Who were the Neanderthals? | DW Documentary

[Music] long before homo sapiens began to populate the earth another human species had established itself across much of the eurasian continent the neanderthals [Music] fossils discovered during the last two centuries in the atlantic ocean and in siberia have shed some light on these mysterious archaic humans they had culture they had social systems they had intelligence [Music] recent archaeological finds in england and france have helped researchers find out more about these early inhabitants of eurasia they mastered their environment and understood it perfectly neanderthals managed to survive for some 300 000 years and then they disappeared how did they overcome existential threats such as extreme climate change and what do neanderthals and modern humans have in common [Music] [Music] so [Music] after the first archaeological evidence of neanderthals was discovered in the 19th century many experts described this species as ape-like a more realistic picture of the neanderthals evolved decades later analysis of their remains and various artifacts provided details about the way they lived the survival skills that they developed and the climate in which they lived that climate was extremely harsh during the millennia that neanderthals inhabited the eurasian continent this was the ice age and there were periods of extreme cold with temperatures dropping to minus 20 degrees celsius and sea levels were much lower than they are today the evidence indicates that the neanderthals adapted well to these particularly difficult conditions paleoanthropologist professor chris stringer of london's natural history museum specializes in the physical and anatomical development of early humans the neonatal face is very different to the shape of a modern face and many arguments about how that face evolved and why it evolved and i think the view now is that certainly that face it's partly to do with cold adaptation so we know neanderthals evolved in conditions that were largely colder and drier than the present day in europe and it's likely that um that face was particularly the nasal area because the nose is very large and it's pulled forwards it has a very large internal volume so partly it seems that it's there as acting like a radiator it's warming up and humidifying the air that's coming in [Music] and this was true for all of these ancient humans all of them really have larger nasal apparatus than modern humans do but neanderthals take it to another level they they really are pumping a huge amount of air through their noses and they've got huge lungs barrel chest they need to oxygenate their blood they're burning more energy to stay warm as well these physical characteristics helped the neanderthals survive in an inhospitable ecosystem they also developed an important skill making tools out of flint and other materials this was groundbreaking technology [Music] it's known as the leval technique and involves using a rock or bone to chip off thin sharp edged flakes from the core material here archaeologist van sant lascua demonstrates the technique and then i'll remove pieces that could be used as tools this is what's called a level wire point it runs it's a long slow process now he has to sharpen the edges here you can see the distinctive features of this process the two ridges that come to a point and the beveled cutting edge this concave ledge could be used to attach the pointed flake to a spear for example the levatoir technique helped neanderthals create weapons to hunt large animals that would provide them with meat for food and skins for clothing this allowed the neanderthals to spread across the continent despite the cold weather they were also able to adapt to brief interglacial periods that were marked by significant increases in temperatures [Music] there are only a few sites where experts have been able to study thousands of years of neanderthal history one of them is on the island of jersey in the english channel excavations over the course of the last century have revealed new details on the lives of these early humans archaeologist becky scott is a researcher at the british museum she and her colleagues have spent several years studying the neanderthal site at la cote de san brellard the sediments preserved within the fissure and begin accumulating at least 240 000 years it goes through to we have dates now of around about 40 000 there are later sediments as well so actually that captures that entire time span but what it also captures is huge changes in climate and environment so there are times when it's warm you know it's nearly as warm as today and the sea is quite close there are other times when it's cold we're dipping down into a glacial period and the the sea is locked up a long way north of the site and a completely different landscape is exposed in prehistoric times jersey was not an island it was part of the european mainland one of its most prominent geographical features is a rock formation that towers 150 meters over a broad plain neanderthals may have used it as a lookout post for neandertal people that view gives them control of that so you can maybe imagine somebody sat up there perhaps directing other groups perhaps spotting maybe other people coming through maybe herds of animals coming through so by getting up they're actually able to control and work with their landscape in a way that that you can't when you're just down low and moving through it [Music] scientists mapped out the ocean floor around the island to find out what the area might have looked like in prehistoric times a few years ago my colleague richard bates and martin bates actually started to conduct a bathymetric survey of the bay that surrounds the cot and up to five kilometers offshore so that was painting in the landscape that we can't see so there's little bits of it that are still visible as skerries and reefs and eroded sea stacks the bates brothers investigation showed that the seabed was not very deep they also found canyons where neanderthals could trap bison wild cattle known as aurochs or mammoths here at the university of reading archaeology professor stephen mithen has been researching how early humans learn to develop survival skills and adapt to their environment i think in many ways the nientels were wild people but i mean wild in a in the best sense the word they were very sensitive emotional caring people but they were engaged in the wilderness the wilderness of isis tundras of interglacial forests of coasts and had a great understanding of nature and were very much part of nature in the way that were not today so much rivers and streams were vital to the neanderthals survival they used these bodies of water to help find their way through dense interglacial forests they also hunted animals who gathered there to drink excavations at kaur in northern france revealed evidence of big game hunts that took place there an estimated 123 thousand years ago [Music] experts from france's national institute for archaeological research in rap have been working at