Built Like a Neanderthal, Part 1

by Dr. John M Berardi and Dr. John K Williams

Meet the Mystery Man

Five foot five inches tall…

One hundred eighty pounds…
Eight percent body fat…
Prehistoric guys want to be him and chicks want to be with him…

Who is he? Why, he’s Neandrethal man. The biggest, baddest, bipedal evolutionary
ancestor on the block. Check him out:

Illustration of Neanderthal Man. Reprinted from Cell, Vol. 90, 1—3, July 11, 1997

Wo — you thought Neanderthals were more Quazimodo than Quadzilla, didn’t you?
Well, don’t tell that to any of your archeologist friends. Nothing makes them cringe more
than using "neanderthal" as an adjective to describe the dumb and the lazy. After all,
every piece of evidence unearthed tells us just the opposite: Neanderthals were intelligent
beings perfectly adapted to harsh Pleistocene conditions. And with a formidable physique
that would make any bodybuilder jealous, they were hardly the hunched creatures
depicted below.
So next time someone calls you a Neanderthal, thank them for the compliment, and then
correct them on their pronunciation: ‘Neanderthal’ is pronounced with a hard t, the same
as ‘Beethoven’.

Original artist rendition of Neanderthals

So how did we get this false image of the hunchback, oafish Neanderthal?

This misperception stems from an infamous archaeological boo-boo. The earliest found
Neanderthal bones (in Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries; La Chappelle-aux-
Saints, France to be exact) were those of an elderly Neanderthal man suffering from
grossly deforming osteoarthritis and several injuries, including a damaged patella.

This was just after Darwin’s Origins of Species hit the bookstores, and scientists were on
a hunt for an ape-like ancestor in our human lineage. Legitimate ape-like ancestors would
later be found in east Africa dating back millions of years ago, but everyone in the early
20th century wanted to find that "missing link" in Europe.

Blinded by this paradigm, a French paleontologist chose a beaten down, crippled old man
to herald as the norm for Neanderthals, despite having specimens of perfectly healthy
adults. Thus began the image of a hunchback, club-wielding brute that still persists today.

So just how buff were these Neanderthals?

The Neanderthal was the apex of musculo-skeletal hypertrophy in our evolutionary past.
In fact, every piece of evidence suggests that Neanderthals were evolved to put on more
muscle naturally than modern, 21st century man (that means you, Flintstone!).

Try these physical characteristics on for size:

• For starters, massive, broad shoulders are indicated by a scapular breadth that is about
8% larger than their modern human contemporaries. (Neanderthals and anatomically
modern humans did live side by side for several millennia.)

• Muscle attachments for the pecs were enormous, up to twice the size of today’s average.

• Neanderthals had shorter, wider humeri (upper arms), which combined with the
shoulders, suggests substantial rotator cuff muscularity. And, get this; the bones in their
forearms were actually bowed from muscles that must have powered a grip that could
crush stone.

• All of this upper body musculature was anchored on a solid foundation of massive
quads that specialized in explosive power and side-to-side movement.

Now, before you start thinking that Neanderthals were all show and no go — it appears
that their physiques and lifestyles were partly tailored towards being effective hunters of
large game. Wild nuts, vegetables, and fruit were also a significant part of their diet. But
judging from their injuries, they engaged in hunting activities that involved close
proximity to large angry Pleistocene mammals. How do we know this? Well, almost
every Neanderthal skeleton shows signs of serious injury and trauma, very similar, in
fact, to what is seen in modern rodeo riders.

So it appears that our fearless ancestors were purposely pissing off some of the biggest,
meanest, Pleistocene megafauna like woolly rhinos until they charged, and then allowing
them to impale themselves on massive tree-trunk sized spears lifted at the last moment
(think Braveheart). Make no mistake folks, these impressive physiques weren’t for the
sake of vanity.

But with all this brawn, were the Neanderthals big, dumb brutes? Apparently not.
Neanderthals also had a lot of brains behind all that brawn. In fact, their brains were little
larger on average than modern man's. Now, all those brains probably did not mean that
they sat around the campfire discussing the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Brain size does
not directly correlate directly with intelligence. Nevertheless, they had large brains and
large, lean bodies — a far cry from the popular image of the Neanderthal.

