How Were Neanderthals Smarter Than We Think?

Neanderthals have been portrayed as much less intelligent than humans, but they developed technologies and cultural practices similar to ours -- and sometimes much earlier. Learn more in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,
Lauren bog obam here. No matter how much evidence we
have to the contrary, Homo sapiens think ourselves very civilized.
In fact, we often talk about the other human species
that used to share this planet as if they were

(00:22):
as far removed from us as armadillos or penguins. But Neanderthals,
for instance, did a lot of the same things as
their modern human contemporaries. They could laugh. Plus they made jewelry, string, glue,
and art. Have you ever tried to make string? It's
actually a bit tricky. You twist two or more bits

(00:43):
of fiber together while at the same time twisting the
individual strands in opposite directions so that the fibers locked together.
It requires incredible fine motor skills and some basic mathematical understanding,
plus a pensiont for civil engineering and Acording to a
study published in the April edition of the journal Scientific Reports,

(01:04):
Neanderthals checked all these boxes. The researchers discovered a fragment
of cordage, probably between forty one thousand and fifty two
thousand years old, and just the width of a child's
pinky fingernail at an archaeological site in France. The fragment
consists of three bundles of fiber twisted together but probably
made from the inner bark of an evergreen tree. The

(01:27):
string was found stuck to a small stone tool and
could possibly have served as a handle for the tool,
or it could have been part of the string bag
that held it. According to the study, the techniques used
to make this fragment of string suggest quote much larger
fiber technology, which means they could have been making clothes,
rope mats, and nets prior to this discovery. The oldest

(01:52):
fiber fragments ever discovered were found in modern day Israel,
probably made around nineteen thousand years ago. And beyond all that,
a study published in the December twenty issue of the
journal Scientific Reports finds that Neanderthal's almost certainly buried their dead.
For more than a century. Archaeologists have been unearthing buried

(02:13):
skeletons of Neanderthals in Europe and parts of Asia, but
many of them were excavated using techniques that would make
a modern archaeologist wins, and given the way they were exhumed,
it's been exceptionally difficult to tell whether the burials were intentional,
but it's been assumed by some researchers that Neanderthals weren't
smart enough to engage in symbolic behavior such as honoring

(02:36):
their dead with a burial. But a multidisciplinary team of
researchers from France, Germany, and Spain reopened the case of
a forty one thousand year old skeleton of a two
year old child unearthed between nineteen seventy and nineteen seventy
three in a cave in southwestern France. The team re
excavated the site where the child was found and reviewed

(02:57):
the notes from the original dig. The researchers found the
bones to be relatively unscattered, meaning animals likely hadn't messed
with the body, and they didn't seem to have been
weathered by the elements, which suggests rapid burial after death.
In addition, the bones seemed to have been placed intentionally,
with the head pointing east and uphill of the other bones,

(03:19):
even though the incline of the hill sloped west. This
study indicates that the child was intentionally deposited in the
ground not long after death, and because the dating of
the bones indicates the Toddler died not long before Neanderthals
winked out of existence. This discovery brings up questions about
when Neanderthals adopted funerary practice and how widely it spread

(03:43):
before their extinction. Today's episode was written by Jesselyn Shields
and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on this months
of other topics, visit how stuffworks dot com. Brain Stuff
is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my
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