Neanderthal behavior


For much of the early 20th century, Neanderthal behaviour was depicted as primitive, unintelligent, and brutish; unevolved compared to their modern human contemporaries, the Cro-Magnons. Although knowledge and perception of Neanderthals has markedly changed since then in the scientific community, the image of the underdeveloped caveman archetype remains prevalent in popular culture. Nonetheless, it is debated if Neanderthals or any pre-modern species exhibited behavioural modernity.
Neanderthal technology achieved a degree of sophistication. It includes the Mousterian stone tool industry as well as the abilities to maintain and possibly to create fire, build cave hearths, craft at least simple clothes similar to blankets and ponchos, make use of medicinal plants, treat severe injuries, store food, and use various cooking techniques such as roasting, boiling, and smoking.
Overall, Neanderthals maintained a low population and population density, and also mainly interacted with only nearby neighbours. Many groups suffered from inbreeding depression. Communities may have seasonally migrated between caves, but most of the raw materials Neanderthals used were collected within only of a site. Indicated by frequent evidence of stunted growth and traumatic injuries, Neanderthals lived harsh lives, which may be implicated in the 150,000 year stagnation in Neanderthal stone tool innovation.
Neanderthals consumed a wide array of food, mainly what was abundant in their immediate vicinity. This was normally hoofed mammals such as red deer and reindeer, but also megafauna, plants, small mammals, birds, and aquatic and marine resources. Although they were probably apex predators, they still competed with cave lions, cave hyenas, and other large predators. A number of examples of symbolic thought and Palaeolithic art have been inconclusively attributed to Neanderthals, namely possible ornaments made from bird claws and feathers, collections of unusual objects including crystals and fossils, and engravings. Some claims of religious beliefs have been made. The extent to which Neanderthals could produce speech and use language is debated.

Popular conceptions

By the early 20th century, several Neanderthal fossils were identified across Europe, establishing H. neanderthalensis as a legitimate species. The most influential specimen was La Chapelle-aux-Saints 1 from La Chapelle-aux-Saints, France. French palaeontologist Marcellin Boule authored several publications, among the first to establish palaeontology as a science, detailing the specimen, but reconstructed him as slouching, ape-like, and a distant offshoot of modern humans.
Boule fuelled the popular image of Neanderthals as barbarous, slouching, club-wielding primitives in stark contrast to their modern human contemporaries, the Cro-Magnons. The image of the unevolved Neanderthal was reproduced for several decades and popularised in prehistoric fiction works, such as the 1911 The Quest for Fire by J.-H. Rosny aîné and the 1927 The Grisly Folk by H. G. Wells in which they are depicted as monsters. In 1911, Scottish anthropologist Arthur Keith reconstructed La Chapelle-aux-Saints 1 as an immediate precursor to modern humans, sitting next to a fire, producing tools, wearing a necklace, and having a more humanlike posture, but this failed to garner much scientific rapport, and Keith later abandoned his thesis in 1915.
By the middle of the century, the scientific community began to rework its understanding of Neanderthals based on new fossil discoveries and reevaluations of earlier material. Ideas such as Neanderthal intelligence and culture became mainstream, and a more humanlike image of them emerged. In 1939, American anthropologist Carleton Coon reconstructed a Neanderthal in a modern business suit and hat to emphasise that they would be, more or less, indistinguishable from modern humans had they survived into the present. William Golding's 1955 novel The Inheritors depicts Neanderthals as much more emotional and civilised. In modern-day, Neanderthal reconstructions are often very humanlike, but the question of behavioural modernity in Neanderthals or any other pre-modern species is still debated. Traditionally, behavioural modernity has been associated archaeologically with modern human Upper Palaeolithic traditions, and characterised as a major revolution which led to the overwhelming success of modern humans over other species.
In modern popular culture, the "caveman" archetype often mocks Neanderthals as primitive, hunchbacked, knuckle-dragging, club-wielding, grunting, nonsocial characters driven solely by animal instinct. "Neanderthal" can also be used as an insult. In literature, they are sometimes depicted as brutish or monstrous, such as Elizabeth Marshall Thomas' The Animal Wife, but sometimes with a complex but unfamiliar culture, as in Björn Kurtén's Dance of the Tiger, and Jean M. Auel's Clan of the Cave Bear and her Earth's Children series.

