Neanderthals have proved to be the perfect ‘repository’ for all our human projections – they are the embodiment of our darkest, most violent impulses: Neanderthals are primitive brutes who do not use language, they are socially simple and technologically unsophisticated. And they are hairy. A psychoanalyst might even see in these projections signs of sexually repressed fears or desires on our part: these men are big and tall, physically very strong, they use force rather than language to get what they need, and when hunting they use their hands more than their tools (their stone tools, I mean).
Neanderthals have undergone some re-branding in the past few decades, largely due to increase information about their genes and their lifestyles (through archaeology), which has allowed some insight into who ‘Neanderthal’ really is, as opposed to what we want him to be. We now know, for example, that he speaks, due to the presence of the FOXP2 gene; we also know he is socially sapient (he buries his dead, for example); and we also know that he is highly skilled (the Neanderthal stone-tool technology – the Mousterian – was at one point a shared skill with Homo sapiens). All of this evidence has softened our hearts to our hominoid fellow – we’ve even learned to look beyond his ginger hair colour, and have stopped demonizing him to instead humanizing him – he also sings now, and we compose orchestral masterpieces in his honour. We are, at last, coming to terms with the Neanderthal side of us.
After so many years of unjustified discrimination, we seem to have finally accepted Neanderthal man as our brethren… But as our lover too?
Scientifically speaking, proving that hybridization did in fact occur between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals is difficult, if not impossible. For starters, because hybridization as a process in itself is not well understood, we have no idea what such a cross between a human and a Neanderthal would look like. Then there is the question of whether such hybrids could themselves reproduce; if they could, would traits passed on from both parent species get ‘diluted’ as generations went by? And how would these subsequent generations look like? Would we be able to recognize them? What traits are diagnostic of processes of hybridization?
This gap in the scientific knowledge is the perfect hideout for all our psychological hang-ups. If, indeed, we accept this admixture, then we are abdicating from being the exclusive authors of our species’ accomplishments – since Neanderthal would have also contributed in some way. We’ve tried so hard to separate ourselves from ‘them’, that transitioning to viewing Neanderthals as one of us, has forced us to redifine ourselves, inasmuch as identities are created by oposition to the identity of ‘the other’. Namely, this means recognizing in us what has been previously relegated to the Nanderthal realm. We were supposed to be the better, more intelligent and sofisticated ones, who because of our ingenuity, prevailed over all others, and now it seems that we may have somehow merged – us and the savage Neanderthal as one?
Much of the mysticism created around the Neanderthal man came from him being the only other kind of human sharing the planet with us (or at least Europe). The discovery of the ‘hobbit’ in Indonesia has broken with this maniqueist vision of recent human evolution and we now have to come to terms with the fact that we were merely one species, among possibly many others, who somehow managed to thrive in detriment of all others.
These new scientific discoveries have also led to a reshuffling of our collective psyche’s values, after all, there are only two places in the ying yang orb, if the Neanderthal has ceased to occupy one half of this bubble in our heads, this means we are forced to recognize all the evil primitive drives we had associated with him, within us.
In the archaeological record, appart from a few French, Spanish and Portuguese sites, where there are arguable signs of cultural influence, it is clear that there are two very different peoples living side by side (quite literally in some cases). Were we keeping each other at bay because of weariness towards the other? Were they hostile to us? Or did we just not speak the same language? Or did fear make us drive them to their end? Alternatively, did we secretly wonder about each other’s habits, smells, grunts, games? Did we secretly desire our other human version? And did we give in to these desires?
If Trinkaus and Zilhao are right, they may have done so under the Portuguese moon.
In the natural world, hybridization is a lot more frequent than we think: James Mallet (2005) shows that 75% of british ducks, 25% of american warblers, 25% of UK vascular plants, 12% of European butterflies, 10% of the world’s birds, and 6% of European mammals hybridize in the wild. As for primates, there are well documented cases of hybrid zones for baboons (Ackermann et al, 2006; Gabow, 1975; Jolly et al, 1997), Sulawesi macaques (Schillaci et al, 2005; Bynum, 2002), and Saddle-ack Tamarins (Kohn et al, 2001; Hutchison and Cheverud, 1995) in the wild.
