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An analysis of Neanderthal hand bones suggests that these extinct humans possessed the thumbs best suited for power take-offs, as opposed to precision grips, which could mean they used their hands differently to us.
Researchers found fundamental physical differences in the thumbs of Neanderthals and modern humans (homo sapiens), which suggests that the two species used their hands in different ways. The finding, as described in Scientific Reports, potentially speaks of behavioral differences in the two species, although this may be difficult to prove.
Technically speaking, Neanderthals were humans, but they displayed some key characteristics that, if they were present today, would make them stand out in a crowd. Neanderthals were somewhat shorter and thicker than early modern humans, and they had a broad nose with large nostrils. They also had a weak chin and prominent browbones. Their hands were also larger than ours, and as the new research points out, Neanderthal hands didn’t work exactly the same way as ours.
“If you were to shake the hand of a Neanderthal you would notice this difference,” Ameline Bardo, a postdoctoral researcher with the School of Anthropology and Conservation at the University of Kent, explained in an email. “There would be confusion about where to place your thumb, and for a thumb fight I think you would win in terms of speed and movement.”
Good to know.
More practically, Neanderthal thumbs were better suited for compression grips, such as how we hold a hammer when we lower it. Specifically, we use these power taps, as they are also called, to hold tools or other objects between our fingers and palm, while the thumb is used to direct force. Neanderthals did not have hammers with handles, but these power grabs were likely useful when raising stone tools or grabbing stones to use as hammers.
At the same time, this likely means that precision grips, where objects are held between the fingertip and thumb, may have been more challenging for Neanderthals. Challenging, but not impossible. As contradictory research from 2018 shows, Neanderthals applied precision grips during manual work. What the new research suggests, however, is that precision grip wasn’t very comfortable for Neanderthals and that they may have been more prone to power grip. Unfortunately, we can’t travel back in time and see for ourselves, so this will likely remain a healthy debate among archaeologists and anthropologists for the foreseeable future.
That said, and as Bardo explained in his email, their “hand anatomy and archaeological record make it abundantly clear that Neanderthals were users of highly intelligent and sophisticated tools and used many of the same tools that contemporary modern humans did.” “.
Previous research in this area has shown how the shapes of Neanderthal thumb bones varied in relation to those of modern humans, but these bones have been studied in isolation. Bardo and his colleagues sought to learn how Neanderthal hand bones actually moved in time and space, which they did by 3D mapping the joints between the bones responsible for thumb movements.
Specifically, the researchers looked at the trapeziometacarpal complex. More specifically, they examined the trapezius (the wrist bone at the base of the thumb) and the proximal end of the metacarpus (the first bone in the thumb that joins the wrist). They analyzed how changes in the shape or position of one bone affected the shape or position of another.
For analysis, the scientists studied the fossilized remains of five Neanderthal individuals (admittedly a small sample size), which were compared with the bones of five early modern humans and 50 recent modern individuals. The results indicated a “favored thumb position” in Neanderthals that was typically different from ours.
As the new article points out, the joint at the base of the Neanderthal thumb is flatter than ours and with a smaller contact surface. This “is best suited to an extended thumb placed along the side of the hand,” according to Bardo, leading to grips that were advantageous for the use of certain tools, such as spears and scrapers, tools used for hunting. One drawback of Neanderthal anatomy is that it limited strong precision grips, such as using a small staple to cut meat, he explained.
In modern humans, these joint surfaces tend to be more curved, which is best for grasping objects between the finger and thumb pads, i.e. the precision grip.
This variation between the two species is “likely the result of genetic and / or developmental differences, but may also reflect, in part, the different functional requirements imposed by the use of various toolkits,” explained Bardo. “Indeed, the variation we found between modern humans and Neanderthals may reflect different habitual activities with their hands between individuals within each species.”
Again, we cannot know for sure and this new document is likely to reignite a debate on the issue.
What we can say, however, is that Neanderthals have been successful over a long period of time, appearing around 400,000 years ago and went extinct around 45,000 years ago (and for reasons we still don’t really understand). Neanderthals were also crafty, as they made their own jewelry, made rock paintings, decorated themselves with feathers, and used lissoir – a specialized bone – to work the hard hides of animals.
If precision grips were hard on Neanderthals, we certainly wouldn’t know from the cultural archaeological record they left behind.
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