Did he whack her Over the Head? And other Questions about the "Cave Men"
by
Gina Matthiesen
The Neanderthal man is out looking for his mate.
He spots a woman, whacks her over the head with his club and then drags
her back to his cave. His time will
be spent hunting, making tools, and protecting his family.
While he may not be very smart, Neanderthal man is very strong and
active. She on the other hand has
babies and tends to the cave. If
she's lucky, she may get a little credit for gathering some plants for a
prehistoric salad. This scenario is
widely seen as the story of Neanderthal and our other early ancestors.
But is it accurate? And why
should we care?
Many people are under the impression that gender roles have been fixed
since the dawn of time. It still
shocks me when I hear about women who wash dishes after Thanksgiving dinner
while the men watch footballùin fact, I have experienced this.
Women clean and provide care while men protect and provide money, and
this is the way it has been forever (according to some of my elderly aunts
anyway!). Of course this is not
trueùwe know that women have functioned well in many roles throughout history.
Most women have their personal favorite female historical figureùmine
is Simone de BeauvierùwhoÆs yours? But
what about women in prehistory, or even women in further prehistory?
Neanderthal women for instance?
What is a Neanderthal Anyway?
Neanderthals were a group of hominids who lived in Europe and Central
Asia from about 200,000 to 30,000 years ago during the Ice Ages.
Hominids are members of the family Hominidae,
bipedal primates which include the genus Homo (modern day humans are Homo
sapiens) and the Australopithecines like ôLucyö.
In other words, hominids are humans and all of our two-footed,
upright-walking cousins and ancestors.
Neanderthals are certainly not the hunched-over, stupid brutes of our
popular imagination. Their posture
was upright like ours and their brains were on average a little larger.
They made sophisticated tools (commonly referred to as the Mousterian
tradition), constructed simple shelters, cared for their sick, buried their
dead, and most likely used language. In
many ways, Neanderthals were similar to anatomically modern human beings (Homo
sapiens). In fact, some researchers see Neanderthals as an ancient
physical (the problematic idea "racial" in popular terms) variation of
Homo sapiens. Others believe that Neanderthals were a very closely related
cousin (Homo neanderthalensis).
Still others hypothesize that Neanderthal and modern human anatomy
emerged around the same time, yet occurred in drastically different
environments. While these two forms
could interbreed (and seemingly did so in Eastern Europe), for the most part
they stayed geographically distinct. Basically,
Neanderthal evolution is still hotly debated.
What did they look like?
Neanderthal
bodies were much more robust ("big-boned" or "muscle-bound"
in popular terms) than ours and their lower legs and arms were proportionally
shorter, both of which are adaptations to cold climates.
Males were on average about 5'6" and females were about 5'3",
comparable to many modern populations (modern European males and females are
5'7" and 5'3" respectively). Neanderthal
skulls were long and low (ours are high and round) and housed a large brain.
Both sexes had prominent brow ridges and large muscle attachments of the
jaw and neck. Their faces projected
forward with a long, large protruding nose, "swept-back" cheeks, and a
"weak" chin. Males and
females had large teeth that show a lot of wear caused by using the mouth as a
vice to hold hides, meat, and plant materials for processing.
Both sexes had robust skeletons with large muscle attachments and
powerful yet flexible hands. Their
legs, ankles, and feet were designed to withstand heavy muscular stress,
implying that their lifestyle was quite vigorous. The best word to describe Neanderthal anatomy is
"powerful".
While we may wonder about Neanderthal eye, skin, and hair color, such
traits are not preserved in the archaeological record.
Most archaeologists believe that Neanderthals probably had pale skin
since they (like modern Swedes for instance) lived in conditions of low
sunlight. Cartoonists draw Neanderthals with a lot of body hair, but
there is no archaeological evidence to support such a view. Other than on mummies (Neanderthals did not use this burial
practice), hair is generally not preserved in the archaeological record.
