Is Our Species Smarter Than Neanderthals?

The word "Neanderthal" is often used as an insult or in a pejorative sense, indicating that the person to whom it refers is crude, brute, impulsive and unintelligent. And it is that most of the people consider that the Neanderthal, one of the different human species that have populated the earth and extinct during prehistory, had a very limited cognitive ability, a kind of savage that could not compete with the Homo sapiens, species to which we belong.

But is this really so? Is Homo sapiens smarter than Neanderthals? In this article we are going to make a brief reflection on this topic.

• Related article: "Theories of human intelligence"

Who were the Neanderthals?

Neanderthals are an extinct species of the genus Homo (i.e. one of the species of humans) that lived mainly in Europe and Asia between approximately 230,000 and 28,000 years ago. It is the last species of the genus Homo to become extinct, leaving the Homo sapiens as the sole survivor of this part of the tree of biological evolution. This species shared with the

Homo sapiens Indo-European territories for thousands of years, until for reasons that are still unknown today they ended up disappearing.

The Neanderthal was physically very adapted to life in cold, mountainous environments like those of Ice Age Europe. He was shorter and much stronger and more muscular than the sapiens, with a shorter pharynx and a wider nose. It also had a larger skull, in which the double ciliary arch (a kind of bone covering that covers the eyebrows) and the prognathism stand out, as well as increased cranial capacity.

Popular culture has often put this species below modern homo sapiens, associating it with an image of savagery and considering their lower limbs or less adapted by the fact that they ended dying out. But this does not imply that they were, or that they lacked intelligence.

• You may be interested: "The theory of biological evolution"

Neanderthal intelligence tests

The truth is Neanderthals weren't brutes without intelligence. This human species, which in fact was close to being called Homo stupidus (Ernst Haeckel came to propose such a name for this species after the discovery of it), in fact it had a fairly high level of cognitive ability. And there is a great deal of evidence that warrants consideration of these beings as highly intelligent creatures.

They have been observed in different sites where there is evidence that Neanderthals they buried their dead, which implies the ability to perceive themselves as differentiated entities, and the presence of abstract thought. They also mastered fire and made complex tools, although different from those that would end using our ancestors, and remains of tinctures have been found that could have been used to dye clothing.

Although until recently it was believed that they had not left artistic representations, the antiquity of some cave paintings (before the arrival of the Homo sapiens) seem to indicate that they also made artistic products of this type, which would indicate the capacity for abstraction and symbolization.

They had a social structure, and there is evidence that they cared for the elderly and the sick. Their anatomical structure and brain capacity make it considered that they had the ability to use oral language. Likewise, it has been observed in different archaeological sites that Neanderthals used different strategies to hunt, often using the characteristics of the terrain to do so. This implies capacity for planning, abstraction and judgment, since knowledge is required the environment and the advantages and disadvantages of certain geographical features, such as wells and ravines.

More or less intelligent than the Homo sapiens?

The fact that Neanderthals possessed intelligence is not enough evidence that our cognitive capacity cannot be greater. However, the opposite does not have demonstrable empirical evidence either. The behavior of one or another species was similar, and only the disappearance of the Neanderthals is used as proof of their lower mental ability.

In fact, the cranial capacity of these humans (remember that like us they are part of the genus Homo) is on average higher than that of Homo sapiens, being also the brain of greater size. Although this does not necessarily indicate superior intelligence (since the fact that a brain is larger does not imply that is necessarily more efficient), it does indicate that brain capacity could allow the development of capacities cognitive. Your nervous system, however, could function differently from ours, leading to different ways of thinking and seeing the world.

Possible reasons for its extinction

Many people consider that if Neanderthals became extinct and we are still here it was, at least in part, because the cognitive capacity of the Homo sapiens It allowed him to face problems and disadvantages that the neanderthal, in principle more primitive, could not face. But the truth is that the fact of having survived until now does not have to have been a result of greater intelligence. There are multiple reasons that led to the disappearance of the Neanderthal, some of them empirically contrasted.

One of the possible reasons is found in a phenomenon that has been repeated countless times throughout throughout history, between members of the same species that have lived in different ecosystems: the transmission of diseases for which the members of the other party are not prepared. An example of this is found in the conquest of America by the Europeans; These unintentionally brought to the American continent diseases for which the natives did not have any type of resistance or immunity, causing large numbers of deaths (spreading rapidly in large cities and settlements and depleting the population native). Something similar could have happened among the Neanderthals before the arrival of the Homo sapiens.

Another reason and probably one of the main ones is inbreeding, something corroborated by science. Neanderthals, in then cold Europe, they tended to establish small social groups in which related people lived together to some degree, reproducing with them in such a way that there was a high level of inbreeding. In the long run, this practice gradually weakened the species by adding mutations and harmful genetic alterations and not leaving. incorporating new genetic material, to the point that over time the birth of new healthy Neanderthals became difficult and fertile.

Cro-Magnon man, on the other hand, traveled great distances and had to move often to hunt, a mobility that made it easy for him to There would not be such a high level of inbreeding when finding other settlements and bonding with peers with whom there were no consanguinity.

It must also be taken into account that Neanderthals were adapted to Europe and tended to seek caves to shelter from the cold, caves often sought after and inhabited by predators that they had to face.

Finally, although we mostly imagine the extinction of Neanderthals as a process in which they all ended up dying, there is a theory that their extinction is actually could have to do with hybridization. The Homo sapiens it became very numerous compared to the number of Neanderthals, and the species could be lost as its genes were diluted in the crosses between Neanderthals and sapiens. This is consistent with the fact that modern humans have been found to possess genes belonging to Neanderthals.

Neanderthal genes in modern humans

Another aspect that may be relevant to comment on is the fact that the genes of current homo sapiens sapiens have been found vestiges and remnants of DNA from the Homo neanderthalensis. This implies that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens They came to produce fertile offspring, and that we actually share part of our heritage with this other species. In fact, some recent researchers consider that the current human being has about two per cent. percent of Neanderthal genetic material, the percentage being much higher than what early studies seemed indicate.

Some of the genes that have been found to be similar to those of this species have to do with skin and hair color (possibly lighter in Neanderthals), tolerance to solar radiation (higher in Neanderthals, who lived in Europe before homo sapiens emigrated from Africa), mood and circadian rhythms. Many of them are also related to the immune system, thanks to which we can defend ourselves against infections and diseases. Although on the other hand, links have also been found of some of these genes with the schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders, autoimmune problems, cholesterol and fat accumulation.