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Received: 16 July 2020 Revised: 13 March 2021 Accepted: 7 July 2021
DOI: 10.1002/evan.21918

ISSUES

Brutish Neanderthals: History of a merciless characterization

Paige Madison

Natural History Museum of Denmark,

University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen,
Denmark
Correspondence
Paige Madison, Natural History Museum of
Denmark, University of Copenhagen,
Gothersgade 130, 1123 Copenhagen,
Denmark.
Email: paige.madison@snm.ku.dk
Funding information
John Templeton Foundation, Grant/Award
Number: 60669; School of Life Sciences,
Arizona State University
Abstract
The idea that Neanderthals were brutish and unintelligent is often traced back to
Marcellin Boule, a French paleontologist who examined the specimen known as the
Old Man in the first decades of the 20th century. This article examines the work of
Boule's predecessors and aggregate a variety of literature to underline an argument
that this idea has much earlier origins and is rooted in the first recognized specimen
discovered in the Neander Valley in 1856. Reorienting our understanding of the brut-
ish Neanderthal to account for its 19th-century origins, allows for a reexamination of
the factors in 19th-century culture, science, and society which contributed to this
caricature, especially the concepts of race and species' extinction. Such a
reexamination dismantles the narrative of Boule's error while providing a new van-
tage point to think about Neanderthals in the present.

KEYWORDS
extinction, fossils, history, hominins, Neanderthal, race

1 | I N T RO DU CT I O N in the pages of this journal, Neanderthals were “children of the 19th

“Uncouth,” “repellent,” “the picture of unattractiveness”—the portrayal
of Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) as unintelligent brutes is per-
haps one of the most notorious characterizations in the history of
paleoanthropology.1 But what is the source of this unbecoming image?
The responsibility for the origins of these “beasts” is often laid at the
feet of Marcellin Boule, the French paleontologist who studied a speci-
2–4
men known as the Old Man of La Chapelle in the early 20th century.
Historical accounts accuse Boule of incorrectly interpreting the Old
Man's arthritic features as evidence that he was a crude, shuffling,
hunched-over beast who was unable to stand up straight—an error that
conflated pathological deformity with species-wide idiocy.5–8 This blun-
der, some argue, resulted in a merciless characterization that almost sin-
gle-handedly revolutionized the perception of Neanderthals.5,9,10
Closer inspection of the history of Neanderthal research, how-
ever, raises an important question: Is the brutish caricature exclusively
attributable to Boule? Paleoanthropologists and historians have
shown that conceptualizing Neanderthals as unintelligent occurred
earlier in anthropology's history.11–20 Indeed, the uncouth image can
be seen in the study of the first recognized specimen found in
Germany's Neander Valley in 1856: the Feldhofer 1 fossil—more than
half a century before Boule's analysis. As Trinkaus and Shipman noted
century” and were thus shaped by the science of human “races” that
trended during that time.17
Despite the recognition by some scholars that the brutish carica-
ture has deep roots that are intertwined with scientific and cultural
questions of race, narratives of “Boule's error” persist.5,6,8–10 This arti-
cle revisits the 19th century to review the analyses of the Feldhofer
specimen through primary sources, while bringing in secondary litera-
ture in paleoanthropology and history that has discussed this time
period and its context.
Aggregating existing literature that acknowledges the 19th cen-
tury uncouth Neanderthal in order to integrate it with recent work by
historians of science provides a more comprehensive view of the brut-
ish Neanderthal character. This vantage point provides new ways of
thinking about shifting judgments on biodiversity and extinction and
the influence of those judgments on scientific and cultural under-
standings of race and evolution. In so doing, I aim to dismantle the tale
of Boule's error. Probing the scientific and cultural context around
extinction, I argue, highlights the ways in which conceptions of Nean-
derthals were fashioned around scientists' understandings of humans'
place in nature.
In the discussion of “race” that follows, it is worth highlighting
that it is clear today that the concept does not accurately represent