So how did they live?
What was daily life like for Neanderthals?
Early on anthropologists argued that they exclusively hunted the large
herd animals of the Ice Ages, such as wooly mammoths or aurochs (giant wild
cows). Elaborate hunting rituals,
"bear cults" and cannibalism have all been proposed as Neanderthal
religious beliefs. Some of these
ideas were based (oh so) loosely on the belief systems of modern
hunter-gatherers, but much of it was pure ômanlyö fancy.
These ideas have been reworked and debunked.
Newer models of Neanderthal behavior focus on subsistence (getting food
and resources) and settlement patterns. Neanderthals
are proposed to have been "foragers" rather than
"collectors."
The main difference between "foraging" and
"collecting" is the amount of forward planning involved.
Foraging is an "opportunistic process" in which people make use
of any resources encountered. Foragers
need to plan routes that will maximize their chances of finding resources, but
generally do not store food or other items, leaving buffers against lean times.
Collecting, associated with modern hunter/gatherer populations, involves
a lot of forward planning. Collectors
often store food and other goods and will carefully monitor their resources.
The work of Lewis Binford is interesting since he has worked gender into
his research. In fact he proposes that Neanderthals lived mostly separate social
and economic lives.
Binford was part of a team that excavated the Combe Grenal cave shelter
in France in the 1960's. He reports
to have found two separate zones of activity, the "nest" in the center
of the cave and an outlying area located nearer to the entrance.
The "nest" is characterized by ashy (low-heat) fire deposits,
simple and expediently made tools of local stone materials, and splintered
animal long bones and cranial fragments. Marrow
extraction was probably the main activity in the "nest".
The outlying areas contained high-temperature fires, more finely made
stone tools of non-local materials, and the very ends of animal long bones. Animal butchery was probably the main activity of the
outlying area (it doesn't have a simple or catchy name). The long bones and crania fragments in both areas were often
part of the same individual animal, which shows that these areas were in use at
the same time.
Neanderthal women were processing marrow and plant resources in the
"nest" according to Binford's model.
They foraged locally for plants, small animals, and other resources such
as stone for their processing tools. Men
on the other hand foraged for larger animals and other resources such as stone
farther away from the rock shelters. They
probably ate the fleshy parts of their animal food while away from the
"nest" and periodically returned to the rock shelter with marrowbones
and crania for the women to eat. This
model is a direct contrast to modern hunter/gatherers, where food is collected
and shared by all. Binford
argues that Neanderthal men and women probably interacted mostly to mate.
He notes that there is no evidence of family units, such as a common
sleeping or food preparation area. Since
men were not regular inhabitants of the "nest", they were not
competing with each other for female attention very often.
Binford states that in this type of social system, mating choices would
be dominated by women. His ultimate goal is to get people to understand that modern
humans and Neanderthals may have entirely different sensibilities about the
world. There is no reason to assume
that they are inferior versions of us,
as has been the unspoken view in much earlier research.
Criticisms of the Binford Model
This somewhat strange model has been criticized on several fronts.
First of all, Binford's model and data have yet to be published in a peer
reviewed formatùthis model appears in an article titled ôHard Evidenceö!
One Neanderthal expert (Paul Mellars) argues that the distribution of
tool use could rather simply be based on function rather than social roles.
For example, butchery tools would naturally be found in areas where
animals were butchered. These areas
would most likely be located away from centers of social activity (such as the
"nest") since butchery is messy.
The "nest" is probably a common social area for all members of
the group since it is located in the middle of the living area. Function separates these areas rather than sex roles.
Further criticism comes from the discipline of socioecology.
Socioecologists argue that men, women, and children have to share food in
order to ensure the long-term survival of the group.
Nor does Binford's suggestion that women collected and ate mostly small
mammals and plant materials reflect the archaeological record very well.
