Were Neanderthals Earliest Artists?

Detail from the El Castillo Cave in Spain.

The unexpected old age of some European cave paintings raise the possibility that Neanderthals rather than Homo sapiens were the earliest painters ~ either that, or humans began painting earlier than previously thought.

“It would not be surprising if the Neanderthals were indeed Europe’s first cave artists,” says João Zilhão, an archaeologist at Spain’s University of Barcelona.

According to Wired.com:

Researchers led by Zilhão and Alistair Pike of the United Kingdom’s University of Bristol measured the ages of 50 paintings in 11 Spanish caves. The art, considered evidence of sophisticated symbolic thinking, has traditionally been attributed to modern humans, who reached Europe about 40,000 years ago. 

Traditional methods of dating cave paintings, however, are relatively clumsy. Even the previous best technique — carbon dating, or translating amounts of carbon molecule decay into measurements of passing time — couldn’t discern differences of a few thousand years. 

Instead of carbon, Pike and João Zilhão’s team calibrated their molecular clocks by studying mineral deposits that form naturally on cave surfaces, including paintings. The thicker the deposits, the older the painting. And as the reseachers describe in a June 14 Science paper, some of the paintings are very old indeed.

 “What’s really exciting about this possibility,” said Pike, “is that anyone, because it’s open to the public, could walk into El Castillo cave and see a Neanderthal hand on the wall.”

Click here for the article.

Artifacts Indicate Earlier Human Migration

Two artifacts from United Arab Emirates indicate early human residents.

New research indicates that early humans may have left Africa earlier than previously thought, but still doesn’t answer if they got any farther than Arabia. The most comprehensive genetic data so far available, based on material called mitochondrial DNA, indicates that all modern humans outside Africa are descended from a single, small population that left Africa less than 60,000 years ago, but even that data may be unreliable.

According to the New York Times:

The present view, based on both archaeological and genetic evidence, holds that modern humans, although they first emerged in Africa some 200,000 years ago, were hemmed in by deserts and other human species like Neanderthals and did not escape to the rest of the world until some 50,000 years ago.

An archaeological team led by Hans-Peter Uerpmann of the University of Tübingen in Germany now reports the discovery of stone tools 127,000 years old from a site called Jebel Faya in what is now the United Arab Emirates, just south of the entrance to the Persian Gulf. If the new tools were made by modern humans, as the researchers assert, then modern humans got out of Africa much earlier than believed.

“This is a huge milestone, but unfortunately it raises more questions than it answers,” Jeffrey Rose, an archaeologist at the University of Birmingham in England, tells the Times. The new finding ~ reported in Thursday’s issue of Science ~ points to a new level of importance of Arabia in understanding the human story.

Click here for the complete article.

Migration Prompted Clothing 170,000 Years Ago

Depiction of Neanderthals from National Museum of Natural History.

Researchers studying skin-crawling body lice have determined that humans began wearing clothing about 170,000 years ago, far earlier than the approximately 100,000 years previously believed.

Researchers sequenced the DNA of clothing lice to see when the bugs began diverging genetically from head lice, suggesting lice were adapting to life on cloth rather than skin and hair. Latest findings suggest modern humans started wearing clothes about 170,000 years ago, 70,000 years before migrating from Africa into colder climates and higher latitudes.

"I find it surprising that modern humans were tinkering with clothing probably long before they really needed it for survival," David Reed, associate curator of mammals at the Florida Museum of Natural History, told LiveScience. "But that tinkering really paid off when they finally left Africa and moved into Europe and Asia."

A past study of clothing lice in 2003 estimated humans first began wearing clothes about 107,000 years ago. However, the latest research form Reed and his colleagues includes new data, as well as calculation methods better suited to minimize errors in estimates.

Click here for the LiveScience article.

Area of Early Civilization Now Beneath Persian Gulf?

Now submerged area may be where moderns first interacted with Neanderthals.

Land now submerged under the Persian Gulf may have supported some of the earliest humans outside Africa some 75,000 to 100,000 years ago. The floodplain now under water would have been about the size of Great Britain, shrinking as water flooded the area. Then, about 8,000 years ago, the land would have been swallowed up by the Indian Ocean, researchers now say.

A new research study, detailed in the December issue of the journal Current Anthropology, has broad implications for aspects of human history. According to LiveScience.com:

For instance, scientists have debated over when early modern humans exited Africa, with dates as early as 125,000 years ago and as recent as 60,000 years ago (the more recent date is the currently accepted paradigm), according to study researcher Jeffrey Rose, an archaeologist at the University of Birmingham in the U.K.

"I think Jeff's theory is bold and imaginative, and hopefully will shake things up," Robert Carter of Oxford Brookes University in the U.K. told LiveScience. "It would completely rewrite our understanding of the out-of-Africa migration. It is far from proven, but Jeff and others will be developing research programs to test the theory. 

