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About 600,000 years ago, humanity has split in two. One group remained in Africa, evolving into us. The other hit by land, in Asia, then in Europe, becoming Homo neanderthalensis – the Neanderthals. They were not our ancestors, but a sister species, evolving in parallel.
Neanderthals fascinate us for what they tell us about ourselves: who we were and who we could have become. It is tempting to see them in idyllic terms, living peacefully with nature and each other, like Adam and Eve in the Garden. If so, perhaps the evils of humanity – especially our territoriality, violence, wars – are not innate, but modern inventions.
Biology and paleontology paint a darker picture. Far from being peaceful, Neanderthals were likely skilled fighters and dangerous warriors, rivals only to modern humans.
The best predators
Predatory land mammals are territorial, especially pack hunters. Like lions, wolves and homo sapiens, Neanderthals were cooperative large game hunters. These predators, which are at the top of the food chain, have few predators, so overpopulation causes conflicts on hunting grounds. The Neanderthals faced the same problem; if other species hadn’t checked their numbers, conflict would.
This territoriality has deep roots in man. Territorial conflicts are intense even in our closest relatives, the chimpanzees. Male chimpanzees routinely team up to attack and kill males from rival gangs, a behavior strikingly similar to human warfare. This implies that cooperative aggression evolved into the common ancestor of chimpanzees and ourselves, 7 million years ago. If so, Neanderthals will have inherited these same tendencies of cooperative aggression.
All too human
War is an intrinsic part of being human. War is not a modern invention, but an ancient and fundamental part of our humanity. Historically, all peoples have fought. Our oldest writings are full of war stories. Archeology reveals ancient fortresses and battles and prehistoric massacre sites dating back millennia.
War is human and Neanderthals were very similar to us. We are remarkably similar in our skull and skeletal anatomy and share 99.7% of our DNA. Behaviorally, Neanderthals were surprisingly like us. They lit a fire, buried their dead jewels, fashioned with shells and animal teeth, made works of art and stone shrines. If Neanderthals shared so many of our creative instincts, they probably also shared many of our destructive instincts.
Violent lives
Archaeological record confirms that Neanderthal lives were far from peaceful.
Neanderthalensis they were skilled big game hunters, using spears to shoot down deer, ibex, elk, bison, even rhinos and mammoths. It is not believed that they would hesitate to use these weapons if their families and lands were threatened. Archeology suggests that such conflicts were the order of the day.
Prehistoric warfare leaves telltale marks. A sledgehammer over the head is an effective way to kill – clubs are fast, powerful and accurate weapons – so prehistoric homo sapiens they often show trauma to the skull. So also the Neanderthals.
Another sign of war is the parade fracture, a forearm break caused by parrying blows. Neanderthals also display many broken arms. At least one Neanderthal man, from the Shanidar cave in Iraq, was pierced by a spear in the chest. Trauma was particularly common in young Neanderthal males, as were deaths. Some injuries could have been sustained during the hunt, but the patterns correspond to those expected for a people engaged in intertribal wars: small-scale but intense and prolonged conflicts, wars dominated by raids and guerrilla-style ambushes, with more rare battles.
The Neanderthal resistance
War leaves a more subtle mark in the form of territorial borders. The best proof that Neanderthals not only fought, but excelled in warfare, is that they met us and were not immediately invaded. Instead, for about 100,000 years, Neanderthals resisted modern human expansion.
Why else should we take so long to leave Africa? Not because the environment was hostile, but because Neanderthals were already thriving in Europe and Asia.
It is extremely unlikely that modern humans met Neanderthals and decided to live and let live. If nothing else, population growth inevitably forces humans to acquire more land, to ensure sufficient territory to hunt and forage for food for their children. But an aggressive military strategy is also a good evolutionary strategy.
Instead, for thousands of years, we must have tested their fighters and for thousands of years we have continued to lose. In weapons, tactics, strategy, we were fairly even.
Neanderthals likely had tactical and strategic advantages. They had occupied the Middle East for millennia, no doubt acquiring a profound knowledge of the terrain, the seasons, how to live on native plants and animals. In battle, their massive and muscular build must have made them devastating fighters in close combat. Their huge eyes likely gave Neanderthals a vision in low light, allowing them to maneuver in the dark for ambushes and dawn raids.
Sapiens victorious
Eventually, the deadlock broke and the tide turned. We don’t know why. The invention of superior ranged weapons is possible – bows, spear throwers, throwing clubs – let read homo sapiens harass stocky Neanderthals from a distance using hit and run tactics. Or maybe let better hunting and gathering techniques sapiens feeding larger tribes, creating numerical superiority in battle.
Even after primitive homo sapiens erupted from Africa 200,000 years ago, it took more than 150,000 years to conquer the Neanderthal lands. In Israel and Greece, archaic homo sapiens He took ground only to fall back on the Neanderthal counteroffensive, before a final offensive by moderns homo sapiens, starting 125,000 years ago, has eliminated them.
This was not a blitzkrieg, as one would expect if Neanderthals were pacifists or inferior warriors, but a long war of attrition. In the end, we won. But this wasn’t because they were less inclined to fight. In the end, we probably just got better at war than them.
This article was originally published on The conversation of Nicholas R. Longrich at the University of Bath. Read the original article here.
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