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What drove Neanderthals to extinction is one of the greatest mysteries in human history.
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A new book “The Naked Neanderthal” says that humans were the main reason thanks to their superior weapon.
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The author, Ludovic Slimak, thinks that humans had less creativity and intelligence than Neanderthals.
“Who the hell is this Neanderthal?”
That’s the question archaeologist Ludovic Slimak asks in his new book “The Naked Neanderthal.”
Neanderthals were man’s closest relatives. But something happened millennia ago that wiped them out.
Today, there are 8.1 billion modern humans on Earth and 0 Neanderthals.
“Why aren’t they here anymore?” It’s one of the big questions researchers keep asking about Neanderthals, University of Victoria archaeologist April Nowell told Business Insider.
In the past, scientists portrayed Neanderthals as less intelligent than humans. But, according to Slimak, Homo sapien was ancient, creatively, “probably unmatched Neanderthal populations and seems to have been intellectually inferior,” he wrote.
Many scientists suggest a combination of factors, including climate change and low fertility rates, wiped out Neanderthals. But Slimak, though intellectually inferior, thinks early humans are to blame.
In other words, if it weren’t for us, Neanderthals might still be here.
Who were the Neanderthals?
Humans and Neanderthals share a common ancestor dating back to between 550,000 and 750,000 years ago. Compared to early humans, Neanderthals was muscular with a prominent brow and less prominent chin.
Neanderthals spread into northwestern Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, and Southern Siberia long before Homo sapiens. They lived in some of these regions for hundreds of thousands of years until about 40,000 years ago, when they became extinct.
Did humans kill the Neanderthals?
Slimak suspects that humans are to blame for what he discovered in a cave in the South of France in 2008.
By dating the soot in which various artifacts were located, he decided to do just that humans and Neanderthals overlapped there about 54,000 years ago.
This was the first time, he wrote, that there was evidence of contact between humans and Neanderthals.
According to Slimak, there is no direct proof of conflict between the two species.
“To find archaeological traces of the Neanderthal-Sapiens war we need to find many more archaeological sites from this important period,” he wrote.
At this particular cave, however, Neanderthals did to return, followed by humans around 44,000 years ago. Since humans were the last species to occupy the cave, Slimak argues that it is because they replaced those Neanderthals by wiping them out.
Nowell said that while direct competition or conflict between the two species may have led humans to take the site Slimak studied, “it may not be the case everywhere.”
The supreme arms of the people
Scientists have found out very little weapons belonging to Neanderthals, Slimak wrote. However, the Neanderthals were “master craftsmen,” making tools with a “creativity that is beyond us.”
But this creativity was not enough to cope with the regimental weapon-making of humans, which eventually led to the extinction of the Neanderthals, according to Slimak.
That’s because “the moderns who colonized Europe produced more numerous and effective weapons,” he wrote.
Humans’ insistence on standardization led to uniform flintlocks, and Neanderthal novelty could not compete.
The Neanderthals in our genes
Archaeologists haven’t found much direct evidence of the two species living among each other, but genetic sequencing shows that humans and Neanderthals interbred.
In some populations, the data suggest that the two species have mated many times over thousands of years.
But genes can’t tell us much about the nature of these interactions or how closely or friendly humans and Neanderthals lived. For that, archaeologists like the cave of France Slimak need more evidence.
Even with existing sites, it’s tough.
The difficulty in connecting the the first appearance of people and it seems to be the last appearance of Neanderthals in Europe radiocarbon datingNowell said.
Scientists use the technique to measure the amount of carbon left in a substance and to calculate its age based on the decay rate of carbon isotopes.
It is most accurate until about 50,000 years ago, Nowell said.
“The extinction of Neanderthals is on the edge” of Carbon-14 dating, Nowell said. “And that’s exactly the time period we’re interested in.”
There are areas in France and Spain that appear to have humans instead of Neanderthals. However, with current technology, it is difficult to say whether they coexisted for 1,000 years or 5,000 years to begin with.
If humans and Neanderthals were side by side for several thousand years, their interactions could be more complex than the “full-fledged conquest” that Slimak described.
The Neanderthals may have already been in decline
Nowell thinks that many archaeologists view creativity differently from Slimak. “The argument is usually made that Homo sapiens is more creative,” she said. They were able to move into new environments and adapt.
Conflict could be the reason for moving into new spaces, but human colonization is the only explanation for the extinction of the Neanderthals, according to Nowell.
“I think there are as many theories about what happened to them as there are paleoanthropologists,” Nowell said. “Most people would see it as a more nuanced model.”
She noted that Neanderthals were already in decline when humans arrived, and lacked genetic diversity. Humans may have added to the stress, on top of a changing climate.
“There’s a lot going on, for sure,” Nowell said.
To Slimak, these other stressors are not as important to humans. “We can argue endlessly about dates, climate, or this or that factor, but we must accept that we are facing a clear and radical population replacement,” he wrote.
“When Sapiens made an appearance, Neanderthal disappeared from the archaeological record.”
Read the original article on Business Insider