Viktor Cerny of the Archaeogenetics Laboratory, the Institute of Archaeology, in Prague, called Rose's finding an "excellent theory," in an email to LiveScience, though he also points out the need for more research to confirm it.

"Given the presence of Neanderthal communities in the upper reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates River, as well as in the eastern Mediterranean region, this may very well have been the contact zone between moderns and Neanderthals," Rose told LiveScience.

Click here for the complete article.

Far From Brutes, Neanderthals Had Compassion

Neanderthal reconstruction in Prehistoric Museum of Halle, Germany.

New research indicates Neanderthals displayed “a deep seated sense of compassion” and were not the dumb brutes often depicted in archaeological lore.

“Compassion is perhaps the most fundamental human emotion,” researcher Penny Spikins of the University of York tells Discovery News. “It binds us together and can inspire us but it is also fragile and elusive. This apparent fragility makes addressing the evidence for the development of compassion in our most ancient ancestors a unique challenge, yet the archaeological record has an important story to tell about the prehistory of compassion."

Based on fossils, artifacts and other evidence, the scientists propose a four-stage model for the development of human compassion:

The first stage began six million years ago, according to the scientists, when the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees experienced the initial awakenings of an empathy for others and motivation to help them, perhaps with a gesture of comfort, or moving a branch to allow them to pass.

The second stage from 1.8 million years ago sees compassion in Homo erectus beginning to be regulated as an emotion integrated with rational thought. Care of sick individuals represented an extensive compassionate investment while the emergence of special treatment of the dead suggested grief at the loss of a loved one and a desire to soothe others feelings, the researchers conclude.

The third stage, based on findings from Europe between around 500,000 and 40,000 years ago, sees humans such as Homo heidelbergensis and Neanderthals developing deep-seated commitments to the welfare of others illustrated by a long adolescence and a dependence on hunting together. There is also archaeological evidence of the routine care of the injured or infirm over extended periods. These include the remains of a child with a congenital brain abnormality who was not abandoned, but lived until five or six years old. The researchers also note that there was a Neanderthal with a withered arm, deformed feet and blindness in one eye who must have been cared for, perhaps for as long as twenty years.

In the fourth stage, the scientists say modern humans starting 120,000 years ago extended compassion to strangers, animals, objects and abstract concepts. 

“We have traditionally paid a lot of attention to how early humans thought about each other,” Spikins adds, “but it may well be time to pay rather more attention to whether or not they ‘cared.’”

Click here for the complete Discovery News article.

Earliest Arrow Heads Reveal Hunting Style

Scientists in South Africa have unearthed 64,000-year-old “stone points” they say were probably arrow heads. Examination of the ancient weapons revealed remnants of blood and bone, as well as traces of plant-based resin scientists think was used to fasten them onto a wooden shaft.

The arrow heads were excavated from layers of ancient sediment in Sibudu Cave in South Africa. During the excavation the team dug through layers deposited up to 100,000 years ago.

Professor Chris Stringer from the Natural History Museum in London said the work added to the view that modern humans in Africa 60,000 years ago had begun to hunt in a “new way.” Neanderthals and other early humans, he explained, were likely to have been “ambush predators,” who needed to get close to their prey in order to dispatch them.

“This work further extends the advanced behaviors inferred for early modern people in Africa,” Stringer told the BBC.

Click here for the complete BBC article.

Neanderthals in Britain 40,000 Years Earlier

Discovery of two ancient flint hand tools is leading researchers to conclude that Neanderthals inhabited Britain about 100,000 years ago ~ or 40,000 years earlier than previously thought.

Francis Wenban-Smith from the University of Southampton, who discovered the two ancient flint hand tools used to cut meat, said tests on sediment in which they were buried showed they date from around 100,000 years ago. The country was previously assumed to have been uninhabited during this period.

“I couldn't believe my eyes when I received the test results,'” said Dr Wenban-Smith. "We know that Neanderthals inhabited northern France at this time, but this new evidence suggests that as soon as sea levels dropped, and a 'land bridge' appeared across the English Channel, they made the journey by foot to Kent.”

Early pre-Neanderthals inhabited Britain before the last ice age, but were forced south by the severe cold about 200,000 years ago. When the climate warmed up again between 130,000 and 110,000 years ago, they could not get back because, similar to today, the Channel sea-level was raised, blocking their path. The new discovery, commissioned by Oxford Archaeology, showed they returned to Britain much earlier than 60,000 years ago, as previous evidence suggested.

Click here for the complete Telegraph article.

Did Humans Feast on Neanderthals?

Computer-assisted paleoanthropological reconstruction of a Neanderthal child based on skull fragments unearthed in Gibraltar.

Scientists remain uncertain about the type of interaction that may have occurred during the Palaeolithic era between Neanderthals and humans. There has been speculation that the two species interbred in Europe between 33,000 and 24,000 years ago. Now, new evidence points to humans possibly having eaten Neanderthals and used their bones for ornaments.

