Dimwitted Neanderthals? Pioneering research challenges ‘outdated’ assumptions about our ancestors

For a long time, paleoanthropologists viewed Neanderthals as being very distinct from our own species, and inherently incapable of sharing the “modern” characteristics that came to define our own evolution.

A substantial and rapidly growing body of research is putting this “dumb brute” conception of the Neanderthal firmly to bed: there is evidence to show that they were a sea-faring people, skilled cooperative hunters, and possibly even capable of medical treatment and healthcare. These discoveries are adding to the complexity of understanding why Neanderthals died out and the modern human survived; if the differences between the two species were much smaller than previously assumed, what gave the modern human the competitive advantage over our ancient cousin?

[T]he appearance of projectile technologies, such as stone-tipped spears, made it easier to hunt prey from a distance and increased the Neanderthals’ chances of surviving the hunting trip. That’s why the innovation of tools like the spear is considered a “tipping point” in human evolution and believed to have triggered major economic and social transformations, including the ensuing global success of modern humans.

This is an excerpt. Read the original post here.