Rediscovering Neanderthals Big Saturday

Day glow skulls at the Rediscovering Neanderthals Big Saturday on 30th April

Last Saturday was the Big Saturday event for the Rediscovering Neanderthals exhibition. This temporary exhibition, which is supported by the Natural History Museum opened to the general public on 22nd April. On Saturday 30th April a number of us set up tables with Neanderthal or Neanderthal related objects, including casts of human skulls, animal fossils and stone artefacts.

One of the attractions  that seemed to go down very well with small children was the selection of ‘day-glow’ skulls created by PhD researcher Tom o’Mahoney. Tom helped the Museum by providing 3D prints of scans of Neanderthal skulls in a section that compared Neanderthals and modern humans. Tom’s research shows that Neanderthal children grew up more quickly than modern human children. They appear to have had a faster metabolism to help cope with cooler temperatures.

We were also fortunate in being able to draw upon some educational specimens kindly supplied by the Natural History Museum.  We also put out the casts of skulls of Homo heidelbergensis, the ancestor of modern humans and Neanderthals, a Neanderthal and a modern human skull. We pointed out some of the differences between Neanderthals and modern humans: Neanderthals have elongated rugby-ball shaped crania whereas modern human skulls tend to be more spherical like a football.

Homo heidelbergensis and Neanderthal skulls kindly lent by the Natural History Museum

Neanderthals  needed roughly double the recommended calorie intake of an adult today. This seems to have been an adaptation to living in cold temperatures. They also had more robust bones, perhaps another adaptation to their preferred hunting strategy of ambushing prey, getting close to the animals to stab them with a fire-hardened stake (a copy of a 300,000-year-old-spear from Schöningen is shown in the Rediscovering Neanderthals exhibition)  a flint-tipped spear, even jumping on the backs of the animals concerned. It used to be said that Neanderthal skeletons showed a similar pattern of breakages and fractures to that of modern rodeo riders, but this seems to be typical of most hunter gatherers who get close to their prey, so perhaps it isn’t saying much about Neanderthals per se. Although Manchester Museum doesn’t have Neanderthal bones in its collection we do have plaster casts and they show how powerful the Neanderthals were. A  thigh bone or femur from Spy in Belgium is  much more robust than a modern human femur.

Cast of a powerful Neanderthal  thigh bone from Spy in Belgium

We also showed stone tools used by Neanderthals  including a 50,000-year-old worked quartzite flake from the cave sites at Creswell Crags in Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire and a 130,000-year-old Levallois point from a Middle Eastern cave site. It came as a surprise to some visitors that the younger object appeared to be more crude than the older example. Of course, this was not because the Neanderthals were less skilled at working stone. It was because the quartzite is considerably harder and it simply wasn’t possible to create a carefully-shaped tool, even with Neanderthal lithic technology.

Neanderthal stone tools at the Big Saturday event

It was also interesting to see the reactions on visitors faces when we explained that when modern humans entered western Asia and encountered Neanderthals about 130,000 BC it was the Neanderthals who had the edge. It is not clear why, unless the Neanderthals were better adapted at that time to the climate in that part of the world. When modern humans left Africa and entered Europe about 40,000 BC they seem to have had the edge and the Neanderthals  became extinct relatively quickly. Perhaps modern humans were better at hunting. Pat Shipman has suggested the domestication of dogs made them more effective hunters. Recently it was argued that modern humans brought with them diseases from the Tropics to which the Neanderthals had little or no resistance. At some point modern humans mated with Neanderthals. This much seems to be coming from the DNA analysis. Some of us have inherited red hair, freckles and certain addictive behaviour from Neanderthals.

Neanderthals as shown in popular culture. Note Night at the Museum and CD  by The Neanderthals

During the conversations we had with the visitors  we often referred to the depiction of Neanderthals in popular culture. We showed a DVD and a music CD featuring Neanderthals. There was even a postage stamp of the supposed ancient musical instrument made by Neanderthals from Divje Babe site in Slovenia but this is no longer accepted as evidence of singing Neanderthals.

