Born in Africa_ The Quest for the Origins of Human Life - Martin Meredith [79]
It was not until the 1950s that scientists reached a different verdict. In 1955, after examining the skeleton found at La Chapelle-aux-Saints, two anatomists, William Straus and A.J.E. Cave, published an article pointing out that it belonged to an arthritic ‘old man’—an elderly forty-year-old—who had suffered from degenerative joint disease in the skull, jaw, spinal column, hip and feet, as well as a rib fracture and extensive tooth loss. ‘Notwithstanding, if he could be reincarnated and placed in a New York subway—provided that he was bathed, shaved, and dressed in modern clothing—it is doubtful whether he would attract any more attention than some of its other denizens’.
Subsequent investigations showed that Neanderthals were highly successful groups of hunter-gatherers, evolving from heidelbergensis perhaps as far back as 300,000 years ago, reaching a fully fledged form by about 120,000 years ago, spreading out across Europe, western Asia and the Levant and surviving through prolonged periods of cold climate. They had stocky, powerful physiques, with large heads, huge noses, low foreheads, double-arched brow ridges, but little chin development. Their brain sizes were similar to those of modern humans but housed in braincases that were elongated from front to back, suggesting that their brains were organised differently. The anatomy of their skulls indicates that they possessed a limited form of vocal communication. They roamed in small nomadic bands over sparsely populated terrain, finding shelter in caves or camping in the open for short periods. They produced a range of specialised tools, referred to as Mousterian, used for hunting, woodwork, and meat and skin preparation. And they were the first human species known to have practiced the simple burial of their dead.
There is also evidence that Neanderthals cared for the infirm and injured. Excavating a cave overlooking the Greater Zab River in the Shanidar Valley in northern Iraq in 1957, an American archaeologist, Ralph Solecki, came across the well-preserved skeleton of an elderly male Neanderthal buried deep beneath the cave floor. A close study of his bones revealed a number of serious injuries: He had suffered a crushing blow to the left side of the head that had fractured the eye socket, displacing the left eye, and probably causing blindness on that side; he had sustained a blow to the right side of the body so severe that the right arm had become withered and useless; and his legs also showed signs of injury. Although disabled and clearly unable to fend for himself, this one-armed, partially blind cripple had managed to survive with his injuries for several years.
Another burial at the Shanidar cave offered an even more tantalising glimpse of Neanderthal life. Soil samples taken by Solecki from the grave of another elderly male showed evidence of large quantities of wildflower pollen. An expert palynologist, Arlette Leroi-Gourhan, claimed that there was far more pollen in the samples than could be accounted for by explanations that it had been blown in on the wind or carried there on the feet of people or animals. The implication, said Solecki, was clear: The elderly man had been buried with an offering of flowers. Writing in Science in 1975, at the height of the American hippie movement, Solecki remarked: ‘The death had occurred approximately 60,000 years ago ... yet the evidence of flowers in the grave brings Neanderthals closer to us in spirit than we have ever before suspected ... The association of flowers with Neanderthals adds a whole new dimension to our knowledge of his humanness, indicating that he had “soul”’. Solecki’s verdict was that Neanderthals possessed ‘the mind of modern man locked into the body of an archaic creature’. As a title for the book on his work, he chose: