Mirror Sites:
CSUDH - Habermas - UWP - Archives

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Soka University Japan - Transcend Art and Peace
Created: April 1, 2003
Latest Update: April 1, 2003
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Backup of Neanderthals' capable of fine handiwork
By Michael Hopkin
SOURCE: Nature Magazine
Copyright: © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2003. Source Copyright.
Included here under Fair Use Doctrine for teaching purposes.

Neanderthals' capable of fine handiwork

Our primitive cousins didn't lose the evolutionary race for want of manual dexterity.
27 March 2003

Michael Hopkin

A precision grip allows complex tool use.

Neanderthals were as skilled with their hands as we are, suggests a new computer analysis of their finger bones1. This indicates that clumsiness was probably not the reason for their demise.

Palaeontologists had previously doubted that Neanderthals had the manual dexterity to make and use tools such as the shafted axes favoured by early modern humans. Neanderthals were thought to be unable to form the 'precision grip' that we use today to manipulate delicate items such as pens and tweezers.

Not so, says Wes Niewoehner of the University of California in San Bernadino, who led the new study. "Neanderthals had the capacity to produce the same grips that we can."

His team created a computer model of a Neanderthal thumb and forefinger, based on resin casts of fossil bones found at La Ferrassie, France. Even allowing only a small range of movement by modern human standards, the tips of the two digits could touch - as in the 'ok' gesture scuba divers use.

Archaeologists think that Neanderthals favoured simple, hand-held tools of sharpened flint. The anatomically modern humans who also lived in Europe around 30,000-40,000 years ago often attached stone blades to handles of bone or antler. If the two groups were similarly dexterous, why were Neanderthals' tools more primitive?

Perhaps Neanderthals were more set in their ways after generations of successful hunting in Europe's cold climate, suggests archaeologist Paul Pettitt of the University of Oxford, UK. "Neanderthals seemed to have had a general template of what they liked," he explains.

But the key to why we outlasted them may be our cultural, rather than technological, superiority. Well-organized social groups were probably better at guiding children through early life, enabling more offspring to survive to adulthood.

References

Niewoehner, W. A., Bergstrom, A., Eichele, D., Zuroff, M. & Clark, J. T. Manual dexterity in Neanderthals. Nature, 422, 395, (2003).

© Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2003