Course description

We are All Neanderthals

Forty thousand years ago in Europe, homo sapiens (or ‘clever man’) was not the only human species alive – there were at least three others. Many of us are familiar with one of these, the Neanderthals, because we sometimes use the word to describe someone who is uncivilized, barbarous and uneducated. Although they had stocky bodies and large foreheads, they were also strikingly similar to us and lived in many parts of Europe for more than 300,000 years.

For the most part, Neanderthals were a resilient group. They existed for about 200,000 years longer than we modern humans have so far been alive. Evidence of their lives vanishes, however, around 28,000 years ago – letting us know when they may, finally, have died out.

Fossils show that, towards the end, the final few were living in places like Gibraltar. (You can just see this tiny island on the map as a blue dot in the south-west!) The only one of four caves there that has yet been explored suggests that it then housed the highest Neanderthal population anywhere in Europe, whether this were dozens of people, or a few families.

Their habitation in Gibraltar was first discovered in 1848, with the finding of the first fully adult Neanderthal skull. Fossil remains discovered in the cave suggest that Gibraltar’s Neanderthals lived and died there for more than 100,000 years until as recently as 24 to 33,000 years ago.

While the front area of the cave is open, bathed in sunlight with a view of the ocean, the back is darker and contains many rooms. The caves remain cool in the summer and warm in colder months, a perfect place to stay out of sight of dangerous predators.

Like the rest of their species, the Neanderthals who lived here were very different from what we once imagined – a violent group of primitive humans who could only grunt to communicate. In fact, they were very much like us. This is supported by genetic insights. Not only do we share 99.5% of the same DNA, we still carry some exclusively Neanderthal DNA today. That’s because when we arrived in Europe from Africa, we met each other several times and interbred with them. All individuals (except in Africa) still carry evidence of this prehistoric mixing of the two species.

Remains from the cave suggest that they ate seafood and marine mammals. They could swim. They even hunted dolphins. We know they hunted – or scavenged – large animals like mammoths, woolly rhinos and deer.

The remains of more than 150 different species of bird have also been uncovered in the cave, many with tooth and cut marks, which suggests Neanderthals ate them. We don't know if they actively hunted birds, a much more difficult task. What we do know is that they didn't necessarily eat all the birds they were hunting, especially not birds like vultures, which are full of acid. It seems they were catching these to wear the feathers. They preferred birds with black ones, maybe to wear these as jewellery. This all points to one thing: that Neanderthals had a sophisticated understanding and appreciation of cultural symbols.

They may even have been producing art. In one surprising 2014 discovery, archaeologists found a marking on the wall of the cave, now described as the "Neanderthal hash tag". A great deal of preparation must have gone into it. When archaeologists tried to make the same design themselves, they found that the deepest cut required 60 strokes of a sharp stone tool. Further discoveries of decorative shells and the use of red ochre at Neanderthal sites also point to the possibility they used objects for art. Again, if this is the case, it shows Neanderthals had symbolic abilities once thought to be uniquely human. In 2018 in Spain, more cave paintings of animals and geometric shapes were attributed to Neanderthals. This time they dated even earlier – to 64,000 years ago.

If they were capable of producing art and jewellery, it might not surprise us that recent studies indicate they also had sophisticated language abilities. In one 2013 study looking at a bone known to be crucial for speech – the hyoid bone – a team found that the Neanderthals’ version worked just like ours. If Neanderthals also had language, then they were truly human, too. If they could speak, then they could efficiently communicate information to each other, such as how to make tools. They may even have taught us modern humans a thing or two. This is probably exactly what happened when Neanderthals and modern humans came into contact. A type of bone tool, discovered at a known Neanderthal site, later was also found where only modern humans lived.

When we lived closer to the equator in Africa, we didn’t need warmer clothes. Neanderthals, on the other hand, lived in the colder European climates for many years before modern humans arrived. Learning how Neanderthals dealt with the cold would have been of great benefit to us.

Neanderthals were much more evolved than what we used to think. We should consider that Neanderthals and homo sapiens at that time were equals in many areas. This becomes even more apparent considering additional evidence that suggests they buried their dead, too – another important cultural ritual showing complex symbolic behaviour.

But there were also clear differences between Neanderthals and modern humans. Obviously, we are here today and they are not. And as they reached the last few millennia of their existence, they were facing new challenges – ones they weren’t as well equipped to deal with as modern humans proved to be.

Their close-combat hunting tactics, which had served them well for larger prey, may have made it much more difficult to catch enough rabbits to keep them alive when other food was in short supply. Modern humans had more technologies to catch these fast-moving smaller prey, items like nets or traps. Certainly when times got tough modern humans always had more at their disposal.

Climatic evidence shows that Neanderthals also existed in an increasingly hostile environment. Extreme cold periods in other parts of Europe pushed them further south until they arrived in areas like Gibraltar. This means that by the time the last Neanderthals reached their final place on Earth they were very inbred – bad news for a population that was already shrinking.

At the same time, a 2019 finding also proposes that their fertility was declining, perhaps due to a lack of food, as infertility can be a result of decreasing body fat. Even a slight change in the fertility rate of younger females could have had a dramatic impact on the growth rate of the Neanderthal population and thus on its long-term survival.

For the last years, then, it was a numbers game. The whole story of the extinction has to be looked at over a long period of time. Their population may have become so small that eventually they reached a point of no return.

But while their species is said to be extinct, they are not entirely gone. Large parts of their genome still live on in us today. The last Neanderthals may have died – but their stamp on humanity will be ensured for thousands of years to come.

If you want to watch some videos on this topic, you can click on the links to YouTube videos below.

If you want to answer questions on this article to test how much you understand, you can click on the green box: Finished Reading?

Videos :

1. Neanderthals (4:21)

2. Neanderthal Cave Excavated (10:31)

3. What Neanderthal DNA Is doing to your Genome (4:18)

4. Neanderthals Hunting (3:31)

5. Neanderthal Teeth Reveal Truth of the 'Paleo Diet' (1:37)

6. Neanderthal Diet Like Early Modern Human's (3:13)

7. Could Neanderthals Talk like Us? (3:26)

8. Difference Between Humans and Neanderthals (3:28)

9. Neanderthals: Smarter than you Think (3:59)