Reconstruction by Kennis & Kennis/Photo by Joe McNally/NGS
Meet Wilma, the first reconstruction of a Neanderthal created using evidence from fossil anatomy and ancient DNA.
Neanderthals were a species of human that became extinct 28,000 years ago. The lifesize model was created to illustrate “The Last of the Neanderthals,” the cover article in the October 2008 issue of National Geographic magazine.
The article, written by Steve Hall and photographed by David Liittschwager and Joe McNally, explores what caused Neanderthals, who dominated Eurasia for more than 200,000 years, to vanish in the Ice Age, while our modern human ancestors survived.
Wilma’s skeleton was built using replicas of a pelvis and cranial anatomy from Neanderthal females combined with parts from a cast of a composite skeleton of a male from the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Calculations were made to reduce the male bone sizes to female dimensions.
Paleo-artists and scientific consultants, overseen by National Geographic magazine’s senior science editor Jamie Shreeve, used evidence of ancient DNA preserved in cannibalized bones that suggested that at least some Neanderthals would have had red hair, pale skin and possibly freckles.
“For the first time, anthropologists can go beyond fossils and peer into the actual genes of an extinct species of human. This opens a whole new window on how Neanderthals lived and behaved, and indeed how we ourselves became human,” Shreeve said. “At National Geographic magazine we saw an opportunity to literally embody this new science in a full-sized Neanderthal female, reconstructed using the latest information from genetics, fossil evidence, and archeology.”
Initially the artists gave Wilma blue eyes, which seemed to be a reasonable choice if she had red hair. But when recent research suggested that blue eyes first showed up as a single mutation 18,000 years after Neanderthals’ extinction, it was decided to make her eyes hazel.
Reconstruction by Kennis & Kennis/Photo by Joe McNally/NGS
Wilma is shown gripping a spear to signify that Neanderthal females and children may have hunted with males in order to satisfy their thick, muscular bodies’ relentless demand for calories, especially in higher latitudes and during colder interludes, National Geographic said in a press release.
She is depicted naked, as summers would have been warm, even during glacial periods, and Neanderthals probably would have gone unclothed in order to shed heat from their stocky bodies.
Marina Allende, from a farm near El Sidron, a cave in northern Spain where Neanderthal fossils were found, demonstrates how a modern human woman compares with a Neanderthal woman.
Photo by Joe McNally/NGS
“People tend to think that Neanderthals were brutish and stupid,” Shreeve said. “Far from it. They had brains as large as ours, and through most of their time on Earth used tools just as sophisticated as the ones made by modern human beings that lived at the same time.
“Yet when those modern humans moved into the Neanderthal’s territory some 40,000 years ago, our ancestors survived, and the Neanderthals faded away to extinction. Why? It’s one of the great mysteries in all of human
prehistory.”
Why was the model named Wilma?
“We were all kiting emails back and forth about the project referring to ‘the Neanderthal female reconstruction,’ which let’s face it, takes a lot of keystrokes,” Shreeve said. “So we needed a nickname, and I came up with Wilma – – Fred’s wife on the Flintstones, of course. It was meant just for internal use, but it just sort of spread.
“At first I was worried about that — this is a serious scientific and artistic project, and it seemed that using the name of a cartoon character was kind of flippant. But hey, Wilma Flintstone was a strong-willed woman who didn’t take much guff from her husband, so she’s not totally inappropriate. Plus, she had red hair — an important feature of Neanderthals we learned from the genetics.”
For more on Neanderthals, watch Neanderthal Code, airing on Sunday, September 21, on the National Geographic Channel. Video excerpts from the show above and below are courtesy NGC.
National Geographic‘s feature, photos, interactive and quiz about Neanderthals
Geopedia: Neanderthals
Jamie Shreeve: The Greatest Journey
National Geographic News stories:
