Original subtitles

They roamed the planet for longer than modern man...

Neanderthals.

Neanderthals were superb survivors.

They survived in a treacherous world...

They really dominated ice-age Europe.

fearless hunters who possessed superior strength

and surprisingly advanced tools.

It's perhaps one of the most efficient technologies

we've ever seen in the entire Stone Age.

But then suddenly, they vanished and no one knows why.

It's still one of the most wondrous mysteries.

Was it a clash with modern humans?

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This may be the best case of a Neanderthal murder victim.

Around the globe scientists are searching for answers.

This is a modern human with Neanderthal features.

And they find clues in unlikely places -

an ancient volcano site In southern Italy...

The ground at the moment is rising.

..in the Greenland ice sheet,

far from the grounds where Neanderthals once settled.

There's a cluster in here thin layers.

Mounting evidence reveals a surprising new theory -

it was not war with modern man that killed off the Neanderthals.

It was an apocalypse... That's the ash. That is the ash.

..that might have sealed the fate of our closest human relatives.

And what happened to them could easily happen to us.

Gibraltar, at the tip of the Iberian peninsula.

Here along the Mediterranean coast,

a vast complex of caves dot the shoreline.

Today, waves encroach upon them.

But 24,000 years ago, with the height of the last ice age fast approaching,

the sea level was more than 100 feet lower.

This was dry land,

home to the very last of the Neanderthals.

When we look at the number of sites

with Neanderthal fossils and/or evidence of occupation,

I don't think there's any place in the world

that has the density of sites per square kilometre that Gibraltar has.

Gibraltar was their stronghold.

This is where the population was continuous.

It was a place that they lived and liked and survived for a long time.

The conditions there were good

and because they were so good they persisted longer than anywhere else.

In this enclave, amid forests of pine,

hunters search for prey.

Along the shore Neanderthals fish,

living as they have for generations before...

unaware that they are the last of a dying breed.

They probably didn't realise,

when their neighbouring group further north disappeared,

that they were on the verge of extinction.

They had no way of knowing that.

Once their species flourished across Europe and Asia.

Now their population has dwindled to just a few clans

here in the south of the Iberian peninsula.

But what ultimately drove the Neanderthal to extinction?

The Gibraltar caves may hold some clues.

Palaeontologists Clive and Geraldine Finlayson

have studied this site for many years

and are leading a massive excavation effort.

So these caves here all lined up, it's almost like a Neanderthal city.

This is a place where Neanderthals were living for a long time,

occupying all of them.

Some cases now the sea's gone in and we've lost the evidence.

But we still have a lot of material there for excavation.

Inside the caves

teams of archaeologists search for remnants of Neanderthal's past...

Everything about the cave looks right for a Neanderthal.

We sort of get a feeling for these things.

They're unearthing bones and remains,

as well as tools and artefacts, linked to Neanderthal

by their distinct shapes and craftsmanship.

(Speaks Maltese)

So this piece, this is a core.

And they'll use this to extract flakes from it.

This is a technique that can be associated with Neanderthals.

With every find

they are gaining new insights into the Neanderthal themselves.

Here we have the remains of a campfire from the Neanderthals,

radiocarbon-dated to about 47,000 years ago.

You can see the concentration of charcoal,

particularly here in the centre of the fire.

Makes a fantastic resource for us because we can date it

but also we can dissect the charcoal

and find out the plants that were growing up there.

So it's fantastic.

So 47,000 years ago for some reason, this is the place they liked.

Maybe it was a mild climate out there

but they were sufficiently sheltered

and the Neanderthals were sitting here.

And we've found remains of deer and other animals they'd been eating

and they had a big fire going here.

Here, for generations,

Neanderthal families gathered around the fire

and prepared meals together...

a far cry from the ape-men scientists imagined

when the species was discovered in Germany in 1856.

Other finds reveal details of a rich and multi-faceted culture

an aspect of the species that is only now being recognised.

Here's a very interesting bone.

It's from a bird, a scavenger that eats almost exclusively bones.

It's got cut marks

so it shows they've been processed by the Neanderthals.

But we don't think they're eating them.

We think, with these large birds,

that they're getting them for their feathers.

