New Evidence of Neanderthal Violence

Evidence has emerged to suggest the Neanderthals had a war-mongering nature. The early hunter-gatherers got into fights and used weapons, according to the results of a study of a skeleton uncovered in French caves.

A crack in the skull of the 36,000 year-old Neanderthal was caused by a sharp tool, say anthropologists.

The Neanderthal survived but would have had to be nursed by other members of the tribe.

The findings indicate that the contemporaries of early modern humans were more sophisticated than their popular "caveman" image suggests.

They would have needed social skills and organised networks to take part in armed conflict.

It may have been a crucial factor in the evolution of Neanderthal and human behaviour, say scientists in Switzerland and France.

The evidence comes from a computer-aided reconstruction of the skull of a Neanderthal found near the village of St Cesaire in 1979.

Dr Christoph Zollikofer of the University of Zurich and colleagues say a healed cranial fracture shows the Neanderthal was hit by a sharp tool or weapon.

"These findings add to the evidence that Neanderthals used implements not only for hunting and food processing, but also in other behavioural contexts," they report in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

They say the potential for violence might have spurred the evolution of social behaviour.

Prof Chris Stringer, Natural History Museum Professor Chris Stringer of London's Natural History Museum is an expert on the origins of humans.

He says several Neanderthal skeletons showing signs of injury have been uncovered in the past.

But to his knowledge injury by another "person" can be implicated in only one other find - a healed wound to a rib on a Neanderthal from Shanidar Cave, Iraq.

Prof Stringer told BBC News Online: "In both these cases the individuals survived long enough for the wound to heal, suggesting that Neanderthal social groups gave support to their members.

"Given that this is one of the most recent Neanderthals known, it is even theoretically possible that the weapon used was wielded by a contemporary Cro-Magnon [earliest anatomically modern human]," he added.

(same story as reported in National Geographic.)

Does Wounded Skull Hint at Neandertal Nursing?

By Bijal P. Trivedi
National Geographic Today
April 23, 2002

A controversial computer reconstruction of a 36,000-year-old Neandertal skull has revealed that the individual was violently bashed with some sort of tool. But the wound was not fatal and shows signs of healing, say the authors of the study who also suggest that the individual was nursed back to health.

Computer-assisted reconstruction of the Neandertal skeleton from St.
Césaire indicate that this individual suffered cranial trauma, probably from a blow exerted with a sharp tool or weapon during an act of interpersonal violence.

"Neandertals may not have been the club-swinging thugs they are often portrayed to be," says Christoph Zollikofer, an anthropologist at the University of Zürich, Switzerland, who led the research.

Zollikofer claims that without the intensive care from other Neandertals, the individual—suffering from dizziness, nausea and blood loss—would probably have perished from the wound.

But not all anthropologists agree with Zollikofer's interpretation.

Tim White, an anthropologist at the University of California, Berkeley, vehemently disagrees with Zollikofer's findings.

"The paper does not provide convincing evidence that this is a healed head wound," writes White in an e-mail. "Arguments of 'lesion' depth are made based on a drawing, but the conclusions are not even supported by the drawing."

"The Zollikofer paper is a perfect example of what I describe there—a physical anthropology driven by arm-waving, hi-tech, and headlines, rather than by critical analysis," says White. "These guys are creative but not critical," says White, adding that the bone lesion could just as easily have been caused by a bump on the head.(aha...just as I thought!)

Another California anthropologist, who did not wish to be named, also expressed that there was little evidence that the bone fragment was actually a wound and even less evidence that it was caused by interpersonal violence. "I'm puzzled that the paper made it through the refereeing process," he said. The skull from the St. Césaire 1 Neandertal skeleton, which Zollikofer analyzed, was found in 1979 in a collapsed rock shelter near the village of St. Césaire—between Bordeaux and the Pyrenees—and glued together about 20 years ago.

Zollikofer and his colleagues took the reconstructed skull and used computer tomography to scan the fossil and create a 3-dimensional image. The scientists then performed a computer reconstruction of the skull—virtually breaking the assembled skull into the original bone fragments and reassembling them on the computer.

The reconstruction led Zollikofer's team to believe that the edge of a broken bone fragment, previously believed to be a natural suture of the skull bones, was actually a healed fracture.

"If anything this new finding makes them [Neandertals] more 'human,'" says Erik Trinkaus, an anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, who submitted the paper for publication in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "They had tempers and acted accordingly, but they also were compassionate and nurturing."

Zollikofer says the find is also interesting because little is known about tool use and Neandertals. The depth of the lesion would require some momentum, suggesting that the weapon was a stone blade bound to a wooden handle. The authors suggest that the option to use tools as weapons may have raised the importance of social networks in Neandertal society.

Ofer Bar-Yosef, an anthropologist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, agrees with Zollikofer's analysis. "Why should Neandertals behave differently from other primates who are caring and loving and from time to time very violent?" Whether the injury was caused by another Neandertal or by an early modern human, who were already present in Western Europe 36,000 years ago, says Bar-Yosef, an act of interpersonal violence is all part of human behavior.

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