It’s hard to imagine that just 40,000 years ago, there was another species of humans on Earth. Modern humans and Neanderthals lived amongst each other, they interbred, lived in the same caves, hunted similarly, and both made tools.
Then Neanderthals died off. Researchers aren’t completely sure why, though disease, competition, and other factors might have played a role. But in the end, only one group survived. But what would have happened if Neanderthals had survived and lived either alongside Homo sapiens or by themselves?
It’s impossible to know for sure, but researchers do have some clues. Some researchers, like British anthropologist Chris Stringer, say that while it’s too speculative to discern what would have happened if Neanderthals and H. sapiens had both survived, if "Neanderthals had survived instead of us, there was no reason why they couldn't have eventually achieved all the things we have achieved.”
A World for Modern Humans
Others, like French archaeologist Ludovic Slimak, think very differently. He says it’s likely that throughout their entire existence, their traditions would have changed very little. They existed for around 360,000 years before they went extinct, and throughout much of that time, they did things very similarly.
Modern humans are different. For us, scientific fiction imagines what modern life would be like before it happens.
“We tell these stories and then make them possible in our real lives,” says Slimak.
Modern humans dreamed for hundreds of years of visiting the moon before, at a certain moment, making it happen. The same will be true of Mars.
“We’re building a life that’s looking more and more like our stories,” he adds.
Read More: Thorin the Neanderthal Was One of the Last of These Ancient Humans
What If Neanderthals Lived with Humans?
Unlike humans, who are experts in optimization and always looking for ways to further perfect our efficiency, Neanderthals weren’t capable of the same imagination. And as a result, the explosion of technologies that occurred during the Industrial Revolution would not have occurred with Neanderthals.
They wouldn’t have adopted the industrial revolution, which is really about the absolute standardization of everything, says Slimak. It’s what humans do best, and this has long been true of us.
Neanderthals, on the other hand, would have continued with their way of life and lived isolated from modern humans. We know from research on Thorin the Neanderthal — among the last of the Neanderthal populations uncovered by Slimak and his team in France — that they tended to stay close to home and didn’t spread their ideas as rapidly to other Neanderthal groups.
This spread of information was one of the first signs of modern humans learning something and then passing it along to other modern human groups. It was standardization without the technology of modern communication.
And while they might have initially interbred with modern humans, they would have eventually stopped because a Neanderthal parent would have trouble understanding its children, says Slimak. We would have looked similar for a while and then gone our separate ways in life.
What If Neanderthals Survived and Modern Humans Didn't?
For Slimak, with or without modern humans, the plight of the Neanderthal would have been much the same. He says that on their own, as they spread across the globe, their populations on Earth would have been similar. That means that the Earth would not have been altered as it has been under modern humans.
Societies might have been established, but they would have evolved without such utilization of the resources on Earth. While modern human efficiency has changed the face of the world in some good ways, our need for modernization and efficiency has also permanently altered the world in which we live.
The fear, in fact, is that our continual need to standardize will modernize ourselves out of existence. Because there’s never been a “good enough” and we can’t resist using the Earth around us to meet our goals, no matter how much it destroys our future existence. Perhaps one day, instead, we can utilize all this knowledge to finally strive for our own preservation and that of all living beings on Earth.
Read More: Neanderthals Roamed Across Eurasia Before Modern Humans
Article Sources
Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:
Natural History Museum. Who were the Neanderthals?
Cell Geonomics. Long genetic and social isolation in Neanderthals before their extinction
Sara Novak is a science journalist based in South Carolina. In addition to writing for Discover, her work appears in Scientific American, Popular Science, New Scientist, Sierra Magazine, Astronomy Magazine, and many more. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from the Grady School of Journalism at the University of Georgia. She's also a candidate for a master’s degree in science writing from Johns Hopkins University (expected graduation 2023).
