THE SECRET LIFE OF THE NEANDERTHAL

The band of Neanderthals stopped outside the cave, and a lone male peered in.
Looking around, he noticed that previous occupants, a taller, more graceful
group, had left some remnants: smoldering coals, scattered garbage, and a
smooth, shell-shaped pendant, purpose unknown. Finding no food, the
Neanderthals trekked on, traversing miles of rocky terrain in less than a day.
By late afternoon, they'd begun to track a goat. One of the males plunged on
top of the animal, wounding it with his crude but heavy spear; the animal
thrashed, but the male hung on until the goat died. Uttering a series of
meaningful grunts, the Neanderthal band settled down tor the night. One of the
females built a fire, while another scraped the hide with a sharpened stone. A
gray-haired male propped his arthritic leg above a grassy knoll. Devouring the
remains of dinner, this Neanderthal family had no way of knowing their future:
The rest of their stay on Earth would be arduous and brief.

A time machine and camcorder top the wish list of every scientist hoping to
unravel the secret life of the Neanderthals-long viewed as a bumbling people who
evolved rapidly (and thankfully) into our direct ancestors. But though today's
paleoanthropologists lack the knack of time travel, they have recently acquired
access to the next best thing: remarkable new dating technology that is slowly
bringing the life and times of early hominids into bold relief. Based on
state-of-the-art dating techniques such as thermoluminescence and electron spin
resonance, researchers have come up with an increasingly detailed picture of the
Neanderthals and how they lived.

No longer viewed as an evolutionary lout, the Neanderthal depicted today is a
kinder, gentler, more successful individual with a range of unique cultural
characteristics including sophisticated hunting practices and an intimate and
elaborate social life.

In addition, paleoanthropologists now believe that Neanderthals coexisted with
our direct ancestors, early modern humans, for a longer time span than ever
before suspected. This revelation has thrown a monkey wrench into the story of
hominid evolution, for if Neanderthals were not our direct ancestors, then who
were they?

Scientists have been puzzling over this question since 1856, when quarry workers
in the Neander Valley near Dusseldorf, Germany, found pieces of skull in the
rock. Considering the way quarry workers go at limestone with picks and shovels
(not at all like modern archaeologists, who tiptoe about with scalpels and
toothbrushes), it's a wonder that any fossils remained. As University of
Chicago anthropologist Richard G. Klein tells the story, the quarry owner
thought the bones came from a bear, but he turned them over to Carl Fuhlrott, a
local schoolteacher, who pronounced them human, albeit unusual.

Further discoveries over the next 120 years ensured Neanderthals a place right
next to modern humans on the evolutionary continuum. According to early
paleoanthropologists, hominid evolution occurred incrementally, with the
Neanderthal just one of many forms that led to humans today.

As more Neanderthal remains were unearthed, anthropologists also pieced together
startling aspects of Neanderthal life. By the 1950's, researchers could cite
definitive fossil evidence of tool use, fire use, and hunting and gathering
techniques. And in perhaps the most extraordinary find of that decade,
archaeologist Ralph Solecki unearthed a Neanderthal skeleton covered with pollen
at the Shanidar site in Iraq. The so-called flower burial sparked a debate
still unsettled today. The hard-liners argued that Neanderthals buried their
dead only to discourage scavengers and eliminate odor. The flower spores, they
held, had drifted into the graves purely by chance. But a new group of
researchers, increasingly convinced of Neanderthals' basic humanity, cited the
pollen as evidence of a ritual Neanderthal burial in which survivors draped
flowers over the deceased.

Evidence for the new and improved Neanderthal, one that inhabited the earth for
at least 100,000 years and lived side by side with early modern man, has been
accumulating since 1980, when archaeologist Eitan Tchernov of Hebrew University
in Jerusalem started dating the hominid remains found in three Israeli caves.
Since Tchernov could find no dating techniques appropriate to the task at hand,
he devised a method of his own. By approximating the dates of rodent bones
found in the same layer as human bones, he created a biostratigraphy, an
evolutionary time chart based on fossils. Using biostratigraphy, Tchernov and
Ofer Bar-Yosef, now a professor of anthropology at Harvard University, set the
ages of the Homo sapiens found in the Qafzeh and Skhul caves at 80,000 to
100,000 years old, about twice as old as anyone suspected. They dated the
Neanderthal-like remains found in the third cave, Kebara, at 50,000 years.
According to these figures, Neanderthals were not ancestral to us at all.

Anthropologists immediately protested the accuracy of these dates, saying the
biostratigraphy did not provide reliable information. However, in the past few
years, two new techniques have confirmed the Israeli results.

One technique, called thermoluminescence (TL), is particularly valuable for
dating nonorganic artifacts such as burnt rocks and tools. The TL technique
works because objects accumulate electrons over time, yet release electrons
whenever they are burned. An accumulation of electrons may be measured by the
intensity of light an object emits when it is burned. By heating a previously
burnt object-for instance, a flint fired in a Neanderthal hearth a hundred
thousand years ago-and then measuring the energy emitted, researchers can
estimate the time that has passed since the object was burnt the first time
around.