These birds have colourful feathers, some of them large, dark feathers,

and we think that they're using them to wear them.

Other artefacts suggest Neanderthals adorned their bodies

with body paint and jewellery...

creating a vibrant personal display.

So this gives us a completely new dimension,

something we hadn't suspected

until we started to discover these things here.

What it means, I think, is that they had ways

of symbolising, abstracting the world.

They had ways of communicating by signalling,

ornamenting themselves.

Deeper still in the cave

there are even more remarkable signs of Neanderthal life.

The passageway winds toward a recently-excavated chamber.

So we're just coming to what must've been

one of the favourite spots of the Neanderthals... just here.

We find evidence for something

that would have been not suspected a few years ago.

The first discovery of a Neanderthal rock engraving...

a grid pattern, carbon-dated to at least 39,000 years ago.

Scientists believe the Neanderthal carver intended it as a clan marker,

perhaps staking a claim to the cave.

The marker is a clue that Neanderthals, like modern humans,

were capable of abstract thought

and it challenges the belief

that Neanderthal were the intellectually inferior species.

They may not have spoken the same language,

they may not have thought that beautiful things

were what we think as beautiful things

but they had the capacity for abstraction

and I have no doubt that they have similar cognitive abilities

to modern humans.

A different picture of Neanderthal is now emerging...

that of a species more like us than we ever imagined.

Then why, and how, did they vanish from the world?

Who were the Neanderthal?

Their story begins 600,000 years ago

in Africa...

with another species -

the evolutionary ancestors of both Neanderthal and modern humans

Homo heidelbergensis.

They are the first humans known to harness the power of fire

and hunt with wooden spears.

They've advanced over more ancient people.

They have bigger brains, they have adapted in a human-like way.

But it has none of the specialisations

that are in Neanderthals

and it doesn't have the specialisations

that are in modern humans.

They're not either like us or like Neanderthals.

They're ancestors of us both.

In pursuit of more abundant game

some head out of Africa

into Asia.

Others settle across Europe,

including in what is now

Heidelberg, Germany,

where their bones are first discovered.

When they left Africa and entered Central Asia and Europe,

they would've been experiencing a harsher climate in many ways.

It's a time of great climactic change,

brought on by a slight shift of the earth's axis

that tilts the North Pole away from the sun.

The polar caps expand, moving across North America and northern Europe.

Temperatures drop by as much as 20 degrees in the northern hemisphere.

300 to 400,000 years ago in Europe

the ice-age elements forge a new breed of man...

Homo neanderthalensis,

the Neanderthal.

Where they lived, in Europe and Central Asia,

these were the coldest places in human existence in those times.

So they were adapting to that.

Their complexion has become lighter compared to their African ancestors,

enhancing absorption of sunlight during the shorter northern days.

Their hair is straight and thick added protection from the cold.

They have a muscular build, more fit for the rugged terrain.

They were strong and amazingly healthy.

They were in fact an extraordinary population.

Along with their physical adaptations,

Neanderthals find strength and safety in numbers.

They live in tight-knit clans,

dedicated to the care and protection of each other.

You're looking at people that have lived in a challenging landscape

for hundreds of thousands of years.

These lives are short and they rely on their groups

for their children to be able to survive

because the parents might not.

By banding together, Neanderthals survive the hardships

and thrive in this ice-age environment.

Numbering in the tens of thousands, they spread across Europe,

the Middle East, Central Asia and as far north as Siberia.

They were mobile.

They're able to get what they need from the landscape where they are.

So they're collecting raw materials for tools

and they carry them tens of kilometres,

maybe hundreds of kilometres with them sometimes.

They're moving in pursuit of being able to find food and survive.

And in this world of frigid earth where vegetation is scarce

their survival depends on the animals they hunt.

They follow wandering herds of bison...

and stalk more evasive prey like deer.

Their ability to provide

resources like vegetation and roots and tubers and fruits

was probably extremely limited.

They were forced to eat mainly hunted animals.

Their hunting tool is the thrusting spear...

a powerful weapon, but only useful if the prey is within arm's reach.

This makes every hunt a most dangerous game.

But you can't be unintelligent about it, right?

You have to know when it's worth taking the risk.

