How different were Neanderthals' habitual activities? A comparative analysis with diverse groups of recent humans

The lifeways of Neanderthals remain poorly understood despite numerous hints from the archaeological record and from Neanderthal anatomy that their lifestyles may have differed substantially from early modern humans and from more recent populations. The distinctiveness, inefficiency, or primitiveness of Neanderthal lifestyles and patterns of activity play a central role in many adaptive scenarios that have been proposed to explain the eventual ascendancy of modern humans and the Neanderthals' demise. However, many recent studies of faunal remains accumulated by Neanderthals, stable isotope analyses of Neanderthal bones, and the energetic demands of their large body mass suggest that these archaic humans were equally efficient hunters as fully modern foragers in similar environments. This contradictory evidence inspired the present study. To gain new insights into Neanderthal behaviors we use a comparative approach, examining indices of residual bone strength and midshaft diaphyseal shapes of the humerus, femur, and tibia in several groups of Neanderthals (European and Near Eastern), early modern humans, and sixteen diverse groups of recent humans. The results indicate that Neanderthal limbs bear a close similarity to a fairly wide spectrum of more recent groups, especially those who practiced intensive forms of foraging within fairly limited territories. The Neanderthal pattern differs strikingly from those of Skhul-Qafzeh and Gravettian humans, but these early modern humans also differ substantially from the later, intensive foragers. These results are probably more indicative of the relative distribution of people to resources in the Mousterian than the relative behavioral capacities of modern humans and Neanderthals.