KINDRED
Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art
by
Rebecca Wragg Sykes
A Review by Bronwyn Mills
As a person of northern European “extraction,” as my late grandmother so snootily put it, I and others like me have 1 - 4 % Neanderthal genes. Though perhaps conflict took place, when Homo sapiens showed up in what is now Europe some 20,000 years after their Neaderthal cousins, they did not necssarily just kill them off, but evidently made whoopee with them as well. So, for that matter did Neanderthals and Denisovans, another hominin cousin whose remains have been found more to the east—as in Russia, Asia. (This latter discovery was made through recent DNA testing of bone found in Tibet, and interestingly appears to show a particular adaptation to altitude, or, at least to low-oxygen zones.) Indeed some modern humans in Asia and Oceania still carry traces of Denisovan DNA. More generally, what seems to have happenened is that “interbreeding” (such a clinical term!) appears to have occasionally occurred between all three, Neanderthal, Denisovan, and H. sapiens; and, with current, more sophisticated techniques of extracting DNA from ancient remains, science has seconded this. Forget the reductionist reading of “survival of the fittest,” turned into a simplistic and a-scientific phrase commandeered by racists and other bigots to assert their unfortunate presence on this earth: the evolution of ourselves and |
our survival as opposed to that of our cousins is far more complicated than that. Nor, as Wragg Sykes ably demonstrates, were the Neanderthals especially at home with the freezing temperatures and limited food resources of the wintery zones of the ice age(s); rather they flourished in more temperate climes. Indeed, one recent scientifically plausible suggestion for the extinction of Neanderthals, at least, is not their “unfittedness,” or their cousin H. sapiens' aggression, but a switch in the earth’s magnetic poles which triggered drastic climate change and, in turn, endangered Neanderthal survival. Where H. Sapiens were at the time of this flip, I do not know, except the range of various hominin species could very well have been a case of being in the right or wrong place and the right or wrong time.
But as a literature person; why do I recommend a non-fiction, sometimes dense, book about a paleoanthropological subject? We writers need, I believe, to scavenge ideas from all possible sources, to feed the library of one’s soul. In accord with the constant search to comprehend the quirks of human behavior, what I am also examining is a shift, albeit slow, a shift in our present world view, aided and abetted by the persistent efforts of researchers, scientists, and the like to acquire and add to our knowledge. The book, Kindred, offers this addition to its readers. Forget, for the moment, any such probability of a flip of the magnetic poles once more; we are already facing a climate emergency, and, among other things, our views on nature and our and other species, esp.in the West, need readjustment, starting with our assumption of species superiority.
Two things intervene here; and they are intertwined. One is the apparent fact that we surviving hominins, H. sapiens, regard ourselves as the pinnacle of creation, with all the rest of nature, not to mention other species, at our behest. Second is the apparent bias: that as we also regard ourselves as the pinnacle of hominin creation, the word “Neanderthal,” up until quite recently, had been used to indicate an essentially crude, dulled and heavy-browed semi-human “other” lumbering through prehistory who couldn’t hold a candle to our separate H. sapiens ancestors. Thus the unfortunate use of the word in today’s common parlance—still!— to mean a dulled not-quite-fellow human being. (In fact, when the Neanderthals were first identified, one proposal for their Latin name was Homo stupidus!)
“What is man that Thou are mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour," says the King James Version. “Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet: all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.” Way before the time that Middle Eastern tribes began writing and assembling the Judeo-Christian Bible, for reasons quite out of the ken of religious texts, H. sapiens had become the sole hominin. Ergo, H. sapiens = “man.” “Man” [sic] was given nature to use at his disposal. Indeed, I remember a Christian fundamentalist student in one of my classes, whom I doubt had even heard of any other of our hominin cousins, saying that god had given us humans all of nature—and I quote—"to use up.” It was a chilling reminder of the arrogant assumption that, yes, we modern humans are lords of creation, the center of the universe, and that “nature” must serve us, when we are no more important than a 500 year old oak, than the elephants who repeatedly and deliberately return to the bones of a dead comrade, feeling along those surfaces in a clear expression of grief, or than the bees who pollinate, and so bring on the growth of one third of all the food we eat… The center of the universe?
