The TV show presented an interesting concept that modern man and neanderthals may have interbred. I believe that in actual appearance the neaderthals may have appeared to just be another race of people to the early modern settlers. Interactions between the two might have been no different then with europeans and asians. Lets consider the possibility that neanderthals were actually another human race. There are some differences in a modern asian's skull as compared to caucasian's. If asians had gone extinct, would we be suggesting they were another species of man as well?

What I would suggest is, OK we made a dirty mean looking neanderthal woman reconstruction. "What if" neanderthals still existed in our modern day? How would a well groomed, clean cut, clean shaven neanderthal woman and man look? Neanderthal men are reported to be muscular. On the reconstruction, try to remove your prejudiced notion that the neanderthal should look "ugly" with a mean face and dirty skin. How would a neanderthal modernized to coexist in today's world with humans look?

Surely they would have an age when they would have peaked at their sexual attractiveness. Then we as modern men can see each judge potential there would have been for possible consider interbreeding with the neanderthals. Put a smile on the face of the neanderthal reconstructions, show the body builder muscularity of the neanderthals and the women with peak of life and condition appearances.

I enjoyed this article immensely, particularly the comment about red hair. It makes me think about the red-haired orangutans who are so incredible intelligent and live (in the wild) in only a small, isolated part of the world. However, I also like the earlier comment of Mr. Ayo. It makes me think of all the articles that speculate that skeletons at the bottom of sink holes in Mayan ruins are always sacrifices of beautiful virgins and the top athletes to make their gods happy. It made more sense to us when we were out in the Yucatan Peninsula and a local man, who said he and his wife have Mayan ancestry, commented that they feel their ancestors had tossed the skeletons of criminals or people of any age shunned due to flesh deformities that frightened them or diseases (think of the leper colonies in more modern times.) I think it is important to remain open to different possibilities. It is nice to read some thought provoking articles over coffee.

Is it possible the New Arrivals actualy hunter the neanderthals during lean times?

Hi! Can you help me. I'm not very good in english i tried my best to be clear. Last august 30 While i'm taking picture in Canyonland, Utah, my wife call me and she's right beside a dinosaur fossil. I want to send you 3 picture that i take. For me i think this is very important to protect it. Can i have an email adress to send you the photos. If you can't help me, maybe you could refer me to the right people. I want to know the name of that dinosaur fossil and i think near that fossil there something else.

Thank you for your time.

Mario Plouffe
Montreal, Canada

I agree with Joseph Ayo. Why does Neandertal always seem to be pictured as somehow unattractive? Heavier body and face certainly, but not necessarily ugly and unkempt! I'm sure their noses were just as keen as ours and there had to be water available at some point...even other primates play in water!
I think, too, if populations were samll and scattered and I were a Cro-Magnon woman without a husband, a Neandertal man who was kind, a successful hunter, I would be just as happy to snuggle up in sleeping furs with him!

Good point Mark Morgan! Could the Cro-Magnon have preyed upon the Neandertal? There are plenty of head hunters and cannibals existing among modern humans! That behavior is nothing new.
It is also possible, but with no way to prove, that any "cannibalism" could have been spiritual, ie. taking into oneself the spirit of the deceased through the eating of the flesh.

Another mention, years ago (80's) I was waiting in an international airport when two or three people came to wait nearby. The two I noticed most was the older woman and a youngish man. I'm not sure if there was some genetic problem or health issue, but the youngish man was medium height, brown haired and looked for all the world like a favorable picture I had seen of Neandertal. I tried not to stare, but his face fascinated me. Wondrous! I've never forgotten it!

Also, in my Anthropology college courses I found a comment by Vine Deloria about Kennewick Man as looking very much like the portrait of Black Hawk and his son c. 1833. This photo was in the book Skull Wars by David Hurst Thomas. I would like very much to find out if Patrick Stewart would be agreeable to a DNA test to see if there might be some relation. Isn't he Canadian? Where did his forbears come from before that? Any Native American heritage? Does anyone know?

Speaking of look-alikes...my ex- husband who was of Scandinavian and European heritage looked like a dead ringer of the visage of a face mask of an Egyptian Pharoh, a face mask I had never seen before and a name I don't recall. I had an artist friend compare the photo with my ex's face and even she could see the likeness.

