It's a Neanderthal Eat Neanderthal World!

Neanderthal cannibalism may have spread a type of mad cow disease which contributed to their extinction. 

Shocking evidence found in a French cave in 1999 revealed that Neanderthals may have eaten each other. 100,000-120,000 year-old bones of 6 individuals were discovered at the cave and showed signs that they were defleshed an anvil was used to remove the marrow and brains.

It is not clear why Neanderthals may have eaten each other, however research based on modern human populations that practice cannibalism such as the Fore of Papua New Guinea, suggests that the relatives of the deceased, dismembered corpses because they believe their flesh was valuable.

The practice of cannibalism within Neanderthal populations gave rise to the spread of encephalitic disorders such as Mad Cow disease. The disease's often result in severe mental impairment, loss of speech and an inability to move. It is estimated that within a group of 15,000 individuals, such a disease could reduce the population to non-viable levels within 250 years. 

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No Need For Soap!

Neanderthals didn't need soap to deal with odors because they couldn't smell each other anyway. Although Neanderthals had bigger noses than modern humans, scientists suggest their sniffing skills were not that great. 

Three-dimensional medical imaging was used to scan fossils of human skulls, these images revealed that the 'olfactory bulbs' which process odors are 12% larger in modern humans than in Neanderthals. 

Scientists of the Spanish Natural Science Museum assessed the shape of the  base of the cranium and quantified the volume of gray matter that would have filled it. Other differences were also identified which suggested that although the Neanderthals were very similar to us, their brains may have worked very differently to us. 

This article explains how the modern human sniffing ability correlates with our higher brain functions directly responsible for processing emotion, motivation, fear, memory, pleasure, and attraction. 

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The Truth About Redheads!

Red Headed Modern European 

The gene which is responsible for red hair, fair skin and freckles may have been inherited from the Neanderthals. According to a team of scientists from Oxford University, the red hair gene could be up to 100,000 years old. The belief is that when modern humans from Africa migrated to Europe, interbreeding occurred between them and the Neanderthals and that is how we inherited red hair into our genome.

MC1R gene  

The MC1R gene is linked to hair and skin colour, DNA analysis was used to find the variation of the gene that produced pale skin and red hair in modern humans. The same gene was extracted from the Neanderthal DNA sample, it was found that the gene produced the same levels of the chemical melanin. Light skin would have been an evolutionary advantage for the Neanderthals because it would have allowed them to absorb more vitamin D from the Sun which is essential for bone health. 

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Look Who's Talking!

A study by Fox et al published in the journal Current Biology explained how Neanderthals may have had advanced languages like modern humans today, and not the stereotypical Neanderthal gruffs and grunts. 

They extracted the DNA sequence for the FoxP2 gene from Neanderthals. This gene is significant because modern humans have several changes in this gene that is absent in chimpanzees, our closest living relatives. This suggests that the FoxP2 gene plays an important role in the evolution of modern human language. Speech is one of the key characteristics that separates us from the chimpanzees. It was discovered that Neanderthals also shared the same mutations in FoxP2, suggesting that they were capable of language and speech. 

It makes me think, if modern humans and Neanderthals once shared this planet, could it be possible that we communicated with one another before they went extinct?
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Red Deer Cave People: A new species of Human

Red Deer Cave People

It seems like a new species of Human has been discovered in very short time after the discovery of the Denisovans, another newly discovered species of archaic humans. The remains of at least four stone aged individuals were pulled from a cave in South West China and are believed to be a new species of Homo sapiens sapiens, they have been christened the 'Red Deer Cave People' and have been estimated to have lived up to 11,500 years ago. They displayed a mix of archaic and modern human features, however they have skulls that are so unique they don't match any type of human skull dating back to 150,000 years ago.

Skull found in China

Different to Modern Humans

Their discovery is particularly intriguing because they are the most recently discovered human remains which do not closely resemble modern humans today. They are different to modern humans because they have jutting jaws, prominent brow ridges, large molars, thick skulls and broad noses. The research team which investigated the discovery suggested that the Red Deer Cave people could be part of an evolutionary line that arrived in Asia early but failed to contribute genetically to modern Asian populations. It is also particularly intriguing that they lived at the same time as relatively modern humans, suggesting that they either could not contribute genetically or lived in complete isolation from the Homo sapiens sapiens population. They were christened the Red Deer People because of the large number of Red Deer fossils found around their remains, suggesting that these humans fed on Red Deer, an animal which is also extinct today. Their discovery has added increased momentum to the modern human origins debate. 

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