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Neanderthals Making Yarn?!
240 Plays4 years ago
This is a crossover episode with Chris Webster and The Archaeology Show!
Recently, evidence of twisted cord was discovered on a Neanderthal archaeological site. While the exact use of this cord is unknown, we discuss our theories for how Neanderthals could have applied this technology to everyday life. Most importantly, this discovery contributes to breaking down the myth that Neanderthals were technologically inferior to their human contemporaries.
Links
- Direct evidence of Neanderthal fibre technology and its cognitive and behavioral implications
- Neanderthal Cord Weaver
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Transcript
Introduction and Episode Crossover
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. Welcome to a crossover episode between historical yarns and The Archaeology Show.
Neanderthals and Yarn: Opening the Topic
00:00:21
Speaker
I'm Rachel Rodin from historical yarns, and joining me is Chris Webster, host of The Archaeology Show. Today we're going to talk about Neanderthals making yarn, sort of.
00:00:35
Speaker
Hey everybody and welcome to the show. Hey, this is Chris Webster too. So check out historical yarns on the archeology podcast network at arcpodnet.com slash historical yarns. And if you're on the historical yarns podcast, you can check out the archeology show at arcpodnet.com forward slash archeology. You can also find each of these shows and all the shows we offer at the archeology podcast network at your favorite podcast player. So wherever you find podcasts, you can find these shows and like a ton more. So what are we talking about today?
00:01:04
Speaker
Okay, so today we are talking about Neanderthals and making yarn, kind of. So an article came out earlier this year in April and it actually made the rounds on the sort of fiber Facebook groups and yarn and knitting and crochet related Facebook groups. Cause everybody was super excited about it. That's where I first heard about this article. The name of it is direct evidence of Neanderthal fiber technology and its cognitive and behavioral implications.
Significance of Fiber Preservation
00:01:33
Speaker
It was published April 9th, 2020 and the lead author is BL Hardy and there's a bunch of other people on the article as well. It was published in Scientific Reports. So this is a really interesting article because people tend to think of Neanderthals as not being
00:01:50
Speaker
very advanced technologically speaking. They sort of have that caveman mentality about them. And as more and more time goes by and we find more evidence that they actually had a lot more technology than we realized, things like this are starting to pop up.
00:02:06
Speaker
This is the kind of thing that we don't get to find very often because fibers don't preserve very well. But in this case, a little tiny strand of what they're calling cord was found preserved on this site. So that is what this article is about. The location is Aubrey du Maras, and it's in a valley near the Ardèche River. I'm saying this totally wrong. A tributary of the Rhône River in France.
00:02:36
Speaker
care to correct me on any of those pronunciations. I'm not going to correct you because I don't know either, but we'll have the link for this in the show notes so you can click on it and go read the article yourself and get all the right pronunciations if you know how to say these things. Yeah, I definitely don't. My background is Spanish kind of.
00:02:52
Speaker
Anyway, so this has been sort of southern East-ish France area, right? And the interesting part here is that the preservation allowed for fiber and textile to be preserved. And it's only the tiniest little piece of it too. So I don't think that there was very much fiber or textile preserved on this site, but they did get one tiny little piece. And it's
Archaeological Methods and Preservation
00:03:14
Speaker
just this tiny little piece of cord and it was found underneath the flake. And that flake
00:03:19
Speaker
and the piece of cord were in situ, they found them together, they pulled them out of an archaeological unit together, and they were covered in sediment and brachia, showing that they were at least contemporaneous, if not the cord was deposited earlier than the flake. So based on the way they were deposited in the unit, they can make that determination.
00:03:41
Speaker
So, real quick, this small piece of cord was wrapped around this little nodule on this flake. And we're talking about not microscopic, but really, really small. And I'll tell you what, we're both archaeologists and the excavating we've done. If I pulled a flake out of the ground, I mean, the first thing I do is vigorously wipe it off on my pants.
00:04:02
Speaker
That is such a good point and I don't really know why they weren't doing that. Maybe they had an expectation based on the preservation on the site itself. Maybe they had some sort of expectation that maybe they could find this so they were taking extra precautions and not doing stuff like that.
00:04:18
Speaker
So when I read the methods, it was clear that they were pulling artifacts directly out of the soil, putting them straight into a bag and not really touching them or doing anything with them after they pulled them out of the soil. So yeah, I think it was just a different methodology. And maybe that was because of the preservation. I don't know.
