Leiden research on Neanderthals featured in the Wall Street Journal article
In the article “Neanderthals and Us: We’re More Alike Than Once Thought”, we are reminded that many negative traits, from unintelligent to unsophisticated, have long been attributed to Neanderthals in popular culture. However, recent studies bring to light an ever-increasing amount of evidence contradicting such a depiction leading us to conclude that it might finally be time to overcome these stereotypes.
The researchers of the Faculty of Archaeology in Leiden conducted some of the exciting studies featured in the article. The results of those studies serve as evidence for, e.g. landscape modification with fire, the use of red ocher by the early Neanderthals, the distillation of birch bark to produce tar and the hunting of straight-tusked elephants implying that Neanderthals operated within larger social units than previously thought.
Common to all of them is breaking out of the norm, changing the answers to the questions of who the Neanderthals were and how did they live.
Read the full article on the Wall Street Journal website for more information.