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Neanderthals were every bit as complex and advanced as early humans -- and perhaps even more so.
All the better to breathe with.
Our ancestors interbred both with Neanderthals and Denisovans.
They took care of their community members without expecting anything in return.
Neanderthals were thinkers and artists, just like humans, tantalizing new research suggests.
The research suggests that human interbreeding was more of a 'step-by-step' event.
Humans weren't necessarily better than the Neanderthals, they just moved around more.
Dibs on the last slice.
Still think Neanderthals were brutes?
No one knows who the direct ancestor of Neanderthals is but this skull might help shed light.
Neanderthals took the herbal equipment of aspirin and penicillin.
Cranial fragments discovered in China can't be pinned down to any known human species. Some speculate it might be Denisovan.
Neanderthals were far smarter than most of us give them credit for.
Early humans were far better smokers than Neanderthals, and this might have mattered a lot in the end.
Researchers discovered a gruesome find.
Westerners are horror-struck by the prospect of an Ebola or Zika pandemic in their very own neighbourhood. Media panic aside, that's extremely unlikely thanks to modern medical science. Our close cousins, the Neanderthals, weren't so lucky tens of thousands of years ago when they first met us, humans. British researchers analyzed ancient bone DNA and sequenced pathogens and found some infectious diseases are far older than we thought. They argue that it's very likely that humans passed many diseases to Neandertals, the two species having interbred, like tapeworm, tuberculosis, stomach ulcers and types of herpes.
People of European descent carry as much as 4 percent Neanderthal DNA, but the Y chromosome passed down from father to sons is entirely missing in the modern population. Scientists now think they know why.
Researchers working in Spain have made a surprising finding: Neanderthals emerged much earlier than previously believed, perhaps as far as half a million years ago.
Evidence points to the fact that Neanderthals used manganese dioxide, today commonly found in batteries, to light fires some 50,000 years ago.
Some 50,000 years ago Homo sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovans co-existed, mingled and interbred. While only the human lineage exists today, these inter-species third degree meetings left a permanent mark on our genome. For instance, an ancient human who lived in what is today Romania had 9% Neanderthal DNA. Today, most Europeans and Asians have between 1 to 4 percent Neanderthal DNA.
DNA analysis of the jawbone of a human who lived in modern day Romania some 40,000 years ago has the most Neanderthal ancestry ever seen. Up to 9% of the ancient man's DNA was Neanderthal, suggesting interbreeding occurred much earlier than previously thought. In fact, this European human had a Neanderthal ancestor four to six generations back in his family tree. How would it be to have a Neanderthal for a great-great-great-grandfather?
Chins are weird and make little evolutionary sense.
Recent archaeological and anthropological research showed that Neanderthals weren't the mindless brutes we once thought they were - they were smart, organized, they had their own speech and interbred with early humans. Now, a new study has found evidence that 130,000 years ago, Neanderthals also designed elaborate jewelry, a degree of sophistication never seen before for that time.
A partial skull fragment found in Kenya seems to indicate that early humans were much more diverse than previously thought. The 22,000-year-old skull clearly belongs to a human species, but is unlike anything else previously discovered.
An ancient skull found in Israel indicates that early Homo sapiens likely interbred with Neanderthals 50,000 years ago. The female skull is the first skeletal evidence to support the idea that Neandertals and moderns mated. The finding is published in the journal Nature. The Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) are closely related to modern humans, differing in DNA by only 0.12%. Genetic […]
Following the genome sequence of the oldest modern human remains outside of Africa using the most refined DNA analysis to data, scientists believe they arrived at a more price time frame when humans and Neanderthals first interbred – sometimes between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago. The findings also suggest modern humans arrived in northern Eurasia substantially earlier […]
A breakthrough finding in Armenia where thousands of ancient cutting tools were found beautifully preserved casts doubt on a currently prevailing hypothesis that these were solely invented in Africa. The tools discovered are between 325,000 and 335,000 years old. The age suggests the ancient paleolithic cultures of the time that inhabited the region independently developed the […]
While you might find people sometimes resemble each other, if you look close enough you’ll soon find unique features and facial characteristics that sets them apart. It’s remarkable how diverse human faces are across the billions alive today and the countless billions that used to live in this world. Scientists at University of Berkeley now […]
Advancements in genetic sequencing has allowed genomic research to flourish. DNA sequencing is now much faster, cheaper and accurate than ever before, and we’re only now beginning to reap the rewards. It’s the first step to a complete understanding of our bodies. The Human Genome Project, once finally completed, mapped and identified all the genes of […]
As more and more research is conducted on Neanderthals, we start to understand that we’re not as unique as we thought, and that they were equals or even superior in many ways. Now, researchers have found that Neanderthals organized their living spaces in ways that would be familiar to modern humans. The findings show that […]
Researchers have found obsidian spearheads dated 85.000 years ago before the development of Homo Sapiens (280.000 years ago). This is a very complicated process, requiring numerous steps and lots of concentration and skill This has 2 possible explanations: either humans evolved much earlier than previously believed, either another species had advanced craftsmanship skills […]