00:04:36
Speaker
Yeah, because I mean, we've done cultural resource management archaeology. We've both also done academic archaeology and it's a very different set of tools that you use and a mindset that you do because in cultural resource management, I mean, you're really just trying to get things out of the ground as fast as you can and you worry about it later. But in academic archaeology, maybe
00:04:54
Speaker
in their previous research, they knew there was a possibility for maybe not fibers necessarily. Maybe they weren't even specifically thinking about those, but definitely some sort of residue analysis or something like that where if that's the case, I mean, they're probably wearing gloves because you don't even want to get your hands on these things and you don't want to touch them. You don't want to get your oils on them. You don't want to get your DNA on
Dating Techniques Explained
00:05:14
Speaker
them if that's going to be a thing that people look for.
00:05:16
Speaker
And you don't want to, I guess, infect it or add something to it from the modern era. Yeah. You want to keep it as pristine as possible. Yeah. And that's a good point because they could have had some like ethnobotany botanical type of stuff that they were hoping to find. And this is a plant fiber. The cord is made of a plant fiber. So I suppose it technically falls into that category.
00:05:38
Speaker
Either way, it's a good thing they didn't brush it off because they would have brushed that little piece of cord right off of it. So it's a good situation there. And I don't think I mentioned this yet, but they were able to date this to the middle paleolithic time period. Which did they give a time range on that? They probably did.
00:05:56
Speaker
Well, you're looking that up though. It's interesting because, you know, Neanderthals did a lot of things that humans weren't, I mean, humans and Neanderthals existed together for those that don't know, like pre-humans, not even pre-humans, homo sapiens and Neanderthals existed together and more than likely interbred. And I think we've proven through DNA, if I'm not mistaken, I don't want to quote that, but I'm pretty sure we've proven through DNA that they did interbreed. I think so. Yeah. And I mean, we didn't change what species we became. So I don't know if the offspring were
00:06:25
Speaker
you know, biologically viable from a reproduction standpoint. But either way, we did interbreed, which means we interacted in certain ways with the species. So did you find an age for? I did. Yeah. So this, the, the flake was found in level 4.2 of this particular unit, which they were able to carbon date to, they have three dates from that 41,000, 46,000 and 52,000. So that's years before brethren. Yes. Yeah. So that's the time period we're looking at.
00:06:53
Speaker
which just another little side note here from a carbon dating standpoint, the limits of carbon dating are about 50,000 years. Yeah. And usually carbon dating has a pretty wide error range of a few thousand years itself. So when you're looking at these dates, I'd be interested to note, and I don't know if this was even in the article, but what they used for the carbon dating and how they calibrated that, that they calibrated it against dendrochronology or anything like that, because you got to really look at all the factors when you're talking about the dating.
00:07:21
Speaker
That's not really what we're talking about in this podcast, but I think it's important to note when you're reading these things, you're thinking, hey, they hit a date of 50,000 years on carbon dating.
00:07:30
Speaker
That's getting real close to the limit because
The 'Missing Majority' in Archaeology
00:07:33
Speaker
if you know anything about radiometric dating, it's the half-life of carbon-14 is I want to say 5,000, close to 6,000 years. It's like 5,700 something, I can't remember, which means half of it goes away every 5,000 plus years and then another half goes away and you're down to a quarter, then another half goes away and you're down to an eighth. So down around 40 to 50,000 years, you have very little carbon-14 left in order to even count that.
00:07:59
Speaker
and read it. And so it gets really... I might have been wrong about the carbon dating and forgive my ignorance because I don't remember a lot about the dating techniques from my school days, but it says that the site has been dated by ESR and U-TH methods. Oh, Uraniums are on. Okay. Yeah. Because one of the units, there's two units in particular that they were focusing on and one of them goes back to 90,000 years. That's the older unit, which this like was not in.
00:08:28
Speaker
Yeah, some of those other radiometric dating techniques, I mean, Carbon-14's got the shortest half-life of most of the dating techniques we use, but there's other like Strontium and Thoron and things like that that are other radioactive elements, basically, for radiometric dating, that have longer, much longer half-lives. So that's cool. They used multiple data sources for dating. Yeah, it looks like they've got pretty good dates on this stuff. Nice. That's good. So why is this important to knitters? Why are they all crazy about it?
