Ice, Ice, Baby!

Modern media has portrayed the world of Neanderthals as a frozen wasteland where one might be lucky if woolly mammoth was on the menu and luckier if a fire was built. However, that is far from reality. Again, this week, I have been investigating Kindred. It has led me to decide I have a bit to clear up in terms of the world Neanderthals lived in before I get too much into how they lived in it.

               Let’s start by breaking the myth that Neanderthals were solely ice-dwellers. The world’s climate can be roughly grouped into warm periods (inter-glacials) and cold periods (glacials.) They chase each other endlessly, one always following the other throughout time. During a glacial period, temperatures may be 2-5 degrees Celsius (which is no more than 9 degrees Fahrenheit) colder than they are during inter-glacials, which is a warm period, like we are living in today. This can all be measured using something called Marine Isotope Stages (MIS.) MIS 1, for example, is the inter-glacial we are living in now. MIS 2 was the glacial that came before that. The further back we reach into the past, the larger the stage number. Neanderthals were a distinct species starting from about MIS 12 to MIS 3. This spans a few true ice ages, notably during MIS 12 and MIS 6. During these times, the entire northern hemisphere would have been covered in ice down to France and England. As this all pairs with the graph I have provided below, Neanderthals did certainly get their fair share of cold. However, these cold periods are outweighed by warm; Neanderthals would have seen more time in inter-glacials than glacials.

TL;DR: Ice was not a ‘norm.’

Based on records of where and when Neanderthals lived, it seems highly likely that they would have existed in a world filled with many creatures as well as climates. During hotter periods, they might have lived alongside rhinoceroses or flat-tusked elephants that had come to fill the, at some points tropical, middle of Eurasia. At other times, they may have been visited by moose grazing along birch trees. At the coldest periods in history, Neanderthals may have killed musk ox, a creature renowned for very rarely moving away from conditions not unlike those in the childhood, classic movie ‘Ice Age.’ Neanderthals saw many creatures and environments during their 450,000-year lifespan. That drives home one undeniable fact: Neanderthals were very adaptive. In fact, we have found remains from both caves in Gibraltar, along sunny beaches where they might have collected seafood, and in Siberia, where conditions today are considered unlivable.

               This is all a very long-winded and science-y way of telling you that you should throw your conceptions about Neanderthals’ environment out the window. They were a species almost as vast as humans are now. Just as Inuits might be found hunting whale in the North and beachgoers lazing on the shores of sunny Greece today, Neanderthals might have been found all over in all sorts of times and climates. They persevered and left little hints of themselves behind for us to pick up. Next time, I’ll get more tactile than chemical and explore the lithics that tell us so much about what Neanderthals did with this varied world they called their own.