We have learned about our many different ancestors in the recent lectures of this class. But, in this past week’s lectures, we learned about how the modern day humans came to be and learned many different interesting facts regarding modern day humans. Fast forward a little and once the neanderthals were discovered, scientists were able to compare early specimens of humans to modern day humans. These specimens helped scientists understand and learn the contribution that it had on human evolution. In one particular example, that was extremely interesting was that neanderthals had short tibias and long femurs. When you look and compare it to the modern day Eskimos and Laplanders, they also had short tibias and long femurs. In result, this was due to both groups having to be able to adapt to cold climates. Also, in fact, in hotter climates they are more prone to longer legs. This helped scientists conclude and see that climate was a big factor in the human evolution. That was also another thing I found to be extremely interesting. Thinking about how your body can and will adapt to certain environments is super crazy and makes me think about it way more in depth and, in result, it has truly shown us that this has continued in modern day humans. In some of the last few lectures, a larger brain was associated with humans. That was another lecture I found to be tremendously cool and interesting. The size of neanderthal’s brain were larger than the human brains which showed and proved that neanderthals were capable of being on a more on an intelligent level. They were able to: create simple tools, speak, have compassion, and create instruments. Neanderthals are considered one of the closest relatives to humans, because we share a tremendous amount of similar features. Paleoanthropologists did many things to study the fossil remains of neanderthals. As they studied skeletal remains, they found different variables to determine their environment. Neanderthals had short tibias and long femurs. This indicated they were living in a cold climate. Overall, it has been determined that the climate was a big factor on how certain physical features were adapted in each group. The scientists believed they probably new how to be communicated. This was hard to be determined because the bones around the larynx are not anatomically distinct from modern humans. However, genomic evidence has found the gene in the remains. This gene is closely related to speech that associates in humans. Scientists also found some old wounds on the remains. This helped scientists determine that these wounds were cared for. Scientists also studied the neanderthal’s DNA. In the lecture, researchers had the reconstruction of a complete Neanderthal genome. This helped lead to many comparisons with the modern human genome. Scientists carefully studied the fossil remains to help find any indicators of our ancestors, and how it has contributed to human evolution. Not only did they study the fossil remains, they also studied their DNA to help answer questions about our ancestors. In conclusion, I feel that everything that was discovered about our early ancestors has contributed to human diversity and has been outrageously interesting. In this class, I believe talking and learning about different features are really important because it helps and aids us to see the differences as well as similarities in our ancestors. In result, we see how the climate, environment, brain size, and different variables during the timeline of human evolution has aided in helping us determine what humans are like and how they were different before. I think this was an overall great week of lectures and actually taught me quite a lot.