This week was really interesting; however, Neanderthal was most interesting in my opinion! I have always heard of them, but never knew how much they shaped the future with evolution. Neanderthals are thought to come from Europe originating from Homo Hidelbergensis which lead to the species becoming its own and having its own distinctive features. In lecture it stated that Neanderthal and modern humans split about 500,000 years ago which shows no DNA of theirs in our modern DNA. Hearing Neanderthals had an average brain size of 1520 ccs when the normal human brain size is 1350-1400 ccs and who they originated from having 1200 ccs. From having a larger brains size came differences in skull features such as Neanderthals had occipital buns with big faces. It was odd to hear that they had small back teeth and large front teeth. Today it is opposite with humans and teeth size. Neanderthals also had different lifestyles as quoted in lecture, they were very heavily muscled, with thick bones and slightly shorter and much stockier compared to us. With these body lifestyles, as mentioned in lecture it was thought they had different growth patterns and is thought they grew really fast, so they did not have enough time to learn things as kids before their body started changing. They were advance compared to most before them but not as advance as us, therefore their tools were very simple and there was no art, or anything left behind from them. However, there was art and tools left from similar species during the same time which shows maybe Neanderthals were a different kind of species. I think Neanderthals made scientist think differently about human evolution. They were different species compared to other species that came before them. Their structure was also very different which shows they were more bipedal. With the evolutionary changes that took place with these species shows that due to environment made changes happen over time in order to achieve different traits such as making tools better, shelter, art work etc. Studying these remains have led scientist to link together Neanderthals to humans by the gene we both share called FOXP2 gene which is found in speech! 

Watching the video, The Neanderthal In Us, just expanded on what lectures covered by showing research that was done to determine the difference with these species by solving the genome of Neanderthals and us. The video talked about a really important issues when solving this mystery of what happened to this species. There was a link between Asian and European descents, but non from Africans. This is questioning anyone studying this what happened to these genes and why were they not found in this location of the earth.  

I think the biggest contributions these findings have showed human diversity is the brain size. Neanderthals had very large brains, but yet were not the brightest compared to humans. With that brain size, I would have thought different, but it makes sense that they were not able to learn everything as a child to pass on. It wasn’t until us humans came along that major evolution changes took place by advanced housing, tools and better ways to live as mentioned in the third lecture. Neanderthals most defiantly set the path that humans eventually modified in the future for the best which the brain was the main player to make better living situations!