Experienced with TL, French physicist Helene Valladas of the French National
Center for Scientific Research decided to help the Israelis out. Dating
prehistoric flints from the three caves with the help of this precise technique,
Valladas's findings were clear: Flints used by prehistoric Homo sapiens at
Qafzeh were about 92,000 years old, while flints used by Neanderthals at Kebara
were much younger-50,000 to 60,000 years old, at most.

The dates were also confirmed for organic materials such as tooth enamel, bone,
or fossilized pieces of grain, thanks to another high-tech method known as
electron spin resonance, or ESR. In ESR dating, paleoanthropologists send a
sliver of material to the laboratory, where physicists grind it up and expose it
to a strong magnetic field. The magnetic field reacts in direct proportion to
the number of trapped electrons that a sample contains. The older the fossil,
the more upset the magnetic field becomes.

To Tchernov and Bar-Yosef's delight, ESR dating provided further support for
their dates. Their conclusion: Neanderthals did not lead to early modern humans
but, rather, were their counterparts. "Modern-looking hominids were
contemporary with the Neanderthals," says Bar-Yosef, "in the same way we are
contemporary with people in Paris."

Because Neanderthals and humans are not directly related, it makes sense that
their fossils seem distinct, even to the untrained eye. According to Lewis
Binford, professor of anthropology at Southern Methodist University, the
Neanderthal skeleton looks as though someone took a human skeleton and compacted
it into a shorter, broader frame. A skull with a jutting brow topped this
stocky body, obviously built to maximize endurance and resist bone damage. "Our
anatomy is that of a walker; the Neanderthals' was that of a gymnast," says
Binford. "Their whole way of coping with the world was action, not tools." Adds
Robert Franciscus, a doctoral student in anthropology at the University of New
Mexico, "Neanderthals Were really using their bodies. Compared to them, modern
humans are basically wimps."

But new theories and research techniques now go beyond the merely obvious,
helping researchers flesh out some of the Neanderthals' best-kept physical
secrets as well. According to Franciscus, for instance, the robust Neanderthal
body may have served as a blanket of warmth against the cold, obviating any need
for fitted clothing. Instead, Neanderthals probably relied on animal hides and
their truncated limbs and broad noses to protect them from the frigid weather of
the Ice Age.

In fact, Franciscus has shown in a recent study, Neanderthals living in colder
climates had abbreviated limbs. To reach this conclusion, he measured the
brachial indices of their arms-the relative length of the forearm to the rest of
the limb-and found that as warmth increased, limb length increased,
Interestingly enough, notes Franciscus, legs did not show as much regional
disparity as arms. "Perhaps with their legs, the Neanderthals were responding
less to climatic stresses than biomechanical ones," Franciscus says.

The Neanderthals' diminutive bodies suggest that they may have suffered not just
from climatic stress, but also from nutritional stress, according to Mary Ursula
Brennan, an anthropologist at New York University. Originally trained as a
nurse, Brennan drew on modern nutritional knowledge to recreate the health of
early hominids from their dental remains.

If people do not receive sufficient nutrients in the first seven years of their
lives, Brennan explains, their teeth do not develop fully, a condition known as
hypoplasia. Aware that this health problem might show up in our prehistoric
predecessors, Brennan wound up toting an X-ray machine the size of a bread box
throughout France. Her mission: X-raying hominid dental remains in museum
storage areas to check for hypoplasia. Of the more than 300 Neanderthals she
has tested, 40 percent suffered from hypoplasia, a good indication that
resources were scarce. The early moderns showed a hypoplasia rate of only about
30 percent. Further evidence came from a small sample of Neanderthals she
studied who were on average about four inches shorter than their successors.

"Neanderthals' short stature may have been an adaptation to low nutrient
availability," Brennan concludes. "If they were living in areas where there was
not enough food, people who needed fewer calories would survive because they
were receiving sufficient nutrition. People born with genes for tallness would
require more calories and die. So within a few generations, everyone's
shorter."

While resources may have been scarce, bones found near Neanderthal remains
indicate that these individuals did manage to find some sustenance. Based on the
diets of modern hunter-gatherer societies, paleoanthropologists believe the
Neanderthals would have subsisted on plant foods supplemented with meat. Some
anthropologists speculate that Neanderthals were "hunter-blunderers" who
scavenged the landscape. But according to the latest research, Neanderthals
were persistent hunters who downed their prey by brute force, This conclusion
comes from University of Michigan anthropologist Loring Brace, who has done a
detailed study of skeletal and muscular stress in both Neanderthals and Homo
sapiens to see which areas would be most likely to break in an encounter. He
discovered the Neanderthal skeleton is adapted to resist such injuries as broken
bones or dislocated shoulders, which would help them triumph in a battle of
strength. Brace concluded that Neanderthals wrestled their prey to death. "The
Neanderthals were put together on a heroic scale," Brace says. "For that to
have been maintained, there have to have been hunting stresses. They must have
literally come to grips with the family dinner."

