Cause Of Neanderthal Evolution

Research speculates that the modern humans and Neanderthals coexisted in Europe for around 5,000 years. To put that into perspective, 5,000 years is around 250 generations in “human-time.” Sharing about 99.5% DNA with the Neanderthals, the largest bone in the foot may be one of the biggest differences that set the modern humans apart to out-live the Neanderthals. Both Neanderthals and modern humans have arched feet, but the height of heal differs. Dr David Raichlen found that because the heal of the Neanderthal was taller, it proved less spring during running and also stabilized the ankle. This made the Neanderthals known for walking, and to which why the lower heal increased the ability for modern humans to out run its closest cousin.

There is proof of this evolution all around us. Man itself has evolved over thousands and thousands of years in direct relation to the changing environment surrounding them. There are facts and proof to back up the theory of evolution, but that does not mean that it is the only way that explains development of living things.

Neanderthals were a species of archaic humans who migrated out of Africa and into Europe and Asia. However, around 40,000 years ago the large populations of Neanderthals died off and became extinct. The mysterious circumstances that surrounded their extinction drove various research teams to undertake the task of excavating numerous Neanderthal sites to collect fossilized bones, and artifacts in order to learn more about this group of ancestral humans. Over the past years, major technological advances have allowed researches to analyze the fossilized remains of the Neanderthals which led to major discoveries. For example, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology found that the ear ossicles of Neanderthals and modern humans had similar functions but differed in terms of structure. In the study, the researchers used high-resolution computer tomography (CT) to scan numerous Neanderthal skulls from different sites in order to determine if there are ossicles present in the middle ear cavity (tympanic membrane). The scans revealed ossicles in fourteen different skulls which came as a surprise to the researchers since the bones of the ossicles are fragile and break down easily in the soil. The researchers then used microcomputed tomography scans and 3D geometric morphometrics in order to virtually reconstruct the bones of the ossicles which are composed of the malleus, incus and stapes. The 3D reconstructions of the ossicles allowed the scientists to

comparable to the sun and the moon? What about King Solomon. Sol (soul)(sun) , Mon (moon) (man), so could this equate to the king of the soul of man? New information is emerging about our neanderthal predecessors all the time. For example, their are discussions now about

If Neanderthals did in fact comport themselves in ways once thought to distinguish anatomically modern humans and enable the latter’s rise to world domination, that similarity makes the Neanderthals’ decline and eventual extinction all the more mystifying. One theory is that H. sapiens had a broader variety of tools that may have enhanced their ability to forage. When they brought their superior technology with them out of Africa and into Eurasia, they were thus better able to exploit the environment more effectively than the resident Neanderthals could. Still, the arrival of H. sapiens did not equal an instant demise for Neanderthals. The latest attempt to track their decline, carried out by Thomas Higham of Oxford and his colleagues, applied

Contemporary Europeans have roughly three times more Neanderthal variable in their genes involved in lipid catabolism than Asian and African people. Even though Neanderthals are extinct, small pieces of their genomes tend to exist in modern humans. These similarities are unevenly distributed across the genome and some regions are particularly enriched with Neanderthal variants. While analyzing the influence of Neanderthal variants on lipid processing in modern humans, the researchers found revolutionary changes in lipid concentration and expression of metabolic enzymes in brains of humans of European

Evolution is a mysterious topic, as there is just so much evidence that has been found by many people throughout history. The first person to spread the idea of evolution was Charles Darwin. He helped to spread the idea of evolution to others such as Gregor Mendel, and helped many others to accept the findings of Boucher de Perthes. Evolution is defined by the changes of organisms throughout time to better the survival rate of said group of organisms.(definitions, 2009) The generations of organisms therefore evolve through time as the changes occur. There are many pieces of evidence such as, analogous and homologous structures in organisms, cladograms, the order of appearance of structures during embryological development, and fossil records. Evidence of evolution at it’s finest.

This in turn allowed them to consider the context of differing abilities to cope with fluctuating resources, different variables, and overall paths in brain development between Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans (AMHs). Although Neanderthals did share similar brain sizes comparable to anatomically modern humans (AMHs), nevertheless Neanderthals brain cases were elongated and not globular as in Homo Sapiens implying that anatomically modern humans (AMHs) and Neanderthals reached fairly large brain sizes along dissimilar evolutionary paths. In their underlying research, they hypothesize that similarly sized brains of both Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans (AMHs) were ostensibly organized differently for two

Neanderthals are the predecessor to anatomically modern humans. They were hunters, cared for their wounded and the dead, lived rough lives, and are considered to be a highly successful species (who). Living between 180-40 thousand years ago, Neanderthals were considered to be a part of the middle paleolithic era (when). Living in both Europe and southern Asia, Neanderthals never migrated into Africa (where). They co-existed with anatomically modern humans; however the time of coexistence is debatable. Unlike today’s humans, they had a significantly larger head, accounting for a significantly larger brain (what). However, they were equipped with a much smaller frontal lobe, which means they had less capacity and ability for forethought. They

Undoubtedly, humans are the most dominant species on earth right now. The question is, Why? Some could point to our ability to form tools or create complex social groups or the movement away from the hunter gatherer lifestyle to develop agriculture of course all this played a significant role but humans were not the only species capable of this. In this essay I will argue that it was the humble dog that led to the eventual dominance of humans by looking at how they helped us against one of our main competitors, The Neanderthal.

The Neanderthals seem to have largely disappeared around 25,000 years ago, but the precise explanation for their disappearance remains something of a mystery. A number of different theories have emerged, some mutually exclusive, some not, but all of them draw upon substantial archeological, anthropological, and biological evidence. Researchers have variously proposed that Neanderthals were the victims of genocide at the hands of modern humans, died out due to some kind of plague or epidemic, or went extinct because they could not cope with climatic shifts. While none of these can be conclusively proven or disproven, one can at least begin to assign certain degrees of likelihood to each hypothesis. Upon examining a variety of these theories regarding the extinction of the Neanderthals, it becomes clear that in all likelihood, the Neanderthals disappeared not due to any single cause, but rather from susceptibility to climate change coupled with conflict, disease, and interbreeding.

Ever since Neanderthals have been discovered they have been misunderstood. From their name, physical traits, and their brain power we have misrepresented them in our novels, comic sketches, cartoons, movies and even in scientific literature for a while. Recently in the past couple of decades we have been gaining a better perspective of them through advancements in technology and scientific methods.

The developmental differences that do exist between Neanderthals and H. sapiens may have a distant evolutionary beginning. An analysis of some 17 skulls dated to 430,000 years ago discovered at the fossil site of Sima de los Huesos, in the Atapuerca Mountains in northern Spain, has shown that members of the population, believed to have been Neanderthal ancestors, had smaller brains than later members of the lineage. The discovery suggests that Neanderthals did not inherit their large brain size from the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans; instead the two species experienced a comparable brain expansion later in their development. Although Neanderthal brains became approximately as large as those of H. sapiens, this independent

When trying to determine why Neanderthals cease to exist after modern humans arrived in Europe, many researchers hypothesis that either climactic changes or competition with modern humans was the cause. Some research indicates that Neanderthals were unable to cope with the sheer number of modern humans on the landscape. For others it was the arid climate causing a loss to their habitation. Still some researchers ascertain that Neanderthals never truly left the landscape due to interbreeding between modern humans and themselves. Archaeological evidence in the form of stone tools is used in order to determine whether a site was Neanderthal or modern human. Neanderthal technology favors Mousterian, whereas modern humans used Aurignacian. The differences between these two types of tools are whether flake- based is used as opposed to blade-based technology (Banks et al., 2008:e3972).

The species Homo neandertalensis has been a subject to much debate over history. This species was once thought as one of us. The existent of this species has undergone conversions about their importance and their evolutionary situation. Moreover, the biggest question we ask is what happened to the Neanderthals? Two debates concerning what happened to the Neanderthals have been continuing since the 19th century. One side of the debate believes that they were unable to compete with modern humans or were unable to cope with the harsh living conditions causing them to become extinct. The other side of the debate states that they mingled with the new human populations, and eventually evolved into the modern human. This paper will provide enough