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MADISON 367

human biological variation. Data from human genomics and evolution-

ary biology have indisputably revealed that variation does not map
onto populations in accurate or discernable patterns and therefore
does not have roots in biological reality.21–25 Essentialist, typological
thinking has been replaced by new perspectives of a more nuanced,
gradual evolutionary process, while strict racial categories, invented
and utilized by past naturalists to interpret human variation, have
been shown to be artificially constructed and based on a range of
assumptions.21,22 As Fuentes states in his recent review of Charles
Darwin's “races of man” section of Descent of Man (1871)—published
around the time period I examine here—examining racial categories
reveals scientists' biases at the time. These categories required the
ignoring of scientific evidence and ultimately promulgated a “damag-
ing ideology” about human diversity that has resisted change ever
since.26 Moreover, the callous terminology of declaring human
populations “savage” or “lowly” is not based in any scientific reality
and is only reproduced here to reveal the historical racial undertones
of 19th and early 20th century in hopes of shedding any associated
conceptions.
This article first reviews the evidence for a brutish conception of
Neanderthals in the mid-19th century through a survey of the initial
analyses of the Feldhofer fossil and a focus on the framework within
which those analyses occurred. Drawing from primary and secondary
sources, I highlight the particular ways that interwoven concepts of
nature and culture linked anatomical characteristics to intelligence in
the case of the Neanderthal. Next, I explore the implications for the
brutish caricature concerning ideas about extinction. Tracing
the extinction dimension forward in time, I then ask if this perspective
can provide new ways of thinking about Neanderthals in the present.
Finally, I explore the lessons that Boule's error provides for the rec-
ounting of history.
The ideas in this article build upon an article in the Journal of the
History of Biology, where I explored the cultural aspects of Neander- FIGURE 1 Views of the Feldhofer 1 cranium, from Huxley31
thal research in historiographic detail.15 Here, I pivot from that
groundwork to speak to anthropologists directly about the assump-
tions underlying Neanderthal conceptions. Throughout this article, I beings' seemingly low cognitive abilities. Schaaffhausen speculated
lean on scholarship by paleoanthropologists and historians of science, that Neanderthals were too crude to be capable of language, instead
particularly the foundational work of Trinkaus, Shipman, Spencer, and uttering sounds “more like the cries of wild beasts than human
17,19,27–30
Sommer. In engaging with their contributions as well as speech,” while Huxley claimed that it was difficult to believe the skull
accumulating literature from recent decades, a goal of this work is to could have contained anything more complex than “the thoughtless
provide an entry point for a deeper exploration of the rich scholarship brains of a savage.”31,32 Even the geologist who chose the name of
on Neanderthals, race, and the history of paleoanthropology the H. neanderthalensis, William King, argued that the “thoughts and
(Figure 1). desires which once dwelt within” the Neanderthal cranium “never
soared beyond those of a brute.”13 Moreover, an entire group of nat-
uralists argued quite literally that the fossil cranium represented a dis-
2 | F R O M L I V I N G “ S A V A G E S” TO ANC I ENT eased and “maldeveloped idiot.”33,34
FOSSILS Agreement on the supposed stupidity of the Neanderthals existed
despite there being “nearly as many speculations” on the nature of
From the beginning, scientific analyses of the Feldhofer fossil were the Feldhofer individual “as there were anthropologists in Europe,” as
riddled with comments about its apparently unintelligent nature. anatomist Arthur Keith later reflected.35 Naturalists held a range of
Researchers ranging from the original describer, German anatomist opinions on what exactly the Feldhofer specimen was. Did the crani-
Hermann Schaaffhausen, to Victorian naturalist Thomas Huxley, um's large brain size indicate that it was human? Or, alternatively, did
reached beyond mere anatomical descriptions to comment on the features like its odd shape suggest it was something else entirely? On

