For this week’s blog post I have decided to focus on Neanderthals. I chose Neanderthals because, as with most of these species of early humans, there is still a vast amount of uncertainty when it comes to behavior and tendencies. This is also the only term that can be applied to early human species that I had heard of before and wanted to gin a more meaningful understanding of them. Googles definition of a Neanderthal is “an extinct species of human that was widely distributed in ice-age Europe between 120,000 and 35,000 years ago with a receding forehead and prominent brow ridges. The Neanderthals were associated with the Mousterian flint industry of the middle Paleolithic.” I fell this is a good way to set the table for the conversation around these early humans.

 First, I’ll address their distinct features which include large brains, a rounded cranium, big faces along with small back teeth and large front teeth. Their average brain size was around 1520 ccs which is even bigger than modern human brains. Their long and low skulls create the rounded crania and large faces that include protruding brow ridges and enormous noses. The shape of the skull also creates a lack of a chin. Their teeth are interesting as well and can tell us a lot about their diet. Their molars are also “taurodont” which means their roots are fused together. Neanderthals also have very thick bones along with muscled bodies producing a shorter being than modern day humans. The most interesting feature however is the fact that their brains develop at a different rate than us. Neanderthals’ brains develop at a faster rate meaning they are given less time to learn things from their parents and others in their communities if you can call them that than modern day humans do. Neanderthals attempted to stay around rock shelters meaning they didn’t use their massive brains to develop their own forms of shelters. Another sign of how advance they were was the existence of burials. There is evidence that Neanderthals buried their dead and even included items with the deceased. These items included foods and tools that they used and even flowers. They also didn’t seem to live very long which seems obvious in their incredibly trying conditions. Although their large brains could get behind the concept of burying their dead, they never developed a taste for the arts, showing no evidence of cave paintings or sculptures. They used types of tools described as Mousterian tools that included hand axes, primitive versions or saws and bolas, which were used to sling rocks at what we presume to be what they were hunting. Once the Neanderthals became extinct, so did these types of tools.

               Overall, this information on Neanderthals from the lecture notes shows us the massive advancements that we humans have made. It’s insane to think about how we even began to categorize our ancestors, let alone learn incredibly specific behavioral tendencies like they way they processed pelts from animals. The largest contribution of these findings on Neanderthals in terms of how we study human diversity is the addressing how far we’ve come in terms of the techniques we use to study these groups of humans and thinking on a grander scale of the things humans have accomplished since these times.