Although I don’t think the case for Homo-Neanderthal hybridization is solid enough as it stands today – nor do I think that bones can ever answer this question – my human imagination very much hopes it happened. I am waiting in anticipation for the results of the new genetic mapping project currently under way. I do strongly suspect that this will show that we kept mostly to ourselves – intercourse-wise – but in our psyche, however, I believe we’ve blended the Neanderthal with ourselves, permanently.
And whether his genes are within us or not, there is most definitely a little bit of Neanderthal within us all…
Saw the link from Greg Laden’s site and decided to check it out. You write very well and present clear thoughts on fun topics. I will keep reading.
Thank you Charles
Any suggestions are welcome too.
Were Neanderthals a separate species or not? If they were then that would make them the only hominids not to originate in Africa, which would be strange enough. If they weren’t, then why is there no trace of hybridization to date? While we’re still waiting on the gene mapping results, there’s enough mitochondrial DNA evidence to suggest that they left no living descendants.
I, too, found your blog via Greg Laden’s site. I’m a writer, who is writing a Great Medieval Science Fiction Masterpiece With Neandertals, and in order to do this, I had to learn a lot about Neandertals. I’m still learning, and furthermore I have my own blog, The Writer’s Daily Grind at:
http://www.writersdailygrind.blogspot.com
It’s a mixture of writing-related material, medieval-related, and, of course, Neandertal stuff. I hope you don’t mind my linking your blog to mine! This blog is a real find.
Anne Gilbert
Neanderthals are indeed a separate species, and we share a common ancestor with them from Africa, although it’s not clear who the best contender is at the moment, some say Homo antecessor, orthers Homo heidelbergensis but I don’t think there is a definite consensus.
On the other hand, it’s also probably not true that Neanderthals were the only species to evolve outside of Africa. The discovery of Homo floresiensis in Indonesia clearly indicates that humans were evolving outside of Africa – this hominid is most probably a descendant of asian Homo erectus.
About the mtDNA, this is true, but this doesn’t rule out the possibility of interbreeding or some degree of interbreeding. It just means that in the living population of today there is not ‘neandethal genetic material’ – at least not through the female lineage.
Hi Anne, check my Blogroll, I’ve added this blog yesterday.
Cheers
A nice link to the current genetic developments on this front..
http://remotecentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/max-planck-institute-to-unveil-vindija.html
Thanks for the add, Anna!
I can’t wait for them to unveil the Neandertal genome!
I wandered over from Afarensis
In more modern possible human-neanderthal hybridization there is the case of Zana. She looked human, was very hairy, and none too smart. She was able to learn basic tasks. She had a number of children by her caretaker, most of whom died. Four survived to maturity, two boys and two girls. One man’s skull has been preserved, but a morphological study concluded it was human. Genetic testing has been inconclusive. Links to further information are sparse.
According to a description I read the Almas is human in appearance overall, though the face is more reminiscent of the Neanderthal. They also have red body hair and either go nude or dress in rough approximations of human clothing. This last indicating the presence of weaving and sewing among them, but they are not as facile in the skills as humans are.
The almas is found from the Caucasus to the mountains of western China, stay in the heights, and are probably a remnant population of early modern man. When Russia collapses either the U.S. or the Chinese are the most likely to make the formal discovery.
Update: Loren Coleman posted about the (possible) hybrid Khwit. The post also names Khwit as a grandchild of Zana instead of one of her sons.
All of that is very fun, but none of it has any scientific validity as far as I can tell.. they’re just folk tales. Besides, why would one assume ‘hybrids’ are any less smart than the parent species? This all refers back to our ‘collective psyche’, of thinking about ‘the beast’ and ‘man’ producing semi-primitive creatures.
