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For hundreds of thousands of years, another kind of human lived across Europe and western Asia.
They hunted enormous animals, survived brutal Ice Age climates, made sophisticated tools, cared for the injured, and even left their traces in the DNA of people living today.
For much of modern history, people dismissed them as primitive and brutish, but new discoveries have forced scientists to rethink almost everything about them.
Learn more about Neanderthals, who they were and what happened to them, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
Neanderthals are often what people refer to as cavemen. The stereotype of a hunched-over brute with a very pronounced brow came from recreations of Neanderthal skulls.
Yet, the more we learn about Neanderthals, the more we realize that the caveman depiction is far from accurate. As you’ll see, we know far more about Neanderthals than we do about any other human relative because they lived alongside humans relatively recently.
Neanderthals are generally classified as Homo neanderthalensis, although some researchers have historically classified them as a subspecies of our own species, Homo sapiens neanderthalensis.
Today, treating them as a separate species is common, but the fact that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens produced fertile offspring illustrates how close the two populations were. Generally speaking, if two groups can produce fertile offspring, they are part of the same species.
If Neanderthals are not our brothers and sisters, then they are most certainly our cousins.
The evolutionary lines leading to Neanderthals and modern humans probably separated roughly 500,000 to 700,000 years ago, although the exact date depends upon which fossils and genetic models are used.
Neanderthals subsequently evolved primarily in Europe and western Eurasia while the lineage leading to Homo sapiens developed largely in Africa. If you remember my Out of Africa episode, modern humans are believed to have left Africa about 70,000 to 100,000 years ago, and probably in waves.
Recognizable Neanderthal anatomy appears several hundred thousand years ago. By roughly 130,000 years ago, what anthropologists usually call “classic Neanderthals” had become widespread.
Their territory stretched from Britain and the Iberian Peninsula eastward through central Europe, the Balkans, the Caucasus, and into parts of Central Asia and Siberia. Their northern and southern ranges expanded and contracted dramatically as glaciers advanced and retreated.
The first Neanderthal fossils were actually discovered before anyone understood what they were.
In 1829, fragments from a child’s skull were found at Schmerling Caves in Belgium. Another Neanderthal skull was discovered at Forbes’ Quarry in Gibraltar in 1848. Both were initially regarded simply as unusual ancient human remains.
The discovery that changed anthropology occurred in 1856. Workers quarrying limestone in the Neander Valley near Düsseldorf, Germany, uncovered bones in the Feldhofer Cave. The remains included part of a skull, arm bones, ribs, and other skeletal fragments.
A local teacher and naturalist, Johann Carl Fuhlrott, recognized that the bones were extremely ancient and unusual. Anatomist Hermann Schaaffhausen subsequently studied them.
The skull was particularly striking. It had an enormous brow ridge, a low forehead and a long, low braincase.
At first, some scientists argued that the individual was simply a diseased or deformed human. Others proposed that he might have been a Cossack who had died during the Napoleonic Wars.
But evidence for human antiquity was accumulating rapidly.
In 1864, the Irish geologist William King proposed that the remains represented a separate species and named it Homo neanderthalensis. It became the first fossil hominin formally recognized as a species distinct from living humans.
The name Neanderthal comes from the Neander Valley, or Neanderthal in the older German spelling. Tal means valley.
Ironically, once scientists understood what Neanderthals looked like, they realized that the Belgian and Gibraltar fossils discovered decades earlier had also been Neanderthals.
If you dressed a Neanderthal in modern clothes and encountered one at a distance, you would unquestionably recognize the individual as human. Up close, however, several differences would be obvious.
Neanderthals were generally shorter and much more robustly built than modern humans.
Adult males were probably around 5 feet 5 inches, or about 165 centimeters, on average, while females were somewhat shorter. Their bodies were exceptionally muscular, with thick bones and strong muscle attachment points.
This compact body shape was probably advantageous in cold environments because it reduced surface area relative to body volume and therefore conserved heat.
Their skulls were distinctive as well. Neanderthals had enormous brow ridges, a long, low braincase, a projecting middle face, a weak or absent chin, and a very large nose. Their front teeth were also unusually large.
One surprising difference concerns their brains. Neanderthal brains were not smaller than ours.
Average cranial capacity was roughly comparable to or slightly greater than that of modern humans, commonly around 1,400 to 1,500 cubic centimeters.
A larger brain, however, does not automatically imply greater intelligence. Neanderthals also had larger bodies, and the internal organization of their brains may have differed somewhat from ours. That being said, brain size alone provides no basis for portraying Neanderthals as intellectually primitive.
One of the biggest debates surrounding Neanderthals is whether they can be considered homo sapiens.
The debate really comes down to what you consider a species. Neanderthals and Homo sapiens were anatomically and genetically distinct populations, but they could successfully interbreed.
Modern genetics has demonstrated this conclusively. Researchers began sequencing Neanderthal DNA in the 1990s, and in 2010 a draft Neanderthal genome was available.
Today, most people living outside sub-Saharan Africa carry roughly 1 to 3 percent Neanderthal ancestry, although the percentage varies by population and individual. This includes Aboriginal Australians who settled Australia about 50,000 years ago.
Why don’t many African’s have Neanderthal DNA? It is because once Neanderthals left Africa and spread throughout Eurasia, they never went back
The event responsible for much of the Neanderthal ancestry in today’s non-African populations appears to have occurred roughly 45,000 to 49,000 years ago, probably somewhere in western Eurasia or the Middle East.
The genetic exchange was not entirely one-way. Neanderthal genomes contain evidence that some earlier Homo sapiens populations contributed DNA to Neanderthals. This means the traditional picture of two completely separate species meeting once is simplistic.
Archaeology has taught us a lot about how Neanderthals lived.
Neanderthals lived as hunter-gatherers. Their communities were probably small, often perhaps a few dozen people, with individuals moving between groups.
Their population was never enormous. Genetic evidence suggests relatively low population densities and frequent periods when small communities were genetically isolated.
Groups probably followed migrating animals, visited known sources of water, gathered seasonal plants and repeatedly returned to favored caves, river valleys and hunting locations.
Contrary to their stereotype, Neanderthals did not simply live permanently inside caves. Caves simply preserve archaeological material extremely well, which gives them an outsized importance in the archaeological record. Neanderthals also occupied open-air camps and probably constructed temporary shelters.
Neanderthals were accomplished toolmakers.
One important technique they used was the Levallois method. Instead of simply striking random flakes from a rock, a skilled knapper carefully shaped a stone core so that a final strike produced a flake of a predetermined size and shape. This required planning several steps ahead, which showed the ability for complex thought.
We know that they created a host of tools that Stone Age humans used, including scrapers, knives, hand axes, woodworking tools, and spear points.
Some stone points were attached to wooden shafts with bindings and natural adhesives, suggesting they worked with materials that usually disappear over time, including wood, animal hides, and plant fibers.
Evidence suggests they hunted a wide variety of animals, including reindeer, horses, bison, rhinoceroses, and occasionally mammoths.
Cut marks, hunting injuries in prey animals, and archaeological hunting sites demonstrate they engaged in active hunting, not just scavenging carcasses left by predators.
Neanderthals also unquestionably used fire. Their archaeological sites contain hearths, burned bones, and heat-altered stone.
Neanderthals also probably wore clothing. We don’t have any direct evidence because organic material doesn’t survive, but it would be almost impossible to live in cold climates without it.
One of the most revealing aspects of Neanderthal archaeology is evidence that they sometimes cared for individuals who could not possibly have survived alone.
The famous Neanderthal known as Shanidar 1, discovered in Iraq, suffered severe injuries. He had major damage to one arm, impaired vision, and other physical problems, yet survived for years.
Other Neanderthal skeletons show healed fractures and degenerative diseases. Such individuals almost certainly received food, protection, or assistance from other community members.
Another big question is whether Neanderthals produced art. This is much trickier. We know Neanderthals used pigments such as red ochre.
They collected unusual objects, including shells, feathers, and eagle claws, and some objects appear to have been modified for ornamentation.
One extraordinary site demonstrates that their behavior could be surprisingly complex.
At Bruniquel Cave in southern France, people broke hundreds of stalagmites and arranged them into large circular structures more than 300 meters inside a cave. The structures date to about 176,500 years ago, long before Homo sapiens arrived in western Europe.
Language is even trickier than art because archaeology can’t provide evidence of spoken language. Scholars assume they must have had some spoken language or languages to facilitate tool making, trade, and hunting.
However, we have no way of knowing what that language was, how complex it was, or whether it was related to human language.
The final great question surrounding the Neanderthals is what happened to them?
The archaeological record suggests that Neanderthal populations disappeared at different times in different regions rather than retreating southward as a single population.
There probably wasn’t a single cause of Neanderthal extinction, but several contributing factors have been put forward.
One of the most popular explanations is competition with humans. Modern humans arrived in Europe in significant numbers more than 45,000 years ago, resulting in several thousand years of overlap with Neanderthals.
Homo sapiens may have possessed demographic advantages. They may have maintained larger social networks, exchanged resources over greater distances, and developed more specialized tools.
Even a small difference in reproductive success could have enormous consequences over thousands of years.
Modern humans did not have to systematically kill Neanderthals.
Suppose a Homo sapiens population grew by only a fraction of a percent faster per generation. Over dozens or hundreds of generations, that advantage could replace a smaller competing population.
Disease could have played a role. Contact between previously separated populations could have introduced unfamiliar pathogens, and humans may have been the vehicle for transmission.
Another possibility, and a quite good one, is that the Neanderthals never technically went extinct at all. We know that Neanderthals and humans could interbreed. If the human population grew faster, or if they had a technological advantage, they might have simply absorbed smaller Neanderthal bands into their population.
This is reflected in the tiny amount of Neanderthal DNA that most humans have today.
As Neanderthal populations vanished from eastern, central, and northern Europe, some of the latest surviving groups in the archaeological record appear to have persisted in southwestern Europe, particularly the Iberian Peninsula.
Many mysteries still surround the Neanderthals. One of the biggest is why the group with the highest amount of Neanderthal DNA is found in East Asia, even though there has never been any evidence of Neanderthals living there.
Neanderthals were not a primitive version of humanity, but a remarkably successful human, or closely related, population that survived for hundreds of thousands of years in some of the harshest environments on Earth. They hunted, made sophisticated tools, cared for one another, and adapted to repeated climatic upheavals.
They may have vanished as a distinct people, but they did not disappear completely. Part of the Neanderthal story still survives today in the DNA of billions of people on Earth.