00:08:58
Speaker
You know, who cares about 40,000 year old young? Well, the first thing I'll say about that is it's really, really interesting to find textiles this old because textiles fall into what has been called the missing majority by some guy named for comb, which I don't even know who that is. But I really, really love the terminology of the missing majority because those are the artifacts that are perishable.
00:09:22
Speaker
and that aren't preserved through time and we lose them and
Neanderthal Fiber Processing Techniques
00:09:25
Speaker
then we don't know anything about them. Textiles and yarn of course fall into that category. So the fact that we found that here is so exciting because it gives us a little window, a little lens into something that we normally don't have any information on. So I think that's one of the reasons why this is really exciting. And then, you know, knitters are particularly excited about it because
00:09:46
Speaker
anything to show that our craft has been around for a long time, even though it's not even knitting related. I mean, these were probably woven or cords for ropes and things like that. But still, it just shows that the technology was there that people could have been knitting 40,000 years ago. I mean, maybe. I mean, they always say that the oldest profession is prostitution, but I think it might be knitting because those girls were wearing clothes.
00:10:08
Speaker
Well, what I will say to you is if you had listened to the first season of historical yarns, you would know that knitting does not go back that far. But clothing making, you know, because you're thinking of leaving. Well, I'm thinking of all kinds of things because we'll probably get into this a little bit later. But, you know, it's I guess it's trying to figure out what they use this stuff for. Right. So, well, in fact, let's talk about it now because I'm wondering.
00:10:33
Speaker
what the possibilities are from a knitter's standpoint because what they found was a really, really tiny piece. And in fact, we'll talk about this in the next segment on what it could have been used for. But let's talk about now because you looked at these things. I looked at the pictures of this and they even ran it under a scanning electron microscope. They have all these high resolution images of it. And I'm like, yeah, it looks like plant fibers. Great.
00:10:56
Speaker
good for you, you deserve a trophy. Like what does it mean? How can you look at it? How can they look at it and tell that this was actually intentionally put together cord that was then more than likely used for something else? Because why would you assemble this thing without using it for something else?
00:11:11
Speaker
Right. So there's a couple reasons that they know that. They were able to analyze the fiber itself and they know that it is the inner bark of a coniferous tree. And that inner bark is sort of just below the outer bark layer is like this flexible fibrous material that can easily be formed into cord with a little bit more processing. And the fibers are quite long and they can easily be separated.
00:11:37
Speaker
So then you take these long fibers from the core. They probably softened them somehow. They might have pounded them with stone tools or you could even soak them to make them softer. There's a couple of things they could have done. Of course, there's no evidence of them having done that in this case, but it's a possibility that you know how to do that. But the thing that they do know that they did is that they twisted them in a manner that could only have been done by human hands.
00:12:00
Speaker
And what they did is they took three of these long fibrous strands and they twisted them in an S-twist configuration. And if you're a hand spinner out there, you are very familiar with these because these are terminologies that we use to talk about twist on yarn and in the spinning process too today. So these are still things that we use. But the S-twist is clockwise and they took these three individual
Terminology and Technological Evolution
00:12:27
Speaker
strands, twisted them,
00:12:29
Speaker
clockwise to make this S twist. And then they took those three S twisted plies, they become a ply once you twist them, and they twisted them counterclockwise in what's called a Z twist to make the actual cord. So it's three strands of this fiber, the three strands are twisted one direction first, and then they are twisted the other direction to create the three ply cord that is what they recovered off of the flake. Now you were explaining to this to me when we were talking about this article the other day.
00:12:59
Speaker
I don't understand why there's an S twist and a Z twist and not like an S twist and a reverse S twist. Why is it a Z twist? Does that make any sense? It's just the direction of the slant on the twist. So when you do it clockwise, it, it twists in a way that looks like an S. And if you do it counterclockwise, it's, it looks, you have to look at the actual cord itself, but the way it slants either looks
00:13:22
Speaker
S-ish or Z-ish. It's kind of a weird thing. I'll give you that. But it's pretty standard in the yarn industry. You can look at, and it's pertinent to knitters because depending on how you hold your yarn and how you knit, either an S-twist or a Z-twist yarn will either untwist while you're working with it or it will twist the other hyper twist while you're working with it. Like it'll add more energy into it.
