Did Neanderthals Believe in an Afterlife?

A possible Neanderthal burial ground suggests that they practiced funeral rituals and possessed symbolic thought before modern humans.

April 20, 2011

Evidence for a likely 50,000-year-old Neanderthal burial ground that includes the remains of at least three individuals has been unearthed in Spain, according to a Quaternary International paper.

The deceased appear to have been intentionally buried, with each Neanderthal's arms folded such that the hands were close to the head. Remains of other Neanderthals have been found in this position, suggesting that it held meaning.

news.discovery.com...

A few dozen documented Neanderthal burials from Western Europe, Eastern Europe and Southwest Asia have already been documented.

Neanderthal skeletons found in apparent burial poses have been unearthed at a site in Spain.
The site, Sima de las Palomas, may be the first known Neanderthal burial ground of Mediterranean Europe.
Remains for six to seven other Neanderthals, including an infant and two juveniles, as well as associated tools and food, have also been excavated.

Why wouldn't they be spiritual, evidence shows that that they had loving close family relationships like we have today.

It may be that they were born with what we call today the G-d part of the brain that allows us to worship something.

It is only in the the Western world that an afterlife or reincarnation isn't embraced, it is still common in the Eastern world today.

Related topics:

Anthropology

Neanderthals

Isolated tribes today who have never been exposed to the outside world worship something, it could be as simple a rock.

They were were found covered together with rocks burying their remains, this certainly says they were more intelligent then we thought. Scientists today know very little about the Neanderthals, much of what we read is assumption on their part.

They wore clothes, used tools and it seems cooked their food over fires. We cannot assume that they were primitive and couldn't take care of themselves.

believe it or not Chimpanzee's mourn death. now not sure if they believe in the afterlife... I'll ask the next time I'm at the zoo.

reply to post by Aquarius1


uhhhh. pretty sure the idea of a neanderthal as a mindless animal that threw rocks and crude spears and club it's women is outdated and hasn't been championed by any anthropologist for decades.

reply to post by ISRAELdid911


When our dog died, our other dog tried to put dirt on the dog that passed away and was very sad for quite a long time. Food for thought. I thought it was pretty symbolic the two grew up together and went ever where together in the 2 acre backyard we had and always got along very well.

reply to post by optimus primal


neanderthal and bigfoot have very similar framework.

reply to post by ISRAELdid911


except the height difference, and the degree of hair coverage. yeah...they're both strong.

my point with my original post in this thread was that neanderthals have been generally accepted to be quite different from the brutish manbeasts originally thought. i can remember reading in highschool about supposed burial rights, about how they made art. More recently about how they had everything required to have had a language. it seems to me that the OP read a book about neanderthals from the 60's and is suddenly suprised to find that modern anthropology disagrees with previous ideas.

Originally posted by ISRAELdid911
believe it or not Chimpanzee's mourn death. now not sure if they believe in the afterlife... I'll ask the next time I'm at the zoo.

Why would you compare Neanderthals with Chimpanzee's?

I don't believe they are related in anyway.

Thanks for posting anyway.

Originally posted by optimus primal
my point with my original post in this thread was that neanderthals have been generally accepted to be quite different from the brutish manbeasts originally thought. i can remember reading in highschool about supposed burial rights, about how they made art. More recently about how they had everything required to have had a language. it seems to me that the OP read a book about neanderthals from the 60's and is suddenly suprised to find that modern anthropology disagrees with previous ideas.

You are absolutely right optimus, I know that in recent years science has changed their minds about the Neanderthals.

The problem is they don't have a brain and can only go by their bones and the artifacts found surrounding them.

Thanks for posting.

i don't see why that's a problem. you can tell a lot about someone or something about the points and artifacts buried around them. certainly it's not as accurate as videotaping their life and will eventually need to be revised as more information is available, like new sites with more artifacts and better preserved bodies. however, that doesn't mean we don't , today, have a generally good idea of how they lived, or that we can't make an educated guess as to how they may have viewed the world and interacted with it. it seems to me you're saying that unless there's pictoral evidence, it's all worthless. that's a rather narrow view.

reply to post by optimus primal


I am not saying that at all and do not take a narrow view.

There are many schools of thought and as you know there isn't always agreement.

The Neanderthals were very religious which is in fact why they dissapeared from the earth, when the Neanderthal Savoir returned and trumped them all up to Neanderthal Heaven after destroying the Neanderthal cities of Hollywood and Gamora!

They believed that by adhering to a Neanderthal State here on earth with heavy taxation, constant war, and contrived scracity in a performance based system would qualify them for an eternal after life of unearthly rewards of the most wonderful nature.

While a few Neanderthals doubted this (those not living in Salt Lake City, Rome and Jerusalem) it's believed likewise they were consigned to a Neanderthal Hell for eternity for their sins against the Neanderthal God and the States he smiled upon!

I know that all sounds crazy as modern humans would never likely believe such nonsense but the Neanderthals very much did!

reply to post by Aquarius1



so then what are you saying? that since anthropologists got some of it wrong half a century ago that modern anthropology isn't any better? merely because we can't speak to the dead? clarify please.

