The Broader Debate: What Were Neanderthals Capable Of?

Shanidar Z’s burial context sits within a much larger argument about Neanderthal cognition that has been substantially transformed in the past two decades.

The traditional model of Neanderthals as cognitively simple, behaviorally rigid, incapable of the symbolic behavior associated with modern humans has been progressively revised.

The revisions have come from multiple directions.

Ancient DNA analysis, beginning with the sequencing of the Neanderthal genome first published by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in 2010 and substantially expanded in subsequent years, showed that Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans interbred at multiple points during the period when their populations overlapped.

Non-African modern humans today carry approximately one to four percent of their DNA from Neanderthal ancestors.