Archaic DNA may also have entered our genes in a more roundabout way. Modern non-African people inherited about 1-2 per cent of their DNA directly from Neanderthals. But, curiously, studies of Neanderthal genomes suggest that around 6 per cent of their DNA was inherited from Homo sapiens in a hybridisation event that took place about 250,000 years ago. That’s long before modern humans left Africa, and about the time archaic sapiens moved into the Levant, suggesting archaic Homo sapiens was the source. If so, then, statistically speaking, it’s likely that some of the genes modern humans acquired from Neanderthals might originally come from archaic sapiens, in a sort of genetic back-and-forth.
Artefacts found with the Skhul and Qafzeh fossils also reflect this mix of sophisticated and primitive. Their tools were part of a tool tradition known as the Mousterian. Mousterian tech was advanced compared with the primitive Acheulian tools like hand-axes used by early Neanderthals, but more primitive than the tools made by modern Homo sapiens. The Skhul and Qafzeh people had abandoned Acheulian hand-axes for smaller stone tools, striking flakes and blades of disc-shaped stone cores. They made big, triangular spearpoints called Mousterian points. To do this, they used a flintknapping style called the Levallois technique, where a stone core was prepared and a large blade was struck off in a single motion. Levallois points were attached to throwing spears to hunt big game – and probably other people. Curiously, Mousterian tools are also associated with the last Neanderthals. Did these Homo sapiens get their tools from Neanderthals – or did Neanderthals get their technology from them?
Artefacts found with the Skhul
Remains of a teenage boy clutching antlers, discovered at Qafzeh cave. Courtesy the Israel Museum, Jerusalem/Wikipedia
Artefacts found with the Skhul and Qafzeh fossils also reflect this mix of sophisticated and primitive. Their tools were part of a tool tradition known as the Mousterian. Mousterian tech was advanced compared with the primitive Acheulian tools like hand-axes used by early Neanderthals, but more primitive than the tools made by modern Homo sapiens. The Skhul and Qafzeh people had abandoned Acheulian hand-axes for smaller stone tools, striking flakes and blades of disc-shaped stone cores. They made big, triangular spearpoints called Mousterian points. To do this, they used a flintknapping style called the Levallois technique, where a stone core was prepared and a large blade was struck off in a single motion. Levallois points were attached to throwing spears to hunt big game – and probably other people. Curiously, Mousterian tools are also associated with the last Neanderthals. Did these Homo sapiens get their tools from Neanderthals – or did Neanderthals get their technology from them?
The artefacts and behaviours of the Skhul and Qafzeh people were in some ways surprisingly advanced, surprisingly human. At Qafzeh, they punched holes in seashells, to string them on cords for necklaces. Then, the sea would have been about 30 miles away. It’s possible their wanderings took them that far, but it’s also possible they traded for shells – a behaviour not known in Neanderthals. Ochre pigment, typically used for painting, makeup and decoration, was also found covering some skeletons.And remarkably, several skeletons were found buried with grave goods, a practice unknown in Neanderthals. A man buried at Skhul had a boar’s jaw on his chest. A teenage boy at Qafzeh was buried curled up clutching the antlers of an elk. The meaning of this practice is unclear – maybe these artefacts were trophies, charms or offerings. Maybe they provided protection or help to the spirits of the dead. And then the burials themselves hint at the idea of an afterlife, and the mere fact that so many bodies are found in a small area suggests they attached some spiritual significance to these sites. Maybe loved ones brought the dead to the caves to join the ghosts of their ancestors.
A back-of-the-envelope calculation
A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests about 0.1 per cent of the DNA in non-African populations could come from archaic sapiens this way.
Archaic DNA may also have entered our genes in a more roundabout way. Modern non-African people inherited about 1-2 per cent of their DNA directly from Neanderthals. But, curiously, studies of Neanderthal genomes suggest that around 6 per cent of their DNA was inherited from Homo sapiens in a hybridisation event that took place about 250,000 years ago. That’s long before modern humans left Africa, and about the time archaic sapiens moved into the Levant, suggesting archaic Homo sapiens was the source. If so, then, statistically speaking, it’s likely that some of the genes modern humans acquired from Neanderthals might originally come from archaic sapiens, in a sort of genetic back-and-forth.
A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests about 0.1 per cent of the DNA in non-African populations could come from archaic sapiens this way. That doesn’t sound like much, but it adds up to around 3 million base pairs out of the 3.2 billion base pairs making up the human genome. And any genes that persisted first in Neanderthals, and later in ourselves, were likely kept due to natural selection – there’s a good chance they’re doing something useful to our bodies, our physiology – or our brains.
So was our survival, and their extinction, a foregone conclusion, or just dumb luck?
The striking pattern we see in the archaeological record is that modern Homo sapiens always took ground against other hominins, and we never gave it up. Everywhere modern humans went, we displaced archaic sapiens, never the reverse – as with Neanderthals and Denisovans. They held us off for a time, sometimes for millennia, but other humans could never push back and retake the land they lost. In civilised history, the rise and fall of civilisations often came down to a few big battles, so luck must play a large role in, say, the rise of Greek civilisation versus Persian.
But prehistoric wars were settled by small raids and ambushes, wars of attrition waged over millennia – the success of modern humans must be the result of countless thousands of conflicts. We won consistently, more often than we lost. Our success wasn’t a fluke; we weren’t just lucky, we were better than the other humans. Modern humans had an edge – so what was it?
