Latest Neanderthal Stories

U.S. and Canadian scientists say data from human fossils suggest a shift in animal resource exploitation as humans spread into Europe 40,000 years ago. Washington University in St. Louis Professor Erik Trinkaus and University of British Columbia Professor Michael Richards used accumulations of carbon and nitrogen stable isotope data to reach that conclusion. They said both the preceding Neanderthals and the incoming modern humans regularly and successfully hunted large game such as deer,...

Accumulating carbon and nitrogen stable isotope data from fossil humans in Europe is pointing towards a significant shift in the range of animal resources exploited with the spread of modern humans into Europe 40,000 years ago.Both the preceding Neandertals and the incoming modern humans regularly and successfully hunted large game such as deer, cattle and horses, as well as occasionally killing larger or more dangerous animals. There is little evidence for the regular eating of fish by the...

Archaeologists at the University of Tuebingen in Germany say a bird-bone flute discovered in a German cave was created 35,000 years ago, making it the oldest handmade musical instrument ever discovered.The find provides the latest evidence that early modern humans had established a creative and sophisticated culture in Europe.The researchers, led by University of Tuebingen archaeologist Nicholas Conard, constructed the flute from 12 pieces of griffon vulture bone discovered in a small plot of...

Scientists in the Netherlands have found part of a Neanderthal man's skull that has been dredged up from the North Sea, BBC News reported.The specimen is a fragment from the front of a skull belonging to a young adult male and experts say it is the first confirmed find of its kind.The 60,000-year-old fossil has undergone an extensive analysis of chemical "isotopes" that match results from other Neanderthal specimens, suggesting a carnivorous diet.This is the first confirmed specimen...

Did cannibalism cause Neanderthals to become extinct? A scientist at France's National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) seems to believe so.Fernando Rozzi reported in the Journal of Anthropological Sciences that humans devoured Neanderthals into extinction during the Stone Age some 30,000 years ago.Rozzi's claim is based on analysis of a Neanderthal jawbone that had apparently been butchered by modern humans.The jawbone, which could be the first evidence of contact between the two human...

Scientists have used a clay sculpture to recreate the face of the earliest known European.Using an incomplete skull and jawbone retrieved seven years ago by potholers in a cave near the Carpathian Mountains in Romania, Richard Neave, a forensic scientist in the UK, successfully reconstructed the head of the ancient European ancestor.Scientists are unsure of whether the bone fragments belonged to a male or female, but radiocarbon analysis dates the find to between 34,000 and 36,000 years...

The Neanderthals inhabited a vast geographical area extending from Europe to western Asia and the Middle East 30,000 to 100,000 years ago. Now, a group of researchers are questioning whether or not the Neanderthals constituted a homogenous group or separate sub-groups (between which slight differences could be observed). A new study published April 15 in the online, open-access, peer-reviewed journal PLoS ONE may provide some answers.Paleoanthropological studies based on morphological...

International researchers say they have completed a draft of the genetic blueprint of Neanderthals, humans' primitive cousin. The scientists say their discovery shows Neanderthals made very little, if any contribution to human genes, USA Today reported Saturday. Neanderthals occupied Europe from about 800,000 to 30,000 years ago, the newspaper noted. Team chief Svante Paabo of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig said their findings provide a good overview...

Scientists said Thursday that they have mapped a first draft of the Neanderthal genome, which might reveal the links between modern humans and their prehistoric cousins.Researchers used DNA fragments extracted from three Croatian fossils to show over 60 percent of the entire Neanderthal genome and sequencing three billion bases of DNA."The Neanderthal genome sequence will clarify the evolutionary relationship between humans and Neanderthals as well as help identify those genetic changes...

New research finds competition between Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon populations, rather than climate change, was the driving force that caused the Neanderthal extinction. The study was published in the online journal PloS One on December 24th. Forty-thousand years ago Neanderthal populations occupied Europe prior to the arrival of humans. Researchers, who belong to the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, l'Ecole Pratique d'Hautes Etudes, and the University of Kansas, reached...