00:13:49
Speaker
So I can't knit because I'm left-handed and I'm always on twisting my yarn. There's a lot of reasons you can't knit. I'm not really sure that S or Z has anything to do with it. Blame it on S twist. Sure. Let's go with that. Lefty bias, righty biased yarn, like everything else. Hashtag scissors. I mean, you can say that, but if you just started knitting from the other end of this game, then it faces the other direction. So get out of here. I can't get to the other end. It's all in a ball. Okay. Yeah. Then I guess you better just not knit. I guess so.
00:14:18
Speaker
Nice yeah, so that's how the s twist and z twist work And it really has to be man-made and if you look at the close-ups and we'll link to the article in the show notes But they've got some really great close-up pictures that they did like microscopic Imaging to show the cord and the cord is twisted the three plies are twisted together around part of the flake and then they sort of separate and
00:14:40
Speaker
So you can really identify the Z twist of the three ply cord and then the S twist on the separated fibrous plies going out to the side. So really neat. What really gets me is that this is 40,000 plus years ago and the technique is immediately recognizable today because you do the same thing, which leads to one of two conclusions. Either A, that cultural knowledge persisted through time, 40,000 years, which is unlikely, or B, there's really only one way to do it.
00:15:10
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, there have been, I don't know if advance is in the right word, but sort of differentiation of different ways to make yarn in the modern era. Obviously we have chainettes and various different ways of doing it, but that twist, twist on twist, right? And twist the strand one way and then apply it in the other direction to make a strand of yarn. I don't, I can't think of any other way to do it. So. All right. Well, let's take a break. And when we come back, we'll talk about what this could have been used for back in a second.
00:15:40
Speaker
Welcome back to the historical yarns archaeology show crossover with Chris Webster and Rachel Rodin. And again, if you want to find either of those podcasts, depending on which one you're listening to this on, which feed you're listening to them on, just head over to the archaeology podcast network, arcpodnet.com. Also, you can get these episodes early if you become a member. If you're listening to this in real time and we haven't changed it again, our membership plan is I think $7.99 a month. We literally just changed it. And Tristan, our co-founder, is the one in charge of that.
00:16:07
Speaker
But I think it's $7.99 a month and you can get access to the shows early and a bunch of other things. So check that out. But let's move on with this discussion about Neanderthal yarn, but really they call it cord because they don't necessarily know exactly what it was used for. But let's talk about what it could have been used for. So what did you get from the article?
00:16:25
Speaker
Well, let's back up just a little bit and talk about their terminology versus sort of knitter terminology for yarn versus cord and all that stuff. So it was interesting to me in reading this article, turns out that that single ply, that single strand of fiber that is S-twisted, they actually called that yarn.
Speculations on Cord Uses
00:16:45
Speaker
I mean, usually yarn as we know it is, well, it can be any number of different plies and, or a single ply.
00:16:52
Speaker
So, but they call that first level, that first twisting yarn. And then when they twisted the three of them together, they called that cord. So that's where the, the cord thing keeps coming from. And then if they were to go beyond that and twist, say three cords together or more, then that becomes rope, I think. And it goes on from there. You can start nodding things if you have rope and that kind of stuff.
00:17:13
Speaker
So that's the terminology that we're dealing with. As knitters, we call everything yarn that's twisted, whether it's a single ply or many plies together. But yeah, I do think it's interesting that it's three plies that they're using here because as any knitter or crocheter would know, when you only have one ply, you get kind of a fuzzy product. If you have two plies, you get a sort of bumpy product.
00:17:37
Speaker
And then three-ply is where you really start getting a nice round yarn or in this case, core that you can work with. So I feel like the three-ply choice is actually really deliberate on the part of the Neanderthals. Are there more than three plies? You can do more. Yeah. The more plies you do, the rounder the yarn is and smoother.
00:17:55
Speaker
But thicker too, right? Well, it depends on how small the plies you start with are. I think you get a nice in the three and four ply, which is what most commercial yarns are these days. You get enough grabbiness that the yarn holds together nicely when you're working with it, but it's also round enough that it has a nice like stitch definition. That seems to be the sweet spot for yarn. Yeah.
00:18:18
Speaker
Anyway, so that's that's what we're talking about here. I'm going to keep calling it a cord, but just keep in your mind that it's a it's the equivalent of a three ply yarn. Sure. All right. So on to what they're doing with said cord. It was made from the inner bark, like I said, kind of a fibrous material. I would imagine it's not the softest material in the world. It's probably pretty sturdy, more rope like than yarn like.
