Neanderthal behavior

Almost everything about Neanderthal behaviour is controversial. From their physiology, Neanderthals are presumed to have been omnivores, but animal protein formed the majority of their dietary protein, showing them to have been apex predators and not scavengers. Some studies suggest they cooked vegetables. Almost everything about Neanderthal behaviour is controversial. From their physiology, Neanderthals are presumed to have been omnivores, but animal protein formed the majority of their dietary protein, showing them to have been apex predators and not scavengers. Some studies suggest they cooked vegetables. The quality of stone tools at archaeological sites suggests Neanderthals were good at 'expert' cognition, a form of observational learning and practice acquired through apprenticeship that relies heavily on long-term procedural memory. Neanderthal toolmaking changed little over hundreds of thousands of years. The lack of innovation was said to imply they may have had a reduced capacity for thinking by analogy and less working memory. The researchers further speculated that Neanderthal behaviour would probably seem neophobic, dogmatic and xenophobic to modern humans. A 2018 open access paper discussed, in light of recent developments in the fields of paleogenetics and paleoanthropology, whether or not Neanderthals were rational. The authors' argument focuses on the genetic evidence that supports interbreeding with Homo sapiens, language acquisition (including the FOXP2 gene), archaeological signs of cultural development and potential for cumulative cultural evolution Few Neanderthals lived past 35. It is not known whether Neanderthals were anatomically capable of speech and whether they actually spoke. A once-widely believed theory that the Neanderthal vocal tract was different from that of living humans and so probably could not speak is now discredited. The only bone in the vocal tract is the hyoid but is so fragile that no Neanderthal hyoid was found until 1983, when excavators discovered a well-preserved one on Neanderthal Kebara 2, Israel. It was largely similar to that of living humans. Although the original excavators claimed that the similarity of this bone with that of living humans implied Neanderthals were anatomically capable of speech, it is not possible to reconstruct the vocal tract with information supplied by the hyoid. In particular, it does not allow to determine whether the larynx of its owner was in a low-lying position, a feature considered important in producing speech. A 2013 study on the Kebara hyoid used X-ray microtomography and finite element analysis to conclude that the Neanderthal hyoid showed microscopic features more similar to a modern human's hyoid than to a chimpanzee hyoid. To the authors, that suggested the Neanderthal hyoid was used similarly to that in living humans, that is, to produce speech. Yet, because the authors did not compare the microscopic structure of the Kebara 2 hyoid with that of speech-hindered living humans, the result is not yet conclusive. Although some researchers believe Neanderthal tool-making is too complex for them not to have had language, toolmaking experiments of Levallois technology, the most common Neanderthal toolmaking technique, have found that living humans can learn it in silence. Neanderthals had the same DNA-coding region of the FOXP2 gene as living humans, but are different in one position of the gene's regulatory regions, and the extent of FOXP2 expression might hence have been different in Neanderthals. Although the gene appears necessary for language—living humans who don't have the normal human version of the gene have serious language difficulties—it is not necessarily sufficient. It is not known whether FOXP2 evolved for or in conjunction with language, nor whether there are other language-related genes that Neanderthals may or may not have had. Similarly, the size and functionality of the Neanderthal Broca's and Wernicke's areas, used for speech generation in modern humans, is debated. In 1998, researchers suggested Neanderthals had a hypoglossal canal at least as large as humans, suggesting they had part of the neurological requirements for language. The canal carries the hypoglossal nerve, which controls the muscles of the tongue, necessary to produce language. However, a Berkeley research team showed no correlation between canal size and speech, as a number of extant non-human primates and fossilized australopithecines have larger hypoglossal canals. The morphology of the outer and middle ear of Homo heidelbergensis, the Neanderthal's ancestor, suggests they had an auditory sensitivity similar to modern humans and different from chimpanzees.