the site for more than a decade the animals were probably killed on the riverbank at that time the river was about 10 meters from here not where it is today the ground was soft which made it difficult for the animals to move around it would have been too dangerous to hunt them on open hard ground the lives of the neanderthals were focused on hunting they developed skills that eventually made them the most dangerous predators in the region they were expert hunters we usually associate neanderthals with sites where the remains of medium-sized animals have been found various species of deer and reindeer but they were also apparently able to kill wild cattle which were nearly two meters tall the woolly rhinoceros was also huge they were very aggressive and dangerous animals but they also provided a rich source of food including meat and bone marrow excavation director jean-luc lost says the site has yielded important new information on how neanderthals adapted to their environment and this has changed our perception of these primitive humans before the kaur site was discovered in 2002 experts believed that neanderthals could not adapt to interglacial environments it was thought that they inhabited only the colder step zones and moved out of our region during interglacial periods evidence from the kawua site indicates that neanderthals spread their activities over several locations for example the current excavation was set up at a place where these early humans butchered the animals they had killed this was an intermediate site they used for slaughtering they killed the animals somewhere else and then brought the carcasses here afterward they probably took the meat to a base camp that was a little further away we've recovered items that indicate that these people made their weapons very quickly without a lot of extra work the idea was to complete the hunt in what was for them a short period of time scientists have now determined how these sites were used and how long they were occupied the oldest layer is around 124 000 years old they went there twice a year the newest stratum which is about 121 000 years old was used for 10 months at a time it's clear that neanderthals were able to adapt successfully to their environment by restricting their activities to specific areas they were nomads but they lived in a rather limited region where each site fulfilled a specific function like extracting raw materials or slaughtering animals and they created living spaces and sloped areas that protected them from high winds they knew how to make good use of these narrowly defined areas materials recovered from the kawa site highlight an important feature of neanderthal culture their nomadic way of life this phenomenon has been confirmed by evidence found at the la court site on the island of jersey the first scientists who visited the site at the turn of the last century discovered the remains of numerous woolly mammoths most of these items ended up in private collections [Music] this tooth is the only one that remains in the hands of scientists we don't know precisely how neanderthals are getting hold of the mammoth that we see brought into the cot but we assume that they're probably hunting numbers of them in that landscape or maybe also scavenging them as well but they're certainly not bringing them in any great distance the neanderthal hunters trapped their prey in the rugged jersey landscape and then use flint-tipped weapons to kill them and flint tools to butcher them but no items made of flint have been found on jersey so where did these essential tools come from [Music] we know from the flint that's carried in that the journeys people are making are from maybe 20 maybe 30 kilometers away um from out around guernsey ordinary where flint fresh flint outcrops to make those journeys you're you're tracking in um maybe over a couple of days you're carrying your toolkit with you you're working it down as you go and you're not replacing it with with local raw materials so it's like these are deliberate moves to get to places that that you know are there it sort of gives us an insight into into neanderthal geographies the ways neanderthals are mapping their world really i think materials excavated at kaur and lakot indicate that neanderthals learn to plan their activities such as hunting in areas where they lived this level of sophistication does not correspond to the stereotype of neanderthals as crude low browned cave dwellers i think unquestionably neanderthals are undertaking some planning in their activities we know that they're hunting big game we know they're hunting mammoths bison and horse now to do that you have to do some planning for that because it's got to be a group cooperative activity you need to anticipate where the herds are going to be exactly how you're going to hunt them you then also need to plan how you're going to distribute the food and butter it so clearly there's got to be planning there we can just see that from the basic archaeological evidence that we that that we get planning allowed the neanderthals to optimize key activities like hunting this was an important development because there were so few of these early it appears that they lived in small groups with perhaps 20 or 30 people a large clan might have two or three families these small groups moved over relatively large areas in all there were only a few tens of thousands of people in an area the size of europe it's unusual that such a relatively small group of people scattered over such a large area kept coming back to places that were far less spectacular than the cliffs of jersey [Music] in southern france excavation work continues at grot mondran a cave-like structure on the rhone river that served as a neanderthal shelter ludovic slimak is the project leader he says that the evidence they found here indicates that this was an important stop on many neanderthal migrations which deposited sediments in the cave over thousands of years humans first arrived here 120 000 years ago we've recovered items from the cave that date back 80 000 years it's a marvelous archaeological repository that covers the period from the first settlements to the extinction of the neanderthals 42 000 years ago it's the only one of its kind in the world [Music] in these layers of sediment slimak and his team have found a lot of evidence showing that neanderthals lived here they stayed only briefly sometimes just a few days but they apparently came back again and again throughout the course of their existence archaeologists have discovered gaps of several decades where no neanderthals appear to have been present here slimak believes that over 80 000 years the mondram caves were occupied frequently by nomadic groups what makes a neanderthal a nomad did we mean populations that are thoroughly familiar with a specific area that could be relatively large groups of neanderthals apparently met regularly in specific places for example once a year they gathered to exchange information and members of their group especially young people there's evidence from the siddrone cave in spain that neanderthals also exchanged women at these meetings they lived together in small groups and reproduced amongst themselves and that could cause genetic problems a healthy gene pool needs constant imports and exports of material so for example i might exchange my sister for someone else's various groups met there the survival of the tribe was essential that's also why groups of neanderthals met often to hunt migrating wild animals [Music] we found evidence that certain objects were transported from far away or in a completely different direction for example flints that came from 300 kilometers farther east or 300 kilometers farther west or 150 kilometers farther north it's not possible that one group would cover such a large area in its annual migrations that's thousands of kilometers and it doesn't fit an annual cycle the evidence indicates that there were several groups and each had its own territory and once or twice a year they'd meet at one place to engage in common activity this activity these meetings would produce the desired results only if the various groups could communicate with each other this raises the possibility that neanderthals had developed rudimentary language skills i think to be able to anticipate and plan your social activities your hunting activities your foraging activity must imply a pretty sophisticated system of communication it doesn't mean it's necessary compositional language like we have in terms of words and grammar and so forth but it means a very sophisticated form of communication [Music] scientists have been studying what sort of language the neanderthals may have spoken in any case these ancient humans do seem to have had the physical capability to speak [Music] we can reconstruct the basic shape of the neanderthal vocal apparatus and it seems to be fundamentally similar to ours but maybe the voice box was a little bit higher in the throat which would suggest the voice was a bit higher pitched doesn't quite go with the butch neonatal image of them having higher voices but maybe they did but we know that the ear bones of neanderthals seem to be functioning like ours do for sound transmission the same range of frequencies so their hearing certainly would have given them the same capabilities as we have in terms of hearing language so i think all of that suggests neanderthals had a basic language they'd be talking to each other they had speech capabilities so it seems likely that neanderthals were able to communicate with each other but did they use language in a form that modern humans would recognize they did communicate so they did have language capability it was a complex and sophisticated form of language that allowed groups to exchange information with each other and that was crucial to their survival plan the cruxes whether they're using words in the way that we use words and those words were then combined with complex grammatical rules or syntax to be able to convey complex ideas narratives information now i suspect not [Music] still neanderthals were able to communicate among themselves but what form did this language actually take [Music] i think musicality is really important musical is hugely important for expressing emotion it's hugely important for social bonding as well if you go off hunting bison we're working as a team are going to be absolutely confident you're going to throw your spear just at the right time to hit that bison because if you don't i'll get trampled to death so how are we going to build up that trust if we haven't got words i think we sing and dance together and i think we see still see that in the modern world singing and dancing together builds up trust builds up that common bond that sense of a group that must be critical to neanderthal survival scientific analysis of neanderthal brain cases and comparisons with those of modern humans may help scientists to better understand the speech capability of these prehistoric people [Music] the brain case of neanderthals is very different from that of anatomically modern humans for example a flat forehead and strong bro riches elongated flat skull this is a robust male he died at an age of 42 years the shape of the brain is very typical and is unique under the fossils of the world the morphological structure of neanderthal brain cases is strongly different from that of anatomically modern humans but the internal structure isn't well known yet we may never be able to create an anatomical profile of the neanderthal brain [Music] but scientists can use their knowledge of modern human brain structure to study that of these prehistoric people especially their cognitive abilities [Music] because when you talk about cognition you know my cognition is partly a factor of my brain and that's partly a factor of what i've biologically inherited and partly in fact my development environment but then it's also all the other support around me you know i'm not very clever unless i've got a smartphone in my hand these days or a ruler or a book and so forth so cognition is really a combination of your material culture you have your social environment and your biology inside of you so we know the answers had the large brains uh they may have been become networked differently but without that material culture to scaffold their cochlear development and scaffold and support their thinking and without words to do that i think they were inherently inhibited but despite the limitations cited by professor mithen were the neanderthals able to develop a culture as we understand the term today [Music] expert opinion on this topic is divided since there's no hard evidence of songs or dances if indeed they had any some scientists believe that the archaeological evidence indicates that neanderthals were capable of creating works that may be described as art one of those scientists is british pre-historian matt pope who knows the flint deposits on the south coast of england quite well pope is part of the team that's studying the site at la cote de sombre lard he and colleague becky scott will carry out further excavations there within lakot perhaps the two most famous stratigraphic levels within it are the two bone heaps on the western wall of the cave they were piling large amounts of mammoth and a small amount of woolly rhinoceros bone they could be just the remains of butchered animals neatly piled up in in just a very ordered behavior they could be stockpiling them for other uses these bone heaps go even further in their ordering the way the skulls of mammoth are placed around the outside of these bone heaps the way that ribs are driven on end into the sediment almost to fence in and constrain the bone heaps and in one case a rib even driven through a skull into the sediment underneath goes beyond simple tidiness goes beyond stockpiling material they're creating something even if it's just a kind of routine habitual behavior even if it has no symbolic meaning it's still monumental what they leave behind it would still if you saw it today look very very striking evidence that neanderthals were