Neanderthal Society, Family Life and Children | Early European History And Religion

NEANDERTHAL SOCIETY

It is believed that Neanderthals traveled in groups of less than 30 individuals — most likely around 10 to 15, including children — and their total population at any one time probably only numbered in the few tens of thousands. The determination that group sizes were small is based on the limited remains found in burial sites and the modest size of the rock shelters they used.

Neanderthal stone tools were usually fashioned from stones found near to their remains which indicates they didn’t range far and trade with other Neanderthals. Similarity of tools across a wide area indicates technology was transferred from group to group.

It seems there was less gender specialization and social stratification among Neanderthal than with humans in that it seems that the entire Neanderthal group was involved in the hunting process rather than broken up into hunters (mostly male) and gatherers (mostly women and young) as was the case with modern humans.

Studies of Neanderthal teeth indicate they matured faster than humans with growth lines in the tooth of an eight-year-year old Neanderthal being equivalent to that of a 10- to 12-year-old human.

Websites on Neanderthals: Neandertals on Trial, from PBS pbs.org/wgbh/nova; The Neanderthal Museum neanderthal.de/en/ ; Hominins and Human Origins: Smithsonian Human Origins Program humanorigins.si.edu ; Institute of Human Origins iho.asu.edu ; Becoming Human University of Arizona site becominghuman.org ; Hall of Human Origins American Museum of Natural History amnh.org/exhibitions ; The Bradshaw Foundation bradshawfoundation.com ; Britannica Human Evolution britannica.com ; Human Evolution handprint.com ; University of California Museum of Anthropology ucmp.berkeley.edu; John Hawks' Anthropology Weblog johnhawks.net/ ; New Scientist: Human Evolution newscientist.com/article-topic/human-evolution

Neanderthal Family in Siberia

Archaeology magazine reported: The first known family of Neanderthals was identified by researchers who sequenced the DNA of 11 individuals from Chagyrskaya Cave in southern Siberia. The small group likely lived together 54,000 years ago. The genetic analysis determined that 2 of the cave’s inhabitants were a father and his teenage daughter, the first time such a relationship between Neanderthals has been established. The study also concluded that 2 other adult males, an adult female, and a small boy were part of their extended family. [Source: Archaeology Magazine, January 2023]

Chagyrskaya Cave is about 100 kilometers (60 miles) west of Denisova Cave, where the first evidence of Denisovans was discovered, just over a decade ago, lies Situated in the snowy Altai Mountains of Siberia, the cave is believed to have served as the site of a short-term bison hunting camp. In 2019 excavators found some 90,000 stone artifacts, bone tools, animal and plant remains, and 74 Neanderthal fossils there. The organic remains of Chagyrskaya Cave were radiocarbon-dated to between 51,000 and 59,000 years old. Pollen and animal remains show that the climate was quite cold in the short time Neanderthals occupied Chagyrskaya.

An analysis published Oct. 19, 2022 in the journal Nature investigated the genetic makeup of the Neanderthals at Chagyrskaya and neighboring Okladnikov Cave. Kristina Killgrove wrote in Live Science: The study yielded an astounding 13 genomes, nearly doubling the number of complete Neanderthal genome sequences in existence. While previous work estimated the size of Neanderthal communities based on footprints and site-use patterns, the new genomic analysis directly tested the hypothesis that Neanderthals lived in biologically related groups of 20 or fewer individuals. [Source: Kristina Killgrove, Live Science, October 23, 2022]

Genetic data from 11 Neanderthals found at Chagyrskaya Cave gave the researchers the first incontrovertible evidence of Neanderthal familial relationships, according to the paper. The DNA from two individuals — an adult male and an adolescent female — suggested a "first-degree relationship," meaning it was possible for them to be mother and son, brother and sister, or father and daughter. But their nonmatching mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which is generally passed on from mother to child, ruled out the first two pairings, leaving researchers face-to-face with a father and his teenage daughter. The father also shared mtDNA with two other males, who were likely close maternal relatives; "for example, they could have shared a grandmother," the authors suggested.

