Neanderthals and humans at ‘war for 100,000 years’ before people left Africa

Prehistoric humans may have warred with our ancestor for more than 100,000 years as we fought to leave the continent where we first evolved.

We might share most of our DNA with prehistoric Neanderthals, but apparently we didn’t get along with them.

Analysis by a senior lecturer in evolutionary biology and palaeontology at the UK’s University of Bath shows we might have been at war with our evolutionary ancestors for more than 100,000 years.

“War isn’t a modern invention, but an ancient, fundamental part of our humanity,” Dr Nicholas Longrich wrote in a piece for The Conversation.

He theorises our shared penchant for warfare might have stemmed from our close relatives, the chimpanzee, who engage in “co-operative aggression”.

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We might have inherited ‘co-operative aggression’ from chimps. Picture: Toby Zerna

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“Male chimps routinely gang up to attack and kill males from rival bands … This implies that co-operative aggression evolved in the common ancestor of chimps and ourselves, 7 million years ago. If so, Neanderthals will have inherited these same tendencies,” Dr Longrich said.

He added that there is plenty of evidence Neanderthals shared “our creative instincts”, making jewellery, artwork, shrines and weapons. And there’s evidence to suggest we shared “destructive instincts” too.

Prehistoric humans and Neanderthals both “frequently show trauma to the skull” from blunt weapons like clubs, and also “parry fractures” which are broken arms from warding off attackers.

“Some injuries could have been sustained in hunting, but the patterns match those predicted for a people engaged in intertribal warfare,” Dr Longrich noted.

A computer model (L) of a Neanderthal skull discovered in a Greek cave. Picture: Katerina Harvati/Eberhard Karls University of tuebingen/AFP

Dr Longrich suggested this could be the reason it took humans so long to leave Africa, where we first evolved.

Neanderthals had established territories throughout the land masses we know as Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

As humans expanded their territories, clashes would soon follow.

“It’s exceedingly unlikely that modern humans met the Neanderthals and decided to just live and let live,” Dr Longrich said.

“Instead, for thousands of years, we must have tested their fighters, and for thousands of years, we kept losing.”

Humans would eventually overcome Neanderthals, now extinct, which Dr Longrich attributed to the possibility of superior ranged weapons like spears and bows as well as larger tribes sustained by better hunting and gathering techniques.

“Ultimately, we won. But this wasn’t because they were less inclined to fight. In the end, we likely just became better at war than they were,” he said.