The Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) fascinate both researchers and the general public. They remain central to debates about the nature of gender Homo (the broad biological classification that includes humans and their family members). Neanderthals are also crucial to understanding the uniqueness of our species. Homo sapiens.
About 600,000 years ago we shared an ancestor with Neanderthals. They evolved in Europe as we did in Africa, before spreading into Eurasia several times. The Neanderthals became extinct about 40,000 years ago. We have populated the world and continue to prosper. There has long been debate about whether this different outcome is a result of differences in language and thinking.
But the evidence points to important differences in the brains of our species and those of Neanderthals, allowing modern humans (H. sapiens) to come up with abstract and complex ideas through metaphor – the ability to compare two unrelated things. For this to happen, our species had to diverge from Neanderthals in our brain architecture.
Some experts interpret the skeletal and archaeological evidence as pointing to profound differences. Others believe there were none. And some choose the middle path.
It is not surprising that there is disagreement when trying to deduce such intangibles from material remains such as bones and artifacts. The evidence is fragmentary and ambiguous, leaving us with a complex puzzle about how, when, and why language evolved. Fortunately, recent discoveries in archeology and other disciplines have added several new pieces to this language puzzle, allowing a viable picture of the Neanderthal mind to emerge.
New anatomical evidence indicates that Neanderthals had vocal tracts and auditory pathways that were not significantly different from ours, indicating that, from an anatomical perspective, they were as capable as us of communicating through speech. The discovery of Neanderthal genes in our own species indicates multiple episodes of interbreeding, implying effective communication and social relationships between species.
The discovery of Neanderthals’ wooden spears and the use of resins to make tools from individual components have also expanded our view of their technical skills. Pendants made from bird claws and the likely use of feathers as body ornaments are claimed as examples of symbolism, along with geometric carvings on stone and bone.
Cave painters?
The most striking claim is that Neanderthals made art by painting red pigment on cave walls in Spain. But some of these claims about cave art remain problematic. The evidence for Neanderthal cave art is compromised by unresolved methodological problems and, in my opinion, unlikely to be correct.
The rapidly accumulating evidence for the presence of modern humans in Europe before 40,000 years challenges the idea that Neanderthals created these geometric designs, or at least that they did so before the influence of symbol-using modern humans. No matter how well crafted, a wooden spear is little more than a pointed stick, and evidence of technological advancement is lacking throughout Neanderthal existence.
Although the archaeological evidence remains controversial, that from neuroscience and genetics provides a compelling argument for linguistic and cognitive differences between H. neanderthalensis And H. sapiens.
A digital 3D reconstruction of the Neanderthal brain, made by deforming it H. sapiens and fitting it into a cast of the brain (endocast) of a Neanderthal, indicates significant differences in structure. Neanderthals had a relatively large occipital lobe, which meant more brain material was devoted to visual processing and less was available for other tasks, such as language.
They also had a relatively small and differently shaped cerebellum. This subcortical structure, which is packed with neurons, contributes to many tasks, including language processing, speaking and fluency. The unique spherical shape of the modern human brain evolved after the first Homo sapiens had appeared 300,000 years ago.
Some of the genetic mutations associated with that development are related to neuronal development and the way neurons in the brain are connected. The authors of a comprehensive study of all mutations known to be unique H. sapiens (as of 2019) concluded that “modifications of a complex network in cognition or learning occurred in modern human evolution”.
Iconic words
As such evidence has accumulated, our understanding of language has also changed. Three developments are of particular importance. The first is the 2016 discovery via brain scans that we store words, or more accurately the concepts we associate with words, in both the hemispheres of the brain and in clusters, or semantic groups, of similar concepts in the brain. This is important because, as we will see, the way in which these clusters of ideas are connected – or not – is likely to have varied across countries. H. sapiens and Neanderthals.
Second, there is the recognition that iconic sounds – which provide a sensory impression of what they represent – had provided the evolutionary bridge between the ape-like call of our common ancestor 6 million years ago and the first words spoken by Homo – although we I’m not sure what kind that was.
Iconic words are still ubiquitous in languages and capture aspects of the sound, size, movement and texture of the concept the word represents. This contrasts with words that are only arbitrarily related to what they refer to. For example, a dog can also be called a dog, chien or hound, none of which gives a sensory impression of the animal.
Third, computer simulation models of intergenerational language transmission have shown that syntax—consistent rules for how words are arranged to generate meaning—can arise spontaneously. This shift in emphasis from genetic coding of syntax to spontaneous emergence suggests that both H. sapiens and the Neanderthal language contained these rules.
The main difference
While it may be possible to put the pieces together in different ways, my long struggle with the multidisciplinary evidence has yielded only one solution. This starts with iconic words spoken by the ancient human species homo erectus about 1.6 million years ago.
As these types of words were passed down from generation to generation, arbitrary words and syntax rules emerged, causing early Neanderthals and H. sapiens with equivalent linguistic and cognitive capabilities.
But these diverged as both species continued to evolve. The H. sapiens brains developed their spherical shape with neural networks that connected previously isolated semantic word clusters. These remained isolated in the Neanderthal brain. So while H. sapiens and Neanderthals had an equivalent capacity for iconic words and syntax, they appear to differ in storing ideas in semantic clusters in the brain.
By connecting different clusters in the brain responsible for storing groups of concepts, our species has acquired the ability to think and communicate using metaphors. This allowed modern man to draw a line between very different concepts and ideas.
This was perhaps the most important of our cognitive tools, allowing us to conceive of complex and abstract concepts. While iconic words and syntax were shared between each other H. sapiens and Neanderthals, the metaphor transformed the language, thinking, and culture of our species, creating a deep divide with the Neanderthals. They died out while we populated the world and are still flourishing.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Steven Mithen does not work for, consult with, own shares in, or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond his academic appointment.