52 Scientific American, February 2022Luka Mjeda (preceding pages); Croatian Natural History Museum (this page);^all artifacts are housed at and shown courtesy of Croatian Natural History MuseumYet numerous studies underscore
the similarities between Neandertals
and us. Finds at Neandertal sites
across Eurasia show that they had
innovative technology, complex for-
aging strategies and nascent sym-
bolic traditions.
Not everyone is convinced. Critics
have argued that Neandertals learned
advanced behaviors or acquired fancy
goods from the modern humans they
encountered rather than developing
them independently.
Our research on Neandertal ma-
terial from the site of Krapina in
northwestern Croatia over the past 15
years provides evidence that the crit-
ics are wrong. The Neandertals there
exhibited a range of behaviors tradi-
tionally assumed to be unique to modern humans, and they devel-
oped these behaviors independently, tens of thousands of years be-
fore modern humans arrived in this region. Much remains to be dis-
covered about these enigmatic members of the human family, but
it is now abundantly clear that they were behaving in cognitively
sophisticated ways long before they ever met up with the likes of us.THE ORIGINAL OTHERS
The NeaNderTals’ bad rap traces back to the mid-1800s, when Brit-
ish geologist William King wrote of the skull of the first Neandertalfossil from Germany: “the thoughts
and desires which once dwelt within
it never soared beyond those of the
brute.” This perception of Ne and er-
tals gained currency in the early
1900s, when French anatomist Mar-
cellin Boule reconstructed a Ne and-
er tal skeleton from the site of La
Chapelle-aux-Saints in France as a
stooped, apelike creature—one that
he saw as primitive in body and
there fore mind. Ever since, paleoan-
thropologists have been debating
just how much like us the Neand er-
tals were in terms of anatomy as
well as behavior.
For a long time it looked as though
Neandertal behavior differed from
that of early modern humans in sev-
eral important respects. Researchers argued that Neandertals had
the same tool kit for tens of thousands of years, whereas early mod-
ern humans eventually went on to make a variety of more complex
tools that used a wider range of raw materials and took more steps
to create. Similarly, moderns appeared to eat a far more varied diet
of animal and plant foods compared with the Neandertals’ appar-
ent focus on large game. And moderns seemed to be unique in de-
veloping art and rituals.
In recent years, though, paleoanthropologists have recovered
evidence of Neandertals behaving in ways no one would have pre-L
asT March, as Texas aNd Mississippi lifTed Their coroNavirus paNdeMic Mask MaNdaTes
against the advice of health officials, President Joe Biden accused the governors of
those states of “Neandertal thinking.” Biden was right to be concerned about rolling
back coronavirus restrictions too soon, but he was wrong to use our evolutionary
cousins as the basis for his reprimand.
Biden is hardly alone in wielding “Neandertal” as a pejorative term. In popular
culture, it is common to make fun of Neandertals, pointing to their primitive physi-
cal features, their backward ways, their overall stupidity. Merriam-Webster suggests “clod,” “lout”
and “oaf ” as suitable synonyms for “Neandertal.” Even some of our paleoanthropologist col-
leagues consider Neandertals—who ruled Eurasia from 350,000 to 30,000 years ago—less than
human, deficient in many of the cognitive and behavioral abilities typical of our kind.David W. Frayer is an emeritus professor of biological anthropology
at the University of Kansas. He has studied skeletal variation and
behavior in Neandertals and other early human populations spanning
more than a million years.Davorka Radovcˇic ́ is curator of the Krapina Neandertal Collection
at the Croatian Natural History Museum. Her research focuses on
Neandertals, early modern humans and Homo naledi.KRAPINA ROCKSHELTER in northern Croatia,
excavated at the start of the 20th century, was
inhab ited by Neandertals 130,000 years ago.