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The Neanderthal's Necklace: In Search of the First Thinkers

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This is a fine book that sheds further light on what the Neanderthals were like and what happened to them. Written in an engaging, clear and almost poetic style (the translation by Andy Klatt is first rate, his surprising use of "irregardless" on page 182 notwithstanding), this book gives us a sense of the latest understanding with an emphasis on evidence from the Sierra de Artapuerca excavation site in Spain where paleoanthropologist Professor Arsuaga is co-director. The black, white and gray illustrations by Juan Carlos Sastre nicely augment the text.

Arsuaga begins with the observation that today we exist almost alone in the sense that there are no very similar species extant, the last one being the Neanderthal in Europe. Arsuaga then traces our descent until he arrives at "Domesticated Man" in the Epilogue. His detours and asides are very interesting. I was especially pleased to learn that there are well-preserved wooden lances (or spears) used by archaic humans fully 400,000 years ago. (p. 182-183) I also found interesting his digression on what caused the extinction of the megafauna of America some 10,000 years ago (in Chapter Six, "The Great Extinction").

Primarily, though, this book is about the cultural, behavioral and conceptional abilities (as derived from the archaeological evidence) that separate humans from other living creatures, especially the Neanderthals. Arsuaga reveals his purpose on page 280: "I have been trying to summarize the evidence available concerning the thorniest problem of human evolution, the development of consciousness, which is the defining characteristic of humankind." He had asked in the Prologue on page ix, "Apart from us, has there ever been a life form on earth that was conscious of its own existence and of its place in the world?" In short his answer is yes, the Neanderthal, whom he defines as our contemporary, not as an archaic human species. (p. 278)

Arsuaga's story begins about 2.5 million years ago when Homo habilis emerged in Africa (presumably from another post-australopithecine species) with a noticeably bigger brain than the first upright walking apes. "A short while later" (geologically-speaking) Homo ergaster (probably the same as Homo erectus) appeared. Arsuaga sees Homo ergaster as the first hominid to migrate out of Africa about 1.5 million years ago, spreading to Europe and southeast Asia. Not only did these proto-humans have a significantly larger brain than Homo habilis, they had also begun "to create a social and cultural environment...that afforded them ever more independence from the physical environment," which is one of the reasons they were able to survive in diverse climates, especially in the cold of the northern latitudes.

Then about 300,000 years ago Arsuaga sees the development independently in Europe and Africa of a "second great expansion of the human brain" producing "somewhat different results." (p. 307) When modern humans again emerged out of Africa about 150,000 years ago they arrived in Europe to find the Neanderthal. The somewhat different results of their independent evolution prevented the species from merging and eventually the Neanderthal died out.

Although some authorities have emphasized competition with modern humans as the reason for the Neanderthal's demise, Arsuaga believes we need more information before we can say "in a convincing fashion" what happened. (p. 292) He does say somewhat imprecisely that the Neanderthal was "defeated by the cold" while the Cro-Magnons due to "superior technology," especially with bone awls and needles to fashion well-fitting animal skins, etc., were able to survive the glacial maximum 25,000 years ago. (p. 302) However on page 78 while noting that the Cro-Magnons had developed physical features that made them look relatively childlike--a gracile build and a "small, minimally protruding face," ("neoteny" is the technical term for this phenomenon)--Arsuaga may have tipped his hand. He observes, "Cro-Magnons must have looked cute to the Neanderthals! They may have discovered later, to their dismay, what kind of people they were dealing with, and as sweet as the Cro-Magnons may have looked, what kind of behavior they could expect."

(I had a sudden vision here of an abandoned Cro-Magnon child found by a Neanderthal family. They tenderly take the child in, nourish it and bring it up as their own. At a certain age, the child realizes that it is not Neanderthal and... Well, I'm sure there are a few science fiction stories that resolve this premise for better or for worse.)

