Neanderthals in the News

[Dark Lightning]

It would have been an unpleasant situation, all around. I remember having a tooth extracted that I could taste the pus when I pushed on it with my tongue. Not a pleasant taste. I was 11 years old, and pretty sure I didn't even have a toothbrush. We were poor. I honestly don't know how the dentist got paid. That would have been in '63; I think that the parents signed for a second mortgage that year by candle light, because the power (and gas heat) had already been turned off.

[Recusant]

Yes, a bit amazing (pun intended) and I think indirect evidence of language capacity in the Neanderthal, though I think that question is already in the past. I think without language it would be excessively difficult if not impossible to convey the idea of grinding a sharp rock in somebody's tooth to (eventually!) relieve the pain. 

[zorkan]

https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2026-02-16/ludovic-slimak-on-neanderthals-it-was-suicide-humans-disappear-when-they-no-longer-want-to-live-because-their-values-have-collapsed.html

A reason to ditch AI?

[Recusant]

https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2026-02-16/ludovic-slimak-on-neanderthals-it-was-suicide-humans-disappear-when-they-no-longer-want-to-live-because-their-values-have-collapsed.html

A reason to ditch AI?

Hmm, El Pais wanted me to sign up to read the article. There is an archived version here. That version also pops up a sign-up request, but refreshing the page gets rid of it.

Slimak presents an intriguing hypothesis, but I don't think there's any clear evidence to support it. He claims that Neanderthals had a fundamentally different brain structure such that even if he raised one with his own children "There would be something inside them that would condition them to see the world in their own way; limitations that not even the culture I taught them could overcome." Maybe there's physical evidence to substantiate that claim, but I doubt it.

However he also extrapolates from human mentality (essentially claiming that Neanderthals would exhibit a reaction to cultural shock that is seen in some Homo sapiens) as evidence to support his hypothesis. It's self-contradictory. If you hypothesize that Neanderthal had a fundamentally different brain structure then you can't use the mentality of some Homo sapiens to support your hypothesis about Neanderthal behavior. Maybe he's able to mend that contradiction convincingly in his book but I don't see how. I'd think he'd have explained it in the interview.

[zorkan]

Not sure if you have read his book.
Not only did it challenge the way I think about Neanderthals, but it provided a great answer to why Catholics are obsessed with love and the eucharist. They are linked by cannibalism.

He had written an earlier book on Neanderthals.

[Recusant]

In my post it's clear that I've not read the book. If you have, maybe you can explain how Slimak supports his claim regarding the difference between the mentalities of Neanderthal and anatomically modern humans and overcomes the contradiction within his hypothesis.

[zorkan]

I don't have a copy of either of his books.
I know one is in a library I visit, so I'll try and answer soon.

Meanwhile, some points similar to what he makes:

The profile of a Neanderthal shows no chin.
Wiki:
"The human chin is a bony protrusion on the lower jaw unique to Homo sapiens and completely absent in all other living primates and extinct human ancestors like Neanderthals. It emerged as an unintentional evolutionary byproduct (a "spandrel") of our faces shrinking as our diets shifted to softer, cooked foods."

Some people today show little chin and rounded profile.. Might be evidence of neanderthal genes.
 
While Neanderthals ranged from Atlantic shores to Mongolia, they spent long periods in close proximity, probably not moving for thousands of years.
By way of contrast, Homo sapiens did not evolve to walk, they walked to evolve, and presumably their brains were changed by the shifting panorama.

 

[Recusant]

The evidence of inbreeding (from which the hypothesis arises that they were insular and relatively uninclined to explore) comes from late in the timespan of their existence. The fossil record can't tell us what really happened through the couple of hundred thousand years they were around. The wide geographical range within which Neanderthal is found would seem to refute the idea that they weren't explorers though.

[zorkan]

I understand one point Slimak makes is that as Neanderthals had different sized brains to Sapiens, their consciousness was also different.

He likens the arrival of Sapiens into Neanderthal territory as like survivors of the Erebus expedition arriving into Inuit territory. 
The Inuit fled from these monsters.
Maybe the Neanderthals kept running until it dawned on them that their way of life was over.
A sort of social suicide.

[Recusant]

There are still new things being learned about our robust cousins.

"Surprising diversity found among Europe's last Neanderthals" | Phys.org

A new study published in Nature provides the most detailed picture to date of Neanderthal diversity in Western Europe shortly before their extinction.

By analyzing genetic data from 27 Neanderthals from present-day Belgium and France, researchers found that late Neanderthal populations were more genetically connected and diverse than previously thought. The study also found no evidence of recent gene flow from modern humans into these groups and challenges the idea that progressive genetic decline was a major factor in their disappearance.

[Continues . . .]

The paper is open access:

"Genetic diversity of late Neanderthals in northwestern Europe" | Nature

Abstract:

Archaeological, osteological and genetic evidence suggests that Neanderthals lived in small groups; however, less is known about whether these groups were part of isolated communities or belonged to larger, well-connected populations.