A herd of bison roams the valley...

unaware of the hunters' approach.

The well-coordinated team closes in on their quarry...

and then goes in for the kill.

If your hunting method requires you to jump on a bison with a spear,

you know, that's what you call fearless.

Each hunt is a life-or-death undertaking

but the supply of fresh meat is worth the risk.

Neanderthals would have had to be brutally efficient

when it came to using the food that they got,

using the food in their environment

and using every part of the animals that they hunted.

When they return to camp

the hunters butcher their prize,

using razor-sharp blades made of flint.

They cook their meat over an open fire,

rendering the toughest chunks more digestible.

They scrape and stretch the hide, making the leather soft and pliable.

They're creating the hides for them

to make some clothing out of to wear.

They're using rock to make tools rapidly.

They were able to master the environment that they lived in.

For now, Neanderthals are masters of their world.

But one day their rule will be threatened

by another species -

our direct ancestors, modern humans.

40,000 years ago, ice-age Europe.

Here, Neanderthals have survived and thrived for 300,000 years.

They alone have been the masters of this land.

But now they face their greatest challenge.

A new species has entered their territory.

Homo sapiens...

modern humans.

Like Neanderthal

they are the evolutionary descendants of Homo heidelbergensis.

They first emerged 200,000 years ago on the savannahs of Africa.

80,000 to 60,000 years ago groups of modern humans headed north

in search of more fertile hunting grounds

into the Middle East and Asia.

And a few pushed west,

entering Neanderthal's European homeland.

They carry throwing spears

a weapon built to kill from a distance -

and they are different in appearance.

Evolving in Africa,

where water bodies were more and more scattered,

it promoted natural selection

towards ability to move over large distances quickly,

becoming an endurance runner,

and with that a technology that is lightweight,

portable, that you can carry around.

The newcomers are hunters...

and they come seeking the land and game Neanderthals claim as their own.

Whenever human populations come into contact historically

there's always cases of warfare.

"These guys are coming. They're trying to steal our land.

"We have to fight them."

And you always see that whenever you see modern humans disperse.

I have to believe

that Neanderthals and modern humans would've been the same way.

For over a century many scientists have marked this

as the beginning of the end for Neanderthal.

Within 10,000 years of modern humans' arrival,

Neanderthals would disappear across most of Europe.

The timing seems more than coincidental for many scientists.

In this theory

Neanderthals were extinguished by invading modern humans.

And there is tantalising evidence linked to this theory -

a clue from what might be the world's oldest cold case.

A 40,000-to-50,000-year-old rib

from a Neanderthal skeleton found in an Iraqi cave.

It bears the mark of a fatal wound.

This may be the best case of a Neanderthal murder victim.

But who is the killer?

There are only two possibilities

another Neanderthal or an invading Homo sapien.

In Mettmann, Germany, at the Neanderthal Museum,

forensic anthropologist John Hawks examines the ancient evidence,

searching for answers.

The thing is that this rib has this big gash in it.

It was clearly made by some sort of stone point or sharp edge.

The next-door rib, the eighth rib,

has only a very minor reaction on it.

So that indicates that the point that made this injury

was very small.

This suggests a precision-cut blade

a weapon unlike the heavy Neanderthal thrusting spear.

Some sort of small point made this injury

punched into the thoracic column.

The blade entered at a 45-degree angle.

The downward trajectory suggests a weapon thrown overhead.

So that indicates that this was a projectile point

made by a modern human.

This is evidence that there was conflict between the species.

And in this encounter a Neanderthal clearly lost.

But other evidence suggests

these confrontations may not have been so one-sided.

Reconstructions of the Neanderthals

show them to be relatively short and stocky

with short extremities and relatively barrel chests.

Based on the latest evidence, the Neanderthal would have been,

at the very least, a formidable opponent.

The remains of muscle markings left on the bones

show extraordinary strength.

This muscular frame gave them the ability

to contend with threats close at hand.

For Neanderthal, a species that confronted two-ton bison head on,

a modern human attacker would have been a light-weight foe.

Neanderthal was shorter than his modern human challenger,

on average four to five inches.

But because of greater muscle mass, he would weigh the same.