Arsuaga's account therefore presents the Neanderthal as a co-existing species, not our ancestor, with whom there was little to no interbreeding. Nonetheless Arsuaga has great respect and affection for the Neanderthal. He writes on page 284 that "It would thrill me more than anything if I could say that I had even a drop of Neanderthal blood to connect me with those powerful Europeans of long ago." His portrait is of a "human" species different from (not less than) ourselves that had culture and ritual and self-adornment (as evidenced by, e.g., the Neanderthal's necklace found at Grotte du Renne in France), a being that had achieved consciousness, although of a sort undoubtedly different than ours. In one particular, Arsuaga argues that the fossil evidence suggests that the Neanderthal's phonetic apparatus would not have been able to produce "sounds as distinct as ours," (p. 268). This physical characteristic may have reduced its ability to develop a culture as extensive as the Cro-Magnon's which we know about in part through the cave murals that they painted in France and Spain.

What one feels strongly from Arsuaga's account is the sense of loss that the Neanderthal is no longer with us. How much we could have learned from a being that was at once much like ourselves, but intriguingly different.

The Neanderthal's Necklace: In Search of the First Thinkers

It's a rare book that delivers more than it promises, but Juan Luis Arsuaga's _The Neanderthal's Necklace_ does just that. The book jacket presents it as a story of the 10,000-year-long encounter between the Neanderthals and our own Cro-Magnon ancestors, a story that ends with the disappearance of the Neanderthals some 27,000 years ago. Arsuaga discusses that epochal culture clash at length and with many fresh insights. However, he weaves that narrative into a much grander story--his expert take on the evolution not just of the Neanderthals and our own very young species, but of all the other walking primates that preceded us back to whatever great-grandparent species we shared with organutangs, gorillas and chimpanzees some 6 million years ago. For good measure, Arsuaga throws in his original and highly readable takes on many key evolutionary issues, on the nature of consciousness, and--really the theme of the book--on when, where and how our own "hypersymbolic" human consciousness emerged.

Arsuaga, a leading Spanish paleoanthropologist, has strong views on many topics. He's convinced that modern humans are unique. "Anatomically, we are but erect primates . . ." he argues. "At the same time, we humans are radically different from all other animals due to the astonishing phenomena of our intelligence, our capacity for reflection, and a broad self-consciousness of all aspects of our behavior." Accordingly, he denies consciousness, at least as he defines it, not only to non-human animals, but even to many of the upright, tool-using species that preceded us. " . . . animals lack both self-awareness and perceptive awareness, or consciousness. They are no more than biological machines." (Immediately after this hackle-raising statement, Arsuaga is perceptive enough to apologize "to all cat- and dog-lovers," whose beloved pets, he concedes, may possibly have "perceptive consciousness.")

After in-depth discussions of almost every line of evidence, Arsuaga comes to several very interesting conclusions about the development of the fully human consciousness he so highly values. Surprisingly, he grants first membership in the consciousness club to a truly ancient ancestor, _Homo ergaster_, whose 1.8 million-year-old fossils have been found in modern-day Kenya. Not only did _H. ergaster_ have a body closer in size and shape to our own, but a brain that was a significant chunk larger than our first tool-using ancestor, _Homo habilis_. Unlike _habilis_, _ergaster_ fashioned biface stone tools--"chipped on two surfaces with obvious skill and concern for symmetry. "These primitive human beings were conscious of what they were doing, and they cared about the tools they carried in their hands," Arsuaga writes.

Like most current researchers, Arsuaga is clear that Neanderthal's were not our direct ancestors, but a relatively recent, parallel, and ultimately extinct human branch. Still, he grants them a mental world nearly equal to our own. After all, he points out, they made tools just as carefully as their archaic human neighbors, made fire, and buried their dead. Still, he concludes from anatomical studies that they could not produce fully articulated speech, and that they never entered the richly symbolic world that we inhabit (with rare exceptions such as the necklace-wearing Neanderthal referred to in the book's title). Arsuaga focuses on two clues to this consciousness gap. It was the Cro-magnons some 32,000 years ago who began to represent the world they saw and imagined in those haunting cave paintings, and who devoted enormous amounts of time and effort to personal adornment. That's when, he writes poetically, "the world was made transparent." By that he means that with their newly re-tooled minds, our immediate ancestors projected all their intuitive understanding of each other, all of their deep immersion into symbols, onto the entire world. "All of a sudden and unexpectedly," he writes, "the spirit of our land, old _Europa_, came alive. The rocks, the rivers, the sea, the trees, and the animals, also the clouds, the sun, the moon, and the stars above; all sang to humankind, and the wind carried their song."

