La Ferrassie-1 Neandertal. Photo: Roberto Sáez

The extinction of Neandertals is a huge challenge for paleoanthropologists. Neandertals and modern humans are believed to have evolved from a common ancestor about 500,000 years ago. Some researchers usually thought of Homo heidelbergensis as this common ancestor, but other hypothesis suggests that Homo heidelbergensis existed as an species only in an European niche, whilst there is a new parent species yet to be found. In any case, the ancestor evolved into Neandertals in Europe and Homo sapiens in Africa. Neandertals lived in Eurasia 200,000 years before Homo sapiens arrived from Africa. About 60,000 years ago, succesful migrations of African modern humans came into Eurasia and then also quickly to Western Europe. It is not known when they first met Neandertals, but genetic evidence shows interbreeding between both species in different periods.

A study by Tom Higham et al set the extinction of the last Neandertals around 40,000 years ago. It is based on radiocarbon dating from 40 sites across Europe. Assuming that Homo sapiens first reached Europe about 45,000 years ago, this implies a period of Neandertals & sapiens coexistence of between 5,000 and 10,0000 years.

However, the study does not include remains from Gorham’s Cave in Gibraltar, where Neandertals apparently survived until c. 30,000 years ago.

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Final assignment of the course ‘Human Evolution, Past and Future’ (University of Wisconsin–Madison, instructor John Hawks). The objective was to describe a plausible scenario for human evolution into the future, with the form of an essay. This work was rated with the maximum grade by four peer assessors.

One of the fields in paleoanthropology I especially like is the cognitive and behavioral evolution. In particular, a challenging matter is the space that neandertals occupy in such field. There are many questions regarding their cognitive abilities and symbolic behavior. The big size of their brains suggests that neandertals would have had a genetic ability for complex cognition. But traditionally it was considered that they did not reach ‘the level’ of modern humans.

Neandertal view by paleoartist Fabio Fogliazza. Photo: Roberto Sáez

We believe that neandertals had a form of language, otherwise they would never have been able to organise themselves to the extent that they did. Assuming that neandertals were capable of some symbolic thought, can we imagine their behavior when they confronted the encroaching Homo sapiens species with different capabilities? Half a century ago it was clearly believed that symbolic thought was a key distinction between modern humans and neandertals. Our knowledge has increased a lot since then, and now we have some evidence suggesting that neandertals did have symbolic thought. Here I collect some of the key findings:  Sigue leyendo →