(courtesy IMDb (c) Netflix)
Growing up, I remember being fascinated by the idea that there were other human species alive on the Earth, not just well before Homo Sapiens but crossing over with us.
At the present time, there are a number of species that have been discovered to have lived, and crucially died out, during the early tens of thousands of Homo Sapiens evolutionary span on the planet and chief among them are the Neanderthals, a species often depicted as thuggish and brutish and a few rungs below our own supposed civilisational magnificence.
A new documentary made by the BBC Studios Science Unit for Netflix, Secrets of the Neanderthals, busts that long-held idea of inferiority apart, taking viewers on an expansive tour of caves in Kurdistan, Croatia, France and Gibraltar, where increasingly over the last few decades, archaeologists have completely revised what we think of this once-scorned branch of the human evolutionary tree.
The discoveries at place like Shanidar Cave in Iraqi Kurdistan, where a leading archaeologist of his time, Dr Ralph Solecki found a number of skeletons including one dubbed the “Flower Burial” – pollen from half-a-dozen flowering species was found under a skeleton, leading Solecki to surmise that this showed evidence of thoughtful and compassionate funereal practices; that’s not been discredited but the idea of a sophisticated species tending lovingly to their loved ones remains – show that what we thought we know about Neanderthals is far from right.
In fact, discoveries on a range of sites including Bruniquel, France where sculptured stalagmites show a Stonehenge-like arrangement dating to 170,000 years ago and in a cave system dubbed “Neanderthals City” on the edge of Gibraltar, show a people who were religious, creative and every bit as capable of rigorously inventive thought as we are.
They were obviously different to us, not just physically but culturally; still, as a BBC media release sagely observes, “They were just another way of being human.”
And really that’s the salient point to take from Secrets of the Neanderthals, narrated by Sir Patrick Stewart – far from being an inferior caveman-like oddity, Neanderthals were simply an advance variant on the same very human theme as us, a point made again and again by a range of scientists in the special including palaeoanthropologist Dr Emma Pomeroy whose Cambridge team are responsible for discovering the first articulated Neanderthals skeleton, dubbed “Shanidar Z”, in 2018 at Solecki’s 1950s dig site in Iraq.
What is so thrilling about this carefully special is that it takes the time to not only dazzle us with some momentous discoveries, which totally rewrite the book on Neanderthals but to build a picture of people who are in so many ways very much like us.
Many of us, in fact, still have Neanderthals‘ DNA inside out, proof that before this hardy, inventive species died out, likely due to climate change some 40,000 years earlier, they were building richly supportive and culturally meaningful societies that represented a real pinnacle of human achievement to date.
There is of course the inevitable reconstruction of tool making techniques and the face of the “Shanidar Z” skeleton, but at all stages of its fascinating story, Secrets of the Neanderthals never confuses gimmicky modern documentary techniques for careful detailing about what we now know about the Neanderthals.
It is one of those documentaries that eschews the current predilection for shouty, near-tabloidy, cliffhanger-heavy delivery and instead lets the beguiling story of the Neanderthals tell itself, a tale of a species reframed and reknown that this far better than anything a sensationalist producer could concoct.
There’s not a single second in Secrets of the Neanderthals where you are even tempted to “10-second” it, proof not only that what we’ve discovered about the species recently is enthralling in and of itself, but that there is still a great deal life in documentaries that take their time and let the story unfurl in its own time and on its own terms.
If Secrets of the Neanderthals, the cinematography of which is beautifully and evocatively rendered, helped by stunning landscapes and intensely beautiful locations, proves anything, it’s that the world is far more complex and intriguing and interesting that we can even begin to suppose.
It also underscores that our knowledge of the world is never static and that we think is true now, is often proved not to be by subsequent discoveries; apart from widening everything we know about a much misunderstood human species, Secrets of the Neanderthals is a clarion call to everyone not to rest on and become victims of assumption but to stay open-minded and enquiring and to see the planet on which we live as an incredible place about which our knowledge is ever-evolving and that we need to change, develop and grow right along with it.