It's a lovely summary of a lovely and deeply informative book. Anyone who is interested in a well written, well thought out and non-standard view of how we came to be the way we are will enjoy it thoroughly.

Robert Adler, author of _Science Firsts: From the Creation of Science to the Science of Creation_ (Wiley, Sept. 2002), presenting highlights in the history of science from the ancient Greeks to the cloning of Dolly the Sheep.

Juan Luis Arsuaga has written an informative account of his own research on the earliest Europeans as represented by the copious skeletal deposits in the Sierra de Atapuerca and in particular with respect to the remains discovered in one very special site of that region, Sima de los Huesos, the Pit of Bones. The study of hominid origins, in this case involving conspecifics of the genus Homo, is always an intriging field filled with a variety of opinions, reasoned and otherwise, and Professor Arsuaga gives a balanced treatment to the problem of the origin of the first Europeans and to the role that Neanderthals had in this evolutionary play. He is also not reluctant to state where his own sympathies lie with regard to our specific ancestry and the fact that, while, in his opinion, Neanderthals are not our direct ancestors, they do represent an alternative humanity, sentient, creative, and technologically proficient in their own right, and an alternative humanity that we shared the greater part of Europe with for some ten thousand years.

I do have some minor concerns with regard to this book. First, American readers may be put off by Arsuaga's repeated use of researcher's full names when givng credit for the work of others. This is, I believe, a cultural artifact, but it makes the reading laborious in more than one instance. I wish also that more time had been spent addressing the significance of the skeletal remains of the child found in Portugal, dated to twenty-four to twenty-six thousand years ago, and purported to represent a combination of both Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal characteristics. Finally, the book subtitle suggests that the cognitive piece of the Neanderthal puzzle will be addressed at some length, and the discussion of this topic did not completely meet my expectations.

Putting aside these criticisms, this book is thoughtfully written and gives even the novice reader ample background in demography, paleoecology, biogeography, evolutionary biology, and anthorpology so that both conceptually and empirically the aspects of archeology pertinent to Prof. Arsuaga's conclusions can be clearly understood. I recommend this book most strongly and suggest that the ideas shared here will provoke the reader to ponder just what life might have been like when two alternatives to the question, What does it mean to be human? existed side by side over no small period of time.

Arsuaga focuses on discoveries in his native Spain, and they are many. His hypothesis is that Neanderthals had the brains to be as intelligent as we, but lacked the physical equipment to develop sophisticated language.

The author ranges afield into areas of natural history and biology that give the book a depth beyond its title. I'm reminded, in a very small way, of course, of The Golden Bough, which set out to explore one cultural artifact and wound up as an encyclopedia of cultural anthropology.

I like Arsuaga's informal style and his fair-minded exposition of points of view that differ from his own. While the book is not a page-turner for the average reader, it is so for anyone seriously interested in its subject.

Consciousness is a thorny subject to begin with. Arsuaga tries to find it in the humanoid fossil record. Because there isn't enough material there, he gives a generalized story of the evolution of mankind, wanders into the vegetation of Spain and gets lost in the world of philosophy of language and consciousness. Info on Neaderthal life is little given the title of the book.
The book is clearly written with love for the subject but the premise doesn't legitimize a 300 paged book. There is just to little flesh on that Neanderthal bone to put your teeth in.
For an outstanding introduction into the field of human evolution read "From Lucy to to Language" by Donald Johanson & Blake Edgar. If you are interested in consciousness read Antonio Damasio or Dashiel Dennett.

The book is very detailed and very interesting, but while it has lots of information about Neanderthals, and they are an important part of the book, much of it IS about the subtitle, In Search of the First Thinkers. When did we go from gestures to language? When did we stop making the same stone tool, again and again, and start making different tools for different needs? When did we stop thinking about how to hunt down an animal which was right in front of us and start planning out how to get food in the future? The author uses Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons to ask 'Why did one win over the other?' Was it language? What does art have to do with it? Maybe it had to do with the development of better tools? And what do bigger brains have to do with it if Neanderthals had the biggest ones?
It is as much history as it is philosophy.