368
one end of this spectrum of opinion was King's designation of the fos-
sil as a distinct species. On the other lay Huxley's hypothesis that the
Neanderthal fit within the variation observed in Homo sapiens, while
in between existed a sampling of other speculations.36 Yet, regardless
of how the fossil was perceived—human or nonhuman—its owner was
considered dim-witted, unsophisticated, and wild. The Neanderthals'
stupidity was the sole feature that scientists seemed to agree upon.
The question becomes, why?
As paleoanthropologists and historians of science have shown,
this shared depiction of an unintelligent Neanderthal grew from the
mid-19th century scientific devotion to examining variations in human
“races.”15,37,38 At the time the Feldhofer Neanderthal was discovered,
naturalists were engrossed in comparing and categorizing the anato-
mies, behaviors, and cultures of humans across the globe.37–42 Euro-
pean scientists conceived of human diversity as a set of categories of
“races” that fit neatly into a linear chain that mirrored colonial hierar-
chies and ideas of progress, with apes at its lower end, “lower races”
of humans (colonized peoples) in the middle, and Europeans at the
top.43
When progress-infused evolutionary thinking took hold in the
1860s, naturalists imagined colonized peoples as low, “savage” links
to early human ancestors, who were themselves links connecting
humans to the rest of the primate world. 42–46
The framework
assumed connections between a number of scientific concepts,
including biology and culture. The biology of the “lower” human
“races” was directly associated with an innately inferior capacity to
produce and appreciate sophisticated cultural and intellectual activity.
So too were boundaries between living and extinct humans blurred.
As historians of science Bowler and Delisle have shown, contempo-
rary “savage” races became viewed as analogous to primitive ancient
15,43,45
humans. Thus, this classification system was not only applied to
living populations but was also central to the study of human origins,
relating to the study of Neanderthals in very specific ways.
3 | APPLYING THE FRAMEWORK TO
N E AN DE R T HAL S
Initial studies of the Feldhofer Neanderthal all placed it within this lin-
ear, ideologically loaded scale, situating it at the “lower,” end near the
“savage” races, explicitly using them as analogs. For example, in the
first published analysis of the fossil, Schaaffhausen claimed that the
“manners of the barbarous populations” recorded in historic accounts
could shed “unexpected light” on the Neanderthal.32 He pointed to
sources that described cannibalistic, ancient European races who lived
“in a state of astonishing savageness” as models for understanding
32
Neanderthal culture, character, and intelligence (Figure 2).
Huxley used a more specific living group to think through Nean-
derthal's biology and culture, asserting that Aboriginal Australians
were remarkably similar to Neanderthals. This position was not unique
to Huxley; Aboriginal Australians were often used as a benchmark for
the most primitive human “race” in this period. As geographer Ander-
son has detailed, Aboriginal Australians were viewed as “intractable
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MADISON
F I G U R E 2 The Feldhofer cranium superimposed on “an
Australian Skull from Western Port,” from Huxley31
savages…sitting liminally at the border” of the nature–culture divide,
pushing “at the very limits” of what it meant to be human.47 In the
case of the Neanderthal, Huxley argued, the shape of skulls was so
similar that only a “small additional amount of flattening and lengthen-
ing” was needed to “convert the Australian brain case into a form
identical with that of the aberrant [Neanderthal] fossil.”31
Specific anatomical markers signified a cranium's place on the
scale for Huxley and others, and, by extension, its owner's state of
mental development. The forehead provides one such example. Natu-
ralists believed that the Feldhofer Neanderthal displayed precisely
those features that they considered savage and brutish, such as a low
braincase and a flattened forehead: All of the early scientists who
examined the Feldhofer Neanderthal commented on these features.
King found the forehead “uncommonly low and retreating,” a feature
that was evidence that the skull was neither human nor intelligent
because “man's psychical endowments are visibly expressed [by] the
elevated vertex of his cranium.”13 The significance of the forehead for
intelligence was so widely agreed upon that, a few years later, Charles
Darwin acknowledged that “it is commonly said that the forehead
gives to man his noble and intellectual appearance”11 (Figure 3).
Commentary on the Feldhofer Neanderthal's forehead is just one
example of how contemporary ideas surrounding the study of humans
drove naturalists' initial interpretations of the fossil. However, it is
one that is easy to visualize; for example, as depicted in Figure 3, a
sketch from Huxley's archives. Through this rough illustration compar-
ing the outlines of a range of human and primate skulls—with the
Neanderthal nestled in the middle in yellow—we see Huxley working
behind the scenes trying to work out these issues of comparative skull
shape in order to understand where the specimen fit. Seeing such an
image is sobering, as Huxley compared the fossil's forehead, vault, and
overall size to a gorilla, an American, an Australian, and a “Scotch
idiot,” believing that this approach could shed light on the Neander-
thal. It illustrates that the “brutes” and “savages” mentioned in his
analyses did not refer to abstract primitive beasts, but instead to living

