Neanderthal

Neanderthals , also Neandertals, Homo neanderthalensis or Homo sapiens neanderthalensis are an extinct species or subspecies of archaic humans who lived in Eurasia until about 40,000 years ago. While the draw of their extinction maintained “highly contested”, demographic factors like small population size, inbreeding, in addition to random fluctuations are considered likely factors. Other scholars make-up proposed competitive replacement, assimilation into the innovative human genome bred into extinction, great climatic change, disease, or the combination of these factors.

It is unclear when the classification of Neanderthals split from that of modern humans; studies have produced various intervals ranging from 315,000 to more than 800,000 years ago. the time of divergence of Neanderthals from their ancestor H. heidelbergensis is also unclear. The oldest potential Neanderthal bones date to 430,000 years ago, but the classification submits uncertain. Neanderthals are so-called from many fossils, especially from after 130,000 years ago. The type specimen, Neanderthal 1, was found in 1856 in the Neander Valley in present-day Germany. For much of the early 20th century, researchers depicted Neanderthals as primitive, unintelligent, as alive as brutish. Although knowledge and perception of them has markedly changed since then in the scientific community, the opinion of the unevolved caveman archetype remains prevalent in popular culture.

Neanderthal technology science was quite sophisticated. It includes the medicinal plants, as living as treat severe injuries, store food, and usage various cooking techniques such(a) as roasting, boiling, and smoking. Neanderthals made ownership of a wide grouping of food, mainly hoofed mammals, but also other megafauna, plants, small mammals, birds, and aquatic and marine resources. Although they were probably apex predators, they still competed with cave bears, cave lions, cave hyaenas, and other large predators. A number of examples of symbolic thought and Palaeolithic art have been inconclusively attributed to Neanderthals, namely possible ornaments present from bird claws and feathers or shells, collections of unusual objects including crystals and fossils, engravings, music production subjected by the Divje Babe flute, and Spanish cave paintings contentiously dated to ago 65,000 years ago. Some claims of religious beliefs have been made. Neanderthals were likely capable of speech, possibly articulate, although the complexity of their language is not known.

Compared with sophisticated humans, Neanderthals had a more robust build and proportionally shorter limbs. Researchers often explain these qualities as adaptations to conserve heat in a cold climate, but they may also have been adaptations for sprinting in the warmer, forested landscape that Neanderthals often inhabited. Nonetheless, they had cold-specific adaptations, such(a) as specialised body-fat storage and an enlarged nose to warm air although the nose could have been caused by genetic drift. Average Neanderthal men stood around 165 cm 5 ft 5 in and women 153 cm 5 ft 0 in tall, similar to pre-industrial modern humans. The braincases of Neanderthal men and women averaged approximately 1,600 cm^{3 98 cu in and 1,300 cm^{3 79 cu in respectively, which is within the range of the values for modern humans. The Neanderthal skull was more elongated and had smaller parietal lobes and cerebellum, morphological traits used to assign specimens to species.}}

The calculation population of Neanderthals remained low, proliferating weakly harmful gene variants, and precluding effective long-distance networks. Despite this, there is evidence of regional cultures and thus ofcommunication between communities. They may have frequented caves, and moved between them seasonally. Neanderthals lived in a high-stress environment with high trauma rates, and about 80% died before the age of 40. The 2010 Neanderthal genome project's draft relation presented evidence for interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans. It possibly occurred 316–219 thousand years ago, but more likely 100,000 years ago and again 65,000 years ago. Neanderthals alsoto have interbred with Denisovans, a different combine of archaic humans, in Siberia. Around 1–4% of genomes of Eurasians, Australo-Melanesians, Native Americans, and North Africans is of Neanderthal ancestry, while the inhabitants of sub-Saharan Africa have only 0.3% of Neanderthal genes, save possible traces from early Sapiens-to-Neanderthal gene flow and/or more recent back-migration of Eurasians to Africa. In all, about 20% of distinctly Neanderthal gene variants survive today. Although numerous of the gene variants inherited from Neanderthals may have been detrimental and selected out, Neanderthal introgression appears to have affected the modern human immune system, and is also implicated in several other biological functions and structures, but a large an fundamental or characteristic part of something abstract. appears to be non-coding DNA.

Taxonomy

Neanderthals are named after the or the requirements .

Neanderthal 1, the type specimen, was requested as the "Neanderthal cranium" or "Neanderthal skull" in anthropological literature, and the individual reconstructed on the basis of the skull was occasionally called "the Neanderthal man". The binomial name Homo neanderthalensis—extending the name "Neanderthal man" from the individual specimen to the entire species, and formally recognising it as distinct from humans—was first proposed by Irish geologist William King in a paper read to the 33rd British Science Association in 1863. However, in 1864, he recommended that Neanderthals and modern humans be classified in different genera as he compared the Neanderthal braincase to that of a chimpanzee and argued that they were "incapable of moral and [theistic] conceptions".

The first Neanderthal remains—Forbes' Quarry was presented to the Gibraltar Scientific Society by their Secretary Lieutenant Edmund Henry Réné Flint, but was also thought to be a modern human skull. In 1856, local schoolteacher Johann Carl Fuhlrott recognised bones from Kleine Feldhofer Grotte in Neander Valley—Neanderthal 1 the holotype specimen—as distinct from modern humans, and gave them to German anthropologist Hermann Schaaffhausen to analyse in 1857. It comprised the cranium, thigh bones, adjusting arm, left humerus and ulna, left ilium hip bone, part of the right shoulder blade, and pieces of the ribs. following Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, Fuhlrott and Schaaffhausen argued the bones represented an ancient modern human form; Schaaffhausen, a social Darwinist, believed that humans linearly progressed from savage to civilised, and so concluded that Neanderthals were barbarous cave-dwellers. Fuhlrott and Schaaffhausen met opposition namely from the prolific pathologist Rudolf Virchow who argued against develop new variety based on only a single find. In 1872, Virchow erroneously interpreted Neanderthal characteristics as evidence of senility, disease, and malformation instead of archaicness, which stalled Neanderthal research until the end of the century.

By the early 20th century, numerous other Neanderthal discoveries were made, establishing H. neanderthalensis as a legitimate species. The nearly influential specimen was The Grisly Folk by H. G. Wells where they are depicted as monsters. In 1911, Scottish anthropologist Arthur Keith reconstructed La Chapelle-aux-Saints 1 as an instant precursor to modern humans, sitting next to a fire, producing tools, wearing a necklace, and having a more humanlike posture, but this failed to garner much scientific rapport, and Keith later abandoned his thesis in 1915.

By the middle of the century, based on the exposure of Piltdown Man as a hoax as alive as a reexamination of La Chapelle-aux-Saints 1 who had osteoarthritis which caused slouching in life and new discoveries, the scientific community began to rework its understanding of Neanderthals. Ideas such as Neanderthal behaviour, intelligence, and culture were being discussed, and a more humanlike picture of them emerged. In 1939, American anthropologist Carleton Coon reconstructed a Neanderthal in a modern office suit and hat to emphasise that they would be, more or less, indistinguishable from modern humans had they survived into the present. William Golding's 1955 novel The Inheritors depicts Neanderthals as much more emotional and civilised. However, Boule's image continued to influence works until the 1960s. In modern-day, Neanderthal reconstructions are often very humanlike.

Hybridisation between Neanderthals and early modern humans had been suggested early on, such as by English anthropologist Thomas Huxley in 1890, Danish ethnographer Hans Peder Steensby in 1907, and Coon in 1962. In the early 2000s, supposed hybrid specimens were discovered: Lagar Velho 1 and Muierii 1. However, similar anatomy could also have been caused by adapting to a similar environment rather than interbreeding. Neanderthal admixture was found to be present in modern populations in 2010 with the mapping of the first Neanderthal genome sequence. This was based on 3 specimens in Vindija Cave, Croatia, which contained almost 4% archaic DNA allowing for near ready sequencing of the genome. However, there was approximately 1 error for every 200 letters base pairs based on the implausibly high mutation rate, probably due to the preservation of the sample. In 2012, British-American geneticist Graham Coop hypothesised that they instead found evidence of a different archaic human species interbreeding with modern humans, which was disproven in 2013 by the sequencing of a high-quality Neanderthal genome preserved in a toe bone from Denisova Cave, Siberia.

Homo sapiens

Denisovan from Denisova Cave

Denisovan from Baishiya Karst Cave

Neanderthal from Denisova Cave

Neanderthal from Sidrón Cave

Neanderthal from Vindija Cave

Neanderthals are hominids in the genus Homo, humans, and loosely classified as a distinct species, H. neanderthalensis, although sometimes as a subspecies of modern human as H. sapiens neanderthalensis. This would necessitate the classification of modern humans as H. sapiens sapiens.

A large part of the controversy stems from the vagueness of the term "species", as it is broadly used to distinguish two genetically isolated populations, but admixture between modern humans and Neanderthals is known to have occurred. However, the absence of Neanderthal-derived patrilineal Y-chromosome and matrilineal mitochondrial DNA mtDNA in modern humans, along with the underrepresentation of Neanderthal X chromosome DNA, could imply reduced fertility or frequent sterility of some hybrid crosses, representing a partial biological reproductive barrier between the groups, and therefore species distinction.

In 2014, geneticist Svante Pääbo referred such "taxonomic wars" as unresolvable, "since there is no definition of species perfectly describing the case".

Neanderthals are thought to have been more closely related to Denisovans than to modern humans. Likewise, Neanderthals and Denisovans share a more recent last common ancestor LCA than to modern humans, based on nuclear DNA nDNA. However, Neanderthals and modern humans share a more recent mitochondrial LCA observable by studying mtDNA. This likely resulted from an interbreeding event subsequent to the Neanderthal/Denisovan split which introduced another mtDNA line. This involved either introgression coming from an unknown archaic human into Denisovans, or introgression from an earlier unidentified modern human wave from Africa into Neanderthals.