No, we are not. “Part of” is not the same as “Lord of.” Furthermore, we weren’t even the only interesting members of our genera, Homo. What I am suggesting is that the more we find out about the intracies of nature and the creatures we share/ed it with, past and present, the more we need to ditch the stereotypes about our prime importance over nature and nature’s creatures around us, including our other hominin cousins. I have somewhat awkwardly dubbed the latter assumption “species-centricity.” Our cousins were distant, not the same species, we say. However, if the common criteria for defining species differentiation is if members can successfully interbreed, then we might honestly have to consider that the Neanderthals were part of the family, first cousins, perhaps, just another type of “us.” The fine points of this debate are beyond the scope of this review, though fascinating; but a goodly number of scientists have come to agree: H. neanderthalis, even H. denisovani are not separate…just different.
On the other hand, while familiarizing the Neanderthals and their achievements, we also need to remember the sign over a mirror in the Bronx Zoo (NYC) which baldly states, albeit about the modern human who gazes at the image reflected there,
But as a literature person; why do I recommend a non-fiction, sometimes dense, book about a paleoanthropological subject? We writers need, I believe, to scavenge ideas from all possible sources, to feed the library of one’s soul. In accord with the constant search to comprehend the quirks of human behavior, what I am also examining is a shift, albeit slow, a shift in our present world view, aided and abetted by the persistent efforts of researchers, scientists, and the like to acquire and add to our knowledge. The book, Kindred, offers this addition to its readers. Forget, for the moment, any such probability of a flip of the magnetic poles once more; we are already facing a climate emergency, and, among other things, our views on nature and our and other species, esp.in the West, need readjustment, starting with our assumption of species superiority.
Two things intervene here; and they are intertwined. One is the apparent fact that we surviving hominins, H. sapiens, regard ourselves as the pinnacle of creation, with all the rest of nature, not to mention other species, at our behest. Second is the apparent bias: that as we also regard ourselves as the pinnacle of hominin creation, the word “Neanderthal,” up until quite recently, had been used to indicate an essentially crude, dulled and heavy-browed semi-human “other” lumbering through prehistory who couldn’t hold a candle to our separate H. sapiens ancestors. Thus the unfortunate use of the word in today’s common parlance—still!— to mean a dulled not-quite-fellow human being. (In fact, when the Neanderthals were first identified, one proposal for their Latin name was Homo stupidus!)
“What is man that Thou are mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour," says the King James Version. “Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet: all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.” Way before the time that Middle Eastern tribes began writing and assembling the Judeo-Christian Bible, for reasons quite out of the ken of religious texts, H. sapiens had become the sole hominin. Ergo, H. sapiens = “man.” “Man” [sic] was given nature to use at his disposal. Indeed, I remember a Christian fundamentalist student in one of my classes, whom I doubt had even heard of any other of our hominin cousins, saying that god had given us humans all of nature—and I quote—"to use up.” It was a chilling reminder of the arrogant assumption that, yes, we modern humans are lords of creation, the center of the universe, and that “nature” must serve us, when we are no more important than a 500 year old oak, than the elephants who repeatedly and deliberately return to the bones of a dead comrade, feeling along those surfaces in a clear expression of grief, or than the bees who pollinate, and so bring on the growth of one third of all the food we eat… The center of the universe?
No, we are not. “Part of” is not the same as “Lord of.” Furthermore, we weren’t even the only interesting members of our genera, Homo. What I am suggesting is that the more we find out about the intracies of nature and the creatures we share/ed it with, past and present, the more we need to ditch the stereotypes about our prime importance over nature and nature’s creatures around us, including our other hominin cousins. I have somewhat awkwardly dubbed the latter assumption “species-centricity.” Our cousins were distant, not the same species, we say. However, if the common criteria for defining species differentiation is if members can successfully interbreed, then we might honestly have to consider that the Neanderthals were part of the family, first cousins, perhaps, just another type of “us.” The fine points of this debate are beyond the scope of this review, though fascinating; but a goodly number of scientists have come to agree: H. neanderthalis, even H. denisovani are not separate…just different.
On the other hand, while familiarizing the Neanderthals and their achievements, we also need to remember the sign over a mirror in the Bronx Zoo (NYC) which baldly states, albeit about the modern human who gazes at the image reflected there,
You are looking at the most dangerous animal in the world. It alone of all the animals that ever lived can exterminate (and has) entire species of animals. Now it has the power to wipe out all life on earth.
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Though not so destructive as we—Sykes fleetingly alludes to some evidence suggesting that H. sapiens was quantitatively more aggressive than the Neanderthal, the latter was no noble savage, either. Sykes cites evidence of ritual (i.e., probably not wanton) cannibalism but, in one of her missed details, fails to cite, as backup, the much later examples of funerary cannibalism among indigenous H. sapiens groups: the Wari’ ancestors of the Arawak in northen South America, for example, ate the roasted flesh of their deceased. The rationale was to mourn yet perpetuate their loved ones’ essence by consuming them and thus, helping survivors both go on with their lives and enfold their loved ones into their being (see Consuming Grief, by Beth A. Conklin). Even ‘modern,’ monotheistic faithful Christians celebrate their belief in their release from death’s sting by a ritual of symbolic cannibalism (Holy Communion): consuming the body and blood of their savior, Christ. (Some faithful, in fact, believe that the bread and wine of Holy Communion, when consumed, is is literally, magically transformed into Jesus’ flesh and blood.)