capable of planning and building structures is rare so the discovery of the brunichell cave in 1990 in france's averron valley caused a sensation in a space located more than 300 metres from the entrance archaeologists discovered several structures made of broken stalagmites there are rings of this material as well as random piles the ring structures were later determined to be approximately 175 000 years old some scientists say that the neanderthals who built these structures had developed a complex level of social organization there's a parallel between the bone heaps and the the stalagmite circles uh brunical cave both in a way are inexplicable in their their order um both are very very structured of course the brunicle it's deep in the cave they're not using food refuse but it shows that they're capable of working together to create structure out of chaos without any obvious function we've got lots of words for those sort of behaviors in our in our own language we can call it symbolism we can call it art we can call it ritualistic behavior i don't think those words are very helpful i think uh it is just something very very human to try and monumentalize landscape monumentalised landscape with our own traces and our own interventions on it a rare indication of neanderthal abstract expression was discovered at gorham's cave on the gibraltar peninsula in 2014 [Music] a series of intersecting lines the press dubbed it history's first hashtag it's not clear what the symbols mean some experts like ludovic slimac caution against speculation there's evidence that early homo sapiens made jewelry they took the teeth of carnivores that they killed drilled holes in them and created necklaces we found none of that among neanderthals no jewelry necklaces beads or anything that might require drilling and scientists have examined countless artifacts from that period humans wear jewelry and clothing to show off these items shape our mental cultural and social universe which we then present to others neanderthals simply didn't do that future archaeological discoveries may prompt skeptics to change their minds but this discussion also raises an important question how closely did neanderthals resemble modern people the science constantly changes how we envisage neanderthals and at the same time we want to bring them close to us we're seeing them as very modern in terms of their behavior we should never forget the fact that if we were confronted by one if we encountered one in the street or in the landscape we'd instantly notice differences in their mythology in their face in their bearing in their gate the first humans of the species homo sapiens arrived in western europe about 50 000 years ago this development appeared to seal the fate of the neanderthals who were far less sophisticated studies of the mondran cave the reconstruction of settlements there and the discovery of flint objects indicate that homo sapiens came to western europe in two waves the first consisted of scouting parties who used advanced flint tools that group disappeared after about 10 years and the neanderthals gradually returned to the mondra site homo sapiens returned to the region a few thousand years later around 42 000 years ago this cave was home to both the last neanderthals and the first modern humans they probably traveled north from the mediterranean through the rhone river valley they settled there and it's likely that they came into contact with neanderthals this was just about the time that the previous residents of this region the neanderthals started to die out there's been a lot of speculation about why and how this happened the neanderthals had been there for dozens even hundreds of generations other parts of europe and western asia have concluded that the neanderthal population became extinct about 42 000 years ago [Music] tom hayam is an expert on carbon 14 dating he's a professor of archaeological science at oxford university and says that recent scientific studies have provided new information on why the neanderthals died out and actually this is different to what i originally thought when i first started working in this area i thought that modern humans would kind of sweep in and neanderthals would go extinct relatively soon after but actually it seems to be a lot more complicated than that and there seems to be a mosaic of populations in different parts of europe we also know of course that the dna is telling us that these two populations not only met but they interbred with one another which adds an increased layer of interest and complexity at the same time i think over the two to four thousand years in which we see modern humans and neanderthals um living or overlapping in europe that there was a slow and gradual disappearance of neanderthal groups [Music] as neanderthals started to interbreed with homo sapiens their numbers grew smaller and smaller until they eventually disappeared all together i think the tails were to some extent trapped in their success they survived for two three hundred thousand years and through huge amounts of climate change in very challenging environments but the culture uh remained pretty stable for two three hundred thousand years they were making basically the same types of tools they were exquisite tools but the amount of innovation around creativity is is minimal neanderthals and homo sapiens co-existed across eurasia for several thousand years these ancient humans managed to survive major changes in climate but they failed to adapt to the arrival of a superior species the thought that there was a point where there was a group of people you know surviving in the same landscape who were you know superficially so similar to us but maybe did things in a different way it's like a it's almost like playing a hunter-gatherer thought experiment or something i just i just think it's incredible that at one point we weren't the only human species that walked the earth as we are today i think that the way that we look at neanderthals says a lot about how we deal with others and this raises the question of how we treat other members of our species today people are always talking about the cultural shock of migration i think the situation is exaggerated but it still reflects on how we deal with others from time to time archaeologists find new evidence that helps us to better understand how neanderthals lived but these are just fragments from the long history of this species modern humans inherited part of their genetic code from neanderthals perhaps that's why many of us are fascinated with the relics of these ancient people and the similarities that neanderthals share with modern humans if they had managed to survive the world would likely be a very different place neanderthals developed a distinct social intelligence and were much more attuned to their environment than was the species that replaced them we can only speculate on what influence the neanderthals might have had on the course of human history for better or for worse [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: DW Documentary