Other recent studies have attempted to trace the life cycle of Neanderthals,
following individuals from birth to death. Erik Trinkaus, professor of
anthropology at the University of New Mexico, for instance, has analyzed about
20 complete Neanderthal skeletons as well as fragments from other skeletons.
Using a technique known as histomorphic metric analysis, Trinkaus ground up thin
slices of Neanderthal bone and placed the resulting powder on slides under a
microscope. Trinkaus checked the bone powder for signs of maturity. By
comparing the maturity of the Neanderthal bones with that of mammals alive
today, Trinkaus estimated the age of each skeleton upon death. A definitive
pattern emerged: Neanderthals rarely lived more than 40 years, with both sexes
dying at the end of the female's reproductive cycle.

"What you have, then, is no postmenopausal survival," Franciscus says. "Most of
all, there would have been no grandparenting." In modern hunter-gatherer
societies, grandparents lend a much-needed hand with child rearing. Without
grandparents to help care for them, Neanderthal children might have been more
precocious than their early modern counterparts, Franciscus suggests.

The absence of grandparents, say other researchers, would have ramifications for
the society as a whole. In modern hunter-gatherer societies the elderly are
responsible for passing on knowledge of the environment and religious lore, says
anthropologist Randall White of New York University. "The idea that you have a
Neanderthal group composed of people only to age forty means you have a group of
a radically different social fabric. You're missing an entire generation."

But the overriding question when it comes to Neanderthal relationships for many
people remains where they should hang on our family tree. Two years ago a group
of Berkeley scientists thought they had shown we still had Neanderthal genes.
Today anthropologists are not sure. Did the Neanderthals interbreed with the
early modern humans who shared their land for at least 10,000 years? Or did
Neanderthals have no interaction with modern humans until, ultimately, the
humans wiped them out?

Physical distinctions would have been a sufficient obstacle to interbreeding
between humans and Neanderthals, says NYU's White. Modern baboon species-which
never interbreed-show fewer skeletal differences than Neanderthals and Homo
sapiens, he points out. This comparison supports the hypothesis that
Neanderthals did not become integrated into our gene pool.

Adds Tchernov, "Perhaps early modern humans and Neanderthals were separated by
such profound cultural differences they did not interbreed at all."

Even if there was no genetic crossover, no interbreeding, adds Bar-Yosef, we
still don't need bloody scenarios to account for the Neanderthals' demise.
"Simple inability to compete with modern humans in terms of finding food and
shelter and reproducing could have finished Neanderthals off once and for all."

Yet because no clear-cut answers exist, researchers in the field may allow their
biases to color their perception. Bar-Yosef charges that some of his colleagues
are "Westerncentric," preventing them from accepting that Neanderthals and our
ancestors belonged to the same species. "Our image of early Homo sapiens, based
on the concept of a man painting in a cave, is too limited," he says. "It's
only particular to certain parts of Europe. What was happening in the rest of
the world?"

Bar-Yosef contends that Western anthropologists may be all too quick to assume
that Neanderthals contributed nothing to our gene pool, mostly because they do
not want to admit a relationship with somewhat unsavory hominids.

Milford H, Wolpoff of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor takes an even
harder line, vehemently insisting that Neanderthal genes did flow into the
evolutionary mainstream. Part of the proof, he says, is as plain as the noses
on the faces of Charles de Gaulle, Jimmy Durante, or any number of British
knights. "These large noses are Neanderthal features," Wolpoff asserts. "If all
modern humans descended from a group of Africans who began migrating northward
between one hundred and two hundred thousand years ago, as some anthropologists
claim, I am hard-pressed to explain the origin of these noses. No African,
ancient or modern, has a nose like that."

Perhaps it is the subtle familiarity of the Neanderthal face that continues to
enthrall us today. Scientists are not the only ones to let emotions dictate
their view of Neanderthals. Erik Trinkaus, who once wrote what he refers to as
a .,pedestrian" dissertation on the structure of Neanderthal feet, says the
general public also reads the evolutionary record selectively.

"People really seem to want to claim the Neanderthals as relatives," Trinkaus
says. "Their fossils have been known for almost one hundred fifty years, but
our picture of them changes with the times: In the 1930's very few people
thought the Neanderthals were cannibals, though there was some evidence for that
belief. Then, in the 1940's, in the wake of World War 11, without any new fossil
evidence, Neanderthals were turned into cannibals to explain the nastiness of
the Nuremberg trials. Hollywood in the 1950's perpetuated a brutish caricature
of Neanderthals. And during the 1960's and 1970's, Neanderthals became flower
children after the Shanidar Cave discovery."

But no matter who the Neanderthals were and where they went, one thing is for
sure: Their impact on the environment was minimal. Says White, "They were never
milking the environment for more than it would give them. In some ways you can
argue they were more successful than their successors in the Upper Paleolithic
or ourselves."