The dense concentration of broadly contemporaneous Neanderthal sites in the Meuse Basin, Belgium, provides a rare opportunity to study regional populations at high resolution. Here we generated genetic data from 27 Neanderthals who lived less than approximately 52,500 years ago from ten archaeological sites in Belgium and France, including a high-coverage genome from a 45,000-year-old individual from Goyet, Belgium.

We show that most of these individuals are more closely related to one another than to other contemporaneous late Neanderthals in Europe. Further, some of these individuals carry DNA from a Neanderthal lineage predating the split of late Neanderthals. Although these Neanderthals overlapped temporally with early modern humans in northwestern Europe from around 47,000 years ago, we find no evidence of recent gene flow from modern humans.

They also do not show the genetic signatures of mating among close relatives found in Altai Neanderthals, suggesting that they lived in larger or better-connected groups. Moreover, genetic load did not accumulate over time, arguing against progressive genetic deterioration as a driver of Neanderthal extinction.

[Recusant]

While there was a recent item about evidence of significant Neanderthal woodworking (open access paper), I never intended this thread to be an exhaustive record of Neanderthal paleoanthropology. So I didn't make a post for it despite the involvement and interest here in woodworking (Dark Lightning and myself at least).

However this one is a bit more significant. Remains of a Neanderthal who appears to have been killed with a spear. The authors of the paper conjecture a rounded wood point (I'd say likely fire-hardened) as opposed to a flint spearhead.

"Ancient Hole in Neanderthal Shoulder Blade May Be The Oldest Spear Attack Ever Discovered" | ScienceAlert

In a moment of violence roughly 75,000 years ago, something sharp pierced the body of the victim, known only as Shanidar A, an adult Neanderthal estimated to be 45 years old.

The deadly injury left a gaping 15-millimeter-wide hole in Shanidar A's left shoulder blade.

We can't say for sure what made that hole, but in a new study in Scientific Reports, researchers suggest it was probably a spear, meaning this could be the earliest known example of an interpersonal spear attack in the hominin fossil record.

"The position of the wound and the force required to push it right through the Neanderthal's body bear the hallmarks of an intended kill shot directed towards the heart," says paleoanthropologist Emma Pomeroy from Cambridge University.

[Continues . . .]

The paper is open access:

"Evidence for funerary behaviour and lethal trauma in a new Neanderthal individual from Shanidar Cave" | Nature Scientific Reports

Abstract:

Shanidar Cave has long featured in debates concerning Neanderthal cognitive capacity and behaviour, including evidence for care and intentional burial. By identifying additional individuals, including Shanidar A reported here, new excavations have expanded a burial cluster first identified in 1960.

Shanidar A, an older adult, was deposited around 75,000 years ago, decayed, and their skeletal remains were subsequently disturbed by a flash flood. Our findings raise the minimum number of individuals in this unparalleled cluster to five, supporting interpretations of complex, potentially meaningful Neanderthal mortuary behaviour.

Shanidar A also demonstrates major non-fatal trauma to the face and rare evidence of perimortem penetrating trauma among Neanderthals. Trauma among Middle and Upper Palaeolithic Neanderthals and modern humans, and subsequent survival, is common. However, the facial injury was severe and unusual. It suggests care from group members, the evolutionary origins of which are also contentious.

The nature of the perimortem penetrating traumatic injury adds to a small corpus of such injuries in the hominin fossil record. The morphology of this scapula perforation is consistent with injury from a wooden spear, providing valuable (albeit indirect) evidence for the use of wooden implements in the Middle Palaeolithic, which is often difficult to demonstrate given the rare preservation of organic materials.

[Dark Lightning]

Yep, Homo Sap is a vicious creature. It's how we got where we are. I get pissed sometimes when wood working, but I walk away. No fire-sharpened spears in my repertoire, though. Though I have been known to throw a wrench during my mechanic days.

Maybe I missed something- do you work wood, too? Or do I check in here so little that I've forgotten? <subconsciously suspects memory issues due to age>

[Recusant]

Cabinetry mostly anymore. I used to do pretty much anything that was required. Finish carpentry, framing, decks, whatever. Kind of a guerilla crew: Often I'd tote my tools (and once in a while materials) to the jobsite on a bicycle as needed. That could get adventurous on occasion.

Preoccupied with being a carer and factotum for a ramshackle old house in the woods now. The closest I ever got to your fine carving and kumiko work though was raised panel wainscoting.  We did some up a stairway once, which was entertaining.

[Dark Lightning]

Raised panel wainscot up a stairway? That's pretty adventurous. I've never even done raised panels, except to buy cabinets already done. I've done what you've done in the past, though. I tried using a lock miter bit in my router once. That whirring bit was terrifying. Want a lock miter kit?  I'll do locking rabbets, though.