Neanderthal's pectoral muscles

were twice the size of the average modern humans'.

With a more muscular upper body, scientists believe

that a Neanderthal could produce 80 to 90 per cent more force

than a modern human.

You know, if they did arm wrestling,

I suspect the Neanderthals would beat everybody,

including the ex-governor of California.

I think he would not stand a chance.

And their greater muscularity reveals another fact.

The Neanderthal body was riddled with androgens - sex hormones.

Neanderthals had naturally

a greater amount of occurring androgens,

which developed their muscularity and the denseness of their bones.

And androgens, like steroids, have a well-known side effect.

They may have been a little more aggressive

and so they may have been somewhat more dangerous than modern humans.

Entering Neanderthal territory could have posed a risk for modern humans.

Maybe we didn't win as many battles that we would like to think,

that perhaps the Neanderthals on home territory

knew what they were on about

and maybe they succeeded more often than we realise.

Neanderthal strength likely gave them the advantage

in most violent clashes.

But survival would also depend

on the ability to cope with the bitter ice-age climate.

Who was best physically built to withstand extreme cold

the muscular, stocky Neanderthal or the tall, lean modern human?

Come on over. We're gonna gear you guys up...

To find out

we're putting two volunteers with two distinct body types

to the test in a deep-freeze environment.

We're at a California cryotherapy centre

that uses extreme cold to enhance healing and recovery for athletes.

Okay, we're about to expose Jason and Matt,

two very different body types,

to minus 166 degrees Fahrenheit

to determine how their bodies react to the cold temperature.

One of the volunteers stands tall for modern man,

the other, stocky and muscular like Neanderthal.

Before they're exposed to the extreme cold,

the men protect their hands, face, ears and head.

We're gonna be using thermal imaging

to take a look at both pre- and post-treatment.

But first, a pre-test skin temperature reading.

96 degrees.

95 degrees, very similar.

Good, let's go ahead and go!

They're gonna enter the pre-chamber here for 30 seconds.

This part of the process sort of acclimatises the body

and prepares it for the much colder temperature

in the treatment chamber.

All right, go and enter the main chamber.

They're now in the main chamber of minus 166.

This is 30 degrees colder

than the lowest temperature ever recorded on earth.

For this test, our subjects will endure

a survivable but excruciating three minutes in the cryo-chamber.

Much longer and they risk hypothermia,

shock and even death.

Two minutes.

Lab technicians closely monitor the volunteers.

One minute left. One minute...

30 seconds...

Time's up. Go and exit the chamber.

Okay, they're gonna be exiting the chamber

and we're gonna get skin temperatures...

Call it out.

56...

51.

The volunteer with the more muscular build

has retained a higher skin temperature.

So you can see here

that Jason's internal temperature or muscle temperature

is several degrees higher than Matt's.

Under thermal imaging

the advantages of a stocky frame become even more apparent.

The warmest areas are shown in red, the coldest in blue.

But that's not all.

It's interesting, you can see,

during this, you know, minute while they're out

they're starting to rewarm.

And Jason actually is starting to rewarm pretty rapidly.

The more muscular body also recovers faster.

But why?

Around the skeletal area

where the muscle is, there's more vascularity.

You're getting circulation in those areas pretty rapidly.

Because they evolved in a cold climate

Neanderthals developed a body type

tailor-made for the world they lived in.

They possessed superior physical strength and stamina.

So what advantage did modern humans have?

It must have been brain power.

Neanderthals were stronger and better adapted to the cold than modern man.

But when it comes to intelligence,

Neanderthals have always had a bad reputation.

This brutish guy with a club,

pounding on the head of his mate and dragging her into a cave

that is what the Neanderthal has come to represent.

It's a reputation that goes back to the discovery of the species.

Neanderthals were recognised in 1856

and you have to think that in those days

Europeans were envisioning a human past

that was very primitive

and Neanderthals fit right into that.

What stuck out to scientists was Neanderthals' protruding brow...

the mark of a species not quite human and less intelligent.

But how does Neanderthal's brain actually compare to our own?

For forensic anthropologist John Hawks,

this is the kind of comparison

that sparked his interest in Neanderthal 20 years ago.

I started working with Neanderthals when I was in graduate school.