There was a steady influx of visitors throughout the day and many went away saying they would go up to the third floor to see the Rediscovering Neanderthals exhibition. Many were families with young children and one father even wore a  themed sweatshirt. It’s an entertaining take on the old chestnut about humans becoming more advanced as they evolve, the weaponry evolving from a handaxe to a spear to a Kalashnikov to Darth Vader’s lightsaber. It was an ironic comment about human destructiveness linked to evolution and progress. From this perspective perhaps the theory of modern humans committing genocide against Neanderthals isn’t so far-fetched after all.

Human evolution and progress

Thanks to all the staff and students from FLS who supported the Big Saturday and especially to Loren Souchard who talked to the visitors in what is her second language.

 

 

Humans in Ancient Britain: Rediscovering Neanderthals Exhibition

Rediscovering Neanderthals exhibition at Manchester Museum

Preparations for Manchester Museum’s newest temporary exhibition are well in hand and we have spent the last few days installing Humans in Ancient Britain: Rediscovering Neanderthals ready for the Private View opening on the evening of 21st April. It must be a good 18 months or so since the Natural History Museum contacted us to ask if we were interested in taking touring exhibits  from the NHM’s One Million Years BC exhibition. At the partnership meeting that followed we chose the ‘Neanderthals and modern humans’ option, which included a fine hand axe from Kent’s Cavern, a Neanderthal skull from Swanscombe, a bone harpoon and a perforated badger tooth made by anatomically modern humans.

This is a topic that has considerable resonance for us at Manchester Museum because we have a large collection of material from excavations of the caves at Creswell Crags. The first Curator of Manchester Museum, William Boyd Dawkins (1837-1929) joined Reverend Magens Mello and Thomas Smith from Derby Museum on the site in 1876. In many ways Dawkins was the ideal person to take part because he had written a book called Cave Hunting, which assessed the importance of cave deposits in preserving evidence from earlier times, but he fell out with Smith and there was controversy over some of the finds from the excavations.

Watercolour of the Crags by Revd. Magens Mello

Despite these differences,  Dawkins’ involvement in the project resulted in Manchester Museum acquiring a sizeable portion of the finds. Manchester’s collection of artefacts and specimens from the site increased further when A.Leslie Armstrong excavated at Creswell Crags during the 1920s. Ever since, Manchester Museum has been a port-of-call for anyone wanting to research the mid to late Palaeolithic, broadly the period of time from the onset of the last Ice Age when Neanderthals used some of the caves about 50,000 years ago to the melting of the ice sheets just over 10,000 years ago.

1920s excavations at Creswell Crags

So right from the start, we had it mind to supplement the exhibits we would borrow from the Natural History Museum with material from our own collection. We also saw an opportunity to draw upon recent research on Neanderthals at the University of Manchester. We approached a number of  academics working in different parts of the campus and asked them to contribute to the exhibition project.

Prof Andrew Chamberlain in person and on screen in the exhibition

Dr Michael Buckley (FLS) provided information on identifying bones using a technique called proteomics. Prof Andrew Chamberlain (FLS) kindly agreed to be interviewed about his work on the excavation of a Victorian spoil heap at Creswell Crags.  Prof.Matthew Cobb (FLS) helped us with Neanderthals and the sense of smell; Dr Chantal Connoller (Archaeology) on the technology of Neanderthal stone tools; Dr David Kirby (FLS) discussed early images of reconstructions of Neanderthals; PhD researcher Tom O’Mahoney kindly provided obtained 3D prints of Neanderthal bones displayed in the exhibition (the 3D prints are courtesy of the Centre for Digital Fabrication). Last but not least Prof. Jamie Woodward (Geography) provided information about the volcanic ash evidence at Crvena Stijena in Montenegro. We were also supported by Creswell Crags Visitor Centre, which kindly provided access to images and film footage.