00:18:43
Speaker
So my guesses would be something like baskets or even nets and things like that. But they made a couple guesses, you know, net cord rope, something like that, very utilitarian. It is interesting that it's found with a flake, but I can't imagine that they would be hafting a flake for any reason. Could you think of a reason?
00:19:02
Speaker
Yeah, it's hard to say and I haven't actually read the article to see to see where the flake in this this cord and other stuff like what other stuff was found with it and around it. You know, was it what was it in some sort of a will look like a discard pile like what were people throwing on the edge of their campsite? They're throwing stuff out that they're not using because
00:19:21
Speaker
Flakes can be usable. Flakes, for those that don't know, they're usually the byproduct of making something else. Back in that day, you're making an axe, a hand axe or something like that, or you're making a large stone tool or a spear point or something like that. So you take these flakes off a piece of rock and you make that. And the flakes are generally discarded in most cases, right? But some of the larger flakes are sharp and usable in themselves. And while we look at the end product,
00:19:46
Speaker
that's our bias because when you're back in the day and you don't have a Home Depot to go to, to get more things, you look at this flake and you go, yeah, I could totally use this for something. And you might use it as a scraper to clean a hide, or you might use it as a, or to run down the edge of your, your spear point or something like that, or your spear shaft or something, you know, to smooth it out. But they can be used for lots of different things. And I've heard of, and I don't know of any sources right now, but I've heard of,
00:20:12
Speaker
and seeing pictures of like a club almost that has, you cut a line, you cut lines down the club on all sides, and then you jam flakes into the holes as like a weapon. Yeah, something, not necessarily a weapon against other humans, but even just a bludgeon of animals, you know, something like that.
00:20:29
Speaker
But you've got this weapon type of thing and I've also heard of those being used as almost like almost like an axe to cut down a tree You'd have to really have the flake sunk in there and only have a portion of it sticking out But perhaps a cord could have been used to tie that on yeah my guess more than likely because I did see the picture of the flake was that they're not they weren't used together and the flake ended up on the cord somehow and this cord deteriorated and was protected by the flake yeah, and Now we just got a piece of cord on the flake because it was wrapped around that little
00:20:59
Speaker
Not inclusion or something like yeah, and it was and that wasn't an intentional thing. It was just happened to be there Yeah, that was my conclusion from looking at the photos as well. I wouldn't want to like rule out Having it for some you know to a spear or something like that or to use as a spear But it does seem more likely that it was they are contemporaneous, but not necessarily associated
00:21:21
Speaker
But in hafting means attaching, for those that aren't aware of that term. And you typically see that with arrows, darts, spear points where they'll split the end of the wood, usually, is what's used for those things. They'll split the end of the wood, jam the point down in there, and then the projectile point will have these little... I'm doing it with my hands, of course you can see that.
00:21:41
Speaker
But the projectile point will have these little ends on it, like ears, they're called, and shoulders and notches. And around those notches is where they would take some sort of cordage. Sometimes it was a sinew type thing, muscle fiber type stuff, or cord that they would make.
00:21:56
Speaker
And, you know, this we're talking, though, in North America, we're only talking the last few thousand years that they would have made arrow points like that. And beer points go back much farther, like at-lateral darts, they're called, and then spears that you just throw. But they've been doing this over in the European continent for tens of thousands of years. Yeah, for sure. And they had to attach it with something, and a lot of times they would use a cord like this, so it's entirely possible
00:22:20
Speaker
that they were doing that. I think possible too, that if this flake is contemporaneous and was used with that piece of cord, perhaps they were, I don't know the process, maybe they were smoothing out the cord, had it stretched out, and this was a fiber that came off the cord, a piece that came off, and then the flake was discarded because it was dulled or something like that, and they just grabbed another one because they had a whole pile of them, or something like that, because I've seen that being done before by experimental archaeologists.
00:22:47
Speaker
It's definitely possible. The only hesitation I have is that it's the piece of cord is already completed. Like it's a completed cord. It's not one that's in process. Why would you do that if it's completed? Yeah. Yeah. Cause you don't want to destroy the integrity of the cord by scraping on it unless you're.
00:23:03
Speaker
you need to for some reason. Maybe they were sawing through with the flake. They might have been. Yeah, maybe they were cutting it. That's entirely possible for sure. If the whole thing was wet or you were muddy or something like that, it could have attached itself to the flake or a bigger piece could have as well. And it just, that's the only bit that didn't deteriorate. I like that theory. I like the cutting through cord theory. Although at the same time, again, I'm thinking about like,
00:23:29
Speaker
how precious resources probably were to a Neanderthal. So I'm not sure that they would actually cut through a piece of cord that they worked so hard to create. Well, if you're making a long piece and you only need a shorter piece, then you're going to cut it off. And when I cut a piece of rope today, I'm willing to bet
00:23:46
Speaker
Neanderthals did the exact same thing. When I cut a piece of rope today, I'll take my knife and I'll wrap the rope around it, complete 360 on the rope around the knife blade, holding both ends in one hand and the knife in the other and then saw through it because you've got more tension and force that way. They could have done the same thing if that flake was in some sort of cutting device or attached to a piece of wood or something like that. Sometimes they wouldn't even attach them. They would just be jammed into a piece of wood for stability so you don't have to hold on to it.
00:24:13
Speaker
and then you wrap that cord around it and saw through it or something like that. Could have been any number of things. Definitely possible. Yeah. Definitely possible.
Cultural Significance of Discoveries
00:24:19
Speaker
Now, from a knitter's standpoint, I'm wondering, and I don't know anything about what they were wearing, clothing, things like that, but what else could this have been used for? Could have been used as like thread? Is it too big?
00:24:29
Speaker
It's too big for thread, I think. But when you're sewing like hides together? Oh, maybe, yeah. You know? Yeah, actually it probably would have done very well to hold hides and fur and stuff together if they were doing that. I don't really know what evidence we have for like clothing for needed house, but they lived in the cold, so they must have been covering their bodies with something. Yeah, this was like Southern France, which while hot during the summer, definitely cold in the winter. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:24:56
Speaker
And the intertiles were all over northern Europe. So they're definitely in cold, cold climate. So they had to be doing something to cover their bodies in the wintertime for sure. So yeah, it's possible they could have used it to connect it. I'm thinking of that like sort of X crossed stitching, you know, where you see joining two pieces together, sort of bringing the two edges together rather than like folding them, folding them together. So that's sort of what's in my mind as a possibility. Yeah.
00:25:23
Speaker
I doubt that they were using it to weave or make actual fabric because we don't have any evidence of the tools that go along with that process. No looms or anything like that. And while you can do a very simplistic weaving process, you still leave tools behind and evidence of what you're doing.
00:25:45
Speaker
And that's a great observation too, because some people might be saying, well, how do we know what this is used for if we don't have any of the fibers? Like you said in the beginning, the missing majority, none of that remains. But there's tools required to make these things. And those tools do persist because they're made out of wood or they're made out of, I doubt they'd be made out of stone, but they, you know, they're made out of things that have a better chance of surviving the archaeological record.
00:26:06
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, a loom would probably be made out of wood, but I'm sure there would be some pieces of it that would be stoner or material that would last longer. I would think anyway. So... No, this goes back to... Because I know we talked about this. What would...
00:26:24
Speaker
How did they make, cause it, if anybody's ever seen fiber made and you've drug me to some festivals and things where you see people spinning yarn, right? And I don't mean telling stories like we're doing right now, but spinning yarn. And that's on this big machine with the, with the big wheel and the pedals. They didn't have any of those, but what is the technique they would have used back then likely to make this?
00:26:45
Speaker
So they would have used a version of a spindle. I don't know a lot about hand spinning techniques. So I'm going to kind of just make this up a little bit, but a drop spindle is what I own a drop spindle. It's a very simple, it's got a long pole thing coming off of it and then a heavy weight at the bottom of it. And you just spin it and then the yarn wraps itself around the like pole in the middle. I'm sure there's technical terms for this. So if you're a spinner, please forgive me. But as you're spinning the yarn wraps itself around and then you end up with like a
00:27:15
Speaker
a bobbin of, of spun yarn while you're doing it and you apply on the same thing, but just going in the different direction. So they could have been doing something like that. Now I believe they're called spindle worlds when you find those at, and we found them at various different sites over the years. I believe that that is performing the same function as a drop spindle. Cause that world would be the heavy part that would give some stabilization to the spinning and allow it to
00:27:42
Speaker
So I don't know exactly how spindle whirls work. That would be a fun thing to research actually and figure out how native people would have used that to make yarn. But anyway, that's how you do it by hand. It's a very simple process, you know, so they could have been doing something like that. But again, I feel like we would have found, well, no, I mean, if it's made of shell or something like that, it might not last. So yeah.
