Did Neanderthals Wear Clothes ?

[0ldgrizz]

The Neanderthals were well adapted to their frozen environment. But, just how well adapted were they? No bone-needles have ever been discovered among their artifacts. We must remember that humans are animals and able to adapt and evolve. Is it possible that Neanderthals were physically adapted to their environment without artificial protection? The tanning and curing of hides is a science that perhaps was unknown to them. Your thoughts...

[theropod]

I highly doubt they had fur or blubber. Very likely they did have clothes, just not ones so advanced that a bony needle would have been necessary. Or maybe they used an alternate technique instead of needles, or they actually had needles, but they were not preserved for some reason.

[theropod]

But really, how difficult is it to produce basic clothing?
You take a hide (that’s something neandethals necessarily had a lot of, it’s almost impossible a primate would not experiment with it–even a chimp probably would try to do something with it if it regularly brought down large game that provided large hides. And unlike neanderthals, chimps don’t have a use for it, neither do they have the cognitive capacities of a modern human) and cut a hole in the middle, and you’ve got a simple poncho. You’ll notice it doesn’t stay pliable after it’s dried, so you try to get it back to soft. I don’t really see how taking the brains of some animal to massage it with is such an exceedingly unlikely coincidence, H. sapiens also managed to figure it out somehow, no reason why Neanderthals shouldn’t.
As for smoking the skin, that would pretty much take care of itself given there’s a fire, or at worst people would notice that the stuff went all rigid after getting wet but noticed smoke made it better.

Actually I doubt H. neanderthalensis was the first human to figure it out.

As far as needles are concerned, they weren’t necessary, perhaps not even very useful. We have to keep in mind the skins in question were often from pretty large animals, and must have been accordingly thick, so if present, holes for sutures would be punched through with something more robust. If you leave sinew or rawhide ends in their natural state they are hard (correct me if I’m wrong), so those would have more than sufficed to get the string through the hole. There are countless conceivable reasons why a human employing this technique might never come to invent a needle of the type used by Homo sapiens, or at least never find it worth producing in larger numbers.

[0ldgrizz]

Tanning a hide and producing a supple leather garment, with or without the fur, takes a lot more than just smoking the skin. Bottom line, everyone assumes that Neanderthal acted like a Homo sapien and wore clothing. However, there is the possibility that, like the elephant which adapted and became the woolly mammoth, perhaps the Neanderthal adapted similarly.

[theropod]

I know, I’ve actually written so. But no step in the whole process seems overly difficult to arrive at by trial and error with the substances naturally ocurring at a camp site of a big game hunter. Still, bony needles don’t appear necessary for producing sufficient clothing.

Everyone assumes that Neanderthals acted like modern humans, which is because they likely had a comparable level of intelligence and advanced levels of tool use, including hide scapers and advanced blades.

It’s not impossible that Neanderthals were furry, but it’s not realistic to assume that producing clothing was beyond its capabilities.

[0ldgrizz]

Either scenario is possible. I simply consider the fact that humans are a part of the animal kingdom and no less subject to adaptive evolution. Therefore, although seemingly unlikely, Neanderthal could have carried more body fat on average and could have been much hairier. If he did learn to tan hides, perhaps they were simply tied on by strips of hide. A hide simply draped over a man's shoulders, as depicted on so many drawings would be little protection against harsh weather. The Neanderthals, if like us, would have kept bundled like an Inuit.

[theropod]

Of course they are subject to adaptive evolution. Adaptive evolution can also be change in behaviour tough.

[0ldgrizz]

I'm not saying that Neanderthals were so perfectly adapted physically that they had no need of protective clothing. I simply wonder if this possibility ever occurred to anyone. Fact is, while they probably wore some type of protective garments, we cannot know this for sure. There is no evidence. Sewing cured hides together would have had the best results. Sewing instruments were discovered in Cro-magnon dwellings, but not among Neanderthal artifacts. We must remember that they were not merely another race of human, but a separate species.  

[creature386]

Just found this:
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23084621
They modeled that Neanderthals could have covered up to 80% of their body with clothes. While there is no direct evidence, all logic points towards clothing.

[theropod]

Maybe it was a lack of manual dexterity that’s responsible for the lack of sewing needles? I know from experience they it’s quite a fidgeting to make a bony needle, even for a Homo sapiens. Assuming Neanderthals were specialized macrophages, it would make sense for them to not have the degree of fine motor skills that would ne needed to effectively employ it.

Considering intelligence is probably not the issue, it could be linked to the physical attributes.

[creature386]

Makes sense. Reminds me of how humans (compared to chimps) exchanged strength for muscle control/dexterity.