by Bjorn Kurten
The bones of Neandertal man give no clues as to the color of his skin. As a rule, however, people living at high latitudes have lighter pigmentation than the inhabitants of tropical and subtropical regions. This is thought to be an adaptation to differences in the exposure to solar radiation. As the Neandertals had lived in Europe for a very long time, the inference that they were light-skinned is obvious. They could also have differentiated into local races with varied pigmentation traits, for instance blond and red-haired. The facial peculiarities of the “Reds,” however, are modeled upon the eastern Neandertals of the Levant.
If the sapients emigrated from the south, they would be likely to be darker-skinned, and we might picture them as rather like the present-day inhabitants of India. In the story, a southern heritage is suggested by the name of Tiger’s mother, Oriole; this bird would not be found in the pine-clad country of the north.
Many of the rituals described, especially in the case of the “Blacks,” are documented in the Paleolithic material. Alexander Marshack says that the thinking of early Homo sapiens was very complex and surprisingly modern. There are, for instance, sequential engravings that can be interpreted as moon calendars. He also found that many animal pictures were reused: repeated engravings were made in the same contour. In the story I suggest that this was a ritual to appease the Guardian, or supernatural owner, of the game—who, as Ake Hultkrantz has shown, is an important figure in the religion of many hunting societies. Of course, other interpretations are possible.
Tiger’s initiation is based on discoveries in the Basua Cave in Savona, Italy, and the strangulation torture suffered by Left Hand was depicted at Addaura, Sicily; both were described by Alberto C. Blanc. Ochre hand impressions can be seen in many caves, and often a finger or a finger-joint is missing. Perhaps sacrificed?
As an artist, Tiger is shown to rely on eidetic images which are fixed in the brain with total recall, rather than on conscious memorizing. He uses ochre and charcoal for painting, but I may be guilty of an anachronism in having him use the indigo dye extracted from the woad plant.
In spite of the rich archaeological material at hand, it is not easy to frame a really credible picture of the society in which Ice Age sapients lived. When we come to the Neandertals, the problems, and the call for empathy, are much greater.
The “White” society is here described as highly ritualized and mild-mannered, probably a startling notion to anyone who has seen a life reconstruction of Neandertal man with his seemingly brutish features. A key character in the physical make-up of these men was the beetle brow. It creates an impression of ferocity, and I suspect that that was one of its main functions. A big gorilla, its eyes hooded by mighty, bony brows, looks most intimidating. This, as Dale Guthrie says, “has made it easy for writers to portray it as a dangerous beast, even though it is a vegetarian and rather shy.” In nature, aggression by display is often a sham. If an intimidation stare suffices to frighten away an enemy, why engage in costly fighting? Behind his menacing mask, primitive man may well have been rather peaceable.
From this it is only a brief step to envisage a system of appeasing ritual to offset the effects of the built-in threat display. Given sufficient time, and the inventiveness of the human brain, it could even develop to seemingly absurd degrees. I do not say it did, but at any rate there is compelling evidence for the complexity and humanity of Neandertal society to support the idea of ritualization.
The demography, for instance, is surprisingly favorable. Marie-Antoinette de Lumley, studying Neandertal remains from the Cave of Hortus in southern France, noted the high incidence of old people. The fact that every fifth individual was over fifty years old is truly amazing in a primitive hunting society. Ralph Solecki showed that two of the old Neandertals from Shanidar Cave in Iraq were so severely crippled that they must have been completely dependent on their fellow men for a long time. No killing of the “old and useless” here. And Erik Trinkaus and William Howells, marshaling the total evidence, point out that the longevity of Neandertal man was markedly greater than that of the succeeding sapients. It would seem that old people were held in high respect. Probably, sages like Silverbirch were not uncommon.
Of course, many elements in the story are wholly fictitious. There is certainly no evidence for military organizations like that of Shelk, or for such early, if abortive, attempts at domestication. The first domesticated animal seems to have been the dog, but that came later, perhaps some 15,000 years before the present. And finally, there is no certain proof that Neandertals and sapients ever met, though it appears likely.
In this story they do meet, and so I come to the model for the extinction of the Neandertals (Whites). I’m sure you have it by now, but here it is anyway. It comes in three parts.
First: The species hybrids are assumed to be sterile. Baywillow, Black Cloud, the Shelks, all are childless. At the same time, they are affected by hybrid vigor, giving them unusual resistibility, intelligence, and so on, but that doesn’t affect the outcome. Even a moderate reduction of fertility would have the same effect in the long run.
Second: Both Whites and Blacks regard the Blacks as superior beings. With their less advanced technology and poorer articulation (Philip Liebermann has shown that Neandertal vocal organs probably could produce no other vowel than “ah”), the Neandertals in fact suffer from an inferiority complex. In addition, the “childlike” features of the sapient face appeal to the tender emotions of the Neandertals.
Third: The Whites in this story are matriarchal, the Blacks patriarchal. This cannot be proved, but my impression—which may be false—is that among early sapients male and female differed more in size than among the Neandertals. Could this also mean a greater difference in the sex roles—or am I poking a hornets’ nest? In any case, here is the core of the model. It would lead to the offspring between White males and Black females becoming outcasts in the Black society (as happens to the Shelks), whereas the offspring of a Black male—White female mating would be honored in the White society (Baywillow). And so the great majority of the hybrids would be of the second kind: children of White mothers.
There it is. Many more White mothers than Black mothers will have hybrid children, or in other words, sterile offspring. As a result, the number of Whites will dwindle continuously even if the two kinds of humans live together in perfect amity.
The model might be compared to the use of sterilizing radiation in certain methods of biological pest control. It is, of course, an unpleasant analogy, and yet I feel tempted to stress it. Too often we have regarded groups of our fellow men as pests, thereby justifying brutal and irresponsible use of technology against them. This seems, unfortunately, to be a characteristic of the species which in its hubris calls itself Homo sapiens.
But I repeat, this is only one model out of many possible ones, and I don’t think it happened just this way. Dixi et salvavi animam meam.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Björn Kurtén was born in Finland in 1924. A professor at the University of Helsinki and one of the world’s leading paleontologists, he has worked extensively in Europe, Africa, and North America. Professor Kurtén has published several novels in Swedish and numerous books in English on mammals and the ice ages. He is a fellow of the Explorers Club and has held a lectureship in zoology at Harvard University.