Nonetheless, Rebecca Wragg Sykes’ book with its telling title, Kindred, is a further step in establishing an understanding of the Neanderthals as complex, creative, flint-knapping relatives, probably with some form of speech—the physiology for it was there; is it our “Sapiens-centricity” that assumes only ancestors did, in fact, have speech?—relatives with a culture. Customs. Habits. Art. And in that last category, Sykes’ book is a bit disappointing. The final section of her book delves into the artesanal skills of the Neanderthals as flint knappers, but pauses in less precise fashion at early cave art. The poignant Neanderthal outline of a hand made by spewing ochre at it in Maltravieso cave (Extremadura, Spain) is at least 66,700 years old, long before “modern” humans are known to have reached Europe on their migration out of Africa, around 40,000 years ago
Nonetheless, Rebecca Wragg Sykes’ book with its telling title, Kindred, is a further step in establishing an understanding of the Neanderthals as complex, creative, flint-knapping relatives, probably with some form of speech—the physiology for it was there; is it our “Sapiens-centricity” that assumes only ancestors did, in fact, have speech?—relatives with a culture. Customs. Habits. Art. And in that last category, Sykes’ book is a bit disappointing. The final section of her book delves into the artesanal skills of the Neanderthals as flint knappers, but pauses in less precise fashion at early cave art. The poignant Neanderthal outline of a hand made by spewing ochre at it in Maltravieso cave (Extremadura, Spain) is at least 66,700 years old, long before “modern” humans are known to have reached Europe on their migration out of Africa, around 40,000 years ago
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Recently, however, discoveries made by University of Southampton, UK, have gone on to research and date even more cave art in three Spanish caves—La Pasiega, Maltravieso, and Ardales—not only hands, but some early lines and drawings that have been established as Neanderthal. Such discoveries have led scientists/paleontologists/ paleoanthropolgists to reconsider the human consciousness of our cousins. Apart from Sykes, some researchers have even suggested that the very use of ochre and, at this stage, abstract paintings on cave walls by Neanderthals, suggests that Neanderthals “taught” H. sapiens cave painting, if nothing else by the examples later arrivals (H. sapiens) found, imitated and built upon.
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As writers and artists, some of us have often had to do our work in places where such activity is dismissed as frivolous, if not a waste of time. Here, making art is not considered frivolous, but an essential human trait, a mark of our humanity: we create a “language,” imagistic, visual clues, out of our thoughts. Creativity is key evidence of a consciousness distinctly human, species specific.
As said, Kindred is a dense in places, but the author attempts to lighten to load by including short, more lyrical and fictionalized passages at the beginning of a section. While she disappoints in the “art” part of her title, her information is genuinely interesting and for her valiant efforts to dispel the stereotypical idea we have of our early cousins alone, the book is a worthy read. In considering the two ideas cited earlier, our relationship to nature and to other varieties of human, then and now, it is not just sentimentality to say that the narcissistic, hierarchic “rating system” of human value in nature, other species, and in terms of our hominin cousins impoverishes not only those seen around us, but quite literally impoverishes ourselves. To understand ourselves and our own complex humanity we need to celebrate our cousins. Indeed, all of us should be humbled by the fact that we are part of nature, and subject to its rule, part of a wondrous whole, not gods steering its ship into an alien world.
As said, Kindred is a dense in places, but the author attempts to lighten to load by including short, more lyrical and fictionalized passages at the beginning of a section. While she disappoints in the “art” part of her title, her information is genuinely interesting and for her valiant efforts to dispel the stereotypical idea we have of our early cousins alone, the book is a worthy read. In considering the two ideas cited earlier, our relationship to nature and to other varieties of human, then and now, it is not just sentimentality to say that the narcissistic, hierarchic “rating system” of human value in nature, other species, and in terms of our hominin cousins impoverishes not only those seen around us, but quite literally impoverishes ourselves. To understand ourselves and our own complex humanity we need to celebrate our cousins. Indeed, all of us should be humbled by the fact that we are part of nature, and subject to its rule, part of a wondrous whole, not gods steering its ship into an alien world.