Was Neanderthal man a primitive, stupid, and hairy apeman? The Smithsonian Institution, established in 1846 for the increase and diffusion of knowledge, is a group of museums and research centers administered by the United States government. Concerning Neanderthal man, the Smithsonians website on human evolution says: The original reconstruction of the ‘Old Man of La Chapelle’ by scientist Pierre Marcellin Boule led to the reason why popular culture stereotyped Neanderthals as dim-witted brutes for so many years. In 1911, Boule reconstructed this skeleton with a severely curved spine indicative of a stooped, slouching stance with bent knees, forward flexed hips, and the head jutted forward. He thought the low vaulted cranium and the large brow ridge, somewhat reminiscent of that seen in large apes such as gorillas, indicated a generally primitive early human and a lack of intelligence. However, additional discoveries of Neanderthal skeletons coupled with a re-examination of the Old Man’s skeleton in the 1950’s showed that many of the features thought to be unique in Neanderthals fall within the range of modern human variation, and that the Old Man suffered from “gross deforming osteoarthritis”. Thus, the slouching posture of the original reconstruction may have been based on an unfortunate individual with a deforming disability. But this isnt quite the whole story. A more recent evaluation of the entire skeleton by scientist Erik Trinkaus has shown that, while the Old Man of La Chapelle did suffer from a degenerative joint disease, the deformation caused by this should not have affected Boules original reconstruction of the individual’s posture. It appears that Boules own preconceptions about early humans, and his rejection of the hypothesis that Neanderthals were the ancestors of modern humans, led him to reconstruct a stooped, brutish creature, effectively placing Neanderthals on a side branch of the human evolutionary tree. (Boule even gave his reconstruction an opposable big toe like the great apes, but there was no bone deformity that should or could have lead to this interpretation.)[1] Erik Trinkaus (born 1948) is a prominent paleoanthropologist and expert on Neanderthal biology and human evolution. He writes: Detailed comparisons of Neanderthal skeletal remains with those of modern humans have shown that there is nothing in Neanderthal anatomy that conclusively indicates locomotor, manipulative, intellectual, or linguistic abilities inferior to those of modern humans.[2] William H. Howells (November 27, 1908 – December 20, 2005) was a professor of anthropology at Harvard University. He wrote: The Neanderthal brain was most positively and definitely not smaller than our own; indeed, and this is a rather bitter pill, it appears to have been perhaps a little larger. The middle-aged man of La Chapelle-aux Saints had a brain whose volume was about 1,625 cubic centimeters, which is a figure that only a fraction of modern European men can match.[3] At the Neanderthal site in Romania, the human remains display a mosaic of modern human and archaic/Neandertal features according to the paper published on the find (Soficaru, Dobos, and Trinkaus 2006).[4] Science News has reported that: Amid stone implements typical of European Neandertals excavated last year in a Slovenian cave, researchers found a piece of a juvenile bears thighbone that contains four artificial holes and resembles a flute. ... This bone could have been used to make noise or, possibly, music, contends geologist Bonnie Blackwell of the City University of New Yorks Queens College in Flushing, N.Y. It would not surprise me if this was a Neandertal musical instrument. ... The ends of the hollow bone artifact are broken off, and the holes, which penetrate only one side of the shaft, run in a straight line. ... The Slovenian bone closely resembles several hole-bearing bones that were likely to have been used as musical instruments by humans at later European sites, according to archaeologist Randall K. White of New York University. ... Neandertals were apparently quite similar to Homo sapiens in their behavior and cognitive capacities, Blackwell asserts. In both groups, musical traditions probably extend back very far into prehistory. [5] Writing about the instrument, UK surgeon and author of 3 highly acclaimed surgical textbooks, Vij Sodera said: ... the neatly-drilled holes show that the instrument is based on the same basic scale pattern used in modern Western music ... [6] Further research has now shown that this artifact was a flute meant for playing music.[7] Heres a video of Ljuben Dimkaroski playing a replica of the flute: youtube/watch?v=sHy9FOblt7Y An article in Discover magazine pointed out that: The recognition that they may have had music suggests they probably had fairly well-developed speech. They certainly did a lot more than just sit around the cave and bash tools.[8] Concerning speech in Neanderthals, Erik Trinkaus and anthropologist Pat Shipman wrote: Although no one had explicitly predicted what a Neandertal hyoid would look like, few were really surprised when it turned out to be a slightly enlarged version of a human hyoid and nothing like an ape hyoid ... . Many anthropologists came to believe that Neandertals could have spoken any modern human language, whatever their accent may have been.[9] Neanderthals were found to have the FOXP2 gene that enables speech.[10] Mat Cartmill is a professor of biological anthropology and anatomy at Duke University. Writing for Discover magazine, he says: I tend to think they had fully human language. After all, they had larger brains than those of most modern humans, made elegant stone tools, and knew how to use tools.[11] References: [1] [2] Erik Trinkaus, Hard Times Among the Neanderthals, Natural History 87(10):58 (December 1978). [3] William W. Howells, Mankind So Far (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran and Company, Inc., 1944), p. 165–166. [4] Soficaru, A., A. Dobos, and E. Trinkaus, Early modern humans from the Pestera Muierii, Baia de Fier, Romania, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103(46):17196–17201, (2006); [5] Neandertal noisemaker, Science News 150(21):328, (November 23, 1996); [6] Vij Sodera, One Small Speck to Man: The Evolution Myth, 2nd (revised) ed. (August 2009), p. 512. [7] [8] Folger, T. and Menon, S., ... Or Much Like Us? Discover 18(1):33, (January 1997); [9] Erik Trinkaus and Pat Shipman, The Neandertals: Changing the Image of Mankind (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1993), p. 391. [10] Peter Borger and Royal Truman, The FOXP2 gene supports Neandertals being fully human, Journal of Creation 22(2):13–14, (August, 2008); [11] Mat Cartmill, The Ascent of Words, Discover (November, 1998), p. 62;
Posted on: Fri, 16 May 2014 00:10:59 +0000
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