Revisiting Neanderthals: Challenging the Stubborn Myth of ‘Subhuman’ Ancestors

While I was earning my Associate’s degree, I took a class in Archeology 101 where we covered the topic of human evolution. Of course, any discussion of human evolution is incomplete without discussing our ancient relatives who didn't survive. Neanderthals come to mind as the most famous. They’re humanoids that left behind a treasure trove of evidence surrounding them: their lives, their habits, and even their culture. Maybe I’m a nerd or just overly empathetic, but I find great comfort in knowing humans weren't always alone. All you have to do is search their name, and you’ll reach a thousand results of articles with surprised headlines–intelligent, cultured, artistic, attractive? Surely not, yet it’s so.

We’ve had the evidence for years. You can only milk that surprise for so long, come on.

I would like to discuss the stubbornness of public consciousness. When it came to our textbook in that class–a paperback behemoth called World Prehistory and Archaeology: Pathways Through Time by Michael Chazan–it devoted a paltry dozen pages to the lives and lifestyle of Neanderthals, all with a tone that struck me as begrudging. In the section about burial sites, Chazan admits that bodies were placed in shallowly dug pits, but there was “no evidence they were further buried.” That seems like an odd claim to me. Why dig a pit just to leave them on the ground a little deeper than before? Shouldn’t their remains have been more scattered if they were exposed to animal life like that? He also mentions an “extravagant claim” of burial site that involved large quantities of flowers, though “significant questions remain about the association of the soil collected near the skeleton.” It’s too much to believe that loved ones would dig a grave, pick hundreds of flowers, put them all in that grave, and then cover it in such a way that we can see the concentration of pollen surrounding that skeleton thousands of years later, with all the obviousness of a coffee stain on a white carpet. 

The implication is clear: Neanderthals weren't capable of burial, so the pollen must have been scattered by the wind.

Regarding art, Chazan acknowledges Neanderthal methods of decorating their living spaces and creating pigments, yet concludes there’s no evidence they made art. Not very little, not sparse, not insufficient, but a very definitive denial. It seems he believes they created pigments just to see pretty colors, but even that is an act of artistic expression.

It’s creation for the sake of perceiving beauty. Someone wanted to make art so badly that they invented paint, but it’s still not enough. Burials and art are things humans take pride in as expressions of emotion unique to ourselves. We can argue back and forth over whether modern animals are capable of the same, especially as we creep closer to finding more soul and personality in the animal kingdom than previously thought, but it strikes me as blind stubbornness to insist on drawing the line at humanity alone. 

In that same class,  we watched a documentary where a layman goes from expert to expert looking for a picture of this era, with a careful emphasis on Neanderthal life. Though the documentary presented a lot of well-sourced information, the host makes fun of those findings at every turn. When a flint knapper–someone who can make stone tools–tries to impress upon him the delicate, skilled art of making razor-sharp knives emerge from volcanic glass, the host makes jokes about primitive skills. Then, when he tries it himself, the host creates a storm of celebration on the first halfway successful strike—after several failures. If you look carefully into the flintknapper’s eyes, you can see his well-contained urge to strangle the host.

The host then looks at a pristine recreation of a Neanderthal skull. The archeologist who owns this recreation lines it up against a human skull and points out the longer, sharper teeth, the pronounced brow, and the larger brain cavity. We have no way of knowing why they needed so much of a bigger brain than humans do, but it’s undeniable that they did. The host makes a joke about “wasted space.” The expert looks annoyed with his condescension.

I mentioned pigments above, and they come up too. Our clownish host is utterly amazed that Neanderthal sites have things like combs, beads, jewelry, and maybe even makeup. The narration is backed by an animation of a masculine Neanderthal woman sitting in front of a vanity, smearing eyeshadow and bright red lipstick around her mouth before turning to the camera and blowing it a wet kiss. Back in class, our professor did not conceal her annoyance with the mockery anymore. She took the time to stop the documentary and point out the discrepancy: just because you can’t imagine someone being skilled within your own culture doesn’t mean they were incapable of skill at all, or that they were amateurs in their own practices.

As a final touch, the documentary shows the most revealing demonstration of all. An actor is put into Neanderthal special-effects makeup and otherwise everyday clothes. After seeing him walk around in normal society with nothing but a few odd looks, the host’s brilliant takeaway is that he seems like a normal-ish dude. He set out to see what these people were like, and he ended up dressing up an extinct people in his own culture: a costume within a costume.

It speaks to me that there’s so much overwhelming evidence for Neanderthal intelligence, personhood, agency, tradition, culture, and everything else that makes us feel like people. Not even discovering that every human on Earth has some percentage of Neanderthal DNA in them is enough. Those responsible for compiling evidence and putting it into important educational material, such as a documentary or a college textbook, can be incapable of seeing Neanderthals as a species of people that we were once capable of loving. Putting flowers in a grave, purposefully creating paint, makeup, decoration, interior design; suddenly, that isn’t an expression of beauty, nor an appreciation of it. These people can’t see Neanderthals as normal people unless they’ve assimilated into a familiar culture. By this logic, the only reason to show unfamiliar cultures is to say that they don’t exist. 

You could call it narcissism. I would call it something uglier. After all, what would you call a person who finds it filthy and primitive when a culture doesn’t conform to strict Western expression? They refuse to recognize personhood if the bones aren’t the expected shape, if the brain doesn’t work in an identical way, and if the people don’t express grief, companionship, or love in line with their strict understanding of the way the world works. Any evidence to the contrary isn’t a rebuttal, it’s simply a mystery muddling the waters of supremacist worldviews.

Regardless of your answer, and regardless of whether you agree with that parallel, anyone who compiles evidence that points to a clear conclusion and says, “I refuse to respect this as new information,” isn’t a scientist, and they should have no credibility. We need to stop pretending to be shocked that people of all shapes and kinds have always sought to make beauty and comfort in the world.