The cool thing about Neanderthals is that they're so close to us

and yet there's like this division between them and us

and so looking at them gives us a look at ourselves

through maybe sort of a distorted kind of a lens.

Using 3-D imaging technology,

Hawks studies Neanderthal skulls excavated in France.

The technology allows him to peer inside the skull

and glean insights about the Neanderthal brain.

It has a very pronounced brow ridge right on the outside of it

and you might think "Wow!

"That must impact the shape of the front of the brain,

"which is right behind it."

I like the way you've lined it up.

Like a 3-D x-ray,

a laser scanner captures every detail outside and inside the skull.

When you turn this frontal bone over and look inside of it,

you see the frontal lobes of the brain

that are imprinted in the back of that bone.

The marks left in the bone

allow the scientists to calculate the size of the frontal lobes,

the area of the brain involved with cognitive processes.

The imprint inside of it, of those frontal lobes,

is basically the same as ours.

Within the frontal lobes lie the prefrontal cortex

the area responsible for critical thinking,

problem solving and creativity...

The results of Hawks' analysis

reveal a brain that's remarkably similar to our own.

The parts of the brain that are responsible for language capacity,

the parts of the brain that are responsible

for really thinking about stuff,

seem to be the same size and proportion in Neanderthals

as they are in humans.

But surprisingly, there's one area

where Neanderthal's brain differs from ours.

The back part is a little extended, right inside that occipital bun,

and it's possible that that makes a difference

to the functions of the back of the brain.

The occipital bun contains the occipital lobe,

the area involved with processing visual information,

like pattern recognition and depth perception.

For hunters, these are critical visual clues

used to identify prey and hit their target with deadly accuracy.

This points to Neanderthals having exceptional vision.

So this is a possible functional difference

between Neanderthals and us.

But the true measure of Neanderthals' brain power

lies in how they applied it

to survive challenges in their environment

and how they kept pace

with the inventions of their modern human rivals.

The best examples are the tools they built.

To the untrained eye,

Neanderthal knives appear crude, even primitive,

especially when compared to the precision-chiselled blades

and spearheads crafted by modern humans.

Neanderthals would make knives

that basically would get done in a coupla minutes at most.

So rather than trying to impress

with how fancy their technology looks,

they're interested in getting the job done.

Modern Homo sapien technology seems to be a lot more elegant.

You know, a piece like this would take several hours to make,

sometimes a day.

But a quickly made knife is not necessarily an inferior one.

For a Neanderthal to make a spearhead

is just not a lucky blow.

Neanderthals were able to create their stone flakes

that not only had incredibly sharp edges

but the edges were incredibly strong.

Archaeologist Metin Eren

is uncovering Neanderthal tool-making techniques

by replicating their methods.

While it looks easy to make these stone flakes,

it took me about a year and a half

to learn how to make and replicate

the same exact technology that Neanderthals did.

One reason why the Neanderthal technology is so hard

is that it's necessary to get a precise geometry

in the rock that you're making.

Neanderthal stone-cutters targeted small fissures and cracks.

In a sense, they saw the blade within each rock

and struck accordingly...

a visionary technique.

A Neanderthal could easily make 50 to 60 to 70 stone flakes

from a single nodule of flint.

So I think in a very real sense

you could say it was almost assembly line stone flake production.

A side-by-side comparison with a modern-day knife

shows just how effective the Neanderthal blade is.

The metal knife requires lots of effort.

The Neanderthal stone blade slices with ease.

Neanderthal knives were as sharp as anything that we would have today

and it really just speaks to how sophisticated their technology was.

And how well they were able to use the materials at their disposal.

With their stone blades, Neanderthals turn a basic assumption upside-down.

They prove that when it comes to technology

they are on par with modern man.

And there is at least one instance

where Neanderthal's innovation surpasses that of our own species.

This seemingly unremarkable object, uncovered in a German mine in 1963,

is a piece of technological history.

This 50,000-year-old artefact

bears the stamp of its original Neanderthal owner.

(Speaks German)

TRANSLATION: It's a very small, black, unremarkable thing

but it's a sensation.

What you can see here is an imprint from wood.

And when you turn it around

there is another imprint of a stone point.

