Allie Hughes – August 9th, 2019

In my blog post today, I will be focusing on Neanderthals. One reason I enjoyed reading about The Neanderthals was because it challenged my current connotation of what I thought. Reading about their development from an evolutional perspective along with their fossil records, brought insight into my viewpoint of them. I’m walking away from this lecture with a new perspective on The Neanderthals than what I had previously known or believed.

From my studying of the lectures, I believe the Neanderthals highly contributed to the diversity of humans. In the first section of my blog post, I will go into detail of their specific features. One key thing I learned in the lecture is how Neanderthals had very large brains, averaging around 1520 ccs. I find this interesting because of how different it was from the other species in that time. When I was reading, there was another feature that contributed to the diversity. That being how The Neanderthals both were subject to natural selection due to the harsh ice age conditions. This group likely lived in very small populations and they lived in harsh Ice Age environments. This adaptation to ice age conditions are attributed to the physical differences seen in modern humans today. Another feature of their development from an evolution perspective is their heavy muscles and thick bones which produces a shorter build than most humans. This could imply an active lifestyle that they must have lived.

During the lecture, another key physical difference were their large noses and the middle of their faces sticking out. This could have affected how scientists viewed the fossils and how the paleoanthropologists studied these fossilized remains. Specifically, because today, humans have much more of a flat face. Additionally, their chins did not stick out like ours do today. Along with that, their sharp brow ridges and vertical foreheads would contribute to paleoanthropologists analyzing fossils very differently. They would learn a lot of differences from how humans are today.

One interesting fact I found to challenge my perspective was “Neanderthals developed faster than modern humans do during childhood.” This was concluded from the Neanderthal child found at Devil’s Tower who demonstrated a discrepancy between the growth rings of his teeth and his cranial anatomy. This implies that they processed information in a faster manner, which I find to be very interesting given how “Could Neanderthals Speak? The answer is probably. It’s hard to tell, but the bones around the larynx are not anatomically distinct from modern humans.” This relationship is one of the biggest reasons for their contributions to human diversity.

All in all, to conclude my learnings and takeaways from this section is that The Neanderthals contributed to the advancements and human diversity. We would not be where we are today without their unique features and commitment to diversity. After reading through this section, it makes me curious to think about how different humans will be from an evolution perspective in in the next 1000, 1 million and 100 million years.