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THE MIDDLE & LATER STONE AGE (~300 ka to ~35 ka)

The Mystery

Many different hominids were trying to survive in the Stone Age, from tree-dwelling australopithecines in the ESA to Neanderthals and other primates who lived a hundred thousand years ago. But one species flourished and continues to thrive today: Homo sapiens. In this part of the Google Site, we'll briefly explore what caused we humans to launch to the top of the evolutionary food chain, what separated us from Neanderthals, and why we were the ones who survived and thrived.

Brain vs. Brawn

The Neanderthals were far more muscular than modern humans, thereby allowing them to attempt dangerous hunts for big-game animals. 40 ka, Homo sapiens were, anatomically-speaking, “indistinguishable” from modern humans. They were also “puny” compared to the far more brutish Neanderthals who were carnivores with a protein-heavy diet [1]. Prehistoric humans were already small to begin with, considering that the average LSA adult was the size of a modern preteen [2]. So, one can only imagine how burly the Neanderthals must have been by comparison. Still, the brute strength that Neanderthals possessed surely helped them hunt dangerous animals like bears, rhinos, and mammoths. However, this also meant that they were prone to the hardships that come with hunting big-game prey. Perhaps the best demonstration of this comes from the remains of Neanderthal skeletons that "show healed upper-body fractures" which were incurred by getting into fights with beasts (refer back to [1]). They lived incredibly reckless lives by always pursuing the most threatening animals in existence, and this undoubtedly hindered their ability to flourish and rise to the top of the food chain.

Humans flourished because of their inventiveness and intelligence while the relatively dull Neanderthals never innovated any of the tools they used. According to archaeologist Thomas Wynn and psychologist Frederick L. Coolidge, LSA humans displayed "an enhanced ability to plan and strategize” (refer back to[1]). This is made most clear when one considers the patience prehistoric humans must have had when operating traps remotely and using elaborate fish weirs. Their intelligence undoubtedly made up for their lack of brute strength. Meanwhile, "Neanderthals lacked the advanced executive functions and working-memory capacity that people have today” [3]. They never used any sophisticated traps to capture animals, and neither did they innovate their spears, saws, and other tools for the 200,000 years that they lived on this planet [4]. Not to mention, they never changed their diet. While humans became omnivores, Neanderthals remained die-hard carnivores who continued to eat the same animals (refer back to [3]). Simply put, humans were willing to adapt to their environment as well as change their technology and diet so they could improve their chance of survival. But Neanderthals, for a whopping 200,000 years, remained stagnant and unchanging in their ways.

Answering the Mystery

What gave humans the advantage over Neanderthals was not just the development of a singular gene, but rather the cumulative effect of tens of thousands of years of evolution. As Wynn and Coolidge contended, what likely contributed to the evolution of intelligence in humans was the development of a phenotype with a "small reproductive advantage… [that] increased in frequency fairly rapidly” [5]. This would have resulted in humans eventually gaining the smarts necessary to invent and innovate technologies that could assist in their survival. And even though it's still unclear when and how humans acquired these genes, the ultimate consequence of this was that the human race "survived and flourished, whereas Neanderthals met their demise" [6]. Further, humans were able to rise to the top of the food chain because their advanced cognitive faculties allowed them to more effectively hunt and domesticate other animals as well as systematically cultivate plants.

1. Wynn and Coolidge, "A Stone-Age Meeting of Minds," p. 44.
2. Bower, "Children of Prehistory," p. 265.
3. Wynn and Coolidge, "A Stone-Age Meeting of Minds," p. 50.
4. ibid., p. 45.
5. ibid., p. 49
6. ibid., p. 51.