And below that, a Neanderthal fingerprint.

What's so remarkable for chemist Christian Wunderlich

isn't just the maker's mark.

It's the substance itself.

Chemical analysis reveals that it does not occur in nature,

making it the world's oldest synthetic material.

It's an adhesive distilled from birch bark called "pitch"...

a kind of stone-age superglue.

Neanderthals used pitch to form a rock-hard bond

between stone blades and wooden shafts,

making their thrusting spears more durable and deadly.

But the most impressive part of the landmark adhesive

is the process involved with its production -

a process that scientists could only figure out

in the controlled environment of a lab.

You have to invent this and tinker with the recipe

in order to do it properly

and it's hard for us to learn how to do.

Birch pitch only emerges

when the bark is heated to around 750 degrees Fahrenheit.

The problem is, in open air the bark ignites at much lower temperatures.

So how did the Neanderthals do it?

Christian Wunderlich and a colleague are attempting to make pitch

using only materials available to Neanderthals.

First, they place the birch bark in a container,

like the goose egg seen here.

Next, an empty container with a wider opening is buried in the ground.

It will later collect the pitch.

Then Wunderlich places the container with the birch bark on top of it.

Mud is then applied to seal the two containers,

preventing oxygen from rushing in and sparking the ignition process.

The birch pitch that they're creating

in order to use as a glue to adhere things together,

it's so complicated, the steps that you have to carry out

to create this accurately

and they're doing it

and they're doing it apparently for long periods of time.

Hot coals are used to heat the birch bark

inside the goose-egg container.

As temperatures rise to 750 degrees Fahrenheit

the oily pitch will begin to ooze out.

(Speaks German)

TRANSLATION: Normally 30 per cent of the birch bark becomes pitch.

The entire procedure takes 20-30 minutes

but the process itself

is over 200,000 years in the making...

a testament to the intellect of Neanderthal

and proof that they, like modern humans,

had the ability to innovate and invent,

to see possibilities in nature

and mould them for their own advantage and survival.

What technology really is is the ability to follow directions,

carry them out to create something that's useful to you.

And Neanderthals, they're able to do these things.

They're learning from other Neanderthals

and they're carrying out those things

long before modern humans show up on the scene.

So we're just getting a little glimpse

of the sophistication that Neanderthals probably had.

But for all their sophistication,

Neanderthal technology may have had one fatal flaw.

Experts now understand that Neanderthals were physically stronger

than their Homo sapien rivals,

and equally as intelligent and innovative.

Why then did they disappear while modern man survived?

Could their different hunting techniques be the key?

Neanderthals attacked their prey

with thrusting spears...

a heavy, hand-held weapon.

Modern humans pursued their quarry armed with throwing spears.

Pitted against modern man and their throwing spears,

did the Neanderthals die out because they were simply outhunted?

In Petaluma, California,

weapons expert Mike Loades and his colleague Scott Thomas

will put Neanderthal and modern human spears to the test.

Their target - a pig carcass.

It's a good height. We've got the height.

First up, the modern human throwing spear.

This is not the Olympics.

We're not throwing for hundreds of metres.

This is hunting and it's hunting in a group.

So I have got my friends the other side of that animal.

I'm not throwing for distance,

I'm throwing for penetration and accuracy.

So probably no more than six to eight metres.

Even as close as this is a reasonable hunting distance.

Like Neanderthal, modern man needed to get close to their prey.

But how deadly is the modern human throwing spear?

We can see already that the impact of that strike

has actually sheared the stone head off.

Now, in terms of doing damage to the animal that doesn't matter too much.

You know, this has penetrated and in fact if we look round here...

Yeah, it's come right through.

But how will this compare to the killing power of the thrusting spear?

Neanderthals tended to hunt the big game,

the big aggressive animals like mammoths and bisons,

big creatures that run at you.

In that situation I do not wanna throw my weapon away.

This time, Loades will strike the target

using all of his strength, Neanderthal style.

That has gone in pretty convincingly.

I mean, we can see it's past the shoulder.

It's gone in deeper than the thrown one.

And clearly the thrown spear

is a higher-velocity event than the thrust one.

But that little extra bit of muscle power,

even my weak, modern human muscle power,

has been enough to go through.

