In 1856, while working in the Neander Valley (Germany), some workers found what they thought were the remains of a bear. Later, paleontologists claimed that these were evidence of a human species predecessor to ours that would have existed between 400,000 and 40,000 years ago.
Extinct for 40 thousand years, this Neanderthal (Homo neanderthalensis) He was considered a brutal, crude, literally "primitive" being. Recent discoveries, however, indicate that it was more like us ( Homo sapiens ) of what we thought – or would like...
Today we already know that Neanderthals knew and used tools, both for domestic use and for hunting; they cut and peeled pieces of wood to make spears and other weapons. Everything indicates that they were adapted to the cold climate of the region they inhabited and that it is likely that they needed to consume 4480 calories per day. It is believed that they made clothes and put on their feet. There are indications that they buried their dead and that they adorned themselves. In 2018, researchers found evidence of cave paintings of an abstract nature, indicating that, perhaps, these groups were capable of thinking in a symbolic way.
However, Neanderthals disappeared. This fact feeds the tireless dedication of researchers and, of course, not only my interest and curiosity – but, certainly, thousands more people.
It is already known that Neanderthals coexisted – and mated – with the Homo sapiens , originated on the African continent 300 thousand years ago. "Genetics sapiens" won and the Neanderthal disappeared.
Why?
There are several hypotheses: some consider that genetic evolution has selected more viable traits; others suppose that competition for food and shelter was the reason for the extinction of one species as a function of the other. For others, perhaps the fact that Neanderthals lived in small groups and were few in number was the cause of their extinction. Perhaps, also, climate change was the cause of the disappearance of the Neanderthals: there are records of a period of a thousand years of cold in Central Europe, coinciding with this time. On the other hand, it is possible that the cold was less intense in the regions inhabited by the Homo sapiens , which would have guaranteed his survival. However, there is another theory – the weapons of humans Sapiens would have been better than those of the Neanderthals!
The Sapiens – the wise – we supplant the "brutes". Those who had rituals, who buried their dead (there are indications of a burial with flowers next to the body); that they manufactured various tools; that they protected themselves with clothing and shoes; that they hunted large animals and painted the walls of their caves; who chewed poplar bark (a source of salicylic acid, the painkiller in aspirin) to treat dental abscesses, were supplanted by the "wise men".
The story of Neanderthals tells us about a world different from our own, in which humans coexisted as four species confirmed by genetic studies: Homo Sapiens , H. Neanderthalensis , H. floresiensis and H. erectus . Literature and cinema show us works such as The war of fire by J.H. Rosny, for example and among others, in which Neanderthals are always portrayed as less intelligent, less capable.
Archaeology, however, has dismantled this theory.
In the words of biologist Lluís Quintana-Murci, director of the Human Evolutionary Genetics unit at the Pasteur Institute, "Neanderthals fascinate us because they remind us too much of ourselves. It's a mixture of fear and curiosity, of love and hate, because we are ourselves, but at the same time, not." For paleoanthropologist Jean-Jacques Hublin, director of the Department of Human Evolution at the Max Planck Institute, "they make us fall in love because in the human phylogenetic tree it is [sic] the creature closest to men and, at the same time, it is different. It is another humanity [...]". One can also mention the archaeologist Francisco Giles Guzmán, a member of the team of the Museum of Gibraltar, who, commenting on the diverse knowledge of Neanderthals, adds: "[...] Neanderthals hunted with contact spears, hiding. They had not invented the bow or the spears thrown from a distance. They had symbolic thought and adorned the body, but they did not produce the figurative art characteristic of the Sapiens . Like us, they mastered fire, processed food and, above all, survived in an unimaginably hostile environment. [...] Is our technology superior or just different? The arrival of modern humans in Australia and America coincided with mass extinctions of megafauna, which proves that our intentions pose enormous problems, as is clear from what has been happening on the planet since the industrial revolution."
So what drove Neanderthals to extinction?
According to Antonio Rosas, director of the Paleoanthropology Group at the National Museum of Natural Sciences (Madrid), "In the extinction of species, there is never a single cause, although there is almost always one above: the degradation of the environment. In the case of Neanderthals, it is a multifactorial phenomenon. [...] In addition, new populations arrived, with a different technology and a very powerful cultural system. Those populations are us, the Sapiens ”.
Rosas continues: "What is a human species? We have long believed that we, the Sapiens , we are superior. For much of history, the concept of humanity did not include other populations, just look at what was said and written at the time of colonialism. They had developed all the attributes that we consider human and yet they are not equal to us. It's a different humanity, certainly with a different psychology. Intelligence is a potentiality, a capacity to learn, which manifests itself in different ways."
Finally, Clive Finlayson, zoologist and paleoanthropologist says: "Differences from us are cultural and material culture is not an indicator of intelligence. They were less intelligent than us in the Renaissance because they had not Internet ? Were my grandparents less intelligent because they didn't have planes?"
There is no doubt that the technical skill of Neanderthals, their ability to adapt to different environments and their long presence in different habitats leave questions about the reasons for their disappearance from Earth. But there is no escaping a fact: they leave the scene when we – the wise men, the Sapiens – we enter it. By expanding his limits across the planet, modern man has made all other human forms disappear.
In these days of daily coexistence with the news of environmental devastation and the horrors of wars, when we see the "wise men" use their sophisticated technology of and for death, when the non-acceptance of the different and when power and its concupiscence take to the extremes the capacity for destruction learned and conquered by the Homo sapiens It is urgent to ask ourselves: "what makes us, in fact, human"?