There is no evidence that these itinerant Neanderthals mingled with the nearby Denisovans, even though they were likely in the same place at the same time. The researchers wrote that, by their estimate, the Denisovans shared a common ancestor perhaps 30,000 years before the Chagyrskaya Neandertals lived and that the Chagyrskaya and Okladnikov individuals "all appear equally related to European Neanderthals and were part of the same Neanderthal population."

High similarity in the genome segments of these Neanderthals also led the researchers to "conclude that the local community size of the Chagyrskaya Neanderthals was small." Fitting models to the mtDNA and Y-DNA, the latter of which is passed from fathers to their sons, the best scenario "assumed a community size of 20 individuals," with female migration being "a major factor in the social organization of the Chagyrskaya Neanderthal community," the study authors wrote. In essence, some females remained with the group they were born into, while many others left their communities to join new ones. But the researchers aren't sure if this group size could be applied outside the Altai region, as the Chagyrskaya group may have been a unique, isolated example.

Isolation might have been these Neanderthals' undoing. Speculating on this group's cause of death, paleogeneticist and lead author Laurits Skov told The New York Times that the group may have died of starvation following a poor bison hunt, while geochronologist and co-author Richard Roberts told The Washington Post that "maybe it was just a horrendous storm. They are in Siberia, after all."

Neanderthals Just Like Us?

Elizabeth Kolbert wrote in The New Yorker: “At least on some occasions, they buried their dead. Also on some occasions, they appear to have killed and eaten each other. Wear on their incisors suggests that they spent a lot of time grasping animal skins with their teeth, which in turn suggests that they processed hides into some sort of leather. [Source: Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker, August 15, 2011]

Jon Mooallemjan wrote in the New York Times magazine: “Neanderthals weren’t the slow-witted louts we’ve imagined them to be — not just a bunch of Neanderthals. As a review of findings published last year put it, they were actually “very similar” to their contemporary Homo sapiens in Africa, in terms of “standard markers of modern cognitive and behavioral capacities.” We’ve always classified Neanderthals, technically, as human — part of the genus Homo. But it turns out they also did the stuff that, you know, makes us human. [Source: Jon Mooallemjan, New York Times magazine, January 11, 2017 ||*||]

“Neanderthals buried their dead. They made jewelry and specialized tools. They made ocher and other pigments, perhaps to paint their faces or bodies — evidence of a “symbolically mediated worldview,” as archaeologists call it. Their tracheal anatomy suggests that they were capable of language and probably had high-pitched, raspy voices, like Julia Child. They manufactured glue from birch bark, which required heating the bark to at least 644 degrees Fahrenheit — a feat scientists find difficult to duplicate without a ceramic container. In Gibraltar, there’s evidence that Neanderthals extracted the feathers of certain birds — only dark feathers — possibly for aesthetic or ceremonial purposes. And while Neanderthals were once presumed to be crude scavengers, we now know they exploited the different terrains on which they lived. They took down dangerous game, including an extinct species of rhinoceros. Some ate seals and other marine mammals. Some ate shellfish. Some ate chamomile. (They had regional cuisines.) They used toothpicks.||*||

“Wearing feathers, eating seals — maybe none of this sounds particularly impressive. But it’s what our human ancestors were capable of back then too, and scientists have always considered such behavioral flexibility and complexity as signs of our specialness. When it came to Neanderthals, though, many researchers literally couldn’t see the evidence sitting in front of them. A lot of the new thinking about Neanderthals comes from revisiting material in museum collections, excavated decades ago, and re-examining it with new technology or simply with open minds. The real surprise of these discoveries may not be the competence of Neanderthals but how obnoxiously low our expectations for them have been — the bias with which too many scientists approached that other Us. One archaeologist called these researchers “modern human supremacists.” ||*||