The thrusting spear appears to be more lethal.

But to be sure, Loades wants to conduct another battery of tests,

this time under controlled conditions.

At the University of California, Berkeley,

Loades will evaluate both pre-historic arms,

applying technology used for ballistics tests.

Using an air cannon,

Loades can replicate the force of a Neanderthal's thrust

and compare it to that of a modern human throwing a spear.

The actual design is different.

Being a throwing spear, we've got a slightly more slender shaft.

So there's less friction on the shaft.

The forensic gelatine

will give a clear view of each weapon's destructive power.

First, the team wants to test the modern human throwing spear.

Loades knows modern humans still needed to get close to their prey

to hit their target with accuracy.

From prior experiments

he estimates the average range was no more than nine to 12 feet.

But how deadly is a throw from this distance?

Firing in three...

two...

one.

The spear sends a shockwave through the gelatine

but it doesn't penetrate past the binding on the spear tip.

Okay, not bad.

So that was at two-thirds of our Neanderthal thrust.

So that's representing early modern man throwing.

But it's done pretty good.

With a throwing spear, force dissipates in flight.

Loades believes it would typically strike

with about 30 per cent less power than the thrusting spear.

Now it's time to put the Neanderthal thrusting spear to the test.

Oh, yes!

Wow! That's pretty impressive.

That's just cut cleanly. Look how far that goes in.

And dragging that material behind. That's right.

That's causing colossal interior damage and bleeding

and just the shock alone...

Huge.

It would stop the heart possibly, even just the force of that.

In Loades' tests

the thrusting spear not only stands up to the modern human spear,

it stands out as the more powerful weapon -

a strength of Neanderthals,

rather than a weakness for mankind to exploit.

With a body type tailor-made for the cold

and technology perfected over 300,000 years,

Neanderthals clearly had the advantage in ice-age Europe.

Modern humans showed up but the Neanderthals persist

for a good long time after modern humans appear out of Africa

and it takes a long time for modern humans to succeed

in the habitats where Neanderthals are still going strong, you know.

They were able to master the environment that they lived in.

There are still people who will argue

that these Neanderthals were somehow inferior

and it's our arrival

that irrevocably eliminated anything that stood in our way.

I think it's total nonsense.

Today, a consensus is emerging -

modern humans did not kill off the Neanderthal.

So what was it that put them at a disadvantage?

For decades scientists believed that, unlike modern man,

Neanderthal clans lacked the strong interpersonal bonds

that provided security and protection.

But even this assumption is being challenged.

In Mettmann, Germany,

a 60,000-year-old Neanderthal skeleton provides proof

that modern man was not the only species with strong social bonds.

I mean, it's amazing that the entire skeleton is sort of laid out here.

Yeah. See, it is a extremely well-preserved skeleton.

The skeleton is intact, encased in earth tightly packed around it,

proof that Neanderthals were possibly the first humans

to bury their dead.

So it wouldn't be preserved this way

if it wasn't like a body that went into a hole.

Exactly. It is still articulated. Uh-huh.

The right arm crosses the body,

as if it was carefully posed before the deceased was laid to rest.

So I think it must have been put in a burial pit

and covered with clay

so that scavengers, hyenas and so on, did not disturb it.

This is just one example of a Neanderthal burial

and it is just one of many burial traditions now linked to Neanderthal.

We're looking at a range of traditions,

just as it's variable among living human populations.

You have these bodies that are laid out aligned with each other.

And then you have a large stone placed over it with marks on it.

Although the exact meaning of their burial practices

is shrouded in mystery,

the fact itself is telling.

And when we look at the way they were treating their dead,

it shows us that they were doing so in a way that we recognise as human.

If they're burying their dead

they have some kind of thought about an afterlife,

respect for those people who have died.

And that shows how human they are.

That brings them closer to ourselves even more.

These new discoveries pose many questions

about our closest human relatives.

What were and what are our relationships?

How do we fit in with the Neanderthals?

How can we understand their relationships to us?

I think we have many questions.

The most pressing if we are so similar,

why did the Neanderthals die out while we survived?

That was a volcanic event.

They were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Captions (c) SBS Australia 2015