Neandertals Had Highly Capable Hands, Study Says

Stefan Lovgren
for National Geographic News

March 26, 2003

A new study suggests Neandertals could touch the tips of their thumb and index finger, and may have been as dexterous as modern humans.

The findings are significant because they could help researchers in their quest to explain why Neandertals died out 28,000 years ago.

"One theory suggested Neandertals were hampered by their hand movements and couldn't make the tools necessary to survive," said Wesley Niewoehner of California State University in San Bernardino, who led the study. "But Neandertals didn't lag behind modern humans in terms of manual skills, so the explanation for why they died out is much more complex than that."

Computer Animations

Many experts already suspected that Neandertals were in fact highly dexterous. But previous studies focused on individual bones or fingers. "No one had ever looked at the Neandertal hand as a whole," said Niewoehner.

Researchers took resin casts of fossil bones found at La Ferrassie, France, which date back 70,000 years, and scanned them with a laser to make a computer model. The process is similar to what animators do when they take real-world animals and turn them into computer objects.

Using different software, the researchers identified the center of the joints of the thumb and index finger bones and entered degrees of movement. The parameters used for this movement were very conservative.

"Even with this conservative approach, the thumb and index finger could clearly touch," said Niewoehner. Such a precision grip can only be achieved by humans and some apes.

Making Tools

Neandertals lived in Europe and some parts of Asia from 300,000 years ago, until the last of them disappeared on the Iberian Peninsula of present-day Spain and Portugal about 28,000 years ago. Modern humans arose in Africa less than 200,000 years ago and appeared in great numbers in Europe, starting about 40,000 years ago.

One main difference between the Neandertals and the Cro-Magnon was the sophistication of tools made and used.

The tools of the Neandertals are called Mousterian, named after the site in France where they were found. They are "flake-based," which means the Neandertals hacked off pieces of a rock to make tools used for butchering animals, scraping hide, and working wood.

They were able to modify these "flakes" slightly, but overall their tools were rudimentary. The tools of the Cro-Magnon, however, often had handles and were standardized.

"There's no physical reason why the Neandertals couldn't have made those sophisticated tools," said Niewoehner.

The Neandertal hand looked similar to a human hand, but it was much stronger. They had larger muscles and broader fingertips.

Neandertals held tools between their fingers, something that required enormous strength. "The effect is like using a coin rather than a screwdriver to fasten a screw," said Niewoehner.

Friends or Foes?

The relationship between Neandertal and Cro-Magnon beings has long been debated. The two groups overlapped in Europe for 10,000 years, but many experts have argued that the two groups were distinct from each other.

Exponents of the out-of-Africa hypothesis of modern human origins argue that Cro-Magnon emerged from Africa with a superior tool culture and wiped out the Neandertal population in Europe.

Advocates of the "continuity" theory believe that Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal beings mixed and that Neandertals are fundamentally the same species as human beings.

But what caused the Neandertals to die out while modern humans survived? Since the Neandertals did not lag behind humans in terms of manual skill, there must have been another reason why they lost the evolutionary battle with their more sophisticated counterparts, according to the new study.

"There are significant behavioral differences between the two groups," said Niewoehner. "Cro-Magnon are much more innovative than Neandertals, especially in their hunting techniques."

The child survival rate was far greater among Cro-Magnon than Neandertals. The Cro-Magnon had better cultural buffering, which refers to the measures a species take to block out the harsh effects of nature.

"We can't look at Neanderthals as inferior to humans," said Niewoehner. "There's no probably no one reason why they went extinct."

The research appears in the current issue of Nature.