I always find these things wonderfully amazing!

given the "peace-loving" nature of Homo sapiens, how confident are the powers that be that Homo sapiens wasn't the butcher of the neaderthals????

An important contributing cause to the eventual demise of the Neandertal could be prion disease. We have learned that cannibalism was widespread and their population at its height was never greater than 15,000. The article postulates several destabilizing factors, including erratic climate change. It neglected to bring up the distinct possibility of neurogenerative disease caused by consuming brain tissue. Kuru Kuru in the Fore people of New Guinea immediately comes to mind.

It is a pity that the October 2008 article on Neanderthals was riddled with errors - none of them minor. The map showing the Neanderthal range from 250,000 to 45,000 years ago showed no European sites north of the Neander Valley and shaded off into oblivion near Hamburg. This leaves out the Susiluola Wolf Cave - at least 700 miles away to the northeast in Finnish Lapland. The tools there are over 74,000 years old.

The next map may be no better: the map-maker stopped the shading indicating a Neanderthal presence over 400 miles to the south of an isolated dot indicating the presence of Moderns - where there should also be one or more for Neanderthals, Krupovaya Gora, which is only 60 km from the Arctic Circle, and a possible Neanderthal assemblage at Mamontovaya Kurya, which is actually north of the Circle. I would also be curious to know what the evidence is for the presence of modern humans on the shores of the Arctic Ocean in eastern Siberia before 28,000 BP. I'm familiar with Mal'ta near Lake Baikal but would be grateful if you could point me to similarly ancient sites so much farther north.

Next comes the assertion that Neanderthals “relied almost entirely on hunting big and medium-size mammals like horses, deer, bison, and wild cattle.” What do we make of the following then?
- a study by Maja Paunovic and Fred Smith which reported that the “majority of the identified remains” from Vindija Cave were of trout, pikeperch and frogs, suggesting that “a territorial model of exploitation of all animal sources is more plausible,”
- starchy residues from plant processing on the working area of tools from both Starosele and Buran Kaya III,
- “clear and repetitive evidence for the exploitation of mature grass panicles, inferred to have been collected for their seeds” by Amud Neanderthals
- and soil sheen on Mousterian bifaces which seem to have been widely used to dig in bogs for cattail rhizomes and other plant underground storage organs.
The article's assertion about the Neanderthal diet may be true for some sites but is largely based on an archaeological mirage created by the obviousness of bigger bones, the taphonomic disappearance of smaller bones and plant materials in ancient sites, and the failure to seek tiny un-sexy materials by flotation and sifting. Now that such work has finally been done properly, there is no reason to ignore it or to perpetuate a myth.

Then there is the reconstruction. That point on the spear sure looks like a replica of a 20,000 year old Solutrean laurel leaf. If it is, it is like illustrating Caesar with a wristwatch.

Next there are problems with the reconstructions' soft tissues and skin. On the one hand, the article notes that Neanderthal “fur robes were likely crude, as no evidence exists of sewing tools” and, on the other, it deletes evidence of Neanderthals as far north as Lapland and the Arctic Circle, where present temperatures fall below -40 °C. Do you really think northern Neanderthals could have survived such conditions for long periods without effective biological or artificial insulation? There is also the fact that the genetics of lice suggest that they did not find a separate habitat from hair - namely in clothes - until around 107,000 bp, in other words after Neanderthals and their ancestors had already experienced glacial conditions. So what did Neanderthals do before they even had “crude” fur robes? Exercise like mad to stay warm? Run the math - it is not possible metabolically. I have published osteological evidence, involving shoulder-to-pelvis ratios, features of Ward's triangle in the femur, and other details that indicate that classic Neanderthals were protected by a well-distributed layer of subcutaneous insulation and were somewhat less muscular than the illustrated model*. This different morphological paradigm has a cascade of consequences for understanding their behavior - none of which are reflected in the article.

Other problems involve such things as the implication that modern humans were the first to introduce “narrow flint blades” to Europe, although blade industries from Level CA at Riencourt-Lès-Bapaume, Molinons and elsewhere disprove this. But enough is enough. The important thing now is to avoid perpetuating anachronisms and myths by publishing an up-dated article about Neanderthals soon.

