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Photo: David Mark On Pixabay The relationship between Neanderthals and early sapiens sparks exciting debate. A confrontation between both species, a 100,000 year “war”, has long been the
The relationship between Neanderthals and early sapiens sparks exciting debate. A confrontation between both species, a 100,000 year “war”, has long been the most accepted interpretation, with a victory for us when coexistence continues on the planet. Today we know that in addition to the possible hostility of the sapiens, there were other enemies in the war.
The defeat of the Neanderthals may have been due to the extinction of the last “sister” species, climatic changes, perhaps their own anatomical situation, or even the effects of an epidemic that wiped them out. New archaeological records and advances in understanding our genome have now completely changed the way we tell our story, with Neanderthals.
About 129,000 years ago, population density in Eurasia during the Upper Pleistocene must have been very small. It is not just a figure, it deals with the possibilities of encounters that may have occurred between both communities in the past. They and we were very few.
We do not have reliable data for the Middle Paleolithic, but we do have data for the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic (Aurignacian), with an estimated population of 900 to 3,800 in Central Europe. In other words, the inhabitants of what might be a small town today were scattered throughout central Europe. If we consider a habitable area of more than 10 million km², the population density was negligible and was close to 0.103 people/100 km².
Added to the low population density is the repeated use of settlements (caves, shelters or river beds) by the same groups over time. Therefore, the chance of contact between the two species should be very low.
Map showing the distribution of main finds from late Neanderthals, sapiens before 40,000 BP, as well as late Mousterian and early Upper Paleolithic sites. Shaded areas may correspond to contact areas between species.
(own detail at https://doi.org/10.1002/jqs.3350,
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03335-3 and
https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abj9496. Mapping Base, NASA Earth Observation MDT).
There was not only rivalry between Neanderthals and Sapiens, but more encounters than seemed likely.
Experts were able to sequence Neanderthal DNA in human remains such as El Sidrón (Asturias), Vindija (Croatia) or Mezmaiskaya (Russia), and we started to make comparisons with DNA from modern populations. With the first sapiens to come to Europe.
The importance of the sequencing culminated recently with the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Medicine to its pioneer, Svante Pääbo, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. This comparison confirms that association between these groups of people is more frequent than previously thought. Likewise, it is contradictory that different species have common offspring. Today, however, we know that there is a genetic load of between 1% and 4% of Neanderthal DNA, although not all sapiens show traces of hybridization as they do in African populations.
In 2018, the discovery of the remains of a girl who was the daughter of a Neanderthal woman and a Denisovan man confirmed that interbreeding was a viable and indiscriminate process.
Human remains of late beds
Bacho Kiro in Bulgaria and Zlatý kůň in Czechia confirmed frequent contacts.
For the time being, meetings should be limited to specific geographic and chronological contexts. We know that they may have been produced in the Altai mountains of Siberia at least about 100,000 years ago, in the Near East 60,000 years ago, and in Central Europe about 40,000 years ago, and all these are Sapiens and Neanderthals.
The “loving” relationship between species should be limited to the integration of isolated individuals within alien groups. Cultural selection processes in offspring must have shaped our limited Neanderthal genetic load.
We tend to forget the importance of culture as a differentiator between groups of people. Even though they were not recognized as distinct species, they should have been considered different as their material culture shows.
For example, about 300,000 years ago, the first sapiens developed an industry similar to that of the Neanderthals, but soon developed it to very complex standards. However homo neanderthalensis kept almost unchanged until they disappeared. Similarly, even assuming that symbology and art were part of the Neanderthals’ cultural wealth, its generalization and expression would certainly not be similar to that of sapiens, without excluding sapiens authorship as a result of its early arrival in the West.
During the last 100,000 years, when relationships between these species have been established, the culture of Neanderthals undoubtedly seems to be the biggest winner. Known as the Mousterian, this Neanderthal industry has been recorded at European sites almost unchanged for over 300,000 years. In fact, the cultural hybridization that occurred in the Near East confirms the relative triumph of Neanderthal tool production styles over those of Sapiens.
Can this be considered the superiority of one species over another? It’s possible that sociodemographic situation has conditioned a cultural response in favor of Neanderthals, but Sapiens’ resilience and resilience may have been key to this Mousterian assimilation at a time when both species came into contact for about 5,000 years. . . .
Confronted with a distinct territorial feeling in Neanderthals, Sapiens perhaps more mobile modeled the occupation of the same region, gradually depleting the traditional resources of their relatives.
Neanderthals had the ability to adapt to harsh climate changes and use complex technology and a wide variety of environments and resources.
Perhaps they were capable of adapting to the environment with greater flexibility and their agile migrations, whose cultural immobility added to the new conditions created by Sapiens’ irregular and perhaps early arrival in Eurasia determined their gradual dispersal in their favour.
It was a slow “battle”, but it was already won. It is not easy to know whether the last Neanderthal groups were aware of their extinction and whether they left their traces in isolated redoubt.
This conflict between species led to sex, but it seems with very little love. Otherwise, Neanderthal DNA would have been much more abundant in human groups that evolved in Europe.
Professor of Prehistory Javier Baena Preysler Autonomous University of Madrid and Concepción Torres Navas, Postdoctoral Researcher in Prehistory, Autonomous University of Madrid
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original.
Source: El Nacional
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