Neanderthals Used Their Hands for Precision, Not Just Power

Neanderthals Used Their Hands for Precision, Not Just Power
Researchers suggest that the early human ancestors’ hand usage places them in line with tailors, painters rather than brute-force laborers

By Meilan Solly
smithsonian.com
September 27, 2018 12:55PM

Homo neanderthalensis, the early human ancestor better known colloquially as the Neanderthal, has long been associated with brutish behavior, but a new study published in Science Advances adds to the growing body of literature that challenges this stereotype.

As Meagan Cantwell reports for Science magazine, a team of European researchers has found that Neanderthals were capable of wielding a precision grip, placing their hand usage more in line with tailors and painters than bricklayers, butchers and other brute-force laborers.

To assess Neanderthals’ capacity for precise craftsmanship, scientists from the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at Germany’s University of Tübingen, Switzerland’s University of Basel and the Natural History Museum of Basel turned to entheses, or scars left at the points where muscle attaches to bone. These markings, according to New Scientist’s Michael Marshall, manifest as raised areas of bone that can be measured via 3D scanning.

Precision grips require deft manipulation of the index finger and thumb—imagine writing with a pen or guiding a paintbrush across a blank canvas—while power grips, which Marshall likens to the chokehold young children use when grasping crayons with their entire fist, place more stress on the thumb and pinky. Each grip produces a distinctive muscle-use pattern that can be assessed through analysis of skeletal remains.

Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/neanderthals-used-their-hands-precision-not-just-power-180970422/#Zwb6CXK1gsebhXAZ.99