Binford himself states that "there are no small mammal bones in the
shelters". However, he
does suggest that small mammals were eaten ôon the spotö when caught, so
their remains would be deposited elsewhere.
Nor do plant foods make up more than a minor component at any Neanderthal
site. Chemical analyses conducted
on Neanderthal bones prove that their diets consisted mostly of meat.
Only Binford proposes such a radical separation of the sexes.
Mary Stiner and Stephen Kuhn, for example, propose a similar strategy of
local and non-local foraging that in no way implies Neanderthal men and women
lived separate social and economic lives.
Evidence collected from Neanderthal bodies, such as injury patterns and
muscle attachments, also contradict BinfordÆs hypothesis.
Stress fractures on Neanderthal skeletons suggest that they were killing
animals at close quarters. In fact,
Neanderthal injuries were similar to those of modern day rodeo riders (falling
or getting kicked by animals). I
found no mention in my research of differences in injuries to male and female
skeletons. Furthermore, any
discussion of Neanderthal bodies mentions that men, women, and children all had
large muscle attachments and were all powerfully built.
If there are no differences in morphology or injury patterns, we can
probably assume that men and women had similar lives.
Research
on femurs and muscle attachments in anatomically modern human populations
reinforce this assumption. Female
and male femurs of hunter/gatherer populations are similar in robusticity
(strength and shape) since women and men in these societies have similar roles.
WomenÆs femurs became smaller and less robust than menÆs with the
introduction of agriculture. In
these societies, women stayed closer to home and the crops while men remained
mobile hunters. MenÆs femurs
became smaller and less robust too as they gradually became more sedentary (less
mobile) themselves.
So Why Should We Care?
The criticism that I have not seen of BinfordÆs model would point out
how similar his proposed Neanderthal sex roles are to our present-day American
stereotypes of ideal male and female behavior.
He is proposing that men literally ôbrought home the baconö while
women occupied themselves at home. Our
American ideal is similarùmen should go to work and women should stay at home. Lewis Binford is an American archaeologist and (like us
allùlets not single him out) has to have been influenced by this stereotype.
There are some rather unfair criticisms of Binford and his model of
Neanderthal behavior on the Internet (type "Binford,"
Neanderthal," and "women" into a search engine to see some
examples). He certainly does not
imply that women did not provide for themselves or make their own tools as such
personal, non-peer reviewed Internet sites suggest.
I have no doubts that he is attempting to make people understand that
they cannot just assume that Neanderthals lived like modern hunter/gatherers. He has strongly criticized earlier anthropological research
for portraying Neanderthals as ôinferiorö versions of modern
hunter/gatherers. However,
BinfordÆs model, while widely praised for its boldness, strikes me as rather
conservative.
The
good news is that no matter which model proves to be correct, we know that
Neanderthal women were strong and self-sufficient.
She made her own tools, processed her own hides, and collected a lot of
resources. She was not whacked over
the head and dragged to the cave. Maybe
these women can become some of our historical favorites?!
Some
References
Fischman, Joshua. "Hard Evidence." Discover (Feb. 1992): 44-51.
Gero, Joan. "Genderlithics: Women's Roles in Stone Tool Production," 163-193. In Gero, Joan M., and Margaret Conkey, eds. Engendering
Archaeology: Women and Prehistory. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1991.
Gore, Rick. "Neanderthals." National Geographic 189 (Jan. 1996): 2-35.
Mellars, Paul. The Neanderthal Legacy: an Archaeological Perspective from Western Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.
Page, Jake. "Seeing Fingers Decipher Bones." Smithsonian 32 (May 2001): 94-102.
Stringer, Christopher, and Clive Gamble. In Search of the Neanderthals. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1993.
Tattersall, Ian. The Last Neanderthal: The Rise, Success, and Mysterious Extinction of Our Closest Human Relatives. New York: Macmillan,
1995.
Trinkaus, Erik, and Pat Shipman. The Neanderthals: Changing the Image of Mankind. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993.