Now before you start thinking that every Neanderthal was a superhuman with a little red
cape, there is some variability in Neanderthal hypertrophy. Those who stayed put for
extended periods of time tended to be bigger than those who had to move around more
often. For example, Neanderthal skeletons at Shanidar Cave in Iraq show great musculo-
skeletal hypertrophy. It’s probably no coincidence that this huge cave was a basecamp
where they had plenty of food and stayed for at least a few months out of the year. In
other areas with less food, however, you find smaller Neanderthals who were constantly
on the go.

There are too many factors to isolate a single cause for variable levels of hypertrophy, but
food abundance and the type of activity certainly played a role. All Paleolithic folks were
active — they had to be to survive. But if you take a group of people who walk hundreds
of kilometers in a yearly cycle versus those who stay in one place longer and engage in
short bouts of intensive activity, then what we might be witnessing is something along
the lines of endurance versus strength-trained physiques.

What Happened to the Neanderthal?

Ironically, the rough and tumble lifestyle and brawny physique that ensured their survival
for hundreds of thousands of years also sealed their fate, making room for Homo sapiens.
While Neanderthals were occupying most of Europe and the Middle East, anatomically
modern humans evolved in Africa and subsequently spread into areas occupied by
Neanderthals, in some cases co-existing with their evolutionary cousins. (If you’ve ever
read Jane Auel’s Earth’s Children series you’ll recognize that Auel offered a fictional
account of the interrelations between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens.)
So what did our direct ancestors look like compared to our evolutionary cousins? Well,
sadly for our gym performance, the earliest moderns were characterized by more
atrophied bodies with equally large brains. Compared to Neanderthals, the brains to
brawn ratio of moderns was significantly increased. In fact, compared to other animals,
humans are primarily walking brains. (Granted, they may not all function at the same
level, but they are presumably there nonetheless.)

But the Neanderthals had big brains too. So why did their kind die off while ours
remained?

1. Big muscles and big brains are expensive.

Evolutionary fitness relies upon developing many contingency plans and for times when
food was not plentiful and modern bodies evolved to ensure the brain remains well fed.
The muscularity of humans pales in comparison to all other existing primates such as
gorillas and chimps. But what we lack in muscle we make up for in fat.

Body fat is particularly important during infancy, when the brain is growing like a weed.
Greater levels of body fatness (and reduced muscle mass) supports the growth of an
infant brain by having a ready supply of stored energy, and by reducing the metabolic
costs of the body. Muscle is just too metabolically taxing, and when it boils down to
competition between brain and brawn, our genetic makeup allows the brain to win.

2. When food is scarce, we need to think good, not look good.

Our unimpressive physiques and overgrown brains have won the evolutionary challenge
and the world is populated by Homo sapiens today and not Neanderthals because we can
conserve more calories in our fat cells, saving energy for brain function. Therefore,
during times of famine, while those big Neanderthal muscles and brains were demanding
lots of energy, competing for energy resources and leaving the Neanderthal weak and
intellectually sluggish, our more plentiful fat stores afforded us more energy for
ingenuity. And ingenuity gets food when you’re physically weak.

3. When you’re weak, you don’t rely on muscular strength.

Since moderns did not have the powerful physiques of the Neanderthals and could not
wrestle with Woolly Mammoths, they learned to rely on their mental prowess.

Rather than chasing down prey and physically interacting with them, modern humans
invested their mental energy into developing new and better technology that could take
down animals from a distance (a spear throwing device, and eventually the bow and
arrow). While the Neanderthal tried to physically overcome every challenge, modern man
tried to outwit every challenge. A Neanderthal would take the stairs while our own
ancestors would use the elevator. In other words, modern man is basically the thinking,
lazy man.
4. Big brains don’t always mean high intelligence.

Neanderthals and moderns had brain sizes that were roughly equivalent. Yet moderns
seem to have been more intelligent. This might be a result of what those brains were
made up of.