According to Cosmos Online:

Re-examined artifacts from the Les Rois cave, a settlement of early modern humans in southwest France, include a jawbone with flint-knife cut marks on it and a pendant made from a child's tooth cut out of another jawbone, according to a report in the Journal of Anthropological Sciences.

“Secondary burial practices and cannibalism are the two explanations traditionally proposed to account for modifications on prehistoric human bones,” the researchers wrote.

Although researchers can’t be certain the 30,000-year-old jawbone belonged to a Neanderthal, several of its features are characteristic of that species, said co-author Marian Vanhaeren, an archaeologist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Nanterre.

The idea will provoke considerable opposition from scientists who believe Neanderthals disappeared for reasons that did not involve violence. Neanderthals were a sturdy species who evolved in Europe 300,000 years ago, made complex stone tools and survived several ice ages before they disappeared 30,000 years ago - just as modern human beings arrived in Europe from Africa.

And according to Britain's Guardian:

The idea will provoke considerable opposition from scientists who believe Neanderthals disappeared for reasons that did not involve violence. Neanderthals were a sturdy species who evolved in Europe 300,000 years ago, made complex stone tools and survived several ice ages before they disappeared 30,000 years ago - just as modern human beings arrived in Europe from Africa.

Some researchers believe Neanderthals may have failed to compete effectively with Homo sapiens for resources, or were more susceptible to the impact of climate change. But others believe our interactions were violent and terminal for the Neanderthals. According to Rozzi, the discovery at Les Rois in south-west France provides compelling support for that argument.

Click here for the Cosmos Online article.

Click here for the Guardian article.

Click here for an earlier article about interbreeding.

Face of Earliest European is Reconstructed

At the behest of the BBC, a skilled forensic artist has reconstructed the head and facial features representing the first anatomically modern human to live in Europe ~ a person inhabiting the Carpathian Mountains of Romania about 35,000 years ago.

According to Britain's The Independent:

The artist's reconstruction ~ a face that could be male or female ~ is based on the partial skull and jawbone found in a cave where bears were known to hibernate. The facial features indicate the close affinity of these early Europeans to their immediate African ancestors, although it was still not possible to determine the person's sex.

The lower jawbone of the first modern European was discovered in 2002 in Pestera cu Oase, the "cave with bones", located in the southwestern Carpathians. The remaining fragments of skull were unearthed in 2003.

Scientists have dated the bones using radiocarbon analysis to between 34,000 and 36,000 years ago when Europe was occupied by both Neanderthal man, who had lived in the region for tens of thousands of years, and anatomically-modern humans – Homo sapiens – who had recently arrived on a migratory route from Africa via the Middle East.

Although the skull shares many modern feature of human anatomy, it also displays more archaic traits, such as very large molar teeth, which led some scientists to speculate the skull may belong to a hybrid between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals ~ an idea discounted by other experts.

The reconstruction was made for the forthcoming BBC 2 series The Incredible Human Journey, which documents human origins and evolution.

Click here for the complete The Independent article.

Neanderthals' Cellular Overheating May Have Led to Their Extinction

Meet Wilma, the first model of a Neanderthal based in part on ancient DNA evidence. Click here for National Geographic information on her image and additional photos.


Neanderthals may have produced so much internal heat that a steadily warming climate caused their extinction about 24,000 years ago.

Scientists at Newcastle University in England have put forward the theory after examining a particular form of genetic material obtained from the fossilized bones of Neanderthals. By comparing it with that found in modern humans, they discovered that Neanderthals had key differences in the sections responsible for producing energy in all living cells.

Professor Patrick Chinnery, a neurogeneticist at Newcastle University, believes the differences in this mitochondrial DNA could have caused Neanderthals to be inefficient at producing energy, meaning their cells leaked heat.

Searching for Genetic Clues

"The question is why did Neanderthals disappear?” he told the Telegraph of London. “There are lots of explanations to do with changes in climate and the food supply. Differences in these mitochondrial DNA sequences might explain why modern humans were able to survive while Neanderthals were not.

"We found a number of differences within a certain part of the mitochondrial DNA that were quite unlike anything we see in modern humans,” he said. “It is difficult to get a definitive answer, as it is rather like looking through a misty window. We can only get clues to what went on."

Genome Research Continuing

Mitochondria are tiny structures found inside all living cells and are the biological power stations that produce the energy cells need to survive by converting sugar from food into energy.

Scientists have also been attempting to read the entire Neanderthal genome in the hope that it will shed more light on the differences between them and modern humans. Recent work by scientists at the Max Planck Institute in Germany revealed that Neanderthals shared a language gene that is only found in modern humans. The controversial findings raised the debate about whether Neanderthals were capable of speech.

Neanderthals are thought to have evolved from a common ancestor shared with modern humans around 400,000 years ago. It is thought they died out around 10,000 years after modern humans began spreading in Europe.

Click here for the complete Telegraph article.