00:28:05
Speaker
Yeah, wood doesn't always last in the archaeological record either, like a big piece might, because it takes longer to just deteriorate that. And if it's a wetter environment, it might actually last longer because it just stays moist. But the drier it is, the more it just crumbles into dust. Like here in the Nevada, where we've done a lot of work,
00:28:24
Speaker
We never find anything like that. And most of the textiles or woven things like baskets and sandals and stuff like that and duck decoys even have been found in caves. In fact, all of them, I think, have been found in caves in Nevada because caves have a less dry environment, a less harsh environment. Even in the desert west, a cave, especially if it's buried, if it's buried in a cave, it's more than likely going to survive. But finding those caves and then, you know, getting the academic access and permission to actually dig those caves is a challenge.
00:28:55
Speaker
Yeah, we don't have a lot of evidence of it and you know the thing that gets me too about the archaeological record is
00:29:00
Speaker
we write a lot of very conclusive sounding theories based on very little evidence because we find one thing and we're like, yay, we found something. And now we're making a judgment about an entire society and an entire span of time based on that, you know, like the Lovelock cave in Nevada where they found duck decoys and things like that. Sure. You can probably assume that maybe other societies use these things, but can you assume that those weren't made just for ceremonial purposes for dumping in a burial cave because they found burials along with those too?
00:29:30
Speaker
What were these everyday objects that were buried with the people, you know? Yeah, and you also have to have the genius hypothesis has to be in the back of your mind too. What if one person came up with this brilliant idea but it never really disseminated to the rest of the tribes or groups or populations or whatever?
00:29:50
Speaker
I like to think that all Neanderthals knew how to make yarn and cord and from that baskets and mats and maybe even sandals and the other things that you can make by knotting things and making and weaving and whatever. But yeah, the thing I like about this discovery is it's
00:30:08
Speaker
not special from just a piece of material standpoint. It's special from the fact that we now have evidence that not only did they do this spinning and plying 40,000 plus years ago, but that it's the same exact technique that has been used since then. Which more than likely means, you got to think of this too, they didn't invent that at this site. It was probably used for thousands of years before that, we just don't have evidence for it.
00:30:36
Speaker
I mean unless this person invented it but in archaeology going along with the genius hypothesis and other things you always have to assume what you found is the norm and it's been that way for a long time just because normal things show up more frequently because they're more abundant whereas one-offs don't show up
00:30:52
Speaker
It's like it literally is a needle in a haystack. Not literally, but figuratively a needle in a haystack because you're not going to find the one off. You're not going to find the one person that said, hey, look at this. And then they had an arrow through the head and never did it again. And you're also not going to find the very first example of it either. I mean, if we found this at 40,000 years and they were doing it before that time, this is, I mean, what are the chances of the first time it was ever done? Well, but if we looked for news articles, you'd probably find one that says the first knitters.
00:31:22
Speaker
or something like that, because they say the first, but it's only because it's the first example that we found. But more than likely, if we have found it somewhere, they're more than likely like the thousandth knitters, because it's common now. Yeah. And it's a complicated enough mechanic to get to the applied point that it's at that they found it, that there certainly are earlier examples that are simpler for sure. So we just haven't found them yet. All right. Anything else to wrap up this article?
00:31:49
Speaker
The last thing I'll say is I want to go back to the clothing thing about it because the one thing that stuck out about this to me, clothing wise, is that it's made from this plant fiber, the bark fiber in a tree. And we actually use fiber like that to make yarns today.
00:32:08
Speaker
Yarns that are super soft and very wearable have beautiful drape to them. Some of them are even kind of shiny. So I don't think it is a huge leap to think that at some point they figured out how to not manufacture, but turn that harsh fiber into something that was soft and drapey and wearable as clothing.
Concluding Thoughts on Neanderthal Intelligence
00:32:28
Speaker
So I don't want to totally rule out clothing, not in this instance with this particular piece of cord that they found, but it does.
00:32:38
Speaker
spark in my mind the idea that maybe they were using it to make clothing, which I think is really cool. And you know, clothing has such a long, long history. And the further back we can go, it's just, it's so cool to see that evolution of clothing.
00:32:52
Speaker
Yeah, and I think to really figure that out, we'd have to do a wider literature search or see if somebody's done one and find out, okay, so on this site at 40 to 50,000 years, we've got evidence of hand spun fibers, right? And then on this site over here, we've got evidence of what looks like needles or we've got evidence of spindle walls or something like that, but no fibers. And then on this site over here,
00:33:15
Speaker
We've got, I don't know, evidence that they were using certain stone tools to, because there's fiber analysis on the edge of them or something, to cut these, you know, something else that would be a part of this. So you take all these pieces together and you say, yeah, more than likely these guys were doing this thing right here. Because we know they wore something to stay warm, whether it was just a hide that they processed and it was more than likely animal hides because those are super warm.
00:33:39
Speaker
But at some point, somebody must have said, you know what? I really wish I could attach this piece to this piece. What can we do to make that happen? And that's not that big of a leap to make. These guys were super smart for what they needed to do. I mean, the simple fact that they could come up with this 40,000 years ago just blows me away. But that tells you how smart they were. And they were living and surviving and finding humans to mate with and doing all these other things.
00:34:05
Speaker
I'm going to go ahead and say they were probably wearing clothing that they at least sewed together with some of these fibers, but we just don't have evidence for it yet. Yeah. I'm totally on board with that. And I think my favorite part about this article, so here's Rachel's conclusions. My favorite thing
00:34:24
Speaker
in this is that it is breaking down preconceived notions that Neanderthals were just dumb cavemen that barely scrape by a living by killing, you know, a squirrel here and there. And that was it. It just, they were just so much smarter than that. They had so much more technology and the more sites that they uncover like this one, where they find these more complicated technologies and methods and things that they were using for their everyday lives. I just think that that is so cool. And I hope that archeologists keep finding something like that.
00:34:54
Speaker
It turns out they probably invented clothing, art, and music, and probably food. I don't know. My conclusion is stop calling people Neanderthals to indicate that they are dumb and stupid because these guys were way smarter than a lot of the people that are out there today.
Episode Wrap-up and Listener Engagement
00:35:15
Speaker
Maybe we're smart because they interbred with homosavians. There you go. Injected that smart Neanderthal DNA.
00:35:24
Speaker
Why didn't they survive I guess that doesn't really hold up as a hypothesis But because as we've seen humans just take over and destroy everything else around them including Neanderthals Burn I know right human burn almost say being burned
00:35:37
Speaker
Well, on that note. Yeah, on that note. All right, so we have a few more episodes planned out along this line of thinking. And if you have any questions or you want to talk to Rachel about this stuff, check out the show notes. We'll have contact information. Rachel does a lot of knitting and designing work. We'll have her resources in the show notes as well. She's Rachel Unraveled. If you're not on the Historical Yarns podcast and you're listening to this in the archaeology show, look her up on Ravelry and Instagram and Instagram, all those things that Rachel unraveled.
00:36:06
Speaker
I mean, we're talking about raveling things together, but she's unraveled. So I don't really know what's going on. I'm unraveling the mystery, obviously. That needs to be the name of the podcast. All right. So again, check us out on arcpodnet.com or wherever you find podcasts. You can get both of these shows and then also check out our membership because we are really trying to push membership because that helps us bring all this out. You know, we're paying for an advertising manager and
00:36:34
Speaker
some other things, and we want to actually take advertising away from these podcasts at some point and just have a member-supported podcast. But for that, we need members, so arcpodnet.com forward slash members. If you are interested in advertising, email Madison at advertising at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com. We'll be back next time with another episode and crossover with historical yards. See ya!
00:37:05
Speaker
Thanks for listening to The Archaeology Show. Feel free to comment and view the show notes on the website at www.arcpodnet.com. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at arcpodnet. You can also find us on the Lyceum app, a podcast app just for educational podcasts. Music for this show is called I Wish You Would Look from the Band's Sea Hero. Again, thanks for listening and have an awesome day.
00:37:33
Speaker
This show is produced and recorded by the Archaeology Podcast Network, Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle in Reno, Nevada at the Reno Collective. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com. Thanks. What do you guys say? I don't remember. Happy knitting. Oh, yeah.
00:38:02
Speaker
Happy knitting until I'm going to say until next time until next time. Happy knitting.