MADISON
F I G U R E 3 A comparison of skull shapes in humans and Feldhofer
1, by Thomas Huxley. Courtesy of T.H. Huxley papers, Imperial
College London
populations. Ideas about those populations, which interwove deeply
entrenched assumptions about progress, culture, and biology, meant
that associating Neanderthals with them came with a host of
implications.
4 | I M P L I C A T I O N S : C U L T U R E , SC I E N C E ,
A N D EX T I N C T I O N
Racial categorizations have always been political; associating Nean-
derthals with living populations deemed to be “savage” had implica-
tions for both the fossils and those to whom they were compared.
The primary consequences that arose from scientists' assumptions
that the species were biologically and culturally inferior was that it
provided Europeans with further justification for imperial expan-
sion.6,43,44,46,48 As Fuentes et al. have demonstrated, the seemingly
biological classification system used at the time, in fact “emerged
from, and in support of, European colonialism, oppression, and dis-
crimination,” thus carrying numerous cultural stereotypes and
biases.49 During a time when deep history was made analogous with
the present, scientists used the past “as an ideological and political
tool to comprehend social processes, reinforce value systems and
assert the authority of particular groups,” historian Chris Manias has
argued.46 We can see how this played out by focusing on the dis-
course around extinction.
In the 19th century, extinction was considered to be a marker of
progress: something that occurred gradually and inevitably as a result
of evolution. Historian of science Sepkoski has argued that, during this
time, extinction signified a failure to adapt and was therefore under-
stood to be a fair consequence of the evolutionary process.50 This
was true across the animal kingdom, including humans themselves.
During the height of European imperialism, such logic made it easier
to defend the displacement, subjugation, and even extermination of
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369
human “races” that accompanied the spread of Europeans across the
globe, because these groups were seen to be doomed to extinction
due to their inferiority. This stance has been termed by historian
Brantlinger “extinction discourse,” a specific outcome of the historical
interaction between imperialism and racism.44
Many naturalists at the time were in basic “agreement about the
inevitable disappearance of some or all primitive races,” as Brantlinger
has argued.44 “Savagery,” he shows, was “frequently treated as self-
extinguishing” by Victorian naturalists.44 The consensus around this
idea was so pervasive across different branches of science, and so
rarely questioned, that it made extinction discourse “extremely
potent.”44 These understandings of extinction were built upon a com-
plex web of values and beliefs, informed not only by “contemporary
scientific theories about extinction” but also by “broader cultural atti-
tudes about social progress,” among other factors.50
Embedding Neanderthals into this worldview provided evidence
for previous extinctions, adding further justification for continued
European expansion across the world. Neanderthals were no longer
around, therefore they must have been unable to compete with more
progressive humans, the assumption went. Viewed as lowly beings,
Neanderthals' demise afforded tangible, fossil evidence that the pro-
cess of extinction in the name of evolutionary betterment had already
occurred, therefore justifying its continuation in the present.12,27
This framework of scientific and cultural attitudes on extinction,
then, reflected larger issues of how naturalists viewed themselves as
part of nature and potential drivers of change.50,51 Thinking through a
world of possible imperialist-driven extinction required grappling with
the question of how to situate humans within the biological world and
determine our “relations to the universe of things,” as Huxley put it.31
Leaving responsibility for extinction generally with nature—by assum-
ing it was a completely natural outcome of evolution irrespective of
human action—relieved Europeans of culpability in the imperialist
atrocities occurring around the globe.
Thus, assuming that Neanderthals disappeared due to their cul-
tural inferiority was viewed within a general framework that drew
from assumptions about the evolutionary process to situate humans
in the natural world. This issue—ascertaining humans' place in
nature—as Huxley declared in his text examining the Feldhofer fossil,
is the “question of questions for [hu]mankind; the problem which
underlies all others and is more deeply interesting than any other.”31
5 | I N T O T HE 2 0 T H CE N T U R Y
Recognizing that understandings of extinction played a role in 19th-
century conceptions of Neanderthals allows us to then trace extinc-
tion discourse across time, connecting the initial examinations of the
Feldhofer fossil to Boule's work and beyond. By tracing the tangled
ideologies of race, imperialism, and extinction, we see how similar
assumptions shaped interpretations of the past—and of Neander-
thals—for decades.
As a historian Sommer has shown in her work on Huxley's stu-
dent, William Sollas, notions of “racial violence and imperialistic

370
behavior” as “central mechanisms of progress” continued to inform
ideas about human prehistory.27,52 By dehumanizing non-European
“races,” naturalists like Sollas perpetuated the white-supremacist view
that Europeans would inevitably invade and replace them.27 In 1911,
Sollas commented in a discussion of Neanderthals that the “dispos-
session by a new-comer of a race already in occupation of the soil has
53
marked an upward step in the intellectual progress of mankind.”
Anatomist Grafton Elliot Smith later agreed with him, speculating that
the Neanderthals' small prefrontal region was “sufficient evidence of
his lowly state of intelligence” and the “reason for his failure in the
competition with the rest of mankind.”54
During this time, numerous developments and new discoveries
occurred concerning the scientific understandings of Neanderthals:
These have been reviewed by Spencer, Trinkaus, and Shipman.19,29
For the purposes of this article, however, it is worth highlighting the
continuity in naturalists' approaches across this period, despite new
specimens. For example, Boule's analysis followed certain patterns set
forward by Schaaffhausen and Huxley. In his interpretation of the La
Chapelle specimen, Boule continued to focus on Aboriginal
Australians, the group identified decades earlier as a “benchmark” for
the most primitive human “race,” pushing “at the limits” of what it
meant to be human.47 He used these “primitives at the peripheries of
the earth” as proxies for both intelligence and posture.55 Persisting in
the belief that Neanderthals were unintelligent, Boule, like those
before him, pointed to the forehead as evidence. The species, he
claimed, had failed to acquire “the principal characteristics of true H.
55
sapiens…fully-developed foreheads [and] large brains.”
Thus, as the imperial era persisted into the early decades of the
20th century, narratives of progressive evolution, racial differences,
and primitive superiority endured. These ideas continued to be linked
to scientists' views on extinction that continued to be a potential nat-
ural consequence of territory expansion and competition. While
researchers like Boule added new facets to Neanderthal research with
new analyses, their work built upon—and in many ways replicated—
previous themes set forward by Huxley and others.
Over the next decades, however, a shift began to occur in how
Europeans viewed issues of race and imperialism both culturally and
scientifically, contributing to changing judgments about the value of
diversity and the consequences of extinction. Briefly reviewing the lit-
erature on those changing judgments allows us to begin to think
through how ideas about Neanderthals may have been altered due to
changing worldviews.
Scholars have shown that the concept of “race” underwent a dra-
matic change in scientific circles during the 20th century.56 In the
early years of the Nazi emergence—and certainly by the end of World
War II—the questioning of race-based theories among scientific com-
57,58
munities had become prevalent. Simultaneously, the linked
decline of imperialism was unfolding. Additionally, Sepkoski has
argued that understandings of extinction were also undergoing dra-
matic changes across science and culture in ways that continued to be
50
connected and mutually reinforcing.
By returning the discussion to the subject of Aboriginal
Australians, it becomes clear what the above changes signified for
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MADISON
how many scientists thought about “race.” Historian Russell
McGregor has argued that, by the 1940s, “the inevitability of extinc-
tion” of the population “was as much contested as conceded” and the
“race theory was itself heading towards extinction.”59 Without perva-
sive assumptions about the inferiority of certain living populations
and the inevitability of expansion by others dominating scientific dis-
course, it was no longer as easy to assume that certain groups were
doomed.
Coinciding with these broader shifts in concepts of race and
extinction, a change occurred in the leading narratives about Nean-
derthals' intelligence and their ultimate demise. The latter half of the
1940s marked what Trinkaus and Shipman have called the “renais-
sance” of Neanderthals; a time when the species began to seem more
human-like and familiar.19 During this time that Straus and Cave
declared that if a Neanderthal “could be reincarnated and placed in a
New York subway, it is doubtful whether he would attract any more
attention than some of its other denizens.”7 Famously, this statement
was derived from a reexamination of specimen Boule had studied
decades earlier, a reexamination explicitly countering his brutish
conception.
Theories on the demise of the Neanderthals extinction became
more varied during this time, for example Howell commented in 1957
that the question of whether the Neanderthals were already extinct
by the time modern humans arrived in Europe or “whether they were
extinguished by, or hybridized with these invaders, remains a moot
point.”60 This statement illustrates a move away from a pervasive
assumption that Neanderthals' were self-extinguishing toward a more
nuanced view that reconsidered potential interactions with modern
humans, either that the invaders extinguished Neanderthals or inter-
bred with them.
6 | RE C EN T V I E WS ON E X TI NC T I O N A ND
NE A N D E R T H A L S
Transformations in ideas about biodiversity and extinction only
became more pronounced as the 20th century progressed, as Sep-
koski has illustrated. With paleontologists increasingly examining evi-
dence for multiple rapid, mass extinctions and ecologists increasingly
arguing that biodiversity was a value in and of itself in the 1960s, sci-
entists moved away from the mid-19th century view of extinction as
an inevitable, progressive, and “fair” process.50
Adopting a perspective that recognizes the tragedy of catastrophic
extinction events and ascribes intrinsic value to biodiversity is signifi-
cant because it leaves room for human agency and lays the groundwork
for a robust set of ecological and humanist values. By the 1980s, histo-
rians have shown, understandings of extinction increasingly came to
consider “ethical responsibilities towards nature and our fellow
humans.”50 Unlike Huxley, scientists by this time carried an “awareness
that humans are responsible for the decimation of biological and cul-
tural diversity, for the devastating consequences and extreme inequities
of global warming, and ultimately for jeopardizing the survival of their
own species by bringing about the sixth mass extinction.”61

MADISON
How, then, we can ask, does the perception of human agency in
extinction shape our understandings of Neanderthals' disappearance
from the planet today? Is it possible that changing assumptions sur-
rounding race and extinction have played a significant role in framing
scientists' ideas about Neanderthals? Although a range of opinions
currently exist regarding the potential causes of Neanderthals' demise,
the notion that they were inevitably headed toward extinction simply
due to their own brutishness is no longer the dominant narrative.
Instead, the picture is more nuanced—invoking climate changes and
other factors external to the Neanderthal brain itself.62
As Neanderthals become increasingly portrayed as intelligent
beings capable of crafting cave art and jewelry, the tone of the discus-
sions of Neanderthal extinctions has shifted.63,64 Instead of invoking
modern human superiority, some researchers have begun to envision
Neanderthals as of an “alternative way of being human,” a perspective
is made possible by valuing diversity and alternative ways of being.62
Villa and Roebroeks have claimed, for example, that the explanation
of the “replacement and supposedly rapid extinction” of Neanderthals
“in terms of substantial cognitive, technological and demographic dif-
ferences” between them and modern humans is not supported by the
archeological record.64 This reopens the question, they argue, of “if
Neandertals were not technologically and cognitively ‘disadvantaged’,
65
how can we explain that they did not survive?”
For some researchers, it is possible to envision Neanderthals as
having been victims of H. sapiens' expansion and the accompanying loss
of biodiversity, particularly megafauna63,66 Within these hypotheses,
labels of modern humans as “invaders” indicate a different set of
assumptions from the 19th century concerning what drives extinction
and what extinction means.63 Twenty-first century discussions and
debates around the extinction of Neanderthals and their encounters
with H. sapiens are multifarious and complex—I do not mean to oversim-
plify them here. Indeed, included in those perspectives are hypotheses
that continue to posit that Neanderthals were unable to compete with
H. sapiens in some way.67,68 However, I contend, the tone of those con-
versations has changed, while the narratives have become more diverse,
and increasingly based in ecological and other external factors.
Thinking through conceptions of Neanderthals in the 21st cen-
tury also requires recognizing the recent emergence of evidence for
65
interbreeding between them and modern humans. The ways in
which this introgression has influenced conceptions of Neanderthals
and their extinction requires further examination, both in terms of
asking how assimilation played a role in their extinction or morpholog-
ical disappearance, as well as asking more broadly how that alters
notions of our own identity as modern humans.69
When inspecting these modern conceptions of Neanderthals,
then, it is worth remembering that past conceptions have been
influenced by contemporary understandings of diversity, extinction,
and humans' relationship with nature. During the present moment of
the Anthropocene, such reflections allow us to see, in new light, senti-
ments that appear in literature contending that the “unfolding extinc-
tions and resulting biodiversity crises that we observe today are likely
a continuation of processes that extend far back into human prehis-
tory.”70 As Sepkoski summarizes, “the way we understand the
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371
relationship between humans and the rest of the natural world—and
how we conceive of ecological relationships, geological processes, and
evolutionary dynamics” informs the types of scientific questions we
ask, our anxieties about the present and the future, and the “basic
values that guide our interactions.”50
7 | DI SCU SSION
From Schaaffhausen to Sollas, this article has shown that the carica-
ture of Neanderthals as brutish was pervasive throughout the 19th
century and into the 20th. Why then, has Boule been held solely
responsible for the depiction of Neanderthals as unintelligent brutes?
When Straus and Cave reevaluated the Old Man almost half a century
after Boule and found evidence that his stooped posture was attribut-
able to arthritis, they pleaded for scientists “not to criticize Boule too
harshly.”7 Instead, his study “must be placed in its proper historical
setting,” they declared, adding that the brutish notion of Neanderthals
“undoubtedly goes back to the discovery of the holotype.”7
A number of reasons have been put forward to explain this fea-
ture of history. Hammond, a historian, suggests that the “enormous
weight” of Boule's detailed analysis resulted in it being the “central
tenet of human paleontology” for decades.6 Or, as Sommer has pos-
ited, Boule's influence could have been the result of the intense circu-
lation of his work in textbooks, newspapers, and magazines across
Europe. Illustrations such as František Kupka's shaggy, primitive Nean-
derthal, that was based on Boule's work, appeared in the pages of the
Illustrated London News, for example—though Boule himself disliked
the image17 (Figure 4).
It is possible, however, that its popularity was so great because it
is a great story. Straus and Cave's reexamination of the historic speci-
men inspected by Boule laid the foundation (however accidentally) for
the captivating historical narrative that Boule had made a great mis-
take. At certain points in history, the story has been so powerful that
a sociologist of science even looked for explanations of how Boule, a
competent anatomist, could make such a mistake.6 This search for
explanations traveled so far astray that they included intentional
fraud, while ignoring the research on Neanderthals that preceded
Boule. Examples like this reveal how embedded the story is in particu-
lar corners of history.
Using the existing literature on Neanderthal history and racism to
take a deeper dive into the details of the ways that broader scientific
and cultural ideas became entangled with Neanderthals. Treatment of
this issue has often been incorporated into works surveying the
broader history of Neanderthal research, including by Trinkaus, Ship-
man, and Drell. By drawing the topic to the forefront here, we see
how assumptions can become grounded in specific anatomical
markers or embedded corners of the family tree.12,19 Bringing this
scholarship into conversation with recent works in the history of sci-
ence examining extinction discourse and its implications for under-
standings of human “races,” allows for a better understanding of how
the science of human evolution is rooted in—and linked too—larger
scientific concepts, such as that of ecology or biodiversity.