My best wishes.

Duncan Caldwell

* In peer-reviewed Rock Art Research Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 101-116: “Are Neanderthal Portraits Wrong? Neanderthal Adaptations to Cold and Their Impact on Palaeolithic Populations”

And “Afterthoughts about the Neanderthal insulation hypothesis” in AURA Newsletter Vol. 25, No. 2.

I appreciate your comments, Duncan. I'm checking into some of your points and will get back to this blog about them.

Thank you, Chris, for looking into my contentions. I thought it might be useful to know the references, so here is a short list of them:

- For the Susiluola Wolf Cave:
SCHULZ, H.-P. 2002. The lithic industry from layers IV–V, Susiluola Cave, Western Finland, dated to the Eemian interglacial. Préhistoire Européenne 16–17: 7–23.

SCHULZ, H.-P., B. ERIKSSON, H. HIRVAS, P. HUHTA, H. JUNGNER, P. PURHONEN, P. UKKONEN and T. RANKAMA 2002. Excavations at Susiluola Cave. Suomen Museo 2002: 5–45.

- For Mamontovaya Kurya:
PAVLOV, P., J. I. SVENDSEN and S. INDRELID 2001. Human presence in the European Arctic nearly 40,000 years ago. Nature 413: 64–67.

- For the trout, pikeperch and frogs found in Vindija Cave:
PAUNOVIC, M. and F. H. SMITH 2002. Taphonomy of lower vertebrates from Vindija Cave (Croatia): delicacy on the Neandertal table or animal prey? Journal of Human Evolution 42(3): A27–A27.

- For starchy residues from plant processing from Starosele and Buran Kaya III: 

HARDY, B. L., M. KAY, A. E. MARKS and K. MONIGAL 2001. Stone tool function at the Paleolithic sites of Starosele and Buran Kaya III, Crimea: behavioral implications. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A. 98(19): 10972–10977

- For exploitation of grass seeds by Amud Neanderthals: 

MADELLA, M., M. K. JONES, P. GOLDBERG, Y. GOREN and E. HOVERS 2002. The exploitation of plant resources by Neanderthals in Amud Cave (Israel): the evidence from phytolith studies. Journal of Archaeological Science 29: 703–719.

- For Neanderthal access to cattail rhizomes and other plant underground storage organs:
HARDY, B. 2007. Not by meat alone: the potential role of underground storage organs in Neandertal diet. Paleoanthropology Society meeting abstracts. Philadelphia, PA, 27–28 March: 10–11.

- For soil sheen on Mousterian bifaces used to dig for rhizomes and tubers in bogs:
CALDWELL, D. 2008. Afterthoughts about the Neanderthal insulation hypothesis. AURA Newsletter, Vol. 25, No. 2

- For problems with reconstructions of soft tissues and skin:
My articles cited at the end of the blog.

- For narrow flint blade industries in Middle Paleolithic Europe:
TUFFREAU, A. 1993a. Riencourt-Lès-Bapaume (Pas-De-Calais) Un gisement du Paléolithique Moyen. Under the direction of A. Tuffreau. Éditions de la Maison des Sciences de L’Homme, Paris.

TUFFREAU, A. 1993b. 37/Riencourt-Les-Bapaume. Under the direction of A. Tuffreau. Maison des Sciences de L’Homme, Documents d’archéologie française No. 37. Re-published 1995.

Thanks again for looking into the problems. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if National Geographic needs help in checking other prehistory articles in the future.

Duncan Caldwell

Dear Chris,

I just checked the blog to see if there had been a response to my earlier comments and saw that there was still time to add references in support of my corrections of the Neanderthal article. These two references explain why the split of human lice into 2 species - one living on the scalp, the other in clothes - may relate to the origin of clothing and how the split was clocked to about 107 000 years ago. I look forward to National Geographic’s feedback.

KITTLER, R., M. KAYSER and M. STONEKING 2003. Molecular evolution of Pediculus humanus and the origin of clothing. Current Biology 13(16): 1414–1417.

KITTLER, R., M. KAYSER and M. STONEKING 2004. Erratum. Molecular evolution of Pediculus humanus and the origin of clothing. Current Biology 14(24): 2309.

Duncan Caldwell

1) What is the correct spelling for Neandertal? Or is it Neanderthal?

