From the news coverage of a new study concluding that
Neandertals, like modern humans, engaged in symbolic behavior,
you might think the study settles a long-standing debate between
researchers who think Neandertals were stupid and those who
think they were smart. But there really isn't such a debate:
Most anthropologists agree that the big-brained Neandertals had
some hefty cognitive capabilities. Rather, the finding that
Neandertals apparently wore mollusk shells as jewelry and used
them as paint containers offers insight about the social
conditions under which symbolism flourished among early modern
humans but was rare among Neandertals. The paper, published
online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, suggests that "Neandertals, too, had such [symbolic]
capacities," says John Speth, an archaeologist at the University
of Michigan, Ann Arbor. The shells were found in the Aviones
cave and the Antón rock shelter, Neandertal sites in southeast
Spain radiocarbon dated to between abou