What the Southern European Record Tells Us about the Early Evolution of Symbolic Culture

Heated debate surrounds the view that the indigenous Lower and Middle Palaeolithic populations of Europe did not possess the same cognitive capacities as modern humans. Different positions range from the staunch claim that Neanderthals were archaeologically – and thus behaviorally and cognitively – inferior and that contemporaneous Homo sapiens were superior, to opposing claims that Neanderthals were indistinguishable from members of our own Palaeolithic population in Africa and Eurasia. Some avoid this dichotomy by supporting a middle position that holds that the differences between the two human types made neither population better or worse than the other in ways visible to natural and cultural selection . Aside from the different images scholars maintain of our ancestors, the variable success in identifying the cognitive abilities they possessed indirectly relies on a wide range of archaeological, physical and bio-molecular proxy evidence in the material and immaterial records.