yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Neanderthals 101 | National Geographic


3m read
·Nov 11, 2024

  • [Narrator] Neanderthals are often depicted as brutish cave men, but science shows that our early ancestors were actually quite advanced. Neanderthals, or homo neanderthalensis, are our closest relatives in the human family tree. The species lived from about 400,000 to 40,000 years ago and inhabited an area that stretched as far as Europe's Atlantic coast and as far east as central Asia. Their habitat reached northward to modern day Belgium, making them the first humans to survive a cold, glacial ecosystem.

The north's cold environment may have influenced neanderthals' physique. Their bodies were relatively short, with males averaging five feet, five inches and females five feet, one inch tall, and they were stocky with broad chests, bulky torsos, and muscular limbs. These adaptations helped neanderthals generate and retain body heat. Also, their noses were large and had relatively high bridges. This created a nasal chamber that warmed and humidified the cold, dry air they'd breathe in northern regions.

Apart from adaptations that helped neanderthals survive a harsh, wintry habitat, the species also developed large brains. They were similar in size to modern humans' brains and were often larger. An increase in brain size may have played a significant role in another type of adaptation, culture. Culture is indicative of an intelligent species, and archeological evidence suggests that neanderthals had a relatively sophisticated culture. They built shelters, made and wore clothing, and created advanced tools.

In fact, they were the first human species to make tools out of bone, not just stone. They also created objects that served ornamental purposes. Neanderthals are suspected to be the first humans to carry out the symbolic gesture of burying their dead and adorning grave sites with flowers. Neanderthals may have also created what may be the world's oldest cave art, which was found in Spain.

Despite advances in their culture, sometime after 40,000 years ago, neanderthals mysteriously disappeared. Some scientists believe the neanderthals were killed or outcompeted by modern humans, or homo sapiens, who arrived in Europe at around the same time as the neanderthals' extinction. However, another theory suggests that neanderthals mated with modern humans and were absorbed into the humans' much larger population. That may explain why most people of European or Asian descent have 1% to 2% neanderthal genes in their DNA.

For more than 150 years, neanderthals have perplexed anthropologists. The first neanderthal fossil specimen was discovered in Belgium in 1829 by Philippe-Charles Schmerling. However, it wasn't officially classified as neanderthal until decades later. The first fossil to be recognized as neanderthal and as an early human or genus homo fossil was found in 1856 by quarrymen in Germany. The new species was named neanderthalensis after the area where the fossils were found, Neander Valley.

Neanderthals' fossils tell us how evolution built them to be sturdy, to survive their harsh environment, but their tools, art, and DNA tell us that their resilience also involved innovation, creativity, and social behavior, much like homo sapiens today.

More Articles

View All
The Venus Project: mistakes that advocates make
So there’s been an exchange between Stefan Molyneux and Peter Joseph on YouTube lately, and I’ve been commenting on both videos and communicating with advocates of the Venus Project. In this video, I’ll try to correct some of the most important misconcept…
Multiplying two 2-digit numbers using partial products
In a previous video, we figured out a way to multiply a two-digit number times a one-digit number. What we did is we broke up the two-digit numbers in terms of its place value. So, the three here in the tens place, that’s three tens; this is seven ones. …
Positive and negative intervals of polynomials | Polynomial graphs | Algebra 2 | Khan Academy
Let’s say that we have the polynomial p of x, and when expressed in factored form, it is (x + 2)(2x - 3)(x - 4). What we’re going to do in this video is use our knowledge of the roots of this polynomial to think about intervals where this polynomial would…
My Favorite Watches From My Million Dollar Collection!
If they raised it, maybe they sold 50% of the business for a million bucks. I mean, if it’s worth 2 million, I’m throwing up. I went to the vault, and I got these puppies out—the hottest watch in the world. I was looking at it; oh, I was staring at this—t…
LC natural response intuition 2
We’ve been working on an intuitive description of the natural response of an LC circuit, and in the last video, we got everything set up. Now we’re ready to close the switch. Let’s close our switch, and now our switch is closed again. What happens? Well,…
The Housing Market Is ABOUT TO BOTTOM
What’s up, Graham? It’s guys here. So, to give you some context, just over a year ago, people were buying up as much toilet paper as they could, emptying it from shelves and causing the price to skyrocket as high as $100 a roll. Well, as you would expect…