49 Fun Facts About Neanderthals

Roughly when did Neanderthals become extinct?

About 40,000 years ago Neanderthals died out, within a few millennia of modern humans' arrival in Europe; a few Iberian refuges may have held on somewhat longer.

In which country was the first recognised Neanderthal fossil, Neanderthal 1, discovered in 1856?

Neanderthal 1 came from the Kleine Feldhofer Grotte in the Neander Valley, a limestone gorge east of the Rhine in Germany, where quarrymen dug it out in August 1856.

After whom was the Neander Valley named?

A hymn writer, the 17th-century pastor Joachim Neander who composed 'Praise to the Lord, the Almighty', loved walking in the gorge, which took his name in the early 19th century.

The Neander Valley that named the species lies near which German city?

Düsseldorf lies just west of the Neander Valley, a limestone gorge of the little Düssel river near Mettmann where the 1856 fossil turned up during quarrying.

Which year's German spelling reform changed 'Thal' to 'Tal', renaming the Neander Valley?

The 1901 orthographic conference dropped the silent h from native German words, so Neanderthal became Neandertal; the scientific name Homo neanderthalensis keeps the th under the principle of priority.

Which Irish geologist proposed the name Homo neanderthalensis in 1863?

William King, a geologist at Queen's College Galway, proposed Homo neanderthalensis at an 1863 meeting; a year later he suggested a separate genus, judging the creature incapable of moral conceptions.

Which pathologist argued in 1872 that Neanderthal features were signs of disease, stalling research for decades?

Rudolf Virchow, the era's leading pathologist, declared in 1872 that the bones came from a diseased modern human with rickets and old injuries; his authority stalled Neanderthal research for decades.

Which French palaeontologist described the La Chapelle-aux-Saints "Old Man" as a slouching, ape-like creature?

Marcellin Boule's 1911-13 monograph on the La Chapelle-aux-Saints skeleton portrayed a stooped, bent-kneed brute; the individual's severe arthritis helped mislead the reconstruction, and the image stuck for half a century.

In which country were the very first Neanderthal remains, the Engis 2 skull, found in 1829?

Philippe-Charles Schmerling dug the Engis 2 child's skull from a cave near Liège, Belgium, in 1829 and saw that it lay with extinct animals, but it was recognised as Neanderthal only in 1936.

A Neanderthal skull found at Forbes' Quarry in 1848 came from which British territory?

Gibraltar 1, an adult female skull, was found at Forbes' Quarry in 1848, before the Neander Valley find, but its importance was not grasped until decades later.

What is the bony projection at the back of a Neanderthal skull called?

An occipital bun is the rounded bulge at the rear of the Neanderthal braincase; other hallmarks are the long low skull, heavy rounded brow ridge, wide chest and short limbs.

What was the estimated average height of a Neanderthal male?

Neanderthal males averaged about 165 cm, a little shorter than the modern humans of their time, with a stocky, barrel-chested build suited to cold climates.

How did average Neanderthal brain volume compare with people alive today?

Larger than any current population: Neanderthal males averaged about 1,640 cc, above today's means, though the brain's organisation differed in areas linked to cognition and language.

Which Neanderthal specimen had the largest recorded brain, at 1,736 cubic centimetres?

Amud 1, an adult male from Amud Cave in Israel found in 1961, had a cranial capacity of about 1,736 cc, among the largest ever recorded for any human.

Which stone tool industry are Neanderthals associated with?

The Mousterian industry, named after Le Moustier in France, is the Neanderthal toolkit; it relies on the Levallois technique of preparing a core so flakes of predetermined shape can be struck off.

What adhesive did Neanderthals produce by the earliest known dry distillation process?

Birch tar, made by heating birch bark without oxygen, was used by Neanderthals at least 200,000 years ago to glue stone points onto wooden hafts; it is the earliest known synthetic substance.

Which Croatian rock shelter, dug from 1899, yielded some 900 Neanderthal bones?

Krapina, a rock shelter in northern Croatia, was excavated by Dragutin Gorjanović-Kramberger from 1899 and produced roughly 900 Neanderthal bones from dozens of individuals, about 130,000 years old.

Which wood was chosen for the Clacton and Lehringen spears for its useful properties?

Both spears were carved from European yew, a dense, springy wood prized for bows; the Lehringen spear, about 120,000 years old, is roughly 2.4 metres long.

At the 125,000-year-old Neumark-Nord site, which animal did Neanderthals hunt every five or six years?

The kills may have happened roughly every five or six years.

Which marine animals were eaten by Neanderthals at Vanguard Cave on the Rock?

Dolphin and monk seal bones with cut marks at Vanguard Cave show Neanderthals exploited the sea; at Figueira Brava in Portugal they also roasted brown crabs to crack the shells.

In which French cave did Neanderthals arrange broken stalagmites into rings 176,000 years ago?

Bruniquel Cave in southwest France holds rings of broken stalagmites built about 176,000 years ago deep inside the cave, showing Neanderthals ventured far underground with fire long before modern humans reached Europe.

Which transitional tool culture of France is linked to the last Neanderthals?

The Châtelperronian, known from Arcy-sur-Cure and Saint-Césaire, is the culture of the last French Neanderthals, with blade tools and pierced animal-tooth pendants, dating to roughly 45,000-40,000 years ago.

What percentage of Neanderthal specimens show evidence of healed major trauma?

Healed major trauma shows on 79–94% of specimens, a rate put down to dangerous close-quarters hunting or animal attacks; men and women show similar injury patterns.

Which Neanderthal from an Iraqi cave survived an arm amputation and possible hearing loss?

Shanidar 1, an older male from Shanidar Cave in Iraqi Kurdistan, lived years after losing his lower right arm and probably much of his hearing, suggesting others in his group cared for him.

Ralph Solecki's famous claim about a Shanidar Cave burial involved what grave offering?

Flowers: pollen clusters around the Shanidar 4 skeleton led Ralph Solecki to argue in the 1970s that the man was buried with blooms, though burrowing rodents may have carried the pollen in.

The disputed 43,000-year-old Divje Babe "flute" from Slovenia is made from the femur of which animal?

A cave bear femur with two complete holes is the Divje Babe 'flute'; many researchers think a carnivore's teeth made the holes, though Slovenian archaeologists maintain it was a Neanderthal instrument.

How many evenly spaced hearths may Neanderthals have kept in a row at Abric Romaní rock shelter in Spain?

Eight hearths, evenly spaced along the rock wall at Abric Romaní near Barcelona, were probably for warmth while sleeping, one person on either side of each fire.

Which bone that supports the tongue is almost identical in Neanderthals and modern humans?

The hyoid from the Kebara 2 skeleton, found in Israel in 1983, is almost identical to a modern human's, supporting the view that Neanderthals could produce complex speech.

In which year was the first Neanderthal genome sequence published?

The draft Neanderthal genome appeared in Science in May 2010, sequenced mainly from three bones over 38,000 years old; it showed non-Africans carry a small Neanderthal contribution, the first strong genetic evidence of interbreeding.

Bones from which Croatian site provided the specimens for the first Neanderthal genome?

Vindija Cave in northern Croatia supplied the three bone fragments for the first draft genome, and in 2017 another Vindija bone yielded the second high-coverage Neanderthal genome.

Which geneticist won the 2022 Nobel Prize for sequencing the genomes of extinct hominins?

Svante Pääbo won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for sequencing the Neanderthal genome and identifying a new hominin from a finger bone; he founded the Leipzig Max Planck institute's genetics department in 1997.

Roughly what share of a modern European's genome is Neanderthal-derived?

Modern Europeans carry about 1.8–2.4% Neanderthal-derived DNA by a 2017 high-coverage-genome estimate, with East Asians slightly higher; Africans carry far less, only what later back-migration from Eurasia brought.

How much of the total Neanderthal genome survives today, scattered across living people?

About 20% of the Neanderthal genome can be pieced together from fragments scattered among living non-Africans, though any one person carries only a couple of percent, mostly in non-coding regions.

To which other archaic human group are Neanderthals most closely related on nuclear DNA?

Denisovans, identified from a finger bone found in Siberia's Denisova Cave in 2008, split from Neanderthals after both had diverged from modern humans, making them Neanderthals' closest known relatives.

How much larger was the initial Cro-Magnon population than the Neanderthals', per archaeological evidence?

About ten times: a 2011 study of south-west French sites by Paul Mellars and Jennifer French found modern humans outnumbered Neanderthals roughly tenfold soon after arriving, judging by site numbers, tool densities and food remains.

During which geological epoch did Neanderthals live?

The Pleistocene, the Ice Age epoch from about 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago, was the Neanderthals' era; they appeared by roughly 400,000 years ago and vanished well before it ended.

Which cave complex, inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 2016, preserves late Neanderthal occupation?

Gorham's Cave, with neighbouring Vanguard Cave on the Rock's eastern face, holds deep Neanderthal occupation layers and a Neanderthal rock engraving; UNESCO listed the complex in 2016.

Which type of DNA in living humans shows no surviving Neanderthal lineages?

Mitochondrial DNA passes only from mother to child, and no living person carries a Neanderthal mitochondrial lineage, although Neanderthal segments survive across the nuclear genome.

Which bird did Neanderthals butcher disproportionately, suggesting to the Finlaysons a symbol of power?

The golden eagle turns up at Neanderthal sites on the Rock far more often than chance predicts, which Clive and Geraldine Finlayson read as a symbol of power; they also proposed Neanderthals used dark feathers as ornament.

Neanderthals' stocky build and short limbs are classically explained by which two ecological rules?

Bergmann's and Allen's rules predict stockier bodies and shorter limbs in cold climates; Neanderthals' barrel chests and short forearms and shins fit both, though some researchers suspect other causes too.

Which of these hair colours has been linked to gene variants found in some Neanderthals?

Red hair has been linked to a pigmentation-gene variant found in two Neanderthals, from Spain and Italy, in 2007; it differs from the variants in modern redheads and was probably not common.

How old are the Sima de los Huesos fossils whose nuclear DNA groups them with Neanderthals?

The Sima de los Huesos bones are about 430,000 years old; Matthias Meyer's 2016 nuclear DNA study placed them on the Neanderthal line, though their maternal-line DNA had earlier looked closer to a