Similarities Between Modern Man And Neanderthals

Deborah Swarthout

Modern Man and Neanderthals

WCCCD-Fall 2017

Modern Man and Neanderthals: Where did they go? It has long been thought that modern man evolved from the Neanderthals. Although we have many similarities, the most recent studies suggest that modern man actually co-existed alongside the Neanderthals and interbred with them to create the modern man we know today. Neanderthals or Neandertals (Homo Neanderthalensis) are considered to be our closest extinct human relatives. They were archaic humans who originated in Africa some 30,000 to 300,000 years ago. Although the Neanderthals originated in Africa, they migrated to Eurasia and lived as far as Great Britain, through some parts of the Middle East, all the way

Modern humans have jaws that sit beneath the rest of our skull, and small noses. The cheekbones are angled, and have a distinctive hollow beneath the eye socket, called the canine fossa. In comparison, the Neanderthals had an entirely larger face, with an enormous flattened nose, and the skull curved outwards around the cheeks rather than being hollowed out. Neanderthals also had a flatter, much larger forehead than modern man, as well as a pronounced double arch brow ridge that hung over their face. In addition, they also had an occipital bun, which is a prominent bulge of the occipital bone at the back of the head. The bun is important in scientific descriptions of classic Neanderthal crania. The purpose of the occipital bun remains a mystery, however, some scientists theorized the bun attributes the Neanderthals to enlargement of the cerebellum, a region of the brain which controls motor actions and spatial timing. There are some human populations which often exhibited buns, but in modern populations they are not frequent. Similarities between modern man and the Neanderthals was also seen in their inventions of tools, some of which modern man still use today. A lissoir is a tool made from the bone of deer ribs. It was most likely used to work on animal hides to make them softer, tougher, and waterproof. The lissoir had previously been associated only with modern humans

Neanderthals, living thru a continuous ice age would find food sources to be extremely scarce. There would likely be no fruits and berries found in the heart of the winter tundra, animal meat would most likely be their main energy source. Neanderthals would be specialists in hunting large game such as the mammoth and rhinos to survive the long cold winters. Although their diet consisted mainly of animal fat, some 80%, they did not solely thrive on it. Scientific studies of the isotope composition of individual amino acids in Neanderthal collagen, suggests that plant matter also constituted around 20% of their