A new genome analysis study suggests that interbreeding between modern humans, Neanderthals, Denisovans and a mysterious archaic population was way more common than previously believed. A Lord of the Rings world Several decades ago, many anthropologists believed that humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans didn’t interbreed at all; as time passed, some evidence of this started popping […]
Modern humans started ‘replacing’ Neanderthals some 40.000 years ago, and for a long time, it was thought this came as a result of the more advanced human intelect and a better ability to adapt; but as more and more studies unfold, the Neandertals’ capabilities are still greatly debated. Many scientists now argue that Neandertals had […]
Our close cousins, the Neanderthals, were much more similar to us than we imagined even a decade ago, fascinating the scientific world more and more with each passing year; now, a new study suggests that they also had a type of speech and language, something which was once considered to draw the decisive lines between […]
The first known case of a bone tumor has been discovered in a Neanderthal who lived about 120,000 years ago in what is now present-day Croatia. The bone samples come from the already famous cave/archaeological site Krapina, which now hosts a Neanderthal Museum. Bone tumors are exceptionally rare finds in fossils and archaeological records, with […]
German scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig have completed the first high-quality draft Neanderthal genome sequence, marking another leap forward in understanding our fellow hominids and how our species interacted, if there was such thing, with other hominid species. Moreover, the whole Neanderthal genome has been made freely available to the […]
Apparently, every month brings forth a new theory on the demise of the Neanderthals – the cookies one being that bunnies were the main culprit. This month’s theory claims that the Neanderthal skull has larger eye sockets than the human one, therefore it had bigger eyes, therefore the brain spent more of its processing power […]
A new carbon dating technique developed by Australian scientists may warrant a new extinction theory for the Neanderthals, which according to the researchers made their last stand some 50,000 years ago or 15,000 years earlier than previously thought. If this is indeed a fact, then our distant extinct relatives may have never interacted with modern […]
Just write, don’t check This is again one of those which gets the media all hyped out, without checking the facts; yesterday’s headlines all sounded like this: ‘“Wanted: ‘Adventurous woman’ to give birth to Neanderthal man — Harvard professor seeks mother for cloned cave baby” – newspapers like the Daily Mail were all over it. […]
Early humans developed sophisticated hunting weapons half a million years ago, 200.000 years before researchers believed they did. As surprising as it may be, humans aren’t the only species who used spears: Western Chimpanzees have also been observed to do it, breaking straight limbs off trees, stripping them of the bark then sharpening with their […]
New, more precise carbon dating of artifacts found in South Africa, such as poison-tipped arrows or ostrich eggs, have been found to be 44,000-year-old. The technology and social behavior at play suggest that modern human culture in the area may have emerged some 20,000 years earlier than previously thought and supports the theory that all modern […]
Researchers have analyzed the DNA from 7,000-year-old bones of two cavemen unearthed in Spain, and have managed to sequence fragments of their genomes, making them the oldest modern human specimens ever found thus far. Ironically, the researchers found that the cavemen bear little genetic resemblance to people living in the region today, instead sharing ancestry with current populations […]
Hand stencils, red dots and animal figures currently represent the oldest examples yet found so far in cave art in Europe; using a new, improved technique, researchers have dated the walls at 11 Spanish locations, including the World Heritage sites of Altamira, El Castillo and Tito Bustillo, and found that one motif, a faint red […]
A new study which analyzed Neanderthal DNA suggests that our close, now extinct relatives were on the point of dying off as a race well before humans made their appearance in Western Europe. The team of international researchers analyzed the mitochondrial DNA extracted from the bones of 13 Neanderthals, and studied its variation. Mitochondrial DNA is copious […]
Last year, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, produced a draft of the Denisova genome, in order study in what proportion they relate to homo sapiens sapiens. The Denisovans, are a new group of hominids, discovered just two years ago, which is believed to have lived around 30,000 years ago, alongside Neanderthals and […]
The mating between Neanderthals and modern homo sapiens has been a highly controversial matter between scientists in the anthropology scene for decades now. That was until last year, however, when anthropologists convened that the two related species did indeed mate, but the genes passed down from Neanderthals were inactive. Recently, there’s been another reason for […]
There has been a long standing debate regarding the Neanderthal people, and what kind of legacy we carry from them. Recently, a study conducted by an international team of researchers led by Damian Labuda of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Montreal and the CHU Sainte-Justine Research Center showed that a part of […]
Accurate dating of a Neanderthal fossil found in a Russian cave, showed that it was 10,000 years older than previous research had suggested. The find could provide proof for the dismissal of the theory which states that Neanderthals and modern humans interacted for thousands of years. The study leads scientists to believe that coexistence between […]
Humanity’s right handedness began at least 500.000 years ago, according to a new study conducted by University of Kansas researchers. The right handed trait is believed to actually be a “side effects” of the development of language. “We are right-handed because the left side of the brain controls the right side of the body, and […]
Usually, we tend to think of Neanderthals as being our bigger and stronger but not-so-intelligent cousins, but that may very well not be true; it has been shown on several occasions that Neanderthals were quite smart, and they could figure out a whole lot of things by their own, without immitating humans. In recent years, […]
