Neanderthals lived from around 400,000 years ago to around 40,000 years ago. Scientists are still working to understand how and why Neanderthals went extinct. This episode takes you to the island of Gibraltar–where researchers think the very last surviving population of Neanderthals lived and died.
Neanderthals lived from around 400,000 years ago to around 40,000 years ago. Scientists are still working to understand how and why Neanderthals went extinct. This episode takes you to the island of Gibraltar–where researchers think the very last surviving population of Neanderthals lived and died.
Further reading (and listening):
About The Leakey Foundation
The Leakey Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to funding human origins research and sharing discoveries. The Foundation was established in 1968 to fund work at the forefront of fossil and primate studies and provide opportunities for a global community of scientists. Learn more at leakeyfoundation.org.
Discovering Us: 50 Great Discoveries in Human Origins
In 50 lively and up-to-the-minute essays illustrated with full-color photographs, Discovering Us: 50 Great Discoveries in Human Origins presents stories of the most exciting and groundbreaking surprises revealed by human origins research.
Prepared in consultation with leading experts and written by Evan Hadingham, senior science editor for NOVA, Discovering Us features stunning photographs, some taken at the actual moment that groundbreaking discoveries were made. The book presents a highly accessible account of the latest scientific insights into the ultimate question of humanity’s origins. Discovering Us was published by Signature Books.
Find Discovering Us at your local library, bookstore, or amazon.com.
Show Credits:
Discovering Us was made possible by generous support from Camilla and George Smith, the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, and the Joan and Arnold Travis Education Fund.
Meredith Johnson
This is Discovering Us from The Leakey Foundation and Signature Books … an audio companion to the book Discovering Us: 50 Great Discoveries in Human Origins. Written by Evan Hadingham and read for you by Ashley Judd.
I’m your host, Meredith Johnson.
In this installment we’ll explore the world of our extinct relatives - the Neanderthals. This species of human lived from around 400,000 years ago to around 40,000 years ago. Scientists are still working to understand how and why Neanderthals went extinct.
Today’s story takes us to the island of Gibraltar - the place where we think the very last surviving population of Neanderthals lived and died.
Here’s Ashley Judd…
Ashley Judd:
The People of the Rock
The soaring cliffs of the Rock of Gibraltar have attracted humans for over a hundred thousand years.
A string of caves fronting the ocean was home to prehistoric foragers, who fished for bream and tuna, collected mussels, snared rabbits and pigeons, and hunted ibex and red deer in the patchy woodland bordering the sea.
They also left markings on a cave floor that may have held symbolic meaning.
And they captured ravens and eagles, probably to adorn themselves with dark wing feathers.
In nearly every respect, what we know about their lifestyle matches the range of behavior and abilities typical of Homo sapiens, the modern humans who had begun entering Europe around 45,000 years ago.
Yet the occupants of Gibraltar were not modern humans, but Neanderthals, long imagined in popular culture as dimwitted sub-humans.
Discoveries from two Gibraltar caves over the last quarter-century show how much we have underestimated the minds and abilities of our extinct cousins, who had populated wide areas of Europe and Central Asia for over 300,000 years before the arrival of modern humans.
Gibraltar was where the first adult Neanderthal skull was discovered in 1848.
However, it was not recognized as an extinct human until 1864, the same year that geologist William King coined the species name Homo neanderthalensis (nee-AN-der-tall-en-sis) after studying fossil bones found in 1856 in the Neander Valley, Germany, a discovery that had attracted far more attention. King believed that the ancient human’s “thoughts and desires ... never soared beyond those of a brute,” setting the tone for a century and a half of Neanderthal stereotypes.
Since 1994, Clive and Geraldine Finlayson of the Gibraltar Museum have led the investigation of Gorham and Vanguard caves, which were occupied by Neanderthals for more than 100,000 years.
Both caves are filled with layers of windblown dune sand that conceal hearths and living areas preserved in fine-scaled detail—sometimes, even traces of individual meals.
The iconic Ice Age big game of mammoth, bison, and reindeer never made it as far south as Gibraltar, where milder climate conditions prevailed.
Instead, the Neanderthals hunted deer and ibex, fished, trapped small game, gathered pine nuts, and even ate seals and dolphins. Clive Finlayson says, “The picture that is emerging is that Neanderthals had a diverse larder outside their cave window and they were exploiting all these things.”
