Skull damage suggests Neandertals led no more violent lives than humans

[Judi Lynn]

Some 200 skulls show similar rates of damage between humans and our evolutionary cousins
BY BRUCE BOWER 1:00PM, NOVEMBER 14, 2018

Neandertals are shaking off their reputation as head bangers.

Our close evolutionary cousins experienced plenty of head injuries, but no more so than late Stone Age humans did, a study suggests. Rates of fractures and other bone damage in a large sample of Neandertal and ancient Homo sapiens skulls roughly match rates previously reported for human foragers and farmers who have lived within the past 10,000 years, concludes a team led by paleoanthropologist Katerina Harvati of the University of Tübingen in Germany.

Males suffered the bulk of harmful head knocks, whether they were Neandertals or ancient humans, the scientists report online November 14 in Nature.

“Our results suggest that Neandertal lifestyles were not more dangerous than those of early modern Europeans,” Harvati says.

More:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/skull-damage-suggests-neandertals-led-no-more-violent-lives-humans?tgt=nr

[Judi Lynn]

1. Maybe Neanderthals Weren't Quite So Nasty And Brutish

November 14, 2018 3:44 PM ET
MERRIT KENNEDY

Neanderthals might bring to mind images of cartoonish brutes whacking each other with clubs.

But even though a number of Neanderthal skeletons have been unearthed showing grave head and neck injuries, new research suggests their lives weren't as violent as the stereotype implies.

In fact, the levels of cranial injuries for Neanderthals are very similar to those of early modern humans, according to scientists whose work was published today in the journal Nature.

"There is no statistical difference between the two, which means that they cannot be differentiated," says study co-author Katerina Harvati, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Tübingen in Germany.

More:
https://www.npr.org/2018/11/14/667818915/maybe-neanderthals-werent-quite-so-nasty-and-brutish