2007-06-06 Roebroeks 2

Wil Roebroeks: 'A simple idea is that the Neanderthals went for the large animals: hippos, elephants, rhinos, the real giants. There are not so many of these, but if you manage to catch one, then you've really got something.' '
© Photo: Arie Wapenaar

For hundreds of thousands of years, Neanderthals continued to use the same tools. Yet they were proficient and knowledgeable
hunters. Wil Roebroeks, Professor in Archaeology of the Ancient Stone Age, intends to use his Spinoza Prize to research their disappearance.

Tower of Pisa
The award of this prize came as a complete surprise to Roebroeks: 'According to a recent report by the KNAW, Dutch archaeology is a kind of leaning tower of Pisa, which is completely out of plumb. There are about fifty archaeologists working in academic environments and thousands of others outside. The fifty archaeologists within the universities are responsible for all the teaching. With this prize I can buy a sabbatical and a considerable amount of research freedom.'

Research theme
It will not be a sabbatical for resting on his laurels. On the contrary, with his research group he will have the opportunity to get things well organised and plan a good research theme, without always having to deal with the perennial problem of finding funds from somewhere. 'I and two people from my group have been busy for almost a year writing a sequel to what the research they have carried out so far. This has to be looked at very strategically. Those reserach plans can now be taken out of storage without having to take into account the restrictions which NWO - quite rightly - imposes.'

Excavation project
On the day of the announcement of the Spinoza Prizes, 4 June, a large-scale excavation project started in Neumark in Northern Germany led by Roebroeks' research group. 'Former lignite mines from the DDR time are being redeveloped and transformed into a lake area. We are working ahead of the rising water. These are Neanderthal encampments about one to two thousand years old: old lakes in a heavily forested area which have now been silted up. Bone material, wood, charcoal, everything is in an excellent state of preservation.'

Paradox
Until not so very long ago it was accepted that the Neanderthals were a line in human evolution which has petred out: primitive, somewhat backward and not able to adapt to a changing climate. But the reality is much more subtle, states Roebroeks, because recent research - primarily in Leiden - has brought to light the paradox of the Neanderthals. 'On the one hand, the Neanderthals left behind primitive, simple tools over a period of hundreds of thousands of years. It is actually very boring: almost nothing changed. We do see some variation, but no clear changes as in the archaeology of modern man, where every ten thousand years you come across a different methodology. But on the other hand we see that they were very driven hunters of large prey. Also, they were modern in the way they handled their prey and in the aspect that they moved around in a very broad spectrum of habitats.'

Isotope research
Isotope research on the bone material of Neanderthals has shown that they had a rather monotonous diet. They mainly hunted large game which they outsmarted and treated in an extremely efficient way. Roebroeks thinks that it was not economical for them to hunt smaller prey. They were large-bodied and needed more energy than modern man. American research quotes estimates of from 20% more than modern man up to an absurdly high figure. They also had large brains, which also require energy. In evolutionary terms it is better to be slow-witted because the energy which is saved by smaller brains and lower intelligence can be used for procreation, for example.'

Biomass
This is why the excavations in Neumark are so interesting. Roebroeks: 'The kinds of environments inhabited by the Neanderthals are very similar to those of modern man: cold and warm periods, open spaces and woods. For hunters forests are difficult because the biomass is much lower there. The wide plains is where the herbivores lived, but the density of game in the woods was much lower. We wonder what they did in the woods, what kinds of animals they hunted. A simple prediction is that they hunted the giants: hippos, elephants, rhinocerus, the real giants. There were few of them, but once you had caught one, then you really had something. It took a lot of time and energy to catch the smaller animals, such as deer and boar, which meant that the yield was much lower.'

Nomadic
Because the Neanderthals were continually searching for the biggest and best from the environment, they are always migrating. They were extremely nomadic. This explains why the encampments exhibit signs of fire, but no hard stones which would increase the efficiency of the fire, and no huts. 'Modern man, from which we are descended, had a broader range and could allow themselves to settle,' explains Roebroeks. You can devote time to making the technique of hunting game more efficient or into processing the game. The Neanderthals probably did the first of these. They had tools which had a wide range of uses. We know this on the basis of analyses of their usage. Modern man had, put in black in white terms, a different tool for each activity, all of which were aesthetically pleasing and carefully designed. Neanderthals used one simple tool for everything.'

The skull of a Neanderthal. The most noticeable characteristic differences from the skull of modern man are: the flat top of the crown of the skull, the pronounced eyebrow arches, the small, receding chin and the greater brain volume.
Language
Roebroeks presumes that the Neanderthals compensated for their simple technology with very detailed knowledge of the natural environment. 'The problem is that you don't see this. You only see that they were very experienced hunters of large prey.' It is well known that Neanderthals took care of wounded and disabled individuals, although these people were no longer to hunt productively. Could it be that these individuals may possibly have played a role in the transfer of this detailed knowledge? Roebroeks does not immediately want to go so far as to claim that Neanderthals had mastered language. 'The problem is that language is a complex mix of different elements and is not preserved in fossils. Recent research among present-day hunter-gatherers has not shown that language definitely played a role in the transfer of knowledge about hunting. Probably the conclusion has to be drawn that much of the knowledge transfer took place by being physically present. My gut feeling is that the Neanderthals probably has some kind of language. It is a fact that the most efficient way of building knowledge is through language. Language is terribly important for evaluating what happened on any particular day. But a feeling is not a good argument. We archaeologists, by the way, don't need language at all. Archeologists can tell a good story without language.'

Natural experiment
For Roebroeks, the best part of his project is that you really start to see Neanderthals as a kind of natural experiment. 'Six hundred thousand years ago we had a common ancestor. The environments in Western Eurasia started to play around with the Neanderthals, while our ancestors probably came to an end somewhere in Africa. We have remained relatively alternative. The Neanderthals who survived half a million years disappeared after a successful existence. In my group, Alexander Verpoorte has developed a fantastically productive research theme, based on the hypothesis that subtle biological differences between Neanderthals and 'us' can explain a large part of the archaeological differences. I think that finally the differences in energy requirements between the Neanderthals and modern man are what made the difference. The Neanderthals were so thinly distributed and so specialised in what they used from the land, that the arrival of a different species which took from them that little with which they had to manage, meant the end for them. Their food may also have played a role. A more diverse diet than only meat, which is what we presume they lived on, would reduce the child mortality rate. Modelling work shows that with modern man having 2% more descendents, the Neanderthals must have disappeared within a period of a thousand years.'