Neanderthals

Study uses rings in teeth to understand the environment Neanderthals faced

Daniel Green worked with fellow researchers to extract day-to-day realities of life in France 250,000 years ago, including lead exposure.

Neanderthals and Humans Were No One Night Stand

Our DNA has revealed many more encounters.

Humans Are Just as Violent as Neanderthals, Scientists Conclude

Ancient modern humans had just as many head injuries as Neanderthals.

Neanderthals: Climate Change May Have Killed Off Our Closest Human Relatives

Researchers probing the stalagmites of Romania think cold weather may have contributed to the the extinction of our closest human cousins—the Neanderthals.

Secrets of the Neanderthals: collaborative, intelligent hunters

With an analysis of prehistoric animal remains from Germany, we can deduce that Neanderthals were capable of sophisticated and collaborative hunting strategies.

Neanderthals May Have Gone Extinct Due to Their Brain Shape

A complicated technique called computational neuroanatomy allowed these scientists to produce detailed 3D models of Neanderthal brains using data from four Neanderthal skulls.

Neanderthals, the World’s First Misunderstood Artists

It’s long been an insult to be called a Neanderthal. But the more these elusive, vanished people have been studied, the more respect they’ve gained among scientists.

Humans didn’t outsmart the Neanderthals. We just outlasted them.

In a new paper published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, Oren Kolodny and his colleague Marc Feldman test a basic hypothesis — that the extinction of the Neanderthals was simply a consequence of population dynamics and bad timing.

Neanderthals in Germany Went Extinct Right After Population Peak

Archaeologists have discovered numerous settlements in Germany.  They have also uncovered evidence which shows that Neanderthal populations there came to an unexplained, sudden end.

Neanderthal Mutations Could Still be Affecting Humans

Breeding with Neanderthals may have had a heavy price for early humans, according to a new study published recently in the journal GENETICS.

“Unprecedented” discovery of mysterious structures created by Neanderthals

Rock designs suggest a complex social structure and ritual behavior.

Did Climate Change Contribute to Demise of Neanderthals?

A zooarchaeologist from the University of Colorado Denver says he’s found evidence that European Neanderthals may have weathered periods of extreme cold brought about by climate change, based on signs of nutritional stress left behind in their remains.

Modern Humans Brought Fatal Disease to Neanderthals

According to scientists from Cambridge and Oxford Brookes Universities, modern humans, when they left Africa and entered Europe, brought with them diseases that the Neanderthals had never encountered before and could not fight as effectively as the newcomers.

Our Neanderthals, Ourselves

by Elizabeth Kolbert

It turns out, though, that the depiction of Neanderthals as hairy, club-wielding brutes—popular ever since the first Neanderthal bones were discovered, in the eighteen-fifties—says more about us than it does about them.

Neanderthals Disappeared Earlier than Thought

New research published on Friday in the Journal of Human Evolution indicates that Neanderthals may have disappeared 45,000 years ago.

Bone Tool Made By Neanderthals Found in France

Our current understanding of human evolution and behavior may change completely, now that University of Montreal researchers have discovered a bone tool from the Neanderthal era which appears to have had multiple uses.

Neanderthals were not inferior to modern humans

The widely held notion that Neanderthals were dimwitted and that their inferior intelligence allowed them to be driven to extinction by the much brighter ancestors of modern humans is not supported by scientific evidence.

Neanderthal molar suggests early weaning

Modern mothers love to debate how long to breast-feed, a topic that stirs both guilt and pride. Now — in a very preliminary finding — the Neanderthals are weighing in.By looking at barium levels in the fossilized molar of a Neanderthal child, researchers concluded that the child had been breast-fed exclusively for the first seven months, followed by seven months of mother’s milk supplemented by other food. Then the barium pattern in the tooth enamel “returned to baseline prenatal levels, indicating an abrupt cessation of breast-feeding at 1.2 years of age,” the scientists reported on Wednesday in the journal Nature.While that timetable conforms with the current recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics — which suggests that mothers exclusively breast-feed babies for six months and continue for 12 months if possible — it represents a much shorter span of breast-feeding than practiced by apes or a vast majority of modern humans. The average age of weaning in nonindustrial populations is about 2.5 years; in chimpanzees in the wild, it is about 5.3 years. Of course, living conditions were much different for our evolutionary cousins, the Neanderthals, extinct for the last 30,000 years....

Study sheds light on Neanderthals

Madrid, May 7 (EFE).- Eleven of the 13 Neanderthals who lived in northern Spain's El Sidron cave were right-handed, indicating that these cousins of modern humans had a brain structure similar to that of Homo sapiens, a study published in Plos One magazine said.Researchers, among them members of Spain's CSIC research council, analyzed grooves in more than 60 Neanderthal dental pieces.Manual laterality "reflects specialized organization of the brain, so its evolutionary origin has been the subject of research for decades," project director Antonio Rosas said....

Trove of Neanderthal Bones Found in Greek Cave

A trove of Neanderthal fossils including bones of children and adults, discovered in a cave in Greece hints the area may have been a key crossroad for ancient humans, researchers say. The timing of the fossils suggests Neanderthals and humans may have at least had the opportunity to interact, or cross paths, there, the researchers added....