Into the mind of a Neanderthal


Life 11 January 2012
New Scientist Default Image

Neanderthals shared about 99.84 per cent of their DNA with us

(Image: Action Press/Rex Features)

A NEANDERTHAL walks into a bar and says… well, not a lot, probably. Certainly he or she could never have delivered a full-blown joke of the type modern humans would recognise because a joke hinges on surprise juxtapositions of unexpected or impossible events. Cognitively, it requires quite an advanced theory of mind to put oneself in the position of one or more of the actors in that joke – and enough working memory (the ability to actively hold information in your mind and use it in various ways).

So does that mean our Neanderthal had no sense of humour? No: humans also recognise the physical humour used to mitigate painful episodes – tripping, hitting our heads and so on – which does not depend on language or symbols. So while we could have sat down with Neanderthals and enjoyed the slapstick of The Three Stooges or Lee Evans, the verbal complexities of Twelfth Night would have been lost on them.











One cognitive ability that evolved in modern humans as a result was the “cheater detection” ability described by evolutionary psychologist Leda Cosmides, at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Another was an ability to judge the value of one commodity in terms of another, what anthropologist Alan Page Fiske at the University of California, Los Angeles, calls the “market pricing” ability. Both are key reasoning skills that evolved to allow interaction with acquaintances and strangers, neither of which was a regular feature of Neanderthal home life.

There are good circumstantial reasons for thinking that Neanderthals had language, with words and some kind of syntax; some of their technology and hunting tactics would have been difficult to learn and execute without it. Moreover, Neanderthal brains had a well-developed Broca’s area, and their DNA includes the FOXP2 gene carried by modern humans, which is involved in speech production. Unfortunately, none of this reveals anything specific about Neanderthal language. It could have been very or only slightly different, we just don’t know.

Having any sort of language could also have exposed Neanderthals to problems modern humans face, such as schizophrenia, says one theory which puts the disease down to coordination problems between the brain’s left and right hemispheres.

But while Neanderthals would have had a variety of personality types, just as we do, their way of life would have selected for an average profile quite different from ours. Jo or Joe Neanderthal would have been pragmatic, capable of leaving group members behind if necessary, and stoical, to deal with frequent injuries and lengthy convalescence. He or she had to be risk tolerant for hunting large beasts close up; they needed sympathy and empathy in their care of the injured and dead; and yet were neophobic, dogmatic and xenophobic.

So we could have recognised and interacted with Neanderthals, but we would have noticed these significant cognitive differences. They would have been better at well-learned, expert cognition than modern humans, but not as good at the development of novel solutions. They were adept at intimate, small-scale social cognition, but lacked the cognitive tools to interact with acquaintances and strangers, including the extensive use of symbols.

In the final count, when Neanderthals and modern humans found themselves competing across the European landscape 30,000 years ago, those cognitive differences may well have been decisive in seeing off the Neanderthals.

“Cognitive differences may have played a big role in seeing off Neanderthals”


Thomas Wynn is a professor of anthropology and Frederick L. Coolidge is a professor of psychology at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. For the past decade they have worked on the evolution of cognition. Their new book is How to Think Like a Neandertal (Oxford University Press, 2012)

More on these topics: