This week–

NEANDERTHALS as innovators?

That the concept seems amusing

goes to show how our sister

species has become the butt of

our jokes. Yet in the Middle

Palaeolithic, some 300,000 years

ago, innovation is what the

Neanderthals were up to.

This period is usually regarded

as undramatic in cultural and

evolutionary terms, with little

in the way of technological

or cognitive development.

Palaeoanthropologists get more

excited about the changes in

tools found later, as the Middle

Palaeolithic gave way to the

Upper, and as modern humans

replaced Neanderthals, some

40,000 years ago.

Terry Hopkinson of the

University of Leicester, UK, has

now challenged this view,

showing that Neanderthals were

far from behaviourally static.

They incorporated different

forms of tool construction into

a single technique, and learned

to cope with the ecological

challenges posed by habitats in

eastern Europe.

“There has been a consensus

that the modern human mind

turned on like a light switch about

50,000 years ago, only in Africa,”

says Hopkinson. But the putatively

modern traits accompanying the

change, such as abstract art, the

use of grindstones and elongated

stone blades, and big game

hunting began to accumulate in

Africa from 300,000 years ago, he

says. “It was the same in Europe

with Neanderthals, there was a

gradual accumulation of

technology.” If Homo sapiens

developed human traits gradually,

then why not Neanderthals?

Archaeological finds from

across Europe show that the

Neanderthals fused two forms

of toolmaking, the façonnage

and the débitage techniques. In

the former a stone core is shaped

by chipping off flakes of flint,

the latter involves producing

sharp-edged flakes from a core.

In the Lower Palaeolithic, more

than 300,000 years ago, the

two techniques were practised

separately, but Hopkinson argues

that during the Middle Palaeolithic

they were fused into a single

method, the Levallois reduction

technique (Antiquity, vol 81, p 294).

At the same time as this was

occurring, excavations show that

Neanderthals spread into central

and eastern Europe, regions where

they and their forebears, Homo heidelbergensis, had hitherto

been unable to settle. In western

Europe, the influence of the

Atlantic ameliorates the extreme

seasonality of the continent, but

away from this, the environment

was too harsh for them to cope.

“The eastern expansion shows that

the Neanderthals became capable

of managing their lives and their

landscapes in strongly seasonal

environments,” says Hopkinson.

This period is commonly

thought to be characterised by

long periods of little change

in technological and perhaps

also cognitive development,

says Katerina Harvati of the

department of human evolution

at the Max Planck Institute for

Evolutionary Anthropology in

Leipzig, Germany. “This analysis

highlights important aspects

of Neanderthal cultural and

cognitive evolution which are not

always emphasised,” she says.

Neanderthals have typically

been thought of as incapable of

innovation, as it was assumed to

be something unique to Homo sapiens, says Hopkinson. “With

this evidence of innovation it

becomes difficult to exclude

Neanderthals from the concept

of humanity.” ●

Neanderthals bid for human status

SOUNDBITES

‹ Science is a gift of God to all of us and science has taken us to a place that is biblical in its power to cure.›

Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the US House

of Representatives, arguing for a bill to

ease restrictions on federal funding of

embryonic stem cell research (The New York Times, 8 June)

‹ Recent scientific developments have reinforced my conviction that stem cell science can progress in ethical ways.›

President George Bush, who has

pledged to veto the House of

Representatives’ bill on embryonic stem

cell research on the basis that amniotic

or adult stem cells could be used

instead (The New York Times, 8 June)

‹ It was a very evangelical meeting. Others who were there said it was like a Billy Graham sermon.›

Tim Worner, who runs a UK multiple

sclerosis support group, on a presentation

by charity Proventus lobbying for greater

access to an unlicensed MS treatment

called Aimspro, derived from goat

serum containing killed HIV virus (The Guardian, London, 11 June)

‹ An act of sabotage, against tourism, against research.›

Paulin Ngobobo of the Congolese

Institute for the Conservation of Nature

on the apparent killing of a female

mountain gorilla in the Virunga nature

reserve by a local rebel group, which

conservationists fear is targeting the

gorillas (AFP, 10 June)

‹ It’s great for people who otherwise might have sat around all night waiting to see a moonbow.›

Don Olson of Texas State University, who

has created a computer model to predict

the precise date and time of moonbows,

which form when a full moon’s rays

hit rain or the mist of a waterfall (San Francisco Chronicle, 3 June)

ROWAN HOOPER

12 | NewScientist | 16 June 2007 www.newscientist.com

“As with Homo sapiens in

Africa, Neanderthals gradually

accumulated technology and

developed human traits”

HO

RST

OSS

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ER/D

PA/C

OR

BIS

–Not as dumb as they look–

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