Scientists Get a Grip on Neanderthals' Dexterity

Monday, April 7, 2003
Scientists Get a Grip on Neanderthals' Dexterity
By John Fleck, Journal Staff Writer - Albuquerque Journal

Neanderthals, once thought of as tough-fisted brutes, had the same dexterous grip as a modern human holding a pen or threading a needle, new research suggests.
Anthropologist Wesley Niewoehner and his colleagues came to the conclusion by applying modern technology to an age-old question.
Our precise ability to grasp with thumb and forefinger has long been thought to be a unique characteristic of modern humans, and one possible explanation of how our ancestors beat out Neanderthals to dominate the Earth over the last 100,000 years.
But Niewoehner believes Neanderthals had the same capability.
"They could indeed do it," said Niewoehner, who recently left the University of New Mexico for a faculty position at California State University, San Bernardino.
Niewoehner and his colleagues came to that conclusion using the same software Disney uses to make animated movies.
They created a computer simulation of a Neanderthal hand, using it to model the motion the hand was capable of.
In a paper published March 27 in the British scientific journal Nature, they report that Neanderthals had exactly the same mobility in their thumb and forefinger that we do.
The result, then, is a conundrum. Other evidence suggests that Neanderthals primarily used a ham-fisted, stabbing grip with their stone tools. For some reason, they chose that over the more dexterous tool grip that proved so profitable for early modern humans.
"They seemed to have a different mind-set about how to go about dealing with the world," Niewoehner said.
While modern humans used tools in precise and innovative ways, Neanderthals seem to have chosen not to.
"It just may be that Neanderthals were set in their ways," Niewoehner said.