This book was enlightening! I dont know if it was the book itself or the topic, but the history of the world and evolution of man and his surroundings has always fascinated me. The book is precise, clear cut, easy to comprehend, and very informative, providing many hypothesis to particular uncertainties. Occasionally it can go off on short tangents or go from one topic to seemingly another with the snap of a finger, which might cause you to back up and reread a paragraph every once in a while, but if you dont have trouble paying attention like me, lol, then you should have no problem. This book seeks as many questions and answers from within you as you do from within the book. It brings you internally closer to history and to the past of which we have all derived from. You begin to wonder about the whys and hows of that which might be considered the most insignificant things in everyday life, topics and subjects that are illuminated for you, while subsequently intensifying your interest, through this introspective-like book. It will certainly assist you in developing a more meaningful outlook and comprehension of life and this world we have continually grown alongside with and a part of. You may be left with more questions than answers, but you will be thoroughly amazed that you possess the capability, consciousness and awareness to simply ask the questions to begin with!! Id give the book a 5 if not for 2 chapters in the middle of the book that dealt primarily with the types of vegetation and trees populating the spanish peninsula over the years. It would be interesting to those individuals who contain some knowledge of these things or whoe would like to, but for myself I purchased this for the rest of what the book elaborated upon and it was well worth the purchase. I hope to read more books equivalent to this quality and its topic in the future. I could go on forever but Ill let you read all the astonishing facts and acquire your new found intelligence on your own. Just imagine co existing in the world with what is paramount to another species of human beings!!I give it a 4.5 from NY, USA

I ignored the negative publisher's weekly review, thinking to myself, "Nevermind, self, it's an interesting concept, and I can burrow my way through digressions."

Alas, the publisher's weekly review describes a real, significant problem with this book. The text digresses, wanders, meanders, and then digresses some more. If it did this with some verve or charm, it might be forgivable--but the voice is monotonous, failing to distinguish between important and trivial information.

I am not uninformed on the underlying subject, but I'm not an expert either. Perhaps to other physical anthropologists, this text is fascinating--or at least informative. Alas, it is neither for the layperson, even the informed one.

Juan Luis de Arsuaga's 'The Neanderthal's Necklace: In Search of the First Thinkers' is a rewarding introduction to palaeoanthropology. The discussion is articulated in plain language for the most part, suiting generalists interested in the main issues. Arsuaga strays from the subject of Neanderthals -- digressing about Europe's weather and geography of the period, its mammal and other life, tools and the bigger picture about fossils, etc. -- but always constructively. The discussion occasionally rambles, as others remark, but in his defence this area of studies may require (as Hume said in another context) approaches that "beat about the neighbouring fields" and seldom lead to an Archimidean `Eureka!'

The earliest Neanderthal fossils date from 200,000 to a quarter-million years ago, when mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses still roamed Europe. This parallel human species eventually began crafting stone tools, built fires -- probably using both to stampede those beasts off cliffs -- and also buried their dead. Cro-Magnon man, our direct ancestor, arrived there some 40,000 years ago, likely from the Middle East, and began spreading across the continent. Arsuaga holds that for fully ten thousand years after that, there was "...a long period of coexistence [and of] irregular contact" between the two populations (p. 287). Around 30,000 years ago, an arctic cold swept across Europe and for some reason the Neanderthals headed south. Their last known presence is in Spanish seaside caves, so the remaining survivors of these human cousins probably died out near the Mediterranean. Arsuaga will not speculate about their end, as he considers the evidence insufficient, although others raise the ominous spectre that the Neanderthal extinction was our first genocide.

Intriguing as this narrative is, newcomers to the field (this is my 3rd or 4th book on the subject, and easily the most engaging) may be as interested in this book's approachable display of palaeoanthropological studies: what counts as evidence to these scientists, the inferences they draw from their data, the controversies resolved and those that remain. In this sense, Arsuaga's occasional rambling far afield is of great interest.

One example from physiology, regarding heat loss versus retention, holds that increases in the diameter of our body cylinders entail reductions in overall body surface, relative to volume; so any such reductions effectively lower the potential for bodily heat loss. Neanderthal males likely averaged a robust 200 lbs of muscle, but their greater girth in both thorax and (shorter) limbs adapted them especially well for a colder Europe. Leaner, taller, and less muscular Cro-Magnons only found Europe hospitable after its climate began to warm up.

Like ours, the brains of the Cro-Magnon were above the face -- rather than behind it, as with Neanderthals. Since about the middle of the 20th century the consensus has become that the Cro-Magnon's brains were actually slightly smaller, contrasting with the former view of Neanderthals as brutish earlier relatives, rather than as contemporaneous with Cro-Magnon man. As to brain function, handedness -- as in left- and right-handedness -- is of anthropological interest since it reflects a differentiation of the brain into hemispheres, signalling greater mental capacities than for beings without handedness. But one might ask: given the very scant, strictly fossil evidence, how could one ever determine handedness? It turns out that Neanderthal teeth show wear that is consistently uneven on one side, indicating handedness - so corroborating a higher level of intelligence than was once attributed to them.

Arsuaga also mentions some conjectures about Neanderthal speech drawn from skull morphology. Their different cranial structure would prevent voicing certain vowels, posing a barrier to articulation. Anyone who abides by Aristotle's view about the isomorphism between language and thought may find it hard to reconcile this conclusion with his claim that "...we have no reason to believe Neanderthals were less intelligent than we are" (p. 91). Arsuaga's claim about their fully rationality, and that Neanderthals were, by and large, Cro-Magnon's (i.e. our) equals, turns out to be at odds with some of his own observations.

Tool-use began with African predecessors of both human branches -- and, of course, it occurs with bonobos, chimpanzees and some bird species. But, as I read Arsuaga, tool-making tools represent the key evolutionary milestone: their portability initially enlarged the radius of action from trees and vegetated areas, permitting proto-man to forage and stray. A stone carried to chisel weapons and hammer- and axe-like tools also shows planned behaviour, or an awareness not just beyond a spatial radius but also into the wider temporal compasses required by projected hunts and explorations.

Tools have further implications, such as meat-eating -- which occurs only with devices to cut and chop carcasses -- and to make weapons to hunt rather than eat carrion. The Cro-Magnon migration to Australia forty to sixty thousand years ago is another related marker that presumes capacities beyond prizing tool-making tools. That voyage called for intellection that shows a capacity to plan, coordinate and undertake boat-building for far-ranging projects - which, in turn, calls for some form of language. Furthermore, the skill to foresee itself relates to an awareness of death, and all that that implies.

The author also considers the speculative `grandmother hypothesis' about the inception of menopause (pp. 160-165). It posits that older women's diminished strength for breeding and child-rearing is related to the end of ovulation, when they start helping their daughters with their child-care -- thereby reducing the infant mortality in their line, but at one remove. Further, by opening this door to human longevity, males came to benefit indirectly.

The necklace mentioned in the title refers to an Arsuaga find in a Neanderthal grave. No-one yet attributes cave art to Neanderthals (except the Amazon Editor, I now see!), but apparently they did decorate themselves. One of the most speculative limbs our author climbs onto to support his view of the Neanderthals' full humanity is that awareness of death arouses a drive to celebrate life and the present -- and what better way than by decorating oneself? Poetic and perhaps intriguing, but not Arsuaga's most convincing conjecture.

The book has more than a dozen fairly good, mostly drawn illustrations, but it would profit from more, and better ones -- and maps, photos, depictions based on fossil evidence of cranial and skeletal shapes, tool types, grave findings, the necklace in the title, etc. Those who remark that 'irregardless' is unforgivable from a translator will get no flak from me, although it's not really indicative: this book reads smoothly, and its diction is generally fine -- not least by reflecting Arsuaga's humour, which calls for a certain versatility in translation. Even if I skipped the occasional page or four when his digressions became lengthy (e.g. on palaeolithic rodents), he never gets technical without some apparent reason. Also, I'd have given up on any facile account that held my attention only by fits and starts. This fine survey of the field will reward anyone curious about this subject.

PS: Anyone interested in more about these topics should consider Ian Tattersall's fine books -- including 'The World From Beginnings to 4000 BCE' and 'The Fossil Trail: How We Know What We Think We Know About Human Evolution.' Tattersall has a clear writing style and a rigorous approach that may lack Arsuaga's near-avuncular tone, but he covers much the same material in greater detail without talking down to his readers.

Great. It goes through all the steps of human development "from ape to man". Very easy to understand for non experts. The Neanderthal chapter is the most interesting one. I recommend it to people who are not experts on the issue but love the topic and want to keep themselves on the loop.