One possibility is that we were better with tools and technology. Modern humans invented weapons like bows, spear-throwers and stone-headed axes; archaic sapiens and Neanderthals neither invented them, nor did they even adopt these technologies from us. Technological superiority wasn’t just about weapons, either. Modern Homo sapiens migrated into the high arctic of Siberia around 40,000 years ago, during the middle of the Ice Age – something Neanderthals never did. That’s strong evidence that we mastered innovations like cold-weather clothing, shoes, and the needles and thread needed to sew them. Modern humans colonised Australia by boat around 65,000 years ago; no other lineage crossed long distances over water.
Another possibility is that we were better with language. Language wasn’t unique to modern humans; Neanderthals probably had a form of speech. The hyoid bone that supports the soft tissues of the throat is highly modern in Neanderthals; they also had modern ear anatomy, suggesting they could hear the sounds of language. But it’s possible we were more refined linguistically, better able to communicate with one another to socialise, and also to wage wars, compared with other humans.
Another possibility
One possibility is that we were better with tools and technology. Modern humans invented weapons like bows, spear-throwers and stone-headed axes; archaic sapiens and Neanderthals neither invented them, nor did they even adopt these technologies from us. Technological superiority wasn’t just about
One possibility is that we were better with tools and technology. Modern humans invented weapons like bows, spear-throwers and stone-headed axes; archaic sapiens and Neanderthals neither invented them, nor did they even adopt these technologies from us. Technological superiority wasn’t just about weapons, either. Modern Homo sapiens migrated into the high arctic of Siberia around 40,000 years ago, during the middle of the Ice Age – something Neanderthals never did. That’s strong evidence that we mastered innovations like cold-weather clothing, shoes, and the needles and thread needed to sew them. Modern humans colonised Australia by boat around 65,000 years ago; no other lineage crossed long distances over water.
Another possibility is that we were better with language. Language wasn’t unique to modern humans; Neanderthals probably had a form of speech. The hyoid bone that supports the soft tissues of the throat is highly modern in Neanderthals; they also had modern ear anatomy, suggesting they could hear the sounds of language. But it’s possible we were more refined linguistically, better able to communicate with one another to socialise, and also to wage wars, compared with other humans.
We might also have had other more subtle advantages. One of the most extraordinary features of modern Homo sapiens is how we form large social groups. African hunter-gatherers typically live in bands of several dozen people, which ally to form tribes of many hundreds or even 1,000 people. Meanwhile, studies of Neanderthal DNA show low genetic diversity, suggesting more inbreeding – they lived in smaller, more isolated social groups. Our big social groups must have given us more brains to solve problems and to devise techniques for making tools. But maybe more important is the fact that large tribes are better able to defend land – or take it. If archaic Homo sapiens resembled Neanderthals in having small social groups, this must have put them at a disadvantage against modern humans.
It’s obviously hard to reconstruct social structures for people who lived tens of thousands of years ago. Still, could the anatomical differences between us and the archaics tell us something – could a clue to our superiority lie in modern humans’ weird skull shapes, where juvenile features are retained into adulthood?
A similar pattern is seen in domestic dogs – dog skulls are shaped like those of wolf puppies, and they have thinner skull bones too. The process of domesticating dogs for lower aggression produced something that looks like a young wolf. This may be a side-effect of selecting dogs for characters found in wolf puppies – less aggression, more playfulness, more friendliness.
So it’s possible that a sort of process of domestication gave modern Homo sapiens our weird, immature skulls, including big, domed heads, loss of brow ridges, small jaws, and thin skull bones. If the bones look immature, maybe the brain inside was too. Perhaps youthful creativity, imagination, faculty for languages, playfulness, why’s-the-sky-blue curiosity, willingness to make new friends were all retained late in life in us, compared with other humans – with selection for child-like behaviours creating our child-like faces.
And remarkably, several skeletons were found
Remains of a teenage boy clutching antlers, discovered at Qafzeh cave. Courtesy the Israel Museum, Jerusalem/Wikipedia
And remarkably, several skeletons were found buried with grave goods, a practice unknown in Neanderthals. A man buried at Skhul had a boar’s jaw on his chest. A teenage boy at Qafzeh was buried curled up clutching the antlers of an elk. The meaning of this practice is unclear – maybe these artefacts were trophies, charms or offerings. Maybe they provided protection or help to the spirits of the dead. And then the burials themselves hint at the idea of an afterlife, and the mere fact that so many bodies are found in a small area suggests they attached some spiritual significance to these sites. Maybe loved ones brought the dead to the caves to join the ghosts of their ancestors.
For a century, archaeologists have tried to make sense of the Skhul and Qafzeh bones, but we’re far from a consensus. Even assigning the skeletons to a species has been contentious. For a time, the skeletons were given their own species; later, they were interpreted as transitional between Neanderthals and modern humans, or even as Neanderthal-human hybrids. The current thought is that they are part of Homo sapiens, more closely related to us than to Neanderthals. But if so, how do they relate to us?
Since the discovery of Skhul
Surprisingly, a few have even been found in Europe. An archaic sapiens skull was found at Apidima Cave in Greece, and teeth have been found in the cave of Grotte Mandrin, in France. They’re apparently part of an initial sapiens migration out of Africa, taking place tens of thousands of years before modern sapiens left that continent.
Surprisingly, a few have even been found in Europe. An archaic sapiens skull was found at Apidima Cave in Greece, and teeth have been found in the cave of Grotte Mandrin, in France. They’re apparently part of an initial sapiens migration out of Africa, taking place tens of thousands of years before modern sapiens left that continent.
Archaic sapiens weren’t just common – they were the most widespread, abundant and successful humans of their time. Since archaic sapiens inhabited most of Africa where they had access to plenty of game and plants to forage, they would have outnumbered Neanderthals, who were restricted to the more hostile environments of Ice Age Europe and Asia. Modern sapiens, meanwhile, are thought to have existed in a small area of southern Africa, with a total population of no more than 30,000 people.