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.
We have already learned that wolves domesticated early man rather than the other way around. It should be noted that hunting accidents caused great numbers of injuries and death amongst the Neanderthal, especially since Neanderthal man, having nothing more than hand axes, had to run down and beat his dinner to death. The larger game animals would be very dangerous especially when momma showed up to see what happened to junior.