Social structure

Social organisation

Reliable evidence of Neanderthal group composition comes from:
  • Cueva del Sidrón, Spain showing 7 adults, 3 adolescents, 2 juveniles and an infant;
  • the footprints of Le Rozel, France, showing a group of 10 to 13 members where all but one were juveniles or adolescents,
  • and Chagyrskaya Cave in the Siberian Altai Mountains showing 6 adults and 5 children. This family may have died of starvation.
A Neanderthal child's teeth analysed in 2018 showed it was born in the spring and weaned after 2.5 years, similar to modern hunter gatherers. Indicated from various ailments resulting from high stress at a low age, such as stunted growth, British archaeologist Paul Pettitt hypothesised that children of both sexes were put to work directly after weaning; and American palaeonthropologist Erik Trinkaus suggested that, upon reaching adolescence, an individual may have been expected to join in hunting large and dangerous game. Stunting may have also resulted from harsh winters and bouts of insufficient food resources. Because Neanderthal bone trauma is comparable to recent Inuit, the characterisation of a short, violent life may be oversimplified. Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals had a similar trauma rate.
Bands likely moved between certain caves depending on the season, indicated by remains of seasonal materials such as certain foods, and returned to the same locations generation after generation. Some sites may have been used for over 100 years. Sites showing evidence of no more than three individuals may have represented nuclear families or temporary camping sites for special task groups. Cave bears may have competed with Neanderthals for cave space, and there is a decline in cave bear populations starting 50,000 years ago onwards. Neanderthals also had a preference for caves whose openings faced towards the south.
Neanderthals are generally considered to have been cave dwellers. Open-air settlements near contemporaneously inhabited cave systems in the Levant could indicate mobility between cave and open-air bases in this area. Evidence for long-term open-air settlements is known from 'Ein Qashish, Israel.

Inter-group relations

Trade

Populations may not have been as capable of inter-group interaction and trade as Cro-Magnons, with genetic data suggesting low population density, and archaeological data indicating the sourcing of artefacts from usually no farther than from the main settlement.
Nonetheless, because a few Neanderthal artefacts in a settlement could have originated 20, 30, 100 and 300 km away, there does seem to have been at least limited long-distance inter-group relations. British anthropologist Eiluned Pearce and Cypriot archaeologist Theodora Moutsiou speculated that Neanderthals were possibly capable of forming geographically expansive ethnolinguistic tribes encompassing upwards of 800 people, based on the transport of obsidian up to from the source. Still, they conceded that Neanderthal long-distance networks would have been significantly hindered by smaller population compared to Cro-Magnons.

Breeding

Low population caused a low genetic diversity and probably inbreeding, which reduced the population's ability to filter out harmful mutations. It is unclear how this affected a single Neanderthal's genetic burden and, thus, if this caused a higher rate of birth defects than in Cro-Magnons. If it did, it could have contributed to the extinction of the species.
The DNA of a Neanderthal from Denisova Cave, Russia, shows that she had an inbreeding coefficient of. The discovery of such an individual may indicate that inbreeding was common here. The 13 inhabitants of Sidrón Cave collectively exhibited 17 different birth defects likely due to inbreeding or recessive disorders.
When inter-group resettling did happen, at least some groups may have practised patrilocal residency, as suggested by mtDNA of the Neanderthals of Cueva del Sidrón, Spain. Here, the three adult men belonged to the same maternal lineage, while the three adult women belonged to different ones. Chromosomal analysis at Chagyrskaya Cave indicates a similar pattern of female migration.

Population dynamics

Genetic analysis indicates there were at least three distinct geographical groups:
Post-Eemian Western European Mousterian stone tools can also be broadly grouped into three distinct macro-regions:
  • Acheulean-tradition Mousterian in the southwest,
  • Micoquian in the northeast,
  • and Mousterian with bifacial tools in between the former two. MBT may actually represent the interactions and fusion of the two different cultures.
Southern Neanderthals exhibit regional anatomical differences from northern counterparts, namely:
  • a less protrusive jaw,
  • a shorter gap behind the molars,
  • and a vertically higher jawbone.
These all suggest Neanderthal communities regularly interacted with closely neighbouring communities within a region, but not as often beyond.
Over long periods of time, there is evidence of large-scale cross-continental migration. Early specimens from Mezmaiskaya Cave in the Caucasus and Denisova Cave in the Siberian Altai Mountains differ genetically from Western European Neanderthals, whereas later specimens from these caves both have genetic profiles more similar to Western European Neanderthals than to the earlier specimens from the same locations. These suggest large-scale population replacement over time. Similarly, artefacts and DNA from Chagyrskaya and Okladnikov Caves, also in the Altai Mountains, resemble those of eastern European Neanderthal sites about away more than they do artefacts and DNA of the older Neanderthals from Denisova Cave, suggesting two distinct migration events into Siberia.
Neanderthals seem to have suffered a major population decline during MIS 4, and the distribution of the Micoquian tradition could indicate that Central Europe and the Caucasus were repopulated by communities from a refuge zone either in eastern France or Hungary who dispersed along the rivers Prut and Dniester.