32 | New Scientist | 22 August 2020
Book
Kindred: Neanderthal
life, love, death and art
Rebecca Wragg Sykes
Bloomsbury SigmaHOW we began to unpick our
species’ ancient past in the late
19th century is an astounding
story, but not always a pretty one.
As well as attaining tremendous
insights into the age of Earth and
how life evolved, scholars also
entertained astonishingly bad
ideas about superiority.
Some of these continue
today. Why do we assume that
Neanderthals, who flourished for
400,000 years, were somehow
inferior to Homo sapiens or less
fit to survive?
In Kindred, a history of our
understanding of Neanderthals,
Rebecca Wragg Sykes separates
perfectly valid and reasonable
questions – for example, “why
aren’t Neanderthals around any
more?” – from the thinking that
casts our ancient relatives as
“dullard losers on a withered
branch of the family tree”.
As an archaeologist with a
special interest in the cognitive
aspects of stone tool technologies,
Wragg Sykes paints a fascinating
picture of a field transformed
almost beyond recognition over
the past 30 years.
Artefacts at well-preserved
sites are no longer merely dug
and brushed: they are scanned.
High-powered optical
microscopes pick out slice and
chop marks, electron beams trace
the cross-sections of scratches at
the nano-scale and rapid collagen
identification techniques can
determine an animal from even
tiny bone fragments.
The risk with any new tool
is that, in our excitement, weHominin history
Modern techniques are helping us to better understand Neanderthals,
as well as where we fit in to the family tree, finds Simon Ingsover-interpret the results
it throws up. For example,
while Neanderthals may have
performed some funerary
activity, they may not have
thrown flowers on their loved
ones’ graves as we once thought.
Other stories continue
to accumulate a weight ofcircumstantial evidence. We have
known for a few years that some
Neanderthals tanned leather;
now it seems they may also have
spun thread.
An exciting aspect of this
book is the way it refreshes our
ideas about our own place in
hominin evolution.
Rather than congratulating
other species when they behave
like us, Wragg Sykes shows thatViews Culture
JORGE GUERRERO/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGESmarking surfaces, though they
aren’t in the least bit invested in
the end result of their labours.
The same is also true of captive
chimpanzees. Why, then, should
we see Neanderthal art with
any significance, beyond the
possibility that Neanderthals
had fun making it?
Neanderthal DNA contains
glimmers of encounters between
them and other hominin species.
Recent research suggests that
interbreeding between
Neanderthals and Denisovans,
as well as Neanderthals and Homo
sapiens, was effectively the norm.
Like modern cattle and yaks, we
were closely related species that
varied in bodies and behaviours,
yet could also reproduce.
Neanderthals were part of our
family, and though we carry some
part of them inside us, we will
never see their like again. ❚it is much more fruitful to see
how human talents are related
to behaviours exhibited by
other species.
Take art. We tend to ask
questions like: were the circular
stone assemblies discovered in a
cave near Bruniquel in southern
France in 2016 meant by their
Neanderthal creators as
monuments? What is the
significance of the Neanderthal
handprints and ladder designs
painted on the walls of three
caves in Spain?
In both cases, we would be
asking the wrong questions, says
Sykes. While striking, Neanderthal
art “might not be a massive
cognitive leap for hominins who
probably already understood the
idea of representation”.
Animal footprints are
effectively symbols and tracking
prey this way “requires an
‘idealised’ form to be kept
in mind”, she writes.
Human infants, given painting
materials, enjoy colouring andNeanderthal art in Spain,
painted between 43,000
and 65,000 years ago“ The significance
of Neanderthal art
may simply be that
Neanderthals had
fun making it”Who were the Neanderthals?
Hear Rebecca Wragg Sykes talk about our ancient cousins
For details about this virtual event visit newscientist.com/eventsT5H8PZ0