2) I hate to use either the term "no question" or "almost certainly", but almost certainly early Cro-Magnon man killed off the Neanderthal (frankly, I like the "h" version)- no question about it.
Just like we killed off the wooly mammoth, and other tasty but slow creatures of prehistoric times.
Tiger, your willingness to love Neanderthals is to be commended- truely, world peace could be attained if there were more people like you. I quote from your contribution:
I think, too, if populations were samll and scattered and I were a Cro-Magnon woman without a husband, a Neandertal man who was kind, a successful hunter, I would be just as happy to snuggle up in sleeping furs with him!
Tiger, I would imagine that something like this happened, and perhaps, indeed, the adventurous Cro-Magnon woman could well have looked like Daryl Hannah, and the Neanderthal not unlike Antony Quinn. Remember that the brain size of the Neanderthal was on the scale of 20 percent larger than the Cro-Magnon- and attraction for females even to this day.
But Tiger, this could have presaged the end of the Neanderthals, as jealous Cro-Magnons everywhere swore to wipe their brawny cousins off the face of the earth!
Yes, in the end, the friendly, lumbering man-child Neanderthals were not killed off by disease or the weather, but the greened-eyed monster!

I am impressed by this, high-level scholarly exchange -- in particular with Caldwell's command of the relevant scientific literature. Surely, writers must be approaching the "truth" in this matter?

The Australian Rock Art Research Association (AURA) and the American Society of Amateur Archaeology (ASAA) have both made it possible to download two of my articles cited above. Most of the corrections which you posted reflect information which is more amply laid out in the companion pieces.

Together, the papers argue that the Neanderthal lineage adapted to cold climates partially by acquiring one or more forms of biological insulation, including a well-distributed layer of subcutaneous fat that varied according to climatic range and season, but whose weight was sufficient at times to account both for:
- aspects of their skeletal anatomy and
- their survival in frigid zones before Neanderthals acquired the capacity to make weather-tight clothing.
Evidence is presented that the overall body proportions, femoral traits, and increased bone mass of cold-weather Neanderthals all correspond more closely to modern individuals who are both fat and muscular rather than to hyper-muscular individuals. This contradicts the prevailing consensus that Neanderthals managed to survive long exposure to extreme cold and wind chill largely by becoming stocky and hyper-muscular.

The two articles also argue against the prevailing view that Neanderthals relied largely on hunting big game. Instead, they present evidence that Neanderthals took advantage of a wider range of nutritional opportunities, including the exploitation of small animals and plants – especially undergound storage organs – in addition to large prey.

Finally, the companion pieces suggests that the classic suite of Neanderthal features disappeared because of an insidious mesh of biological and technological mechanisms after some members of each lineage began exhibiting “modern” behaviors. These mechanisms include:

- the advantages of fitted clothing over draped garments or biological insulators. Naturally insulated Neanderthals would not have had as much of an incentive to perfect fitted clothing as biologically un-insulated Moderns.

- and incompatible sexual cues. The two papers argue that the different evolutionary solutions of each lineage to thermoregulatory control would have led to dramatically different sexual cues which could account for the lack of evidence for significant hybridization.

The two articles -
1) Are Neanderthal Portraits Wrong? Neanderthal Adaptations to Cold and Their Impact on Palaeolithic Populations. Rock Art Research Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 101-116
and
2) Afterthoughts about the Neanderthal insulation hypothesis. AURA Newsletter Vol. 25, No. 2.
- are available both at:
http://asaa-persimmonpress.com/number_8_caldwell_neanderthal.html
and
http://mc2.vicnet.net.au/home/aura/web/info.html

I am as eager as ever to see the feedback you are preparing concerning my comments on the October article.

My best wishes.

Duncan Caldwell

With the greatest respect for Mr. Caldwell, and followed by encouragement from Dr. Gramly, I wait patiently for a continuation of this important discussion. National Geographic has a responsibility for accuracy and open dialogue. Please continue...

I would like to make one small correction regarding Susiluola. It is not in Finnish Lapland, it is in Southern Ostrobothnia, south of Vaasa and quite near to Kristiinankaupunki [Kristinestad]. It is much closer to Helsinki than to Rovaniemi.