That’s some spoil heap: Creswell Crags

So what we have is a composite exhibition that takes the Natural History Museum’s touring exhibits, supplements them with material from Manchester Museum’s collection and adds the latest in scientific understanding about Neanderthals in so far as University of Manchester academics and researchers are involved.

Michael Buckley analysing proteins in the laboratory

Enormous progress has been made in the 150 years or so since Boyd Dawkins  excavated at Creswell Crags, in excavation techniques, in dating and analysing archaeological material from this period, which is known as the Middle Palaeolithic and sometimes the Mousterian. Unfortunately it is too remote for radiocarbon dating but new techniques such as proteomics, identifying bones from their proteins and of course DNA analysis are changing what we know seemingly on a weekly basis. In the most recent New Scientist (23rd April 2016) there’s an article about our DNA inheritance: Neanderthals gave us tolerance to cold and certain forms of addictive behaviour, which millenia later would find an outlet in smoking.

The Singing Neanderthals by Steven Mithen

I wonder what addictive behaviour the Neanderthals were prone to? Steve Mithen famously wrote a book called The Singing Neanderthals The Origins of Music, Language, Mind and Body (2005) after the discovery of a supposed flute made out of a bone from a Brown Bear found at an eastern European site (we show a postage stamp with a picture of the bone in the exhibition). Somehow The Chain Smoking Neanderthals or the Gum Chewing Neanderthals doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Neanderthal addictive behaviour?

Neanderthals had thick brows, receding chins and large wide noses, and no doubt an attitude to go with it. In The Neanderthals Rediscovered: How Modern Science is Rewriting their Story, Dimitra Papagianni and Michael A. Morse comment that if you’d made a disparaging remark about them they’d probably have ripped your arm off!

So whist we like to think of ourselves as superior (purely because by a fluke of nature, sheer happenstance, we survived and they did not), compared to Neanderthals, modern humans were Johnny-come-latelies. The Neanderthals survived for several hundred thousand years in Europe and successfully coped with periods of intense cold. Modern humans have only been around a fraction of the time and already we need another planet because our way of life isn’t sustainable.

The Neanderthals’ bodies were shaped by evolution to better withstand the cool temperatures: short limbs, low body surface area compared to their volume to minimise loss of heat, and barrel-chested. Their skeletons were robust and they must have been incredibly strong.  PhD researcher Tom O’Mahoney’s research, featured in the exhibition, shows Neanderthal children developed faster than modern human children.

Powerful physiques: Neanderthal couple

In the Rediscovering Neanderthals exhibition there are a number of photographs of models of Neanderthals made by Elisabeth Daynes to show that although Neanderthals  were different from us they were also very similar, a far cry from the early depictions of Neanderthals, showing them as savage ape-men. We also show a number of images derived from popular culture. In anticipation of life post-exhibition, some of my colleagues already have their eye on The Neanderthal Man film poster. Of course this is the image that it has suited film directors to promote in order to be sensational but Neanderthals  cannot have been so very different from us. We know that our ancestors interbred with Neanderthals when they encountered them in the Middle East and in Siberia, where the latest evidence has been found for another previously unsuspected and close relative of ours, called the Denisovans.

Why Neanderthals died out is still a mystery. Darwin in On the Origin of Species (1859) stated that ‘species in closest competition will generally press hardest on its nearest kindred, and tend to exterminate them’. So far evidence for genocide hasn’t been found. Perhaps a combination of cold temperatures and the arrival of modern humans was too much for the Neanderthals. Perhaps we passed on  diseases from the Tropics to which they had little or no resistance. Perhaps diminished in numbers the remaining Neanderthals were finally absorbed into the human gene pool, in the same way that Scottish wild cats by interbreeding with domestic moggies are at risk of becoming extinct. There is evidence to support this: people of non-African descent have up to 4% Neanderthal DNA: so there’s direct evidence of Palaeolithic hanky-panky!