It might be no coincidence that most early Homo sapiens sites are found in coastal areas.
Seafood seems to have been crucial for brain health and intelligence. A type of omega-3
fatty-acid found in fish and seafood known as docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) is the
equivalent of rocket fuel for the brain. Our mammalian nervous system is composed
partly of polyunsaturated fatty acids, most of which are DHA and arachidonic acid (AA).
In other words, we have the same fatty acids found in marine food right between our ears.
Fueled by DHA and AA, our brains evolved into their modern form with a large forebrain
associated with superior intellect (outliers removed, such as Jessica Simpson).

As a result of these important differences, the fate of Neanderthals was sealed about
30,000 years ago, when global populations grew and people began competing for
resources. Under demographic and environmental stress, folks with a varied diet and
mental flexibility win the evolutionary coin toss. You don’t need to be a fearsome hunter
to catch fish and set traps for rabbits, and it was in this world that modern man flourished.
Also, with fewer calories to be had, modern humans had a distinct advantage over the
Neanderthals, simply by virtue of storing more fat, having fewer muscles, and burning
fewer calories.

What’s Left Today?

The survival of our species has depended on bigger brains, more fat, and less muscle. So
yea, our evolutionary past certainly hasn’t made it easy for us to have a cover model
body. In fact, an overly protective Mother Nature has selected for just the opposite, a
propensity to store less muscle and more fat. While this has been supremely effective in
our survival, it’s not done us any favors when heading to the beach.

Given that our early survival depended upon it, should we embrace corpulence and shun
muscularity? Not so fast there, doughboy.
Some folks still develop Neanderthal bodies. By making food selections that build brains
and muscles and by moving around lots while lifting heavy stuff, we can defy our
genetics, too. After all, the current research shows that while 50-60% of our physique
development can be attributed to genetics, 40-50% can be attributed to our environment
(what we eat, how much we move, etc). So it’s true that we can enjoy all the benefits of
our big, ingenious brains while still running around like our Neanderthal cousins, lifting
weights heavy enough to bow our forearms and gnawing the meat off wooly mammoth
bones.

But sadly, most people aren’t doing this. In our world of unprecedented food surplus and
cheap, empty calories, we have come full circle in our evolution. We are literally eating
ourselves to death. What was once our asset (ingenuity in getting food) has become our
liability. We have become too effective at procuring calories, and all of our technological
innovations that extract calories from whole foods have resulted in hyper processed pre-
packaged heart attacks littering the aisles of convenience stores.

Evolution follows a conservative pace, and genetically we are all still late Stone Agers.
Paleolithic folks ate everything that they could get their hands on with minimal effort,
and this is exactly the same mantra many folks follow today. Our technology has sped
way past our genetic evolution. And if we could transplant a Paleolithic hunter-gatherer
into today’s world, he would quickly balloon into a morbidly obese heart disease patient.

So what are we, the evolutionary victors, to do now?

Perhaps we should take a few lessons from the Neanderthals. They did endurance
exercise. They did anaerobic burst activity. They performed feats of muscular strength.
They ate free range mammals. They ate fruits, nuts and vegetables. They were muscular
and lean. And you can be too — although bone-bowing strength may be beyond your
reach.

However, with the sudden popularity of paleo-type, evolutionary nutrition theories and
meal plans, a word of caution is necessary. Invoking ghosts from Paleolithic times to
offer nutrition suggestions may be more fallacy than fact. After all, our Neanderthal
cousins and our own ancient parents ate they way they did out of necessity, not for a great
set of abs. Also, our ancient parents were a diverse group — some lean, some fat; some
eating higher protein and fat diets, some eating higher carb diets; some living in more
established settlements, and some always on the go.

Therefore in part II of this article series, we’ll take a closer look at some of the diverse
backgrounds from whence we directly came (early Homo sapiens) and see if these
glimpses offer any insight into the what we should be eating and why.

Dr. John M. Berardi and Dr. John K Williams are world-renowned experts in their
respective fields of exercise nutrition and archaeology. Recently, the two have partnered
their expertise to co-author Gourmet Nutrition — an optimal eating manual with cooking
tips and nutrition strategies to help you get into the best shape of your life.

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