Behavioral Modernity, Neanderthals and Homo sapiens: a Case for Concept Retirement

Recent archaeological evidence is shedding light on the Neanderthals. New discoveries as well as recent reinterpretations of material traces associated with Neanderthals provide windows into their complex cognitive, social, and emotional lives. This article argues that although Neanderthals and ancient Homo sapiens were distinct, the behavioral gap between them, as represented by the archaeological record, is narrower than was previously supposed. Indeed, narrower to the extent that the concept of human behavioral modernity no longer picks out the distinctive behavioral profile of H. sapiens in a clear and useful way. The record contains trace evidence of Neanderthal behaviors/practices that fall within the range of variation of the behavioral profile of ethnographically known human foragers, and which would be taken as markers of behavioral modernity if found in association with ancient H. sapiens. On this basis, this article advocates for retiring the concept of human behavioral modernity. Key controversies remain, of course (for example, the contentious issue of H. sapiens and Neanderthal symbolic behavior/cognition, the question of Neanderthal/H. sapiens interaction especially as it relates to Neanderthal extinction, the extent to which different hominin populations/lineages exhibited adaptive behavioral plasticity, and voluminous debates surrounding the evolution of language, kinship, religion, morality, the arts, and so on), but these do not require a notion of behavioral modernity for guiding progress. “Behavioral modernity” as a research-guiding notion has done its dash. While the generation and implementation of new concepts of behavioral modernity remains a live option, this article suggests a disuse strategy: that debate couched in the parlance of behavioral modernity would benefit simply by pivoting to that of the specific issues at stake in whichever research/discursive context is at hand.