When you consider that Neanderthal DNA has been shown to be present in modern DNA of some people, then it would seem reasonable to conclude that we are of the same species, with the appearances mainly attributable to regional differences. From what I recall from school when we were learning about animal species, a species should only be able to interbreed and produce viable offspring with members of the same species. So, if interbreeding were going on, then we were'nt a true separate species -- maybe closer to what modern folks call "races", like blacks/whites/asians/etc.

It seems that when I go out, I can usually spot someone who somewhat resembles that image on the cover of National Geographic.

Well neanderthals did have slightly larger brains then modern humans, and they are our most reacent ancestors that we know of so if they werent spiritual then we shouldent be either.

reply to post by davidchin


no it would not be reasonable to assume we're the same species. we're not. we're cousins. cousin species can sometimes reproduce. the offspring are not always fertile. the neanderthal dna that some believe is in some people's dna is not yet a definite to my knowledge, it is still in the peer review process. if it really is neanderthal dna, then it proves only that as cousin species we could reproduce together, and by luck those offspring were fertile.

reply to post by GoldenGolem


they are not our most recent ancestor. here's some basic info that can be corroborated through links provided in the source (wikipedia is not always reliable that's why you check the links )

H. neanderthalensis lived from 400,000[35] to about 30,000 years ago. Also proposed as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis.[36] Evidence from sequencing mitochondrial DNA indicated that no significant gene flow occurred between H. neanderthalensis and H. sapiens, and, therefore, the two were separate species that shared a common ancestor about 660,000 years ago.[37][38] In 1997, Mark Stoneking stated: "These results [based on mitochondrial DNA extracted from Neanderthal bone] indicate that Neanderthals did not contribute mitochondrial DNA to modern humans… Neanderthals are not our ancestors". Subsequent investigation of a second source of Neanderthal DNA supported these findings.[39] However, the 2010 sequencing of the Neanderthal genome indicated that Neanderthals did indeed interbreed with H. sapiens circa 75,000 BC (after H. sapiens moved out from Africa, but before they separated into Europe, the Middle East, and Asia).[40] Nearly all modern humans, non-African humans have 1% to 4% of their DNA derived from Neanderthal DNA.[40] However, supporters of the multiregional hypothesis point to recent studies indicating non-African nuclear DNA heritage dating to one Ma,[41] although the reliability of these studies has been questioned.[42] Competition from Homo sapiens probably contributed to Neanderthal extinction.[43][44] They could have coexisted in Europe for as long as 10,000 years.[45]

H. sapiens Main article: Early Homo sapiens H. sapiens (the adjective sapiens is Latin for "wise" or "intelligent") have lived from about 250,000 years ago to the present. Between 400,000 years ago and the second interglacial period in the Middle Pleistocene, around 250,000 years ago, the trend in skull expansion and the elaboration of stone tool technologies developed, providing evidence for a transition from H. erectus to H. sapiens. The direct evidence suggests there was a migration of H. erectus out of Africa, then a further speciation of H. sapiens from H. erectus in Africa. A subsequent migration within and out of Africa eventually replaced the earlier dispersed H. erectus. This migration and origin theory is usually referred to as the recent single origin or Out of Africa theory. Current evidence does not preclude some multiregional evolution or some admixture of the migrant H. sapiens with existing Homo populations. This is a hotly debated area of paleoanthropology.

en.wikipedia.org...

so there you have it, homo erectus is our most recent ancestor.

reply to post by optimus primal


Thank you for correcting me.
But what do you think of them having slightly larger brains then us? Is that true? I got it from a book on prehistoric mammals.

reply to post by davidchin


N.Y. Times April 25, 1999
Discovery Suggests Humans Are a Bit Neanderthal
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Neanderthals and modern humans not only coexisted for thousands of years long ago, as anthropologists have established, but now their little secret is out: they also cohabited.

At least that is the interpretation being made by paleontologists who have examined the 24,500-year-old skeleton of a young boy discovered recently in a shallow grave in Portugal. Bred in the boy's bones seemed to be a genetic heritage part Neanderthal, part early modern Homo sapiens. He was a hybrid, they concluded, and the first strong physical evidence of interbreeding between the groups in Europe.

cogweb.ucla.edu...

I agree with you davidchin, this paper from UCLA Education has come to the same conclusion, there is much agreement with this hypotheses.

Dr. Trinkaus, an authority on Neanderthal paleontology has come to the conclusion that there is definite evidence of admixture between Neanderthals and European early modern humans by examining a boy, who was about 4 years old at death, had the prominent chin and other facial characteristics of a fully modern human,

reply to post by GoldenGolem


neanderthal average brain size= 1,200–1,900 cm3 (73–116 cu in) skull capacity

modern humans = 950 cc to 1800 cc, with the average about 1400 cc.


so really, the averages for both our species are pretty similar, the outliers are much different though.

i wish we still had them around, we're one of the only species on earth with no living near cousins. long long long ago there were around three or four human species surviving in the world at the same time. no longer. i think when the last neanderthal died we lost something precious. maybe someday we'll bring them back.


sources
hypertextbook.com...
en.wikipedia.org...