The Origins - Culture in the Neanderthal

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A lost stone. A bent bone. And many other findings at the Neander valleys tell us so much about the physical and morphological forms of these ancient creatures who may perhaps very well be our ancestors. But these findings, from the neander valleys to other parts of the world, may more than just tell us about shapes and sizes: they might in fact provide a window for us to peek into a lost culture, and the tradition of a seemingly uncivilized race.

At the Shanidar cave in northern Iraq, a number of Neanderthal graves were stumbled upon, and from all indications, they had appeared to have been involved in an accident caused by rocks falling from the roof maybe in the event of an earthquake. Among the buried bones was a hunter with a fractured skull, and analysis of the surrounding soil revealed pollens from some brightly coloured Wildflowers related to groundsel, grape Hyacinth and others. The pollens were so much that archaeologist could not attribute such a happening to chanced birds or feces of animals or wind. The only alternative explanation was that flowers had been scattered on the hunter's grave by someone who loved him.

A Strange deduction indeed, for care and love seldom comes to mind when the word Neanderthals is mentioned.

When we take a closer look at how the Neanderthals bury their dead, and observe the characteristics of such burials, we may gain an insight as to what those who carried out the burial had in mind. As could be seen at a French site which held bits of a man, a woman, two children and two babies. According to the White Lantern, Flints and bone splinters were discovered in the man's grave and a flat stone was laid atop his head. For What reason? We don't know. Perhaps to protect him, perhaps to prevent him from coming back. The woman's grave was a much smaller one and she was buried in a tight fetal position as if she was bounded with cords. Someone either wanted her confine her or to save some space.

Near the burial ground of this family, another child had been buried but this child's head had been separated from its body. The reason for such alienation and detachment is not known and even beyond speculation.

In Switzerland, the bear seemed to be the prime focus of the Neanderthal rituals. A number of box-like stone structures were found in Alpine caves and all contained bear skulls. One of the box-like structures which looked like a tomb held seven of such skulls along the entrance and six more farther into the cave that served as a tomb. This may depict a period when the earliest human pageantry had commenced. Even up to this time, a few stone age tribes conduct ritualistic ceremonies with the principal figure of a bear. Even some enthnologists refer to such ceremonies as the last peak of light into the Neanderthal era.

German writer Herbert Wendt spoke on the discovery :

...it was in the time of cave bears that the first cultural and religious ideas arose, that the first magicians appeared, that Man achieved dominion over Nature and began to believe in the support of supernatural powers.

When we come across the museum displays of this people, there appear to be no sign of painting or facial decoration simply because it is assumed that the Neanderthals had not crossed that stage where the idea of decorating something -anything, would occur to them. Yet powdered black manganese, flower pigments such as the red ocher and yellow ocher were found on their campsites, and appears to have been rubbed on soft surfaces. They had a relatively low aesthetic understanding, no sculpture had been discovered, no drawing or artistic communication, only bits and bits of hints. A bone with a hole here, an ox rib weaved and streaked in an unusual pattern there.

Le moustier Neanderthals

Fifty miles south of Rome, at Monte Circeo, labourers were widening a terrain at a tourist resort when they came across an entrance that had been sealed long ago by a landslide. Curiosity drove the owner of the resort and alongside some friends crawling through a tunnel that led them hillside and finally in a chamber that had not been visited for up to 60,000 years. They came across a skull laying face down to the earth and ensconced within a circle of stones. Whatever had led to the placement of the skull within the circle of stones is still a speculation but what remained undisputed after the skull was examined was that the aperture at the base had been enlarged disproportionately, almost in order to extract and eat the brain.

Could they speak? Perhaps.

Linguist Philip Lieberman and anatomist Edmund Crelin reconstructed the vocal tracts of some fossilized men and came to a conclusion that the Neanderthals did not have much of a pharnyx, or enough to produce an articulate speech involving the g or k or vowel sounds. And he could not speak rapidly as well says the Lieberman and Crelin, and spoke about one-tenth as fast as Europeans and one-twentieth as fast as the Spanaird.

It may very well be that we owe most of out ritualistic beliefs and cultures to the isolated species, although whatever information we have about them, however limited, derives its validity from an inductive sense of reasoning. But we are not to draw conclusions as quick as possible. Perhaps something else had happened to them or they were more civilized than we paint them to be. If they could bury their dead, understand a concept of the afterlife and even develop speech of their own, what else then about this ancient culture that lay buried in landslides and caves. However, at the moment, where archaeological discovery limits our reality, all we can do is imagine, and speculate.
Thank you for reading.