Chapter 4 - Personal Ornaments and Symbolism Among the Neanderthals

Abstract

Abstract Central to the palaeontological definition of Homo neanderthalensis ( King, 1864 ) is the proposition that the physical difference in cranial anatomy bespeaks of a psychological difference placing the creature beyond the range of human variation in intelligence and morals. Having imprinted human evolution studies at their very birth, this notion of the Neanderthals' “brute benightedness” explains the double standard with which the archaeological evidence pertaining to symbolic behaviour in the Neanderthal-associated Middle and early Upper Palaeolithic of Europe has been examined ever since, and particularly so during the quarter century of prevalence of the “human revolution” paradigm. As evidence concerning the use of pigments and personal ornaments and the production of abstract graphical representations was uncovered in the coeval Middle Stone Age of Africa during the first decade of the 21st century, many researchers either ignored the equivalent evidence already known from Europe since the 1930s or sought to explain it away as insecure, spurious or in fact not relevant. In Europe, however, that same decade also produced evidence of symbolism and a Homo sapiens level of cognition among Neanderthals. Coming from modern excavations and studied with the strictest dating and analytical protocols, this evidence includes (a) the production of an artificial pitch made from birch bark and with recourse to a fire technology whose sophistication would remain unmatched in human history until the invention of Neolithic pottery kilns; (b) the use of pendants, made of marine shell, in the Mediterranean, and of pierced and grooved bones and teeth, in France and central Europe; and (c) the practice of body painting, including the preparation for cosmetic purposes of complex pigment recipes combining mineral colourants of different origins. At the same time, results from the sequencing of the Neanderthal genome brought palaeogenetics in line with the human palaeontological evidence for extensive Neanderthal/modern admixture at the time of contact, thus removing the rationale for thinking about Neanderthals as a different species altogether. Even so, the notion that, despite their “archaic” anatomy, Neanderthals were cognitively and behaviourally as “modern” as their anatomically “modern” contemporaries continues to be resisted, revealing the deep paradigmatic and cultural biases underpinning ongoing controversies.