In the late 1950s, high up in a mountain cave
in Iraq, a skeleton was discovered that would drive us to re-think what it means to be human. The skeleton was not of a modern human, like
us. Instead, it was one of at least 9 sets of
remains of Neandertals. This particular specimen came to be known
as Shanidar 1, and based on all of the evidence, he had lived a difficult life. By the time he died, maybe in his 40s, he
had sustained a serious blow to his skull just above his left eye. He had lost his right forearm. And his bones bore the signs of painful degenerative
joint disease throughout his right lower leg, possibly the result of a major injury to the
right half of his body. Now, the point here is not that Shanidar 1
had sustained so many injuries and coped with so many ailments. Pathological conditions like his show up in
ancient Homo sapiens pretty much as often as they do in Neandertals. I mean: Life back in the Pleistocene Epoch, I don't know if you remember, but it was hard for everyone. The important thing to note about Shanidar
1 is that all of his injuries had healed well before he died, perhaps many years before. For his remaining years, he probably couldn’t
have moved on his own very freely, or very far. He likely had impaired vision and hearing. So how did he live so long? He must’ve been cared for, by his own kind. And at the time when Shanidar 1 was discovered,
this was a pretty revolutionary idea. Throughout the first half of the 20th century,
Neandertals were thought to have been … primitive. Unintelligent, hunched-over … cavemen, for
lack of a better word. But the discoveries made in that Iraqi cave
provided some of the earliest clues that Neanderthals actually behaved -- and likely thought and
felt -- a lot like we do. Now, it’s usually very difficult to figure
out how a hominin behaved, just based on its bones. But oddly enough, one of the major lines of
evidence about what Neandertals were really like has come from an unlikely source: skeletal
pathology, the marks left on bones by illness or injury. Lots of hominin remains that we find from
the Pleistocene show evidence of things like dental problems, healed breaks, and osteoarthritis. These pathologies run the gamut from just
annoying to downright life-threatening. And over the nearly two centuries that we’ve
been digging up Neandertals, we’ve realized that there was no way some of these individuals
could’ve survived without serious, hands-on help from members of their own groups. So, instead of being primitive cavemen, Neandertals
like Shanidar-1 -- and many more like him -- have taught us an enormous amount about
ourselves. Because it turns out, that big jumble of wonderful
things that we love about ourselves -- the humaneness, the compassion, and the kindness
that we call “humanity” -- was probably not unique to us, at all. More than 40 years before Shanidar 1 was unearthed,
another Neandertal specimen was discovered that had a powerful impact on how we think
about Neandertals, even today. It was 1908 when the first nearly complete
Neandertal skeleton was discovered in a small cave in France near the town of La Chapelle-aux-Saints. The bones were about 60,000 years old and
belonged to an adult male who became known as the Old Man of La Chapelle. And although he’s called “Old,” estimates
of his age vary a lot. Some anthropologists think he was between
25 and 35, based on the condition of things like his hip joints, but others think he was
over 40 … ...which isn’t very old by my standards,
but it would’ve made him an old Neandertal. His skeleton was described by French anthropologist
Marcellin Boule in a detailed monograph published in 1911. He compared the Old Man’s bones to those
of the few other Neandertals known at the time, and to the skeletons of modern humans
and apes. His meticulous descriptions were a big step
forward for the field of paleoanthropology; but his interpretation of the Old Man's anatomy
would be hard to shake. He reconstructed the Neandertal as a slouching
creature with bent knees, unable to even stand fully upright - the same kind of primitive
caveman that Neandertals are still often thought as today. It wasn’t until the 1950s that ideas about
Neandertals really started to change. The decades after the discovery of the Old
Man had seen a boom in the excavation of earlier hominins, like the australopithecines and
Homo erectus. And once they were welcomed into our family
tree, well, the Neandertals stopped seeming so strange and primitive. And it was while this rehabilitation of the
Neandertals’ image was going on that an anthropologist named Ralph Solecki led a team
into the Zagros Mountains of Iraq, to excavate a site called Shanidar Cave. There they discovered the remains of at least
seven adult Neandertals and two infants, dated to three different occupation periods between
100,000 and just 45,000 years ago. And one of the striking things about these
skeletons was that at least five of them - all of adult males - showed evidence of pathological
conditions. They ranged from relatively minor, like a
fully healed scalp wound and osteoarthritis in the hands, to the kinds of things that
would land you or me in the emergency room. For example, the individual known as Shanidar
3 - a male in his early 40s - probably broke, or at least badly sprained, his right ankle
at some point in his life. And, while it did heal, he ended up with bony
spurs and degenerative joint disease in that ankle that probably caused him pain and limited
his mobility. Shanidar 3 also has a groove on the top edge
of his left ninth rib - evidence of a wound deep enough to have potentially collapsed
his lung. Based on the condition of the bone around
the groove, it looks like he lived for at least a few weeks, and maybe up to two months,
after the injury. And of course, once the scientists studied Shanidar 1, they found that life for Neandertals
could be even more taxing. Like Shanidar 3, Shanidar 1 was an adult male
between 35 and 50 years old. But long before he died, he suffered a crushing
fracture to the side of his left eye socket which might’ve caused blindness or a brain
injury. He also had bony growths in his ear canals,
which probably impacted his hearing. Meanwhile, the bones of his right shoulder
and upper arm were smaller than those of his left, possibly because of a nerve injury and
paralysis that happened early in his life. And his right humerus had been broken and
healed in two places, with the bone ending just above the elbow joint. This means that either his right forearm was
amputated in an injury, or the humerus was so badly broken that the two ends didn’t
heal back together, and the lower part of the arm was somehow removed later. Then there were the problems in his lower
body. He had a healed fracture in his right foot
and a painful degenerative joint disease throughout that foot, ankle, and knee, possibly caused
by some serious trauma to the right half of his body. So, when you put all of the evidence together,
it seems that Shanidar 1 may have been blind in one eye and deaf in at least one ear. He probably walked with a bad limp, which
made getting around hard and likely painful. And he had only his left hand, which limited
his ability to perform lots of tasks. It took decades for experts to find and describe
all of the pathologies that Shanidar-1 suffered from. But from the very beginning, Solecki saw something
striking among all of those injuries: In those bones, he saw the very humanity of the Shanidar
Neandertals. Based on all the healed injuries on the skeletons,
Solecki concluded that many of these Neandertals would’ve needed extensive care and accommodation
by their groups. For example, in the short term, the broken
bones of Shanidar 1 would’ve kept him immobile for weeks, if not months. So his group would’ve had to feed him and
help him get around. And over the longer term, the loss of his
hand, his compromised senses, and the extensive osteoarthritis in his right leg likely meant
that he couldn’t help with some of the tasks that were important to the survival of the
group, like hunting. So instead, his group would’ve had to compensate
for this in some way, like giving him things to do that didn’t require moving around
and keeping him out of dangerous situations, like encounters with predators. He might’ve even slowed the group down - but
they didn’t leave him behind. In 1971, Solecki published a book on the Shanidar skeletons making the case that Neandertals
were not dumb cavemen. They must have been human-like in their capacity
for compassion, in order for Shanidar 1 to have survived well into adulthood. And with this changing view of Neandertals,
the time was ripe for scientists to reconsider the Old Man of La Chapelle. In 1985, anthropologist Erik Trinkaus published
a paper that revisited Boule’s original description of the hominin. He showed that Boule’s reconstruction of
the Old Man wasn’t affected by the Old Man’s pathologies, as some had argued. Instead, he said that Boule was just flat
out wrong. But, like Shanidar 1, the Old Man did turn
out to have suffered from many ailments, and those too provided even more important clues
about what life was like for Neandertals in the Pleistocene. For one thing, the Old Man had lost maybe
as many as 15 teeth well before he died. He also had severe osteoarthritis in much
of his neck and shoulders that likely were painful and affected his ability to move his
upper body. His left hip socket was also severely affected
by osteoarthritis and a chronic bone infection that might’ve formed an abscess. So, in recent years, experts have suggested
that, like Shanidar 1, the Old Man must have needed help from members of his group to survive. To make up for his tooth loss, for example,
he might’ve needed help with eating, like preparing foods that he could chew. The osteoarthritis in his upper back and shoulders
limited his ability to hunt or carry loads. And to accommodate his arthritic hip, his
group might’ve had to move slower, move around less, or help him get around. And these would’ve been serious limitations
for a group of hominins in the Pleistocene. We know that Neandertals lived active, mobile
lives that came with a lot of physical demands. They successfully adapted to living in mountainous
terrain and harsh climates. And we know that life back then was hard for
Homo sapiens too. Adult mortality patterns and the frequency
of pathological conditions are pretty much the same across both groups. But it’s only been within the last decade
or so that anthropologists have started to really study care-giving among our hominin
relatives. And Shanidar 1 and the Old Man of La Chapelle
are prime case studies; the very fact that they survived as long as they did can be seen
as evidence of the care that they received. So, of course, we should still be proud of
what we call our “humanity” -- our compassion, our empathy, our ability to act in the interest
of others rather than ourselves. It’s a key part of what makes us human. But it seems that those qualities that we
prize about ourselves have not always been exclusive to us. Even though we’re the only humans left,
we may not have invented what it means to be human. Ok now Kallie wanted me to remind you that Another key trait of hominins is personal
adornment! So might I suggest our new Eons socks, or
shirts, or enamel pins? You can find them all at DFTBA.com. Also big thanks to this month’s Eontologists:
Patrick Seifert, Jake Hart, Jon Davison Ng, Sean Dennis, Hollis, and Steve! To become an Eonite, pledge your support at
patreon.com/eons! All membership levels have access to our Discord,
where Kallie and I hang out, and a podcast only for Eonites! And as always, thank you for joining me in
the Konstantin Haase Studio. Be sure to subscribe at youtube.com/eons.
This whole yt channel is in general pretty good