I have long been fascinated by Neanderthals and wondered why they don't get more attention. Dinosaurs get a lot of attention. Of course, new fans are recruited at a young age by their purple, melodious, dancing spokesman. And they were pretty sensational! Woolly mammoths and saber tooth tigers get their due - maybe 'cuz they look cool. And they lived up until fairly recently. But Neanderthals fly under the radar. I am perplexed by this. I think a lot of people lump them in with our 'Cave Men' ancestors. Neanderthals were a distinct human species. And they lived up until fairly recently. How could their extinction not get more notice? Can you imagine how fascinating the world would be had they survived and shared the world with us? Fascinating! And yet there seems to be so little interest in it.
Scientists say Neanderthals lived all through Europe, Western Asia and the Middle East, from 400,000 to 30,000 years ago. They were a distinct species that branched away from our own lineage one million years ago. They were cold weather adapted; with slightly shorter and more powerful limbs than their Cro-Magnon cousins. Neanderthals were meat-eaters, much more so than our ancestors. They dealt with cave bears, cave lions and saber tooth cats. They were hunters who made and used tools. They hunted things like woolly mammoths and woolly bison with short spears. Certainly, they hunted in groups and strategized. They had fire and they cared for their children, injured and elders. They had large brains and it is likely that they spoke their own language and worshipped their own gods. These were not apes. They were people - so much like us.
There is debate on what happened when our ancestors met with their Neanderthal cousins. They had been apart and evolved independently for half a million years. Neanderthal was making it in Europe and its surrounds. And then Cro-Magnon expanded out of Africa. POW! What happened when they met? They co-existed for 20,000 years before Neanderthal went extinct. Did they mingle? Did they compete? Did they fight?
The most common theory is that Cro-Magnon had a 'creative advantage' that helped him to evolve and out-compete Neanderthal. But there are other ideas too. Maybe Cro-Magnon infected Neanderthal with a disease that depleted his numbers. Maybe Neanderthals adaptations were a disadvantage when the climate changed. Maybe his meat-dependence did him in when something affected his food source. Maybe they warred and Cro-Magnon had some kind of military advantage. Or maybe they interbred and Neanderthal was simply absorbed into the Cro-Magnon population. No one really knows.
I believe in the absorption theory. I think something depleted the Neanderthal population and the survivors were absorbed into the Cro-Magnon population. Scandinavians and other northern Europeans are fair skinned and light haired. Amongst this population we find concentrations of blue eyes, white skin and red and blond hair. Their skin burns easily, and freckles. And they're big. We don't see this sort of thing in the native African, Asian or the American populations. Could it be that some of these traits were passed down from Neanderthal?
I've enjoyed reading Neanderthal fiction, but there's not that much out there. "The Neanderthal Parallax", a trilogy by Robert Sawyer is really good. There's a kind of parallel universe where the Neanderthals won out and evolved into a modern civilization. One of the Neanderthal scientists passes into our world. It's good stuff. The best known book involving Neanderthals is "Clan of the Cave Bear" by Jean Auel. It's part of her "Earth's Children" series and tells of a Cro-Magnon girl orphaned to the Neanderthals. It was made into a movie. In Mark Canter's "Ember from the Sun", a pregnant Neanderthal woman's carcass is found frozen in the arctic. The embryo is saved (?) and the baby is raised among Native Americans Indians. It's pretty good for a while, but lost my interest when it got into a surviving Neanderthal population in Alaska. Dunno about that! Kurten Gjorn wrote "Dance of the Tiger". This one was entertaining. Set 35,000 years ago, it deals with the interaction between Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal, and describes various Neanderthal tribes. Its sequel, "Singletusk", was also enjoyable. "Almost Adam" by Petru Popescu was ridiculous, but fun. An anthropologist in a plane sees a footprint on a mountain (must have had good eyesight!). And he decides to check it out. He finds remote civilizations of all sorts of pre historic man! Okay?! But it's science fiction, right? John Darnton’s "Neanderthal", is the story of a paleontologist discovering a lost civilization of Neanderthals in Tajikistan. It's silly, of course, but entertaining. That's all the Neanderthal fiction I've been able to get my hands on; only a handful of books - many of them written decades ago.
It seems to me there is a void. There ought to be a story of what might happen if the Neanderthals had not gone extinct, but instead continued to evolve independently right beside our line of humans. How would they have evolved compared to us? How would we interact with them? We've had lots of movies with aliens; some friendly and some nasty. We've had the "Planet of the Apes", the original, the sequels, and the remake. We've even had movies about king sized apes ("Mighty Joe Young") and truly enormous apes ("King Kong"). But for Neanderthals, all we've had is "The Clan of the Cave Bear"; nothing set in modern times. I think "The Neanderthal Parallax" might make a good movie. And I think there's room for the Neanderthal co-existence story as well.