In any case, personally, I think a lot of our fascination with Yetis, Big-foot, Almas, etc, also ties in with our fascination with Neanderthals – except Neanderthals actually existed.
When it comes to the bigger picture, though, ‘hybrids’ are usually evolutionary dead-ends, curiosities if you will, they have no ‘real’ implications or impact in the larger context of human evolution (unless, at the genetic level there is some genetic material passed on from one species to the next – but I guess we’ll have to see about that, and I’m not anywhere near educated enough about genetics to know about this).
First, Zana was not a hybrid, but an almas according to the account. Second, we have the skull of one of her grandsons, Khwit. He would be the hybrid, though mostly a human hybrid.
Of course, the odds are Zana was human, only of an earlier settlement of the land likely driven into the mountains by later migrations.
The primary purpose of the comment was to present something that might intrigue you, nothing more.
in suppose something like the scenario mythusmage proposes is possible, especially in view of the fact that there are, as Anna pointed out, a lot of mammalian and avian hybrids. The area where I live is a hybrid zone — for gulls. The local biologists who study these gulls quite frankly call them hybrids, because they are mixtures fo “Western” gulls(Larus occidentalis) and “glaucous-winged” gulls(Larus glaucescens) whose range ends at about where I live, but where “Western” gulls have been increasingly moving north into the “glaucous winged” gull’s territory. Farther north, as far as the Queen Charlotte Islands, there aqre “glaucous winged” gulls with “introgressed” “Western gull” genes. The picture is complicated even further by the fact that even farther north and west, “glacous winged” gulls hybridize with “herring” gulls(Larus argentatus) in Western Alaska.
While evidence of Neandertal/”modern” hybridization may be kind of thin(at least at the moment), my understanding is that Neandertals were always a rather small population in any case, and there were always more “moderns”, once they came into being, than there ever were Neandertals. So I can easily see that there might well have been “mixings” when and where the two groups met, but because the Neandertal population was a lot smaller, whatever genetic legacy they may have left got swamped in various ways.
Anne G
Well said Anne, and very interesting about the gulls. I knew that the patterns of hybridization amongst the various species of baboons was quite complex (for example, one species males will male with the other species’ females, but not vice versa, and the first generation hybrids in most of these zones don’t end up reproducing themselves), but had no idea about gulls.
I originally wanted to do conduct a phd project about hybridization, so I read quite a bit into it, but then I changed my mind!
Wolves and coyotes have hybridized in certain areas of the US and Canada, with some quite interesting results, particularly in New England. The “wolves” around the Great Lakes area look like wolves as far as anybody can see, but most of them have. “coyote”mtDNA. Then there are a bunch of “coyotes” in New England. People aren’t certain, but it may be that these coyotes have some “wolf” genes in them, somewhere(they are larger than the coyotes of the West, and have thicker, darker coats, among other things). And then there are these hybrid gulls I mentioned, some of whom tend to look like “glaucous winged” gulls, and others look more like “Western” gulls. In any case, I’m quite familiar with these gulls. I see them all the time if I’m in the right area. What do all these gulls have in common? Pink feet! If it has pink feet, and is of the opposite sex, the gulls, apparently, don’t care. I think in the genus Homo, though, it was behaviors that counted, not appearance.
There’s a simpler explanation for the appearance of New England’s coyotes. It gets cold in New England. It’s a matter of adaptation to local conditions.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7886477.stm
Mythusmage:
Yes, that’s true — up to a point. But how do you explain the fact that (a) it gets equally cold in some of the western parts of coyote range and (b) the New England coyotes are larger — and somewhat darker-coated than the ones in the West? This is not entirely “adaptation”, I think.
Anne G
The original announcement came out last week. And Pääbo did say that the complete Neandertal genome would be published today, Darwin’s birthday. Make of the article(which I just saw and passed on), what you will.
Anne G
Anne:
How many Russian genomes have been sequenced?
Mythusmage:
None, that I know of.
Anne G
There’s work to be done!
There’s some evidence that humans and neanderthals did not interbreed, though an issue with bottlenecks has to be taken into consideration.
