User:Trekphiler/Neandertal

Neanderthals, according to Jordan (2001), appear to have had psychological traits that worked well in their early history but placed them at a long-term disadvantage with regards to modern humans. Jordan is of the opinion Neanderthal thinking differed substantially from Homo sapiens, despite having equal or greater brain size.

Both once shared essentially the same Mousterian tool kit and neither had a definite competitive advantage, as evidenced by the shifting Homo sapiens/Neanderthal borderland in the Middle East. In time, Homo sapiens started to attain behavioral or cultural adaptations allowing them to gain an advantage. There are early glimmers of this from Zaire where in the area of Katanda bone harpoon points have been found of fine workmanship, dating to perhaps 80,000 years ago. These featured backwards-pointing barbs and lateral grooves so they could be easily installed on a wooden shaft, used to harpoon local fish. These appear to have been made by modern humans and are more sophisticated spear than any Neanderthals are known to have made. There does not seem much question Homo sapiens in Africa was taking steps toward better tools and a more complex social life, while the Neanderthal ways and technology remained the same, continuing to rely on wooden and stone artifacts, while bone and ivory ones were not common, implying the Neanderthal mind tended to be rather resistant to learning new methods or materials.

While Neanderthals mastered complex tasks such as the making of fire, shelters with post holes, and stone tools, there were many Cro-Magnon tools and behaviors Neanderthals seem to have never developed: organized fishing; using fish hooks and fish nets; headgear or hats, shoes, and sewn clothing; needle-and-thread; and long-distance trade.

Other researchers think Neanderthals had little sexual division of labor, with Neanderthal women alongside the men hunting big game. Such a lifestyle was not as energy efficient as that of modern humans, whose hunter-gatherer lifestyle secured supplemental food of a much greater variety, including plant materials such as tubers or wild grains, fish, edible fungi, and small edible animals secured by women, young boys and girls, and elderly men, while mature males could hunt big mammals. Since Neanderthals were mostly carnivorous and targeting big mammals, a shortage of large mammals meant possible bouts of starvation or malnutrition, which affected Cro-Magnon people less. Neanderthals appear to have stored food against lean times much less than Cro-Magnons. Neanderthals got food in a haphazard, catch-as-catch-can manner. In addition, Cro-Magnon sites show a lot of animal remains of small creatures best hunted with traps and snares, such as squirrels and rabbits, whereas Neanderthal sites show few such fossils. In short, inferior methods shut Neanderthals out of many food sources Cro-Magnons exploited. As a result, Cro-Magnons could carry more people on the land than Neanderthals, and one may infer Cro-Magnons would have familial and tribal organization Neanderthals could not match, if they had the latter at all.

Neanderthals also appear to have never used boats or rafts, as evidenced by the lack of Neanderthal fossils from North Africa, yet in stark contrast Homo erectus, their more primitive ancestor, appears to have used rafts or some other sort of boat on occasion. Homo erectus, or some other hominid, used such craft to reach the island of Flores, as evidenced by the discovery of Homo floresiensis in 2003. Flores and some other places Homo erectus reached have always been surrounded by very deep water, proving the use of watercraft of some sort.

Since Neanderthals evidently never used watercraft, but prior and/or arguably more primitive editions of humanity did, there is argument Neanderthals represent a highly specialized side branch of the human tree, relying more on physiological than psychological adaptation in daily life than "moderns". Specialization has been seen before in other hominids, such as Paranthropus boisei, which evidently was adapted to eat rough vegetation.

Additionally, Neanderthals evidently had little long-term planning when securing food. French caves show almost no salmon bones during Neanderthal occupancy but large numbers during Cro-Magnon occupancy. In contrast, Cro-Magnons planned for salmon runs months ahead of time, getting enough people together at just the right time and place to catch a lot of fish. Neanderthals appear to have had little to no social organization beyond the immediate family unit. Why Neanderthal psychology was different from the modern humans that they coexisted with for millenia is not known.

Due to the paucity of symbolism Neanderthal artifacts show, Neanderthal language probably did not deal much with a verbal future tense, suggesting less planning for the future by Neanderthals. Cro-Magnon people had a much better standard of living than the hardscrabble existence available to Neanderthals. With better language skills and bigger social groups, a better psychological repertoire, and better planning, Cro-Magnon people, living alongside the Neanderthals on the same land, outclassed them in terms of life span, population, available spare time (as shown by Cro-Magnon art), physical health and lower rate of injury, infant mortality, comfort, quality of life, and food procurement. The advantages held by Cro-Magnon people let them by this time to thrive in worse climatic conditions than their Neanderthal counterparts. As weather worsened about 30,000 years ago, Jordan notes it would have taken only one or two thousand years of inferior Neanderthal skills to cause them to go extinct, in light of better Cro-Magnon performance in all these areas.

The Chatelperronian tool tradition suggests Neanderthals were making some attempts at advancement, as Chatelperronian tools are only associated with Neanderthal remains. It appears to be connected to social contact with Cro-Magnons of some sort. There were some items of personal decoration found at these sites, but these are inferior to contemporary Cro-Magnon items of personal decoration and arguably made more by imitation than by a spirit of original creativity. At the same time, Neanderthal stone tools were sometimes finished well enough to show some aesthetic sense.