Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
perhaps through trade, objects such as sea shells that they used to make neck-
laces and other adornments. Neanderthals living in the area that would even-
tually become northern Iran buried heaps of fl owers along with the bodies of
their dead. In Spain, long before the arrival of modern humans, Neanderthals
used sea shells to mix pigments, perhaps for decoration. But there is no evi-
dence as yet that the Neanderthals carved any representations of human fi g-
ures, or drew and painted on the walls of caves. These skills were introduced
into Europe by the modern humans who displaced the Neanderthals.
The argument has been made repeatedly that the Neanderthals were
simply not clever enough to have made such sophisticated objects and
paintings on their own. Perhaps, it has been suggested, they obtained the
objects that are associated with them from nearby modern human tribes.
Alternatively, the modern humans might have driven the Neanderthals out
of the caves, so that the artifacts actually belonged to the modern humans
that displaced them. Or perhaps the Neanderthals sneaked over to nearby
caves and pilfered the objects from modern humans. Arguing against all
these rather unkind scenarios is the fact that the artifacts associated with
Neanderthal remains are distinctly dif erent from those made by modern
humans that have been dated to approximately the same time.
The most powerful argument that the Neanderthals were perfectly capa-
ble of making their sophisticated tools and decorative objects comes from
a glimpse of the capabilities of their remote pre-Neanderthal predecessors.
Refreshingly, this glimpse involves artifacts that are dif erent from those
boring-looking stone tools that archeologists spend so much time exhum-
ing and arguing over.
It is not surprising that most of the tools and artifacts found by pale-
ontologists are made of stone or shell, because wooden and other organic
artifacts soon rot or weather away. Occasionally, however, some of these
organic materials are accidentally preserved. Over the past century a few
such fragile artifacts belonging to pre-Neanderthals have been found in
Europe, including a possible wooden spear tip in England and what looks
very much like a complete but poorly preserved spear in Germany. But these
fragmentary discoveries were dismissed by authorities as likely to be noth-
ing but primitive digging sticks.