Bjørn:
It’s hard to say what Neandertals and “moderns” did or did not do when they met one another, as some groups of them most likely did, in some places and at some times. But you not only have to consider things like genetic bottlenecks(for whatever reason), but population size disparity(Neandertals appear to have been avery small population, whereas “moderns” were a larger group, and more where they came from, so to speak. There is also the little problem that later, the same sort of “swamping” may have happened re Neolithic farmers v. people who remained “paleolithic” hunter/gatherers, in Europe, at least. Also bear in mind that the “Neandertal genome” is mostly pretty “identical” to ours, which might make it even harder to distinguish the two. And with the present state of knowledge, it’s probably going to be impossible to tease out one cause of Neandertal gene extinction from another.
Anne G
Very interesting to read! I will continue to read, like the comments.
Liselotte:
Yup, you learn a lot that way!
Anne G
Hello!
Very Interesting post! Thank you for such interesting resource!
PS: Sorry for my bad english, I’v just started to learn this language
See you!
Your, Raiul Baztepo
Robin Dunbar (2004. The Human Story) speculated that Neanderthals lacked the more advanced level theory of mind possessed by early modern humans and never developed religion as a result. The ability of religion to bind the group together against foes (even if they have to be invented) gave EMH the ability to edge them out. If the last 50 years of boosting the Neanderthals has got closer to the truth and they looked like THIS then widespread evidence of ithe interbreeding that would surely have occurred ought to have been discovered.
Some say they couldn’t throw spears or make tailored clothing.
The ridges on the Neanderthal finger bones were maybe to aid them in clutching their mothers fur as the similar ridges on chimp fingers function and their undeveloped inner ear maybe refects a lack of human agility and balance. So maybe the first reconstuction 100 years ago 1909 artists impression was the most accurate after all. We shouldn’t assume scientists 100 years ago were stupid primitive bullheaded oafs, or for want of a better word -Neanderthals!
Are we part-Neanderthal?
Ken:
It’s interesting that you take an old illustration(circa 1913, which accompanied an article about Marcellin Boule’s “explanation” of the physiology, anatomy, and mental capacities of the La Chapelle aux Saintes fossil. As you are probably aware, Boule either missed,or didn’t care, that the remains, in life, had a bad case of arthritis. He claimed, from his “examination” that Neandertals couldn’t walk fully upright, among other things.
Since then, most, though not all paleoanthropologists and prehistoric archaeoloogists have tended to take their cue from Boule, and have therefore been inclined to see Neandertals as fundamentally “different” from “us”. They were certainly unique in some respects, as any small, isolated population might be, but these diifferences, while visible, because they are anatomical, and presumably controlled by genes, are, IMO relatively minor overall.
And yes, there are plenty of people like Robin Dunbar who fall into what I call the “Neanderstupid” category of worker in prehistoric human history. It’s awfully easy to make claims that Neandertals didn’t “really” have religion(whatever that may mean — what about the fact that we know so much about them, because a great number of them were actually buried?). We have no real way of knowing anything about their culture and society. For that matter, we have no real way of knowing anything about the earilest “modern” humans, who were contemporary iwth Neandertals. We tend, simply to assume that these early “moderns” must have been “just like us”, because they “looked like us”, which doesn’t really shed any light on much of anything at all.
Anne G
The Patterson-Gimlin film of Bigfoot that was made in 1967 is real. The NASI said that the creature had both human and gorilla features. Bigfoot is a human-primate hybrid. Half man and half gorilla. A man made creature that was created several thousand years ago by men who were slaves that ran off and ended up in Africa. They used ropes to catch female gorillas and had sex with them. They created Bigfoot and eventually the African people. The first Europeans that saw the Africans said that some of the African women had genitals that resembled that of a gorilla. If you look at the nose of an African you will notice that it is wide like the gorilla’s nose. For all the skeptics out there, they were real men that had real sex with real female gorillas. And nobody was wearing a costume at the time.