Who were the Neanderthals DW Documentary
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00:00Long before Homo sapiens began to populate the Earth, another human species had established
00:16itself across much of the Eurasian continent, the Neanderthals.
00:27Animals discovered during the last two centuries in the Atlantic Ocean and in Siberia have
00:32shed some light on these mysterious archaic humans.
00:39They had culture, they had social systems, they had intelligence.
00:49Recent archaeological finds in England and France have helped researchers find out more
00:55about these early inhabitants of Eurasia.
00:59They mastered their environment and understood it perfectly.
01:07Neanderthals managed to survive for some 300,000 years, and then they disappeared.
01:13How did they overcome existential threats such as extreme climate change?
01:19And what do Neanderthals and modern humans have in common?
01:49After the first archaeological evidence of Neanderthals was discovered in the 19th century,
02:02many experts described this species as ape-like.
02:08A more realistic picture of the Neanderthals evolved decades later.
02:22Analysis of their remains and various artefacts provided details about the way they lived,
02:28the survival skills that they developed and the climate in which they lived.
02:41That climate was extremely harsh during the millennia that Neanderthals inhabited the
02:46Eurasian continent.
02:50This was the Ice Age, and there were periods of extreme cold, with temperatures dropping
02:55to minus 20 degrees Celsius, and sea levels were much lower than they are today.
03:03The evidence indicates that the Neanderthals adapted well to these particularly difficult
03:09conditions.
03:22Paleoanthropologist Professor Chris Stringer of London's Natural History Museum specialises
03:28in the physical and anatomical development of early humans.
03:34The Neanderthal face is very different to the shape of a modern face, and many arguments
03:39about how that face evolved and why it evolved.
03:43And I think the view now is that certainly that face, it's partly to do with cold adaptation.
03:50So we know Neanderthals evolved in conditions that were largely colder and drier than the
03:56present day in Europe.
03:58And it's likely that that face was particularly the nasal area, because the nose is very large
04:05and it's pulled forwards.
04:06It has a very large internal volume.
04:10So partly it seems that it's there as acting like a radiator.
04:14It's warming up and humidifying the air that's coming in.
04:33And this was true for all of these ancient humans.
04:35All of them really have larger nasal apparatus than modern humans do.
04:40But Neanderthals take it to another level.
04:42They really are pumping a huge amount of air through their noses.
04:47And they've got huge lungs, barrel chest.
04:50They need to oxygenate their blood.
04:52They're burning more energy to stay warm as well.
04:56These physical characteristics helped the Neanderthals survive in an inhospitable ecosystem.
05:09They also developed an important skill, making tools out of flint and other materials.
05:21This was groundbreaking technology.
05:31It's known as the Levaloir technique and involves using a rock or bone to chip off thin, sharp-edged
05:38flakes from the core material.
05:42Here, archaeologist Vincent Lascour demonstrates the technique.
05:49I'm shaping the core, and then I'll remove pieces that could be used as tools.
06:00This is what's called a Levaloir point.
06:04It runs along these ridges.
06:07Now I'll break off a piece.
06:17It's a long, slow process.
06:22Now he has to sharpen the edges.
06:32Here you can see the distinctive features of this process.
06:36The two ridges that come to a point, and the beveled cutting edge.
06:43This concave ledge could be used to attach the pointed flake to a spear.
06:52The Levaloir technique helped Neanderthals create weapons to hunt large animals that
06:57would provide them with meat for food and skins for clothing.
07:02This allowed the Neanderthals to spread across the continent despite the cold weather.
07:13They were also able to adapt to brief interglacial periods that were marked by significant increases
07:19in temperatures.
07:28There are only a few sites where experts have been able to study thousands of years
07:33of Neanderthal history.
07:38One of them is on the island of Jersey in the English Channel.
07:43Excavations over the course of the last century have revealed new details on the lives of
07:48these early humans.
07:54Archaeologist Becky Scott is a researcher at the British Museum.
07:58She and her colleagues have spent several years studying the Neanderthal site at La
08:03Cote de Saint-Brelard.
08:12The sediments preserved within the fissure begin accumulating at least 240,000 years
08:20ago, through to, we have dates now of around about 40,000, and there are later sediments
08:26as well.
08:27So that captures that entire time span.
08:33But what it also captures is huge changes in climate and environment.
08:39So there are times when it's warm, you know, it's nearly as warm as today and the sea is
08:44quite close.
08:45There are other times when it's cold, we're dipping down into a glacial period and the
08:51sea is locked up a long way north of the site and completely different landscapes exposed.
08:59In prehistoric times, Jersey was not an island.
09:03It was part of the European mainland.
09:06One of its most prominent geographical features is a rock formation that towers 150 metres
09:13over a broad plain.
09:16Neanderthals may have used it as a lookout post.
09:20For Neanderthal people, that view gives them control of that.
09:24So you can maybe imagine somebody sat up there, perhaps directing other groups, perhaps spotting
09:32maybe other people coming through, maybe herds of animals coming through.
09:37So by getting up, they're actually able to control and work with their landscape in a
09:42way that you can't when you're just down low and moving through it.
09:49Scientists mapped out the ocean floor around the island to find out what the area might
09:54have looked like in prehistoric times.
09:57A few years ago, my colleague Richard Bates and Martin Bates actually started to conduct
10:05a bathymetric survey of the bay that surrounds La Cotte and up to five kilometres offshore.
10:13So that was painting in the landscape that we can't see.
10:16So there's little bits of it that are still visible as scurries and reefs and eroded sea
10:22stacks.
10:26The Bates brothers' investigation showed that the seabed was not very deep.
10:31They also found canyons where Neanderthals could trap bison, wild cattle known as aurochs
10:37or mammoths.
10:48Here at the University of Reading, archaeology professor Stephen Mithen has been researching
10:53how early humans learned to develop survival skills and adapt to their environment.
10:59I think in many ways the Neanderthals were wild people, but I mean wild in the best
11:05sense of the word.
11:06They were very sensitive, emotional, caring people, but they were engaged in a wilderness,
11:12the wilderness of ice-aged tundras, of interglacial forests, of coasts, and had a great understanding
11:18of nature and were very much part of nature in a way that we're not today so much.
11:29Rivers and streams were vital to the Neanderthals' survival.
11:39They used these bodies of water to help find their way through dense interglacial forests.
11:45They also hunted animals who gathered there to drink.
11:52Excavations at Cahors in northern France revealed evidence of big game hunts that took place
11:59there an estimated 123,000 years ago.
12:07Experts from France's National Institute for Archaeological Research, INRAP, have been
12:12working at the site for more than a decade.
12:16The animals were probably killed on the riverbank.
12:19At that time, the river was about 10 meters from here, not where it is today.
12:24The ground was soft, which made it difficult for the animals to move around.
12:28It would have been too dangerous to hunt them on open, hard ground.
12:34The lives of the Neanderthals were focused on hunting.
12:38They developed skills that eventually made them the most dangerous predators in the region.
12:47They were expert hunters.
12:48We usually associate Neanderthals with sites where the remains of medium-sized animals
12:53have been found — various species of deer and reindeer.
12:58But they were also apparently able to kill wild cattle, which were nearly 2 meters tall.
13:04The woolly rhinoceros was also huge.
13:07They were very aggressive and dangerous animals.
13:09But they also provided a rich source of food, including meat and bone marrow.
13:23Region Director Jean-Luc Locht says the site has yielded important new information on how
13:29Neanderthals adapted to their environment.
13:32And this has changed our perception of these primitive humans.
13:37Before the Cahors site was discovered in 2002, experts believed that Neanderthals could not
13:42adapt to interglacial environments.
13:45It was thought that they inhabited only the colder steppe zones and moved out of our region
13:50during interglacial periods.
13:54Evidence from the Cahors site indicates that Neanderthals spread their activities over
13:59several locations.
14:01For example, the current excavation was set up at a place where these early humans butchered
14:06the animals they'd killed.
14:10This was an intermediate site they used for slaughtering.
14:13They killed the animals somewhere else, and then brought the carcasses here.
14:17Afterward, they probably took the meat to a base camp that was a little further away.
14:28We've recovered items that indicate that these people made their weapons very quickly, without
14:32a lot of extra work.
14:34The idea was to complete the hunt in what was, for them, a short period of time.
14:44Experts have now determined how these sites were used, and how long they were occupied.
14:55The oldest lair is around 124,000 years old.
14:59They went there twice a year.
15:01The newest stratum, which is about 121,000 years old, was used for ten months at a time.
15:12It's clear that Neanderthals were able to adapt successfully to their environment by
15:17restricting their activities to specific areas.
15:23They were nomads, but they lived in a rather limited region, where each site fulfilled
15:28a specific function, like extracting raw materials or slaughtering animals.
15:34And they created living spaces in sloped areas that protected them from high winds.
15:39They knew how to make good use of these narrowly defined areas.
15:46Materials recovered from the Ka'ua site highlight an important feature of Neanderthal culture
15:51— their nomadic way of life.
15:55This phenomenon has been confirmed by evidence found at the Lakot site on the island of Jersey.
16:02The first scientists who visited the site, at the turn of the last century, discovered
16:06the remains of numerous woolly mammoths.
16:10Most of these items ended up in private collections.
16:16This tooth is the only one that remains in the hands of scientists.
16:21We don't know precisely how Neanderthals are getting hold of the mammoth that we see brought
16:28into Lakot, but we assume that they're probably hunting numbers of them in that landscape
16:34or maybe also scavenging them as well.
16:36But they're certainly not bringing them in any great distance.
16:45The Neanderthal hunters trapped their prey in the rugged Jersey landscape, and then used
16:51flint-tipped weapons to kill them and flint tools to butcher them.
16:56But no items made of flint have been found on Jersey.
17:01So where did these essential tools come from?
17:09We know from the flint that's carried in that the journeys people are making are from maybe
17:1520, maybe 30 kilometres away from out around Guernsey, Alderney, where fresh flint outcrops.
17:23To make those journeys, you're tracking in, maybe over a couple of days, you're carrying
17:30your toolkit with you, you're working it down as you go, and you're not replacing it with
17:34local raw materials.
17:35So it's like these are deliberate moves to get to places that you know are there.
17:42It sort of gives us an insight into Neanderthal geographies, the ways Neanderthals are mapping
17:47their world, really, I think.
17:51Materials excavated at Kaua and Lakot indicate that Neanderthals learned to plan their activities,
17:57such as hunting, in areas where they lived.
18:01This level of sophistication does not correspond to the stereotype of Neanderthals as crude,
18:07low-browed cave dwellers.
18:14I think unquestionably Neanderthals were undertaking some planning in their activities.
18:19We know that they were hunting big game.
18:21We know they were hunting mammoths, bison, horse.
18:24Now to do that, you have to do some planning for that.
18:27Because it's got to be a group cooperative activity, you need to anticipate where the
18:32herds are going to be, exactly how you're going to hunt them.
18:35You then also need to plan how you're going to distribute the food and butter it.
18:39So clearly there's got to be planning there.
18:40We can just see that from the basic archaeological evidence that we get.
18:46Planning allowed the Neanderthals to optimise key activities like hunting.
18:51This was an important development because there were so few of these early humans.
19:02It appears that they lived in small groups, with perhaps 20 or 30 people.
19:07A large clan might have two or three families.
19:11These small groups moved over relatively large areas.
19:16In all, there were only a few tens of thousands of people in an area the size of Europe.
19:24It's unusual that such a relatively small group of people scattered over such a large
19:30area kept coming back to places that were far less spectacular than the cliffs of Jersey.
19:40In southern France, excavation work continues at Grotte Mondrain, a cave-like structure
19:46on the Rhône River that served as a Neanderthal shelter.
19:53Ludovic Slimac is the project leader.
19:56He says that the evidence they've found here indicates that this was an important stop
20:01on many Neanderthal migrations.
20:05Mondrain faces due north towards the Mistral River, which deposited sediments in the cave
20:11over thousands of years.
20:14Humans first arrived here 120,000 years ago.
20:18We've recovered items from the cave that date back 80,000 years.
20:22It's a marvellous archaeological repository that covers the period from the first settlements
20:27to the extinction of the Neanderthals 42,000 years ago.
20:32It's the only one of its kind in the world.
20:43In these layers of sediment, Slimac and his team have found a lot of evidence showing
20:48that Neanderthals lived here.
20:51They stayed only briefly, sometimes just a few days.
20:55But they apparently came back, again and again, throughout the course of their existence.
21:04Archaeologists have discovered gaps of several decades where no Neanderthals appear to have
21:08been present here.
21:12Slimac believes that over 80,000 years, the Mondrain caves were occupied frequently by
21:18nomadic groups.
21:21What makes a Neanderthal a nomad?
21:29Did they follow herds of animals, like horses, bison or reindeer?
21:34I think that they had good reason to migrate.
21:37When we talk about nomads, we mean populations that are thoroughly familiar with a specific
21:42area that could be relatively large.
21:49Groups of Neanderthals apparently met regularly in specific places.
21:54For example, once a year, they'd gather to exchange information and members of their
21:58group, especially young people.
22:00There's evidence from the Cidrone cave in Spain that Neanderthals also exchanged women
22:05at these meetings.
22:11They lived together in small groups and reproduced amongst themselves, and that could cause genetic
22:16problems.
22:17A healthy gene pool needs constant imports and exports of material.
22:22So for example, I might exchange my sister for someone else's.
22:27This would help to enhance the group's genetic continuity.
22:33A typical gathering place was La Côte des Saints-Brelades.
22:38Various groups met there over tens of thousands of years, for the specific purpose of population
22:43exchange.
22:52The survival of the tribe was essential.
22:55That's also why groups of Neanderthals met often to hunt migrating wild animals.
23:06We found evidence that certain objects were transported from far away, or in a completely
23:11different direction.
23:13For example, flints that came from 300 kilometers farther east, or 300 kilometers farther west,
23:19or 150 kilometers farther north.
23:22It's not possible that one group would cover such a large area in its annual migrations.
23:28That's thousands of kilometers, and it doesn't fit an annual cycle.
23:35The evidence indicates that there were several groups, and each had its own territory.
23:41And once or twice a year, they'd meet at one place to engage in common activity.
23:51These meetings would produce the desired results only if the various groups could communicate
23:57with each other.
24:00This raises the possibility that Neanderthals had developed rudimentary language skills.
24:13I think to be able to anticipate and plan your social activities, your hunting activities,
24:19your foraging activities, must imply a pretty sophisticated system of communication.
24:24It doesn't mean it's necessarily compositional language like we have, in terms of words and
24:29grammar and so forth, but it means a very sophisticated form of communication.
24:39Scientists have been studying what sort of language the Neanderthals may have spoken.
24:44In any case, these ancient humans do seem to have had the physical capability to speak.
24:54We can reconstruct the basic shape of the Neanderthal vocal apparatus, and it seems
24:59to be fundamentally similar to ours, but maybe the voice box was a little bit higher in the
25:05throat, which would suggest the voice was a bit higher pitched.
25:09It doesn't quite go with the Butch Neanderthal image of them having higher voices, but maybe
25:13they did.
25:15But we know that the ear bones of Neanderthals seem to be functioning like ours do for sound
25:20transmission, the same range of frequencies, so their hearing certainly would have given
25:25them the same capabilities as we have in terms of hearing language.
25:29So I think all of that suggests Neanderthals had a basic language.
25:32They'd be talking to each other, they had speech capabilities.
25:38So it seems likely that Neanderthals were able to communicate with each other.
25:43But did they use language in a form that modern humans would recognize?
25:48They did communicate, so they did have language capability.
25:56It was a complex and sophisticated form of language that allowed groups to exchange information
26:02with each other.
26:03And that was crucial to their survival.
26:07The crux is whether they were using words in the way that we use words, and those words
26:13were then combined with complex grammatical rules or syntax to be able to convey complex
26:20ideas, narratives, information.
26:23Now, I suspect not.
26:29Still, Neanderthals were able to communicate among themselves.
26:38What form did this language actually take?
26:44I think musicality is really important.
26:48Musicality is hugely important for expressing emotion.
26:50It's hugely important for social bonding as well.
26:52If you go off hunting a bison, we're working as a team, I've got to be absolutely confident
26:57that you're going to throw your spear just at the right time to hit that bison, because
27:01if you don't, I'll get trampled to death.
27:04So how are we going to build up that trust if we haven't got words?
27:07I think we sing and dance together, and I think we still see that in the modern world.
27:11Singing and dancing together builds up trust, builds up that common bond, that sense of
27:16a group.
27:17That must be critical to Neanderthal survival.
27:25Scientific analysis of Neanderthal brain cases and comparisons with those of modern humans
27:31may help scientists to better understand the speech capability of these prehistoric people.
27:42The brain case of Neanderthals is very different from that of anatomically modern humans.
27:50For example, a flat forehead and strong brow ridges, elongated flat skull.
27:56This is a robust male.
27:59He died at an age of 42 years.
28:04The shape of the brain is very typical and is unique under the fossils of the world.
28:13The morphological structure of Neanderthal brain cases is strongly different from that
28:19of anatomically modern humans, but the internal structure isn't well known yet.
28:30We may never be able to create an anatomical profile of the Neanderthal brain.
28:40But scientists can use their knowledge of modern human brain structure to study that
28:45of these prehistoric people, especially their cognitive abilities.
28:55When you talk about cognition, my cognition is partly a factor of my brain,
29:01and that's partly a factor of what I've biologically inherited,
29:04and partly a factor of my development environment.
29:06But then there's also all the other support around me.
29:09I'm not very clever unless I've got a smartphone in my hand these days,
29:14or a ruler, or a book, and so forth.
29:16So cognition is really a combination of your material culture you have,
29:20your social environment and your biology inside of you.
29:26So we know the Neanderthals had large brains.
29:29They may have become networked differently, but without that material culture
29:33to scaffold their cognitive development and scaffold and support their thinking,
29:38and without words to do that, I think they were inherently inhibited.
29:44But despite the limitations cited by Professor Mithun,
29:48were the Neanderthals able to develop a culture as we understand the term today?
29:56Expert opinion on this topic is divided,
29:59since there's no hard evidence of songs or dances, if indeed they had any.
30:05Some scientists believe that the archaeological evidence indicates
30:09that Neanderthals were capable of creating works that may be described as art.
30:16One of those scientists is British prehistorian Matt Pope,
30:20who knows the flint deposits on the south coast of England quite well.
30:27Pope is part of the team that's studying the site,
30:30He and colleague Becky Scott will carry out further excavations there.
30:36Within La Cotte, perhaps the two most famous stratigraphic levels within it
30:42are the two bone heaps.
30:44On the western wall of the cave, they were piling large amounts of mammoth
30:51and a small amount of woolly rhinoceros.
30:54They were piling large amounts of mammoth
30:58and a small amount of woolly rhinoceros bone.
31:01They could be just the remains of butchered animals,
31:05neatly piled up in just a very ordered behaviour.
31:09They could be stockpiling them for other uses.
31:13But these bone heaps go even further in their ordering.
31:17The way the skulls of mammoth are placed around the outside of these bone heaps,
31:23the way that ribs are driven on end into the sediment,
31:26almost to fence in and constrain the bone heaps,
31:30and in one case, a rib even driven through a skull into the sediment underneath,
31:37goes beyond simple tidiness, goes beyond stockpiling material.
31:42They're creating something.
31:44Even if it's just a kind of routine, habitual behaviour,
31:47even if it has no symbolic meaning,
31:51it's still monumental what they leave behind.
31:54It would still, if you saw it today, look very, very striking.
32:05Evidence that Neanderthals were capable of planning and building structures is rare.
32:11So the discovery of the Bruniquel Cave in 1990 in France's Aveyron Valley caused a sensation.
32:20In a space located more than 300 metres from the entrance,
32:24archaeologists discovered several structures made of broken stalagmites.
32:29There are rings of this material, as well as random piles.
32:34The ring structures were later determined to be approximately 175,000 years old.
32:42Some scientists say that the Neanderthals who built these structures
32:46had developed a complex level of social organisation.
32:52There's a parallel between the bone heaps and the stalagmite circles at Bruniquel Cave.
32:57Both, in a way, are inexplicable in their order.
33:02Both are very, very structured.
33:04Of course, at Bruniquel, it's deep in the cave,
33:08but it shows that they're capable of working together
33:12to create structure out of chaos without any obvious function.
33:17We've got lots of words for those sort of behaviours in our own language.
33:21We can call it symbolism, we can call it art, we can call it ritualistic behaviour.
33:26I don't think those words are very helpful.
33:28I think it is just something very, very human to try and monitor
33:34I think it is just something very, very human to try and monumentalise landscape,
33:40monumentalise landscape with our own traces and our own interventions on it.
33:45A rare indication of Neanderthal abstract expression
33:49was discovered at Gorham's Cave on the Gibraltar Peninsula in 2014.
33:57A series of intersecting lines.
34:00The US dubbed it history's first hashtag.
34:03It's not clear what the symbols mean.
34:08Some experts, like Ludovic Slimac, caution against speculation.
34:14There's evidence that early Homo sapiens made jewellery.
34:17They took the teeth of carnivores that they killed, drilled holes in them and created necklaces.
34:22We've found none of that among Neanderthals.
34:25No jewellery, necklaces, beads or anything that might require drilling.
34:29And scientists have examined countless artifacts from that period.
34:33Humans wear jewellery and clothing to show off.
34:36These items shape our mental, cultural and social universe,
34:40which we then present to others.
34:42Neanderthals simply didn't do that.
34:50Future archaeological discoveries may prompt sceptics to change their minds.
34:56But this discussion also raises an important question.
35:00How closely did Neanderthals resemble modern people?
35:07The science constantly changes how we envisage Neanderthals.
35:11And at the same time, we want to bring them close to us.
35:14We're seeing them as very modern in terms of their behaviour.
35:18We should never forget the fact that if we were confronted by one,
35:22if we encountered one in the street or in the landscape,
35:25we'd instantly notice differences in their mythology, in their face, in their bearing, in their gait.
35:35The first humans of the species Homo sapiens arrived in Western Europe about 50,000 years ago.
35:44This development appeared to seal the fate of the Neanderthals, who were far less sophisticated.
35:53Studies of the Mondrang cave, the reconstruction of settlements there
35:58and the discovery of flint objects indicate that Homo sapiens came to Western Europe in two waves.
36:06The first consisted of scouting parties who used advanced flint tools.
36:12That group disappeared after about ten years,
36:15and the Neanderthals gradually returned to the Mondrang site.
36:22Homo sapiens returned to the region a few thousand years later, around 42,000 years ago.
36:33This cave was home to both the last Neanderthals,
36:38and the first modern humans.
36:40They probably travelled north from the Mediterranean, through the Rhône river valley.
36:45They settled there, and it's likely that they came into contact with Neanderthals.
36:53This was just about the time that the previous residents of this region,
36:57the Neanderthals, started to die out.
37:01There's been a lot of speculation about why and how the Neanderthals
37:05The Neanderthals had been there for dozens, even hundreds of generations.
37:11But suddenly, with the arrival of Homo sapiens, they disappeared.
37:17They never returned to the caves where they had lived.
37:22Studies at sites in France, other parts of the world,
37:26show that the Neanderthals had been there for hundreds of years.
37:31Studies at sites in France, other parts of Europe and Western Asia,
37:36have concluded that the Neanderthal population became extinct about 42,000 years ago.
37:48Tom Haim is an expert on carbon-14 dating.
37:52He's a professor of archaeological science at Oxford University,
37:57and says that recent scientific studies have provided new information on why the Neanderthals died out.
38:04And actually this is different to what I originally thought when I first started working in this area.
38:08I thought that modern humans would kind of sweep in,
38:11and Neanderthals would go extinct relatively soon after.
38:15But actually it seems to be a lot more complicated than that.
38:18And there seems to be a mosaic of populations in different parts of Europe.
38:22We also know, of course, that the DNA is telling us that these two populations not only met,
38:28but they interbred with one another, which adds an increased layer of interest and complexity at the same time.
38:33I think over the 2,000 to 4,000 years in which we see modern humans and Neanderthals
38:40living or overlapping in Europe, that there was a slow and gradual disappearance of Neanderthal groups.
38:47As Neanderthals started to interbreed with Homo sapiens,
38:51their numbers grew smaller and smaller, until they eventually disappeared altogether.
38:57I think the Neanderthals were, to some extent, trapped in their success.
39:01They survived for 200,000 to 300,000 years,
39:04and through huge amounts of climate change in very challenging environments.
39:08But their culture remained pretty stable.
39:13For 200,000 to 300,000 years, they were making basically the same types of tools.
39:19They were exquisite tools, but the amount of innovation, the amount of creativity, is minimal.
39:26Neanderthals and Homo sapiens co-existed across Eurasia for several thousand years.
39:32These ancient humans managed to survive major changes in climate,
39:36but they failed to adapt to the arrival of a superior species.
39:42The thought that there was a point where there was a group of people,
39:47you know, surviving in the same landscape, who were, you know, superficially so similar to us,
39:53but maybe did things in a different way, it's like a...
39:55It's almost as if there was a group of people, you know,
39:59but maybe did things in a different way, it's like a...
40:01It's almost like playing a hunter-gatherer thought experiment or something.
40:05I just think it's incredible that, at one point,
40:09we weren't the only human species that walked the earth, as we are today.
40:16I think that the way that we look at Neanderthals says a lot about how we deal with others.
40:21And this raises the question of how we treat other members of our species.
40:25Today, people are always talking about the cultural shock of migration.
40:30I think the situation is exaggerated, but it still reflects on how we deal with others.
40:38From time to time, archaeologists find new evidence
40:42that helps us to better understand how Neanderthals lived.
40:47But these are just fragments from the long history of this species.
40:52Modern humans inherited part of their genetic code from Neanderthals.
40:57Perhaps that's why many of us are fascinated with the relics of these ancient people
41:02and the similarities that Neanderthals share with modern humans.
41:08If they had managed to survive, the world would likely be a very different place.
41:14Neanderthals developed a distinct social intelligence
41:17and were much more attuned to their environment than was the species that replaced them.
41:24We can only speculate on what influence the Neanderthals might have had on the course of human history,
41:30for better or for worse.
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