They have held our fascination ever since we first identified their remains. Today, thanks to new artifacts and technologies, findings about our closest relatives are coming thick and fast.
Arts and crafts
Some of the Neanderthal artifacts discovered were very practical in nature. Bits of twisted wood fiber attached to a modified stone flake found in France in 2017 suggest that at least some Neanderthals knew how to make rope, for example, which may have opened the door to fashioning other objects like clothes, bags, nets and mats. There also is evidence that Neanderthals were heating birch bark to make adhesives — no mean feat. “A few researchers have recently tried to do the same in similar circumstances,” says Nowell, “and it’s a lot harder than most people thought.”
Beyond daily chores, Neanderthals evidently liked to adorn themselves. We now know they were using colorful pigments like red ochre as far back as 200,000 to 250,000 years ago, maybe not just on objects, but also on their own bodies — and they may have sometimes imported the substance from tens of kilometers away. Excavations have also revealed perforated and sometimes painted shells that were likely strung together and worn. A creative Neanderthal in Croatia made a necklace or other adornment out of white-tailed eagle talons, and elsewhere, tool marks found on bird bones suggest that feathers were also popular.
Meanwhile, the book “Them And Us” by Danny Vendramini presents and interesting counterpoint to the more recent warm fuzzy views of neanderthals being placid artists.
He argues (with some decent evidence) than they were the apex predator in their day, and that their primary food source was us (homo sapiens). He claims our female ancestors were used as breeding stock by neanderthals (usually via kidnapping and rape), which is how most people alive today have some neanderthals DNA in them. While our male ancestors were their dinner.
The truth is probably somewhere in between.
As in this week’s tale from The Why Files