Views: 2,776,560

Rating: 4.7621975 out of 5

Keywords: Documentary, Documentaries, documentaries, DW documentary, full documentary, DW, documentary 2020, documentary, Neanderthals, Stone Age, prehistoric man, archeology, Ice Age, indigenous Europeans, extinct

Id: 8p8tFcIQ8K4

Length: 42min 25sec (2545 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 23 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/bosshax]

"Their first professions were as hunter gatherers, cave painters and car insurance agents."

[u/nessuer]

ONE TWO THREE

[u/hollyyysg]

I thought this was Shia Labeouf..

[u/PrestigeW0rldW1de]

For all the hurr hurr, dumb Neanderthals! people in the comments, many studies are out indicating Neanderthals were very intelligent, even more intelligent than modern humans are, just in different ways. Denisoivans are in a similar category, they likely older and were even more advanced than Neanderthals.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140430133054.htm

https://www.inverse.com/science/neanderthal-math-study

Considering so many of us have their DNA embedded into our genetic code, they never really 'died out'

Edit After reading some of the politobots comments I'm definitely leaning towards the opinion that they were *far more intelligent

[u/dub-fresh]

Thats an interesting topic. There are hypotheses which believe humans eradicated the Neanderthals after living together for millennia.

[u/EmotionallySquared]

Thought it said, "Who were the Netherlands?"

Think I need some sleep

[u/Mick_86]

He does look like my uncle John

[u/AlexMile]

Reject sapiens, return to neanderthal.

[u/securityburger]

I’m sorry, but if Neanderthals wanted to be taken seriously, they should have lived another forty thousand years! At least make it to the Bronze Age, then I’d watch a documentary on them