A History of Agriculture in India v1.c12.s6: Neanderthal Man (Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis)

A History of Agriculture in India v1.c12.s6

Language: English

Neanderthal Man (Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis)

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The earliest find of the Neanderthal skull is from the fortification of Gibraltar in 1848. Fragments of a skull and a skeleton were later discovered from the late Pleistocene deposits in the Neanderthal Valley near Dusseldorf in Germany. Skulls and skeletons of the Neanderthal man were subsequently discovered from various places in France, the Island of Jersey, Belgium, Spain, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, North Africa, Israel, Iran and Iraq (Fig. 32).

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From these discoveries, it appears that the Neanderthal man lived in Europe, Africa and western Asia some 72,000 years ago. He was short, had a low receding forehead, protuberant brows, long arms and bent thighs; he walked with a stoop, and had a matted coat of hair. His brain-case was large, but the brain was poorly developed. The cranial capacity was between 1,350 and 1,700 cubic centimetres with the average at about 1,400 to 1,425 cubic centimetres. He must have been strong and well-built, about 1.55 to 1.65 metres tall. His lower limbs were shorter than those of the modern man and his thigh-bones were slightly arched. He hunted a variety of animals, including cave-bears and hairy mammoths, and cooked their meat on fire.

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The Neanderthal men hunted mammoths, the woolly elephants of Europe. Their weapons were boulders, and spears of wood tipped with blades of flint. Hunting in a pack requires organization, planning and strategy. In this respect, they showed a great advance over Homo erectus, who probably relied on individual skill in hunting. The Neanderthal man [Figure: INDIA COMPARATIVE OCCURRENCE OF CHOPPER-CHOPPING TOOLS AND BIFACIAL HANDAXES AND CLEAVERS CHOPPER-CHOPPING TOOLS BIFACIAL HANDAXES AND CLEAVERS SITES OF OCCURRENCE 1. Guler 2. Near Nalagarh. 3. 4. in Potwar Region 5. in Chittor District 6 in Singrauli Basin 7. Deogarh 8. Near Hoshangabad 9. Near Narsinghpur 10. In Sabarmati Valley 11. In Mahi Valley 12. In Mayurbhanj 13. In Upper Godavari Valley 14. In Lower Godavari Valley 15. Near Khandivly 16. In Malaprabha Basin 17. In Lower Krishna Valley. 18. Near Giddalur 19. In Nellore District 20. 21. In Kortatalayar Valley 22. In Lower Cauveri Valley]

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Fig. 30. The comparative occurrence of chopper-chopping tools and bifacial hand-axes. Chopper-chopping-tools were more common in the Siwaliks of India and Pakistan. Bifacial hand-axes predominated in the south [Figure: Fig. 31. The Stone Age sites in Himachal Pradesh and Punjab. A number of such sites have been discovered in the Kangra Valley in Himachal Pradesh and in the Valley of the Sirsa River above Chandigarh (After H.D. Sankalia)]

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also used stone-tipped arrows and buried his dead with great ceremony. In the cave of La-Chapelle-aux-Saints, the corpse was accompanied with Mousterian implements and joints of meat. His social and cultural achievements comprised middle Palaeolithic civilization.

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Gradually, however, he increased his stock of tools by adding knives, spearheads, awls, scrapers and the like, all made from chips struck from the original core of flint used in making the hand-axes. He also used the spear and the sling as his weapons. He also began to use bones and horns. To meet the growing demand for flint, he sank shafts to get at the subsurface deposits when those on the surface were exhausted. Such advances represented major steps towards a greater control over the physical environment. He made his clothing from the skins of animals, using bone needles and sinews for binding them. He could also make fire. He made the mouths of caves his permanent habitations.

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In material culture, the Neanderthal man was far ahead of the early stone-age man. The invention of fire-making gave him the most powerful weapon against wild animals. Clothing made from skins of hunted animals also symbolized advance. Progress was due largely to the challenge of the hostile environment he had to face in the last Glacial Age.

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We can appreciate the important changes that took place, as man began to eat meat, as he started using fire to prepare meat and warm himself, as he constructed his first homes and made his tools. The activities of these early Palaeolithic hunters can be deduced from the remains of animals they hunted. The remains of more than 1,000 mammoths were discovered in Predmosti in Moravia. In Solutre (France) numerous bones of wild horses were found, and in Ambrosievka (Ukraine) the remains of hundreds of bison have been discovered. These discoveries indicate organized hunts in which large parties of hunters participated. The spear was their most important weapon, and the spearheads of stone, bone, and mammoth ivory were in use. These Palaeolithic hunters also used wooden traps, fishing-nets and hooks.

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The recent discovery of nine Neanderthal skeletons from the Shanidar cave in Iraqi Kurdistan by Ralph S. Solecki has greatly improved the image of the Neanderthal man. Solecki estimates that the Shanidar cave was first occupied about 100,000 years ago, and, over a period of 60,000 years, groups of the Neanderthals made it their seasonal home. These Neanderthals were more like *Homo sapiens* in skeletal structure, and there was not much difference between them and the modern man. The discovery of the remains of lame and disabled persons from two of the caves indicates that they were kept alive by their fellows, till they met their death by an accidental rockfall. ‘These were the first stirrings of the concept of man caring for his own, a sense of belonging and family,’³ observes Solecki. Pollen analysis of the soil samples [Figure: Remains of Neanderthal Man C Mt. Carmel E Ehringsdorf M Le Moustier N Neanderthal S Steinheim

Cites (1)

Guler