What makes neanderthals different from humans

Neanderthals were both shorter and thicker than we are, so while you might beat them on the basketball court, they could probably out-arm-wrestle you. Some scientists have hypothesized this was an adaptation that allowed them to breathe cold air more easily and adapt to frigid European climates.

Neanderthals also had protruding brows and weak chins, though their jaws seemed to be more developed than ours. Something you might not notice, though it is a significant difference between us and Neanderthals, is the volume of their skull. The clues we do have come from their genome, which was sequenced fully in The ancient hominins shared about How the rest differed is largely unclear, though we do have some ideas.

Scientists have tracked what some of those genes do, and it offers a broad glimpse at some Neanderthal traits. For example, genes from Neanderthals relate to how our immune systems fight off pathogens, how our bodies use keratin and our sense of smell. But often they only had 3, years before the temperature dropped all the way back again. So I think it is the climate that was shutting down the diversity of those populations; they couldn't maintain large numbers because of the climate wearing them down.

So it wasn't that the Neanderthals and Denisovans were cognitively disadvantaged. They just had a harder row to hoe. Keeping your numbers low is bad news for cultural diversity as well. Think about modern populations today: There are so many of us, we are so well networked and have so many ways of storing information, that when something innovative appears, it takes root and gets built upon. But go back 50, or , years and it simply wasn't like that. You have small groups of people at times isolated from each other.

That was certainly true of the Neanderthals. They lived in small groups and were not well networked. Under those circumstances, when your population crashes, you can lose cultural information. Imagine a tribe of 30 Neanderthals, and there are two or three people who are specialists in making fire.

Imagine a disease hits, or there's an accident, and those three firemakers die. Now no one in the group knows how to make fire. So until the group can reconnect to another Neanderthal group, they've lost that knowledge. We see this in the modern hunter-gatherer groups who at times lose the knowledge of making fire at will, or the knowledge of making boats. As Villa and Roebroeks are arguing, it's not necessarily that the Neanderthals were stupid. They had the dice weighted against them.

My model is that modern humans came out of Africa 60, years ago and moved very quickly into the territory of the Neanderthals, later into the territory of the Denisovans, and soon after that into the territory of the "hobbits. Modern humans moving into those areas would be hitting the same environment, gathering the same plants, wanting to live in the best sites. There would have been economic competition. But the genetic evidence clearly shows that these groups were interbreeding with each other.

Doesn't that suggest they weren't outcompeted as much as assimilated? Obviously there was some interbreeding, or we wouldn't have that ancient DNA showing up in people outside Africa today. But that amount could have come from just a few interbreeding events.

It doesn't have to be widespread interbreeding over the whole range; you can argue that there's no evidence of any interbreeding in western Europe at all. It's this whole question of having a population of humans that are in some ways like us, and yet so different—and the fact that they died out and we're still here. And of course the fascination of the last five years is that they didn't go percent extinct, because we've all got a little bit of them inside us. You've been immersed in the study of Neanderthals your entire career.

If you were able to go back and meet one, what would you most like to ask him? I'd ask him to tell me a story, and I'd see how complex that story was. Because obviously, one of the unknowns is how similar their minds were to ours.

Villa and Roebroeks aren't alone in saying there's no evidence that their minds were any different from ours. But I'm not sure. I'm sure they had speech and language, but I'm guessing it was much more a language for the here and now, a more practical language for survival. I doubt they would have expressed complicated things like, "Well, what if I did this differently, what then would happen? Maybe Neanderthals didn't have so much of that. I might also ask the Neanderthal if he had ever seen those funny people with those high foreheads and dark skin—our modern human ancestors—and if he had, what did he think?

Would he fancy one as a partner? All rights reserved. I think I see where this is leading What parts are missing? What about art? So this would argue for a symbolic way of thinking that would express some behavioral advantage? So why did they go extinct, if they were very much like us?

Wouldn't that apply to modern humans as well? What do you think happened when Neanderthals and modern humans met? What do you think accounts for our unending fascination with Neanderthals? Share Tweet Email.

Read This Next Wild parakeets have taken a liking to London. Animals Wild Cities Wild parakeets have taken a liking to London Love them or hate them, there's no denying their growing numbers have added an explosion of color to the city's streets. Lalueza-Fox, C. Science , Stringer, C. Neanderthal exploitation of marine mammals in Gibraltar. Shipman, P. Separating "us" from "them": Neanderthal and modern human behavior. This is the largest and most complete Neanderthal skull ever found.

It was discovered in , along with several other Neanderthal fossils, in the rock shelter of La Ferrassie in southwestern France. Neanderthals used this shelter thousands of years before the arrival of Homo sapiens in Europe. In , the first nearly complete skeleton of a Neanderthal was found at La Chapelle-aux-Saints in France. Because he suffered from a degenerative joint disease, this skeleton was originally reconstructed as stooped over. This slouching posture came to exemplify our image of Neanderthals, but it was later found that this reconstruction was incorrect.

At a young age, this Neanderthal experienced a crushing blow to his head. It damaged his left eye socket and the brain area that controlled the right side of his body, leading to a withered right arm. Nevertheless, he lived until 35—45 years of age.

His group must have looked after him. Skip to main content. Homo neanderthalensis. Where Lived: Europe and southwestern to central Asia. Height: Males: average 5 ft 5 in cm ; Females: average 5 ft 1 in cm.

Weight: Males: average lbs 65 kg ; Females: average lbs 54 kg. History of Discovery: Neanderthal 1 was the first specimen to be recognized as an early human fossil. How They Survived: Compared to early humans living in tropical Africa, with more abundant edible plant foods available year-round, the number of plant foods Neanderthals could eat would have dropped significantly during the winter of colder climates, forcing Neanderthals to exploit other food options like meat more heavily. Evolutionary Tree Information: Both fossil and genetic evidence indicate that Neanderthals and modern humans Homo sapiens evolved from a common ancestor between , and , years ago.

Is there a close correlation between climate change and the extinction of the Neanderthals, or was competition with modern humans the most important factor?

What was the relative contribution of animal and plant sources to the average Neanderthal's diet? Were Neanderthals routinely symbolic e. If the latter is the case, why did those populations exhibit these behaviors? What was the relationship between Neanderthals and the "Denisovans", a population of early humans known mainly from DNA, which overlapped with Neanderthals in time and space in Asia? References: First paper: King, W. Other recommended readings: Trinkhaus, E.