different Western cultures the belief in ape-man monsters like Big Foot or the Abominable Snowman stubbornly persists. It recalls what our distant ancestors may have felt during moments when they watched a band of their muscular neighbors make their way across a ridge in the foothills of the Pyrenees, a few hyena teeth hanging on rawhide cords around their necks.
CHAPTER 2
A Skeptic Admits His Error;
The Passion of Miss
Mary E, Boyle
O n the western edge of Les Eyzies, the village where Font-de-Gaume is located, there is a small rock shelter formed by a low overhang of a cliff. It is tucked behind a large, two-story house covered with vines. To the right of the shelter, a sagging, aged barn leans against the cliff. A low stone wall runs in front of the shelter. It has a rusted metal gate that hangs open at an odd angle. Apparently no one has bothered to close it for decades. Although both the main street of the little town and the train station are just a few yards away, this shelter is quiet, leafy, and forgotten. There aren't even any signs that point the way here. But there was a time when the attention of all Europe was focused on this tiny spot, which was the site of a discovery that rocked the intellectual community, horrified the church, and gave a new phrase to languages around the world. These events are commemorated—or at least quietly noted—on a steel plaque bolted to the overhanging rock directly above the open gate. It announces that this place, known for generations before the skeletons were discovered as the Cro-Magnon shelter, gave the common name to the first humans who arrived to occupy this land 35,000 to 40,000 years ago: Cro-Magnon man.
It was March 1868 when construction workers discovered five human skeletons beneath the overhang. Unfortunately, the workers mixed up the bones as they uncovered them, but Louis Lartet, a capable archaeologist, soon arrived to excavate the site according to the best practices of the time. Apparently the bones were from three male adults, one female adult, and an infant. Their anatomy was identical to that of modern people, and the skeletons were soon taken to be remains of the direct ancestors of the people then living in the area around Les Eyzies.
The first skele
ton, known as Cro-Magnon 1, or the Old Man, was a male who was about fifty years old when he died. His skull was deeply pockmarked across the cheeks, the result of a painful and disfiguring viral infection. Other skeletons had fused vertebrae in their necks that must have come from terrible injuries. The female skeleton had a fractured skull, although that was not the cause of her death. She had survived with the fracture for several years. The lives of these ancient people were obviously filled with duress, but they were tough enough and canny enough to live to be fifty or even older.
Lartet concluded that the skeletons had been buried deliberately. His digs revealed a fine array of stone tools as well as artistic treasures such as carved antler, carved ivory, and pierced seashells apparently for stringing on clothes, necklaces, or bracelets. These attractive relics were identical to those found in several other sites nearby that had not contained skeletons. Lartet made the obvious assumption that these other relics must also have been made by the Cro-Magnons, who in the tenor of the times came to be described as the Cro-Magnon race. Since the first recognized Neanderthal skull had been discovered in 1856 in the Neander Valley near Düsseldorf, the French took some nationalistic pride in the Cro-Magnons. Their ancestors—that is, the ancestors of the French— had been this sophisticated, attractive, modern-looking race, while the Germans must have descended from the short, thick, dense Neanderthals.
It was a confusing, impassioned period. Even those nationalistic overtones were faint background noise compared to the wrenching debates between science and religion and among the scientists themselves. Charles Darwin had published The Origin of Species in 1859, just three years after the discovery of the Neanderthal skull. The book was circumspect about the origin of humans, although the implication that we had descended from apes was clear. The ambiguity didn't last long. Darwin's disciple Thomas Huxley published Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature in 1863, and Darwin himself followed with The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex in 1871. These books not only made quite clear Darwin's ideas about the descent of humans from apes—specifically chimpanzees and gorillas—but also argued that humans must have originated in Africa because that was where chimpanzees and gorillas lived.