For more information about Neanderthal check the Wikipedia article here
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 [...]
Wed, Mar 13, 2013
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 [...]
Tue, Feb 5, 2013
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 [...]
Tue, Jan 22, 2013
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. [...]
Fri, Nov 16, 2012
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 [...]
Tue, Jul 31, 2012
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 [...]
Fri, Jun 29, 2012
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 [...]
Fri, Jun 15, 2012
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 [...]
Tue, Feb 28, 2012
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 [...]
Wed, Feb 8, 2012
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 [...]
Fri, Aug 26, 2011
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 [...]
Mon, Jul 18, 2011
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 [...]
Thu, May 12, 2011
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 [...]
Mon, May 2, 2011
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 [...]
Wed, Mar 9, 2011
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, [...]
Wed, Jan 5, 2011
By all standards, at some point, Neanderthals were better prepared for life than any other human species; however, in spite of all this, they were extinct, while ‘we’ fluorished; the reason why this happened is still pretty much a mystery, but as always, some theories have been made. One of the most accepted ones was [...]
Tue, Jan 4, 2011
Svante Paabo, the researcher whose work provided the basis for the Jurassic Park movies seems to have struck gold once again; this time it’s about a finger bone older than 30.000 years, found in the Altai mountains, that as far as DNA analysis has shown, belongs to no known species of humans. They also found [...]
Sun, May 9, 2010
Yes ladies and gents, researchers have produced the whole genome sequence of the 3 billion “letters” (nucleotides) in the Neanderthalian genome, and the results are interesting to say the least. For starters, up to 2 percent of present day human DNA outside of Africa originated in Neanderthals; this result suggests that the Neanderthals, Homo neanderthalensis [...]
Fri, May 15, 2009
Even among some scientific circles, Neanderthals are considered to be the ‘stupid’ cousins of the modern humans (although some claim that’s the hobbit). However, new research shows they were able to hunt really large animals which required more than power to be taken down, pointing that neanderthals were far from stupid (as hobbits were too, [...]
Mon, Aug 11, 2008
The Neanderthal has spakled controversies around scientists for many years, and most questions remain unanswered even today; they had many adaptations to a hard life, such as hort, robust builds, and rather large noses, which show they lived mostly in cold climates. They were almost exclusively carnivorous and top predators and their brains were probably [...]
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Wed, Mar 20, 2013
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