372
Overall, this work contributes to a growing body of research that
explores the relationship between social context and scientific inter-
pretation in the field of paleoanthropology.14,28,39,41,42,48,72–74 Draw-
ing attention to the social, political aspects of research, this emerging
body of work underlines the human, accumulative, and correcting
complexities of science. As Trinkaus and Shipman wrote 30 years ago,
there is no question that a “more rigorous and accurate understanding
of the Neanderthals has emerged” over the last century and a half, as
material has accumulated, been subjected to further testing, and new
techniques have emerged.30 I agree, and would like to emphasize as
they did that my view of science here is not meant to be a decon-
structionist one. Instead, my emphasis on the social and cultural fac-
tors that influence scientists' interpretations attempts to complement
the existing rich scientific history of Neanderthal research.
8 | C O N CL U S I O N
“Perhaps one of the main lessons to absorb from the history of sci-
ence,” Robin Dennell has suggested, “is the danger of too many peo-
ple becoming too comfortable for too long with an idea, just because
so many agree with it, and have agreed with it so often in the past.”75
The brutish Neanderthal concept, with its widespread acceptance and
persistence through the mid-20th century, is one such glaring exam-
ple. Maybe a similar lesson can be applied to the narratives we con-
struct from history: When certain ideas about a science's history
become entrenched—ideas like “Boule's error”—we become comfort-
able with them, flattening the rest of the potential historical story.
Dismantling the narrative of Boule's error is not simply an exer-
cise in correcting minor details of history. There is danger in tales like
that of “Boule's error.” By reproducing the story of a single, “biased”
15206505, 2021, 6, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/evan.21918 by Universidad De Coimbra, Wiley Online Library on [16/10/2022]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
MADISON
F I G U R E 4 “An ancestor: The
man of twenty thousand years
ago,” by Kupka71
scientist rather than placing his findings and interpretations in their
proper historical setting, we obscure not only the larger picture (and
the lessons that come with it), but also risk washing out the pervasive
racial assumptions involved in the early studies of the deep human
past—and the profound implications of those assumptions. Recogniz-
ing that the caricature of the brutish Neanderthal is inseparable from
19th-century notions of diversity, progress, and extinction opens the
door to examining how widespread social and cultural assumptions
can underlie scientific ideas, findings, and methodologies even today.
By taking the Feldhofer specimen's role in the conception of the
brutish caricature of Neanderthals seriously, we are afforded a new
perspective on the construction of the Neanderthals' image, one that
allows us to see how it was steeped in racism and imperialism. We
also see how it was constructed on assumptions about the processes
of nature—from evolution to extinction—and humans' place in that
process. This perspective offers new possibilities for us to critically
examine ideas in the present. As 19th-century narratives of the inevi-
table rise of H. sapiens have been overturned, so too have we shifted
the ways we conceive of those who lived alongside them. The differ-
ent ways of thinking about humans' “relations to the universe of
things” are occurring against a backdrop of anxiety about vanishing
nature in the Anthropocene.31 As we ask questions about prehistoric
encounters and extinctions, then, let us remember that understand-
ings of our place in nature—that “question of questions” for human-
kind—are shaped by a tangled web of ideas reflecting how we imagine
our own species, our past, and our future.31
ACKNOWLEDG MENTS
Research for this project was supported by Arizona State University's
School of Life Sciences, the Center for Biology and Society, and the
John Templeton Foundation.

MADISON
DATA AVAI LAB ILITY S TATEMENT
Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were cre-
ated or analyzed in this study.
ORCID
Paige Madison https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2361-2961
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AU THOR BIOGRAPHY
Paige Madison is a postdoctoral researcher at the Natural History
Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen. She received her
PhD in the history of science from Arizona State University, focusing
on the history of paleoanthropology. At ASU, her research emerged
from a collaboration across the Center for Biology and Society and
the Institute of Human Origins.
How to cite this article: Madison P. Brutish Neanderthals:
History of a merciless characterization. Evolutionary
Anthropology. 2021;30:366–74. https://doi.org/10.1002/
evan.21918