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As part of my continuing search to learn more about Neandertals I picked up Juan Luis Arsuaga's book The Neanderthal's Necklace. I read it over the past couple days, and found it fairly enjoyable though really only about half of it was the information I was looking for. The book had been translated from the original Spanish, and I feel that there was something lost in the translation. Several paragraphs seemed a bit disorganized and it felt like it might have made more sense in the original.
The first chapters were about the history of hominids, where they started when they diverged, interesting to go over again but not all that much that was new. The first Neandertal chapter was interesting, looking at where their similarities with Cro Magnon were and where they were different, looking at how you can figure out differing brain sizes and why this is important. There was then a divergent into looking at the flora and fauna in Spain and how this had changed over time, and about the different game available during the ice age, which I admit to skipping. The last third of the book was devoted to understanding more about Neandertals. Arsuaga looked more at the life span of Neandertals and the great trouble in figuring it out from the fossil record but several ways it was being done. He also looked at language, how the Neandertals physiology affected their ability to speak. And the reasoning behind that. He also looked at their use of fire, and the fact that they buried their dead.
There was one very interesting part where he talked about Sima de la Huesos (the bone pit) which was a 300,000 year old burial pit containing over 2000 skeletal remains, from so far what is estimated to be around 30 people. (though the numbers are growing). The skeletons were taken and put into a cliff in a cave. From the excavations they determined that most of the people there died around the same time and perhaps were victims of a natural disaster. Arsuaga then went to tell the sad story of the people who had been victims of drought or some other form of starvation who wandered to the area where the caves were, with the older members dying on the way, only to have most of the group die of hunger or exhaustion when they got there.
Another interesting thing that I would have liked a lot more detail on, was talking about the necklaces found at Neandertal sites in France. Apparently these necklaces were only found at sites that had been shared with Cro Magnon. Neandertals that lived isolated from Cro Magnon never developed necklaces on their own. (Apparently France has just always been a more fashionable place to live.) The conclusion being that they borrowed the technology from the Cro Magnon. I wish more was know about the time 10,000 years that the two lived together in Europe and how much interaction they had. One of the interesting things talked about was how Cro Magnon would have appeared "Cute" to Neandertals, in that sense that babies and young animals look cute to mammals with bigger eyes and softer foreheads.
Arsuaga's conclusion seemed to be that while Neandertals had the capacity for speech and thinking they did not have the talent for story telling and abstract communication that our ancestors did, and this led to their demise. This seemed a little abstract to me, how you could accuse their lack of creativity as their downfall and how exactly they showed they were uncreative. Even if they didn't independently develop their own body decorations they did bury their dead, often with grave goods, which would seem to imply to me some level of creative thinking. A belief in something more, or at least a need for something.
The author talked about the work of Erik Trinkus a lot, apparently he's the leading expert on Neandertals at the moment, which made me wish his book had talked more about them and less about the history of evolution. But perhaps he's written another I should go and check. Still I did learn a few interesting things from this book it is one I'd recommend. Though my search to learn more continues.
The first chapters were about the history of hominids, where they started when they diverged, interesting to go over again but not all that much that was new. The first Neandertal chapter was interesting, looking at where their similarities with Cro Magnon were and where they were different, looking at how you can figure out differing brain sizes and why this is important. There was then a divergent into looking at the flora and fauna in Spain and how this had changed over time, and about the different game available during the ice age, which I admit to skipping. The last third of the book was devoted to understanding more about Neandertals. Arsuaga looked more at the life span of Neandertals and the great trouble in figuring it out from the fossil record but several ways it was being done. He also looked at language, how the Neandertals physiology affected their ability to speak. And the reasoning behind that. He also looked at their use of fire, and the fact that they buried their dead.
There was one very interesting part where he talked about Sima de la Huesos (the bone pit) which was a 300,000 year old burial pit containing over 2000 skeletal remains, from so far what is estimated to be around 30 people. (though the numbers are growing). The skeletons were taken and put into a cliff in a cave. From the excavations they determined that most of the people there died around the same time and perhaps were victims of a natural disaster. Arsuaga then went to tell the sad story of the people who had been victims of drought or some other form of starvation who wandered to the area where the caves were, with the older members dying on the way, only to have most of the group die of hunger or exhaustion when they got there.
Another interesting thing that I would have liked a lot more detail on, was talking about the necklaces found at Neandertal sites in France. Apparently these necklaces were only found at sites that had been shared with Cro Magnon. Neandertals that lived isolated from Cro Magnon never developed necklaces on their own. (Apparently France has just always been a more fashionable place to live.) The conclusion being that they borrowed the technology from the Cro Magnon. I wish more was know about the time 10,000 years that the two lived together in Europe and how much interaction they had. One of the interesting things talked about was how Cro Magnon would have appeared "Cute" to Neandertals, in that sense that babies and young animals look cute to mammals with bigger eyes and softer foreheads.
Arsuaga's conclusion seemed to be that while Neandertals had the capacity for speech and thinking they did not have the talent for story telling and abstract communication that our ancestors did, and this led to their demise. This seemed a little abstract to me, how you could accuse their lack of creativity as their downfall and how exactly they showed they were uncreative. Even if they didn't independently develop their own body decorations they did bury their dead, often with grave goods, which would seem to imply to me some level of creative thinking. A belief in something more, or at least a need for something.
The author talked about the work of Erik Trinkus a lot, apparently he's the leading expert on Neandertals at the moment, which made me wish his book had talked more about them and less about the history of evolution. But perhaps he's written another I should go and check. Still I did learn a few interesting things from this book it is one I'd recommend. Though my search to learn more continues.