257 Neanderthal Footprints on the Coast of Normandy, France

In September 2019, scientists reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the discovery of 257 Neanderthal footprints along the Normandy shore in France that were extraordinarily good condition ever though the were over 80,000 years old. Afp reported: Their work suggests the band numbered 10 to 13 individuals, mostly children and adolescents, along with a few very tall, likely male adults, who could have been up to 190 centimeters (six feet three inches) in height, judging from foot size. [Source: Ivan Couronne, AFP, September 10, 2019]

“Jeremy Duveau, a doctoral student at France's National Museum of Natural History and one of the study's co-authors, told AFP, the footprints were left in muddy soil, then quickly preserved by wind-driven sand when the area was part of a dune system, creating a snapshot in time. The Rozel site was discovered by amateur archeologist Yves Roupin in the 1960s, but it was not until 2012, when it was faced with the twin dangers of wind and tidal erosion, that annual excavations began with government support. Tens of meters of sand were extracted with mechanical shovels to reach the layers that were of interest. The team then switched to brushes to carry out the last phase of the delicate excavation work that led to the identification of 257 footprints between 2012 and 2017, and hundreds more since.

Le Rozel

“The footprints were found among what the team called "abundant archeological material" indicating butchery operations and stone tool production, and date back to a time when only Neanderthals, not anatomically modern humans, lived in western Europe. Rapidly-preserved footprints offer an advantage over archeological or fossilized bone remains in estimating group sizes because these can accumulate over time and do not necessarily reflect a single occupation, unless a catastrophic event led to a whole group being killed at once. “Yet this strength is also footprints' main weakness: "They record a kind of snapshot into the lives of individuals over a very short period," said Duveau.

Each of the footprints was photographed and modeled in three dimensions. Casts were taken of a few of them using an elastomer, which is less rigid than plaster. “Thanks to an advanced new chemical technique available to the team since 2017, hundreds of the prints were lifted from the site to be preserved elsewhere. Those which weren't extracted were "totally destroyed" by the wind, said Duveau. "The conservation of footprints requires a sort of miracle: we have to get very, very lucky," he concluded. Before Rozel, only nine confirmed Neanderthal footprints were found in Greece, Romania, Gibraltar and France.

257 Footprints Help Us Understand Neanderthal Groups and How They Lived

The 257 footprints from 10 to 13 Neanderthal individuals, mostly children and adolescents, offers major insights into Neanderthal social structures and how they lived. AFP reported:Like modern humans and primates, Neanderthals — our closest evolutionary cousins — are thought to have lived in groups, but their size and composition have been difficult to infer from archeological and fossil remains. “"That gives us some insight into the composition of the group, but it is possible that it represents only those members of the group who happened to be outside at the time." The question thus becomes: were there so few adult footprints because Neanderthals died young? Or were the adults off somewhere else? [Source: Ivan Couronne, AFP, September 10, 2019]

“Of the 257 footprints, 90 percent were made by children, ranging from two years old to adolescents. “It’s difficult to figure out why those individuals were there at that particular time: Were they looking for food or playing or doing something else?” Isabelle de Groote of Liverpool John Moores University, told New Scientist. “I would expect either more adults or more of a balance between the number of adults and young people.” [Source: Jason Daley, Smithsonian magazine , Smithsonianmag.com, September 10, 2019]

Jason Daley wrote in Smithsonian magazine: “At least one set of adult prints does appear at the site, and it overturns some conceptions about Neanderthals. In general, Neanderthal skeletons show that they were relatively short, ranging between 4’9” to 5’2.” However, extrapolating from the size of the footprints, the team found the adult would have been around 5’8,” close to the average height for men in the United States today, or even taller. It’s possible that this particular Neanderthal was unusually tall. It’s also possible that researchers were previously mistaken about the average height of the species.