Among their quarry, the Gibraltar Neanderthals trapped more than 150 species of birds, notably raptors and corvids such as ravens. Microscopic examination of cutmarks on the bones of these birds of prey indicates that they were not being butchered for their meat but to extract their plumage—specifically, their glossy dark wing feathers.
The cutmark patterns also suggest that the Neanderthals were separating the bones from the feathers while leaving the skin intact, potentially creating an impressive cape or headpiece that they could have worn.
The Gibraltar team found the same preference for raptors and corvids in finds from many other Neanderthal sites across Europe and Asia. In Croatia’s Krapina (krah-pee-nuh) cave, for example, eight talons from white-tailed eagles were laboriously extracted and polished to form a bracelet or necklace that dates back to 130,000 years ago.
As well as wearing feathers and claws, Neanderthals likely painted their bodies and other surfaces.
Digs at many European sites have turned up lumps of the mineral manganese dioxide, widely used in prehistory as a black pigment.
At the Pech de l’Azé (pesh-de-lahz) rock shelter in the Dordogne (dor-doh-nyuh), more than half of at least 500 pieces of the mineral showed traces of polish and wear, and some had been modified into pointed, crayon-like shapes.
If Neanderthals were decorating themselves, what of the cave walls in which they sheltered? In 2014, the Gibraltar team re- ported the discovery of a lattice-like carving on a flat bedrock surface at Gorham’s Cave, dating to at least 39,000 years ago.
Nick-named the “hashtag,” experiments showed that the pattern was not a casual doodle but a laborious engraving, probably requiring at least 200–300 repetitive tracings by a flint tool.
Still more remarkable news surfaced from a 2018 study of three painted cave sites in Spain.
A team led by archaeologist Alistair Pike applied a newly refined technique to dating limestone or flowstone. Thin crusts of these minerals slowly creep across cave walls, covering up ancient artwork in the process.
Measuring the amount of radioactive uranium and thorium in the flowstone can give a minimum date for the underlying artwork.
When Pike’s team applied the technique to red-painted designs in the three different caves, the results were startling. All three had age ranges suggesting that they must be more than 65,000 years old, made long before any modern hu- mans were in Europe.
The red motifs range from a ladder-like pattern to the ghostly outline of a “negative hand” impression, made by blowing pigment around a hand pressed against a cave wall.
The accuracy of the flowstone dating technique is controversial, but if the age is correct, it would mean that Neanderthals, not modern humans, were responsible for a previously unsuspected early stage of cave art.
This tantalizing recent evidence of self-expression challenges long-held assumptions about Neanderthal inferiority.
Some experts hold to the belief that their brains were wired in fundamentally different ways to our own.
For example, paleoanthropologist Ian Tattersall points to the absence of art and personal ornaments from the vast majority of Neanderthal sites, and the lack of innovation in their stone tools during most of their existence in Europe.
Tattersall concludes that “behaviorally ... the Neanderthals were simply doing what their predecessors had done, if apparently better. In other words, they were like their ancestors, only more so. We are not. We are symbolic.”
Yet, at least toward the end of their long sojourn in Europe, it looks as if Neanderthal culture and capabilities were steadily ad- vancing, calling into question the notion of some fundamental biological difference.
Even if their brains were wired differently, it would surely be wrong to view them as inferior or unable to thrive. Archaeologist Paola Villa notes that “Neanderthals lived for 350,000 years under various climate conditions, longer than modern humans have been around. They were not brutes and we are now seeing how adaptable and exceptional they were.”
[MUSIC rises and then ducks under closing credits]
Meredith Johnson
Discovering Us: 50 Great Discoveries in Human Origins was written for The Leakey Foundation by Evan Hadingham. It was published by Signature Books. The stories are read for you by Ashley Judd.
All the episodes of this audio-companion are available to listen to right now! Make sure to subscribe and share this series with a friend.
You can buy a copy of Discovering Us at your local bookstore or wherever you buy books. There’s a link in the shownotes.
The Leakey Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to funding human origins research and sharing discoveries. The science you heard about today was made possible by Leakey Foundation supporters. Visit our website to learn how you can get involved. Go to leakeyfoundation.org. That’s l-e-a-k-e-y foundation dot org.
This project was made possible by generous support from Camilla and George Smith, the Joan and Arnold Travis Education Fund, and the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation