paleonet Neanderthals were not stupid, just a bit anti-social

["Joe Cooper" <joe0727@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Neanderthals were not stupid, just a bit anti-social
IAN JOHNSTON
 SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT 
"CRUDE, boorish and slow- witted" - even dictionaries give Neanderthals a
hard time. But our prehistoric cousins were in reality just as smart as we
are and did not die out as a result of a lack of brain power, according to
a new archaeological study. 

Until now, the leading theory of why the Neanderthals disappeared has been
that a lack of intelligence meant they were less efficient hunters. 

But a team of US archaeologists believe they met their evolutionary end
because of a failure to maintain social links with other groups, unlike
modern humans, who travelled widely, making the friends who would help them
during hard times. 

Working in the Caucasus region of modern-day Georgia, the scientists
discovered evidence of highly skilled hunting behaviour by the Neanderthals
that required an understanding of yearly animal migration patterns and the
planning of traps to catch them. 

But they also found there was a crucial difference between Neanderthals and
homo sapiens. The Neanderthals tended to be anti-social, staying in small
hunter-gatherer groups, while the sapiens were "routinely" travelling
distances of 60 miles and meeting other groups. 

This meant that if an area became hunted out or a more powerful rival took
over, the Neanderthals had no-one to turn to while the modern humans did. 

Dr Dan Adler, of Connecticut University, who led the study, which appeared
in the journal Current Anthropology, said: "Any individual Neanderthal, I
don't imagine, knew more than 20, 30 or 50 people. That's by virtue of the
fact they didn't get around as much. Maybe they didn't want to. Modern
humans seem to get around a lot. They were routinely covering distances of
at least 100km. 

"If you find yourself in an area where the resources just aren't there any
more - it's a bad season or you have killed all the game - you need to move
into another territory where other people are. If you don't know them the
chances are they are not going to like that. Modern humans would have known
these people." 

Neanderthals seem to have had little interest in their appearance, compared
to modern humans, a sign that group identity was not something they
considered to be important. 

"We have no indication that Neanderthals really paid much attention to who
other people were and they didn't try to signal to other people who they
were," Dr Adler said. 

"Modern humans were obsessed with this. They were spending a lot of time
and energy on how they looked. They cared more about how they looked and
were more style conscious." 

However, this lack of fashion sense should not reflect badly on their
intelligence, Dr Adler said. 

"It's fairly clear that Neanderthals were pretty smart. They could hunt
just as well [as modern humans] and they had expert knowledge about the
environment," he said. 

"Put you and a Neanderthal in the woods and the latter would probably
survive a lot longer. 

"It's within the social realm where modern humans have an advantage. I
think they knew more people and lived a richer life in terms of cultural
contact than the Neanderthals did. But they were both smart."

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