100,000-year-old Neanderthal Footprints in Southern Spain

Fossilized footprints discovered on a beach in southern Spain are thought to be more than 100,000 years old and may be the earliest Neanderthal footprints found in Europe. Among other things they appear to show children playing. Tom Metcalfe wrote in Live Science: Some 100,000 years ago, an extended family of 36 Neanderthals walked along a beach, with the kids jumping and frolicking in the sand, scientists report after analyzing the beachgoers' fossilized footprints. "We have found some areas where several small footprints appeared grouped in a chaotic arrangement," said Eduardo Mayoral, a paleontologist at the University of Huelva and lead author of the study, which was published online on March 11, 2021 in the journal Scientific Reports. The footprints "could indicate an area of passage of very young individuals, as if they were playing or loitering on the shore of the nearby waterlogged area," Mayoral told Live Science.[Source: Tom Metcalfe, Live Science, April 13, 2021]

Le Rozel footprints

In June 2020, two biologists discovered the tracks on Matalascañas beach, in Doñana National Park, after a period of intense storms and high tides. The biologists first saw fossilized animal tracks; some of the footprints were made long ago by large animals, like deer or wild boars, Mayoral said. Only later, after Mayoral's team analyzed the prints, did anyone realize that some were Neanderthal footprints, he said. "Nobody recognized the existence of the hominid footprints at that time, which were only discovered by my team two months later, when we began to study the whole surface in detail."

The team photographed the site extensively with an aerial drone and digitally scanned each of the fossilized human footprints in three dimensions. Mayoral and his colleagues identified 87 Neanderthal footprints in the sedimentary rock on the beach at Matalascañas after storms and high tides exposed the surface where they were made.The exposed surface dates to the Upper Pleistocene period, roughly 106,000 years ago, when ancient stone tools discovered nearby show the region was inhabited by Neanderthals.

At the time the footprints were made, the now-exposed surface appears to have been along the shore of a watering hole slightly inland from the coast, which was farther south back then than it is today, Mayoral said. "Probably the water would not have been fresh but somewhat brackish, since we have found evidence of sea salt crystals (halite) on the surface where the footprints are found," he wrote.

100,000-Year-Old Neanderthal Footprints Show Children Playing in the Sand and Maybe Adults Fishing

The sizes and distribution of the footprints suggest they were made by a group of 36 Neanderthal individuals who were probably related, including 11 children and 25 adults — five females, 14 males and six individuals of undetermined sex. "It can be established by correlation with other European sites that there is a direct relationship between the size of a footprint and the age of the individual who produced it," Mayoral said. [Source: Tom Metcalfe, Live Science, April 13, 2021]

Tom Metcalfe wrote in Live Science: Most of the beach-walking adults would have stood between 4 and 5 feet (1.3 to 1.5 meters) tall, but four prints seem to have been made by an individual who was over 6 feet (1.8 m) tall. That's taller than the expected height of Neanderthals, so the print may have been made by a shorter individual with a heavy gait, the researchers wrote.

Of particular interest are the two smallest footprints, approximately 6 inches (14 centimeters) long, that are thought to have been made by a child about 6 years old. They are among several footprints grouped chaotically in some areas, possibly because the Neanderthal children were playing in the sand on the shore of the watering hole, Mayoral said.

Analysis of the tracks shows that most of the footprints are located on the edge of the flooded area, but the individuals who made the prints did not move entirely into the water, the researchers wrote."This could involve a hunting strategy, stalking animals in the water [such as] waterbirds and waders or small carnivores," they wrote. The tracks might also have been made by people fishing in the water hole or searching for shellfish; evidence of similar hunting-and-gathering behavior by Neanderthals has been reported at other ancient sites.

Stone tools attributed to Neanderthals have turned up at nearby sites, but in those cases, there was no direct evidence — such as Neanderthal bones or teeth — to confirm their presence, Mayoral said. That made the fossilized footprints especially important, the researchers wrote: "The biological and ethological information of the ancient hominin groups when there are no bone remains, is provided by the study of their fossil footprints, which show us certain 'frozen' moments of their existence."

Neanderthal Boys Similar to Modern Boys, Skull Reveals

two-year-old Neanderthal

An analysis of the skull of a Neanderthal boy found in Spain suggests that he grew up much like a modern boy, another sign that Neanderthals were similar to us, researchers said. AFP reported: “The rare discovery of a child’s partial skeleton was found among the remains of seven adults and five other youths at the 49,000-year-old archeological site of El Sidron. The seven-year-old boy, known as El Sidron J1 according to the report in the journal Science, is the first juvenile Neanderthal to be studied from the area. “What we see in this Neanderthal is that the general pattern of growth is very similar to modern humans,” said co-author Luis Rios, member of the Paleoanthropology Group at Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, during a conference call with reporters. [Source: Agence France-Presse September 22, 2017 /*]

“He was still growing when he died, and his brain was about 87.5 percent the size of an average adult Neanderthal brain, said the report. A modern human boy would be expected to have a brain weight about 95 percent of an adult’s by that age, it added. An analysis of his vertebrae showed some had not yet fused. These same bones tend to fuse in contemporary people at a younger age, between four and six. /*\

“Adam Van Arsdale, associate professor of anthropology at Wellesley College who was not involved in the study, described the differences between Neanderthals and humans in the paper as “subtle.” The study is “an important contribution to our understanding of human evolution,” and “consistent with a now vast and growing body of research that demonstrates the similarities between Neanderthals and living humans,” he said. It also sheds new light on the history of human development. Neanderthals evolved separately – in western Eurasia – from humans who emerged from Africa, but they had plenty in common. /*\

“Just how the Neanderthal child died is a mystery. Scientists have found no evidence of disease, and described him as “sturdy,” weighing 57 pounds (26 kilograms) and standing just over three and a half feet tall. But his bones also contained marks similar to other remains at the cave, where other studies have suggested cannibalism may have been rampant. “The bones have some marks, but we do not know the cause of death,” co-author Antonio Rosas, chairman of the Paleoanthropology Group at Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, said. /*\

“Researchers said there are limits to what can be inferred about the social aspects of Neanderthal childhood and development from the study. “We have to be very cautious because we have studied one skeleton,” said Rios.Milford Wolpoff, professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan, agreed “that Neandertals may have had extended period of brain growth.” But he questioned the authors’ attempt to age the child so precisely. “Age determination for dead people is at best an estimate, and giving an age estimate to two decimal places (they say 7.69 years of age) really overstates the accuracy that is possible,” said Wolpoff, who was not involved in the study. /*\

Baby Neanderthal Breast-Fed for Seven Months

A baby Neanderthal who lived in present-day Belgium about 100,000 years ago, started eating solid food at seven months old, implying that it breast-fed until then. Stephanie Pappas wrote in Live Science: “The precision of this estimate is courtesy a new technique that uses elements in teeth to determine when breast-feeding started and stopped. Though researchers can't be sure the young Neanderthal's pattern was typical of its kind, such a breast-feeding pattern is not unlike that seen in many modern humans. "Breast-feeding is such a major event in childhood, and it's important for so many reasons," study researcher Manish Arora, a research associate at Harvard's School of Public Health, told LiveScience. "It's a major determinate of child health and immune protection, so breast-feeding is important both from the point of view of studying our evolution as well as studying health in modern humans." [Source: Stephanie Pappas, Live Science, May 22, 2013 /*/]

“Until now, however, no one had an effective way of looking at bones and reconstructing breast-feeding history. Past attempts had relied on moms' memories of when they started supplementing breast milk with solid food and when they weaned their babies. Those memories can be fuzzy years after the fact, Arora said. He and his colleagues had an advantage: A large study of pregnant women in Monterey County, Calif., that started when the women were only 20 weeks along in their pregnancies and followed them for years. At seven years and onward, the mothers were asked to donate a baby tooth their child had lost. Arora and his colleagues analyzed the teeth for biomarkers that matched changes in the child's breast-feeding status. The researchers also conducted a similar analysis in macaques. /*/

“They found that both in humans and macaques, the ratio of the elements barium and calcium in the teeth revealed what the baby had been eating when those teeth formed. The researchers analyzed the enamel (the outer layer of the tooth) and the dentine (the mineralized layer that supports the enamel). The parts of the teeth that form in the gums before birth have very little barium, Arora said, probably because only a small amount of the element gets into the fetus through the placenta. After birth, barium spikes and stays high in the tooth enamel and dentine. If a baby transitions to formula, the barium levels get even higher, as formula has even higher levels of barium than breast milk. The profile changes again when babies (or macaques) start adding solid food to their diet of breast milk. "You find the amount of barium we can absorb from solid foods such as vegetables and meats is different from what we get from breast milk, so we can see this period of exclusive breast-feeding," Arora said. /*/

“The researchers could pinpoint weaning with great precision. For example, researchers knew one baby macaque had been separated from its mother and abruptly weaned at 166 days of life. The tooth analysis method estimated that this weaning occurred between 151 and 183 days of life — a matter of just weeks' difference from the actual date. /*/

“Barium has the advantage of resiliency compared with other elements, so Arora and his colleagues tested their new method on a very old tooth. They used a molar from the Scladina Neanderthal, a fossilized juvenile found in Belgium. Similar patterns as in humans and macaques appeared: a barium increase at birth, which stayed high until the Neanderthal was about 7 months old. At that point, the tooth indicated, the Neanderthal baby went into a transitional diet, consuming breast milk supplemented by solid food. The pattern is one that today's parenting experts would likely approve. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends exclusively breast-feeding babies for at least six months after birth, followed by the gradual introduction of solid foods. /*/

The Neanderthal's mixed diet continued for seven months until 14 months of age, when the baby abruptly weaned. No one knows what happened, Arora said. It's possible the Neanderthal became separated from its mother, or perhaps the mother got pregnant or gave birth to a younger sibling and cut her older child off from the breast. So far, Arora and his colleagues have tested only the Scladina Neanderthal, and they aren't sure whether its weaning pattern is typical of the species.” The researchers reported their findings in May 23, 2013 issue of in the journal Nature. /*/

Neanderthal Children Played With Toy Axes and Went to School?

Neanderthal children may have played with toy axes and gone to school, researchers believe. Tom Porter wrote in the International Business Times: “Archaeologists have studied Neanderthal sites across Europe, collecting bones and artefacts, building a picture of everyday life in prehistoric communities. Instead of caveman life being nasty, brutish and short, the team believes that it was formed around tightly bonded families, where children were educated, and the elderly and disabled supported. */ "The reputation of the Neanderthals is changing. Partly that's because they have been shown to have bred with us – and that implies similarities to us – but also because of the emerging evidence of how they lives," Penny Spikins, a researcher in human origins at York University, told the Sunday Times. [Source: Tom Porter. International Business Times, April 13, 2014 */]

“In a paper, she and her colleagues identify three sites, two of them in England, where toy-like hand axes were found. They believe that Neanderthal children may also have been schooled in how to make tools. At one site in France and another in Belgium, stones were found that had been skilfully crafted alongside others that were inexpertly chipped, as if by learning children. "Learning how to make hand axes may have been part of the adult sculpting of emotional self-control in children," said Spikins. **/

“She believes that as well as being schooled, Neanderthal children may have played games like peek-a-boo. "Peek-a-boo and various throwing and swinging play occur in great apes as well as humans, and albeit by implication, perhaps also in Neanderthals," said the paper. Spikins said that the research may help establish a more nuanced view of Neanderthals, and help overturn assumptions that they were evolution's losers. **/

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons except Le Rozel footprints from Open Edition Journals

Text Sources: National Geographic, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Nature, Scientific American. Live Science, Discover magazine, Discovery News, Ancient Foods ancientfoods.wordpress.com ; Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, AFP and various books and other publications.

Last updated April 2024