Rebecca Wragg Sykes on the objects that reveal the Neanderthal mind

Cognitive archaeologist Rebecca Wragg Sykes says we tin larn thing astir the minds of Neanderthals by studying the worldly they near behind, from painted shells to stalagmite circles. We mightiness adjacent find hints astir wherefore they went extinct

Humans 27 September 2022

By Colin Barras

Nabil Nezzar

DID Neanderthals deliberation similar us? We utilized to presume that our closest past quality relatives, who lived successful Europe and Asia for hundreds of thousands of years, were acrophobic lone with survival. But successful the past fewer decades we person discovered assorted things they made that had nary wide applicable purpose: a ammunition coloured with reddish pigment, a cervid bony engraved with chevrons and a ring of stalagmites assembled heavy wrong a cave.

Archaeologist Rebecca Wragg Sykes, honorary chap astatine the University of Liverpool, UK, and writer of Kindred: Neanderthal life, love, decease and art, is fascinated by these creator – oregon what she calls aesthetic – objects. She spoke to New Scientist astir whether they bring america person to knowing however Neanderthals thought astir the world, and what clues they connection to the species’ mysterious disappearance.

Colin Barras: How tin we get wrong the Neanderthal mind?

Rebecca Wragg Sykes: Clearly, determination are nary Neanderthal texts, truthful we can’t perceive descriptions of what they were reasoning astir the satellite astir them successful their ain voices. But determination is simply a wide of accusation successful the worldly they near behind. In a sense, what we tin bash with those artefacts is constricted lone by our imagination.

How we tin glean accusation from these artefacts?

One mode is to survey their exertion done a method called refitting – basically, putting things backmost together, looking astatine the sequences they utilized for knapping, the process of flaking chromatic blocks to marque tools. It’s “slow archaeology”: you excavate meticulously and cod adjacent the tiniest objects. Then you try, portion by piece, to acceptable those fragments backmost together. It …