Humans in Ancient Britain: Rediscovering Neanderthals opens to the public on Friday 22nd April and runs until 13th July 2016. Manchester Museum is open 10am until 5pm.

 

 

 

 

Conserving Neanderthals by Mlle Loren Souchard

Neanderthal skull casts before conservation

As part of the preparations for Manchester Museum’s latest exhibition Humans in Ancient Britain: Rediscovering Neanderthals, which opens today (22nd April 2016), Mlle Loren Souchard conserved three plaster casts of Neanderthal skulls dating from the end of the 19th century. Their condition, although good overall, required conservation treatment in preparation for the exhibition, and research allowed us to learn more about their history.

Interior of cast showing label

As conservators, it is important to collect much information as possible about an object and its history in order to select the most appropriate conservation intervention.

Detail of one of the 19th century labels

On these labels, handwritten information tells us about the name and the subject of each object, and the typeface on the label informs us more widely about its origins.  We were able to bring together documentation about the skulls, including  descriptions, names, locality and provenance.

The Compagny “Dr F.Krantz / Rheinisches Mineralien-Kontor / Bonn” printed on the labels is still a widely known and respected business. It is actually the oldest geological supply house in the world, and its history is well documented. The Mineralogal Record, a database on the internet shows ‘Label Archives’ of the company from its creation to the 20^th century, and was very helpful for comparing, and providing approximate dates for the labels on the skullcaps.

So we learned that Adam August Krantz founded the firm in 1833 and “Dr. F. Krantz”, his nephew, bought the firm in 1888, and changed the Company’s name from “A. Krantz” to “Dr. F. Krantz” and the «Rheinisches Mineralien- Kontor» in 1891. Regarding the label inside the skullcaps, the fact that it is marked “F. Krantz” instead of “A. Krantz” attests the skull casts were sold after 1891.

From the lack of detail on the casts compared to the originals, we concluded that the casts were probably moulded from existing moulds and not from the originals, and may have been part of a series, as suggested by the numbers written on labels. Then we observed on the Spy skullcap cast two colours on different surface levels, which seems to distinguish the original bone (upper area) from fillings made in order to complete the shape (lower area). This finding could verify a  hypothesis that these two levels and two colours are indicative of use in an educational context to help students.

Spy skull cast after treatment, A2335.5, Manchester Museum

The circulation of archaeological and anthropological discoveries by means of moulded specimens was very important at that time, and collections, teaching models and exhibition pieces  from the Dr F.Krantz / Rheinisches Mineralien-Kontor  were sold to customers all over the world. So, these casts are probably part of a set. In the Manchester Museum, William Boyd Dawkins, the first Curator, presented two photographs of the model of a restored head of a Neanderthal skull to the Museum in 1904-5. So Neanderthals were certainly of interest to the Museum at that time.

Example of conservation planning report

By comparing the Museum’s copy with the original Gibraltar Neanderhtal Skull kept in the National History Museum of London, we were also able to have a better idea of what was  missing on the Manchester Museum cast. Old adhesive on the broken area confirmed that the piece was already broken and had been stuck some time before its loss.

Gibraltar before cleaning

After condition reporting, the casts were dusted down. The labels and the polychrome areas were cleaned with a cosmetic sponge, lightly applied, and the shiny surfaces, with patina, were only cleaned with moist cotton. It was a light cleaning, intended to preserve the patina, as an integral  part of the skulls’ authenticity and their history. The plaster surface on the damaged areas was minimised.

Gibraltar after

We choose not to remove old adhesive on the Gibraltar skull cast broken edge because it’s a part of the object’s history, we simply retouched the edge to make it less intrusive.

Loren conserving Neanderthal skull in the Conservation Laboratory

These three skulls thus have historic and documentary value, they testify about the period of manufacture and are typical of products sold by the company Dr F.Krantz, Rheinisches Mineralien-Kontora ll around the world. To say that we were dealing with plaster casts of Neanderthal skulls, this study proved to be surprisingly  interesting and rewarding, more so than we might have imagined before we started. And of course, it allowed us to learn a little more about these objects.

I am grateful to my supervisor Samantha Sportun, Senior Conservator in the Museum, for having allowed me to work on these casts, and to Bryan Sitch (Curator of Archaeology) for his help with my historic research.

Loren Souchard is a conservation intern from Manchester Museum and is studying Conservation Studies in the National Institute of Cultural Heritage in Paris. Merci beaucoup Ma’moiselle.

Radiocarbon Dating, the Neanderthal Demise, and the Arrival of Modern Humans in Europe

This year’s William Boyd Dawkins lecture will be held at 18:30 in University Place, lecture theatre A, Oxford Road, on December 9^th, and will be given by Professor Tom Higham (University of Oxford), on:-

“Time for the Palaeolithic:Radiocarbon Dating, the Neanderthal Demise, and the Arrival of Modern Humans in Europe”.

Radiocarbon dating by AMS is the key method for understanding the date of the movement of the earliest anatomically modern humans (AMH) into Europe and the concomitant demise of the Neanderthals. Work in Oxford has shown that many previously obtained radiocarbon dates have been severely compromised by contamination that has remained unremoved in many cases. New approaches, using more robust techniques, have resulted in a significant changes to the chronologies of key sites and to a change in our understanding of the timing and pace of cultural changes in the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic. This is the period during which Neanderthals and other Archaic humans were replaced by populations of anatomically modern humans (AMH). Prof. Higham will describe some of the work he has undertaken in the last 10 years, including improved chemical pretreatment methodologies and their application, and describe some of the results. Other important developments in genetics have recently transformed aspects of the field. Finally Prof. Higham will talk about the key issues that need to be tackled if scientists are to further improve our understanding of this key period and the bio-cultural shift that occurred in Eurasia between 50-30,000 years ago.

First World War Archaeology

Session for the Youth Board at Manchester Museum

Thanks to the kindness of Andrea Winn, Curator of Community Outreach  here at Manchester Museum, I can show an image of the recent session about the First World War with the Youth Board  and creative consultants. Whilst the Museum does not collect social history, some objects in the collection were acquired during the First World War. I got out some objects donated by Francis Buckley (1881-1949) when he was serving in northern France during  the First World War. The circumstances were rather unusual. 2nd Lieutenant Buckley was charged with preparing a line of trenches known as the Red Line at the village of Coigneux in 1918. This was in response to a German offensive. Buckley was there from April until the middle of August and had plenty of time to inspect the upcast soil from the excavations to create the trenches. Reginald A.Smith of the British Museum had asked Buckley to look at disturbed ground in case archaeological material was revealed.

Red Line Trenches Coigneux

The drawings above show Francis Buckley’s painstaking care in recording the stratigraphy of the trenches which had yielded flint implements of Mousterian or Neanderthal date, so going back potentially going back several hundred thousand years. The Neanderthal stone tools were found along the tops of the parapets. Buckley knew that the material on top of the parapet was likely to be from the soil from the very bottom of the trenches when they were deepened because of the German threat. Buckley noted ruefully that had it been possible to excavate the parapets  he would have found more implements. ‘But for military reasons this was quite out of the question’ he wrote in his article about the Coigneux discoveries published in Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia (1920-1), pp.1-9.

Francis Buckley was clearly someone to have around in an emergency and he was mentioned in dispatches (‘His Majesty’s high appreciation of the services rendered’) on 9th April 1917. Even so you wonder what Lieutenant Buckley’s commanding officer made of the close observation of the trenches for archaeological material…

This kind of behaviour is not unusual in warfare and quite coincidentally I came across the image below earlier this week in one of our archive boxes. It shows a rather charming little painting of a pot decorated with a white wavy line on its shoulder. Two views are shown.  It’s only when you read the pencil inscription underneath that you realise what this represents. ‘Found whilst deepening a well in Gallipoli – about 3 feet of mud on top of it. The well contained water and was near Cape Hellas about 2 miles from Knithia (?)’. Someone has added in ink  ‘Said at S.Kensington to be modern Turkish, possibly 200 years old’. In other words this pot was found during the unsuccessful Gallipoli campaign in which so many soldiers were killed or wounded, and yet someone still took the trouble to make a record of a pot they had found. There is no name attached to the painting but one likely candidate is Lieutenant Thomas Eric Peet B.A, of the Kings (Liverpool) Regiment, Army Service Corps who worked in the Egyptology Department of Manchester Museum. In 1917 Thomas Peet commanded an Army unit dedicated to excavating and preserving antiquities discovered on the classically rich battlefields of the Salonica Front. Perhaps his promotion was the result of the beautiful records he had made of chance discoveries like the Turkish pot.

Turkish pot from Gallipoli

When I was talking to the Youth Board I said that soldiers weren’t fighting all of the time and often found time to practice some of the skills they had developed in civilian life. Perhaps the detailed recording of flints from the trenches at Coigneux or of a Turkish pot Gallipoli are evidence of soldiers finding ways to express their humanity in an inhumane situation.

Afterwards I showed the Youth Board some Roman material to explore how soldiers 2000 years ago introduced new styles of jewellery and pottery into Britain that the native British would not have been familiar with. New introductions such Continental brooches and mortaria or mixing bowls were adopted by the soldiers’ families and by civilians, making the soldiers important agents of Romanisation in newly-conquered provinces. Roman soldiers as advocates of Mediterranean culinary expertise in their spare time is a far cry from recording archaeology disturbed by the trenches or the fighting at Gallipoli. It seemed somehow glib in comparison.

Thanks to Andrea Winn and Michael Whitworth for information and images used in this blog.

Stone Age Cartoons

Dysonsaur

Robert Thompsons’s brilliant cartoon in the Metro a fortnight ago (‘Neanderthal man kept an orderly cave’) manages to both contrive a witty pun on dinosaur/Dyson vacuum cleaner and invoke the popular (but wildly inaccurate) cliche about cave men being alive at the time of the dinosaurs. And all this as a humorous aside on an article about Neanderthals keeping their caves neat and tidy.

This reminded me of another entertaining cave man cartoon that appeared in New Scientist  ‘Chewing gum gave Stone Age punk a buzz’ (18th September 1993) in which it was reported that 9000-year-old chewing gum had been found in Sweden:-

ruined the carpet

“It could only have been a teenager” observed a Swedish archaeologist!

Both cartoons are very entertaining but there may be a deeper underlying meaning. The cartoons seem to suggest (though 17 years apart) that the house-proud Neanderthal has the edge over the Homo sapiens teenager spitting chewing gum on the rug. This provides an ironic backdrop to a debate that has continued pretty well since the discovery of the first Neanderthal skeleton in the mid-19th century.

It was argued that because Neanderthals became extinct, they were, in Darwinian terms, backward, primitive and definitely inferior to Homo sapiens, who inevitably replaced them. More recently, Neanderthals  have enjoyed much more sympathetic treatment. Their demise has been attributed not so much to their backwardness but to factors over which they had no control such as changes in climate, disease and the increasing isolation of Neanderthal populations. Their brains were larger than ours and, if the latest findings are correct, their treatment of their domestic space shows they were certainly not backward in organising their domestic space.

It is not so long ago that it was reported that Neanderthals created Europe’s first bone tools, adding to growing evidence that Neanderthals were much more intelligent than previously believed (‘Bone tools dispel myth that Neanderthals were stupid’ The Daily Telegraph 13/8/2013 p.10). That cartoons contribute to this debate is a fascinating side-line to prehistoric archaeology. How archaeology comes to be transmuted through popular culture is an area of increasing interest.

A very happy Christmas and New Year to all readers of the Ancient Worlds blog. Joyeux Noel. ευτυχισμένα Χριστούγεννα. Счастливого Рождества.