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If you needed repairs done 50,000 years ago, you’d be better off with a Neanderthal team than Homo sapiens, a new study has shown. The new research was published in the journal Scientific reports and suggests that the Neanderthals may have “found precision holds … more challenging”. This means they have been adapted for “power” or “squeeze” grips, where objects are held like a hammer between the fingers and palm, with the thumb used to guide direction. Could it be that our Neanderthal cousins were better suited for holding tennis rackets?
The new study analyzes thumb morphology in Neanderthals, early humans, and modern humans to see how this influenced tool uses and technological development in these two species. It is concluded that Neanderthal thumbs were best suited for gripping tools or handles. (Ameline Bardo et. Al. / Scientific reports )
Tracing ancient technological developments
Neanderthals, pronounced with a “t” instead of a “th”, are our closest human relatives. Living in colder environments, Neanderthals developed large faces, angled cheekbones, and wide noses, while their bodies were shorter and stouter than our tall, thin bodies. However, their brains were larger than ours, and recent discoveries of ancient technologies developed by extinct species are changing everything we once “thought” about ancient species.
The technological abilities of Neanderthals are much debated, especially in relation to the capabilities of early modern humans. This new study, however, examines the “morphology of the thumb” and how this tool has influenced the use and technological development in these two species.
In order to come to their conclusions in relation to Neanderthal thumbs, the team conducted a comparative analysis of Mc1 and the trapezius in modern humans, early humans and Neanderthals. (Ameline Bardo et. Al. / Scientific reports )
Mapping of ancient footprints
Imagine for a second that the knuckles of your hand are a line of hills on a distant horizon and that your elbow is a large mountain. Well, to understand how this conceptual territory was created and how it eventually worked, you’re going to map it, right? Well, that’s exactly what happened to the ancient hands of five Neanderthals when the team of researchers applied 3D scanning technology to map the joints between the bones responsible for moving the thumb.
Lead researcher Dr. Ameline Bardo, of the Skeletal Biology Research Center, School of Anthropology and Conservation, at the University of Kent in England, refers to this group of bones and joints as the “trapeziometacarpal complex”. The 3D scans of the hands of the five Neanderthals were compared with similar measurements taken from the remains of five early modern humans, and also with scans of fifty hands from modern adults.
A comparative study of potential TMc joint motion in modern humans and Neanderthals concluded that Neanderthals had thumbs that were best adapted for grasping tools. (Ameline Bardo et. Al. / Scientific reports )
Anyone for tennis?
By studying the individual scans and then comparing their potential movements, the authors of the new paper discovered “covariation in the shape and relative orientation of the joints of the trapeziometacarpal complex.” What this finding suggests is that Neanderthals developed for repetitive thumb movements than modern humans, because the joint at the base of the thumb was flatter with a smaller contact surface. This means that Neanderthals would have been better suited to using an extended thumb placed along the side of the hand.
While the thumb position may not seem like a big deal, this particular thumb posture suggests that Neanderthals used power “squeeze” grips, such as we now use to hold the handles of hammers, tennis racquets, and baseball bats. . The paper does not determine that Neanderthals were playing ball better than humans, but that these specific joint surfaces, being generally smaller in ancient humans and more curved in modern human thumbs, gave Neanderthals an edge with their grip to hold. the instruments.
Hands designed for combat
Such comparisons of fossil morphology between Neanderthals and modern humans can provide further insights into Neanderthal behaviors and how they developed and used the first tools. The researchers concluded that while Neanderthal hand morphology “is best suited for PTOs,” they would still be able to use precision hand postures, although they would have found it more challenging than modern humans.
New discoveries about Neanderthals seem to be made every month. Our perceptions are rapidly changing about how they lived and died and we are getting closer and closer to discovering how this species died and went extinct. As our understanding of this species expands, we are finding that the race for dominance over planet Earth may not have been as easy as we once thought, and now, knowing that Neanderthals had a variety of dynamic holds to hold their tools, we can only imagine them welded weapons with greater skill than ours.
Top Image: Could it really be that Neanderthal thumbs were better suited to gripping tools (and tennis rackets)? Source: Mark Herreid / Adobe Stock
By Ashley Cowie
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