In a laboratory in the upper recesses of the American Museum of Natural
History, away from the public galleries, Dr. Ian Tattersall, a tall Homo
sapiens, stooped and came face to face with a Neanderthal man, short and
robust but bearing a family resemblance ? until one looked especially
closely.
A paleoanthropologist who has studied and written about Neanderthals,
Dr. Tattersall was getting his first look at a virtually complete skeleton
from this famously extinct branch of the hominid family. Nothing quite
like it has ever been assembled before, the foot bones connected to the
anklebones and everything else up to the cranium.
It is, the museum says, the first composite reconstruction of a full Neanderthal
skeleton based on actual fossils.
Dr. Tattersall's initial reaction was visceral, then more analytical.
"For the first time, I really feel I have met a Neanderthal,"
he said. "He was so much like us, but actually quite different."
Examining the upright skeleton, Dr. Tattersall disputed the notion, once
current even among some scientists, that Neanderthals may have been so
humanlike that if dressed in contemporary clothing, they could have passed
unrecognized on the subway. This impression has been characterized in
popular cartoon figures of a heavy-browed Neanderthal in a jaunty fedora.
"This definitely is its own species," Dr. Tattersall affirmed,
glancing first to the Neanderthal and then to a modern human skeleton
next to it. "If people didn't believe that before, by all rights
they should now."
Standing 5 feet 4? inches, thought to be a typical height of a Neanderthal
man, the skeleton will be on display at the museum, in New York City,
in an exhibit opening on Jan. 11. Showmanship as well as science was behind
the skeleton's creation.
These prehistoric
people, who lived mostly in Europe and parts of central and southwestern
Asia, vanished about 30,000 years ago. Since the first of their fossils
were recognized in 1856, Neanderthals have been objects of mystery and
endless conjecture. They are, in many respects, the dinosaurs of hominid
studies.
Like the fate of the
dinosaurs, their extinction has kept scholarly mills grinding out imaginative
theories. Similarly, popular culture often treats Neanderthals as the
personification of obsolescence. They are the brutes of caveman caricature
(sometimes, anachronistically, sharing the turf with hulking dinosaurs).
They have been maligned
as an inferior breed not smart enough to survive, even though Neanderthals
apparently managed well in challenging climates for more than 200,000
years ? longer than the 125,000 to 150,000 years modern Homo sapiens have
been around so far.
One reason for the misunderstanding is that not a single remotely complete
skeleton of a Neanderthal has turned up. The many artistic recreations,
though commonplace and more lifelike than skeletons, invite scientific
criticism as being projections of particular interpretations of Neanderthal
appearances and behavior. A less subjective study, scientists say, starts
with anatomy ? with the skeleton.
Dr. Erik Trinkaus,
a Neanderthal specialist at Washington University in St. Louis, who was
not involved in the project, said the skeleton reconstructions were especially
important for computer models of Neanderthal biomechanics, the way they
stood, walked and ran.
So technicians at the museum, working with the skill and patience of reconstructive
surgeons, assembled a full skeleton from the exact casts of fossil parts
from several specimens found in Europe and the Middle East.
"The whole skeleton is in essence a transplant," said Gary Sawyer,
a senior technician in anthropology, who directed the reconstruction.
Mr. Sawyer and other technicians began developing their skills several
years ago with the reconstruction of Peking Man, a Homo erectus from China.
Their goal is to recreate skeletons of about 20 hominid species.
Last summer, they finished a prototype Neanderthal skeleton and have since
added more body parts for the new version. With so much work and thought
invested in their creation, they now wish they could give it an appropriate
sobriquet. Any suggestions?
Up to 90 percent of the amalgamated skeleton is made from polyurethane
replicas based on actual fossils. These are stained a yellowish brown,
the color of most excavated fossils. A few parts, particularly cartilage
associated with the rib cage, are inferred by context. All such parts
are colored gray.
"This was not the easiest thing to do," Mr. Sawyer said. "There
were not an awful lot of parts of Neanderthals available to us."
The museum borrowed
fossil casts from several institutions. The ribs, spine and some pelvic
bones, among other parts, were derived from a 60,000-year-old Neanderthal
found at Kebara cave in Israel.
Anatomically modern humans may have seen their first Neanderthals in what
is now Israel some 90,000 years ago. They occupied the same region from
time to time, and it is tempting to imagine their shock of recognition.
Like long-separated cousins, they probably searched each other's faces
and physiques for contours of their shared ancestry.
The two surviving groups of the hominid family came in more frequent contact
in Europe, beginning 40,000 years ago. Each made stone tools, used fire
and had equally large brains. But the Neanderthals, longtime Europeans,
were robust with heavy brow ridges and forward-projecting faces. The modern
humans, presumably migrants from Africa, were taller and lighter-boned
with smaller, less protruding faces. Still, there was a family resemblance.
The museum technicians drew on fossils from the site in La Ferrassie in
France for much of the rest of the skeleton, notably the skull. Some leg
and arm bones and pelvic parts were created from the original specimen,
discovered in a limestone quarry in the Neander Valley of Germany.
The Neanderthals apparently made their last stand in the Iberian peninsula
less than 30,000 years ago. The causes of their extinction are still debated.
Did modern humans outcompete them for resources? Kill them in combat?
Breed with them, so that some of their genes lived on, as they were replaced
as a recognizably separate people?
Looking at the reconstructed skeleton, Dr. Tattersall said it was clearer
than ever that Neanderthals were not a human subspecies but a separate
hominid species, Homo neanderthalensis, a view held by many paleontologists.
Dr. Tattersall is the author, with Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz of the University
of Pittsburgh, of "Extinct Humans." (Westview Press, 000).
Dr. Tattersall's eye ran over the anatomical differences. The Neanderthal's
shoulders are wider than a human's. The pelvis is also wider, even in
males. Some scientists once suspected that the wide pelvis enabled Neanderthals
to carry a child longer than nine months, giving birth to larger, more
developed infants. But that view is now doubted.
The Neanderthal has shorter forearms and shins, a broader trunk and virtually
no waist. The rib cage is a pronounced difference; instead of tapering
off, as in humans, it is large and more bell-shaped. And there is the
heavy brow ridge, sloping forehead and forward-projecting face.
Attached at the skeleton's neck is a small hyoid bone, which would have
anchored the muscles of the tongue and other parts of a voice box apparatus.
Found at Kebara cave, this hyoid is a slightly enlarged version of the
human hyoid and nothing like similar bones in apes. Some scientists see
this as evidence that Neanderthals may have had some capacity for articulate
speech.
Dr. Tattersall is skeptical. He thinks Neanderthals had "an essentially
symbol-free culture," meaning that they probably lacked the cognitive
ability to reduce the world around them to symbols expressed in words
and art. In contrast, the Cro-Magnons, as their contemporary modern humans
in Europe are called, were creating dazzling art on their cave walls,
evidence of a major advance in abstract thought and presumably articulate
speech.
Dr. Trinkaus of St. Louis insists that the behavioral attributes of Neanderthals
are an open question. They were clearly different anatomically from modern
humans, he said, but "the unresolved issue is how important are those
differences in Neanderthal behavior ? how elaborate was their language
or their social systems, what do the differences mean." (Dr. Trinkaus
wrote "The Neandertals" (Knopf, 1993) in collaboration with
Dr. Pat Shipman, now affiliated with Pennsylvania State University.)
However much Neanderthals and modern humans differed, Dr. Tattersall said:
"What Neanderthals did, how they managed in extreme environments,
they did very well. It was only Homo sapiens, it seems, that they couldn't
cope with."
The Neanderthal skeleton will be part of "The First Europeans: Treasures
From the Hills of Atapuerca," an exhibit of recent hominid fossil
and artifact finds in northern Spain. These include material of Neanderthal
ancestors dating back 800,000 years. The show was organized by Spanish
scientists, with Dr. Tattersall as a co-curator.
Writing in the current issue of the magazine Natural History, one organizer,
Dr. Juan Luis Arsuaga of the Complutense University in Madrid, said that
reconstructions of hominids much more primitive than Neanderthals often
seemed less startling, perhaps because they look something like living
chimpanzees.
"But there is no familiar equivalent to the Neanderthal, so similar
to us, so human yet so different," Dr. Arsuaga wrote. "To come
across a Neanderthal, even a reconstructed one, is a thrilling experience.
It was no doubt even more thrilling to our ancestors, who met them in
the flesh."
Photo is copyright James Estrin/The New York Times. The caption reads:
"Dr. Ian Tattersall of the American Museum of Natural History with
the first composite reconstruction of a full Neanderthal skeleton based
on actual fossils."
Photo Copyright New York Times
Portions of this website are reprinted under the Fair Use Doctrine of
International Copyright Law as educational material without benefit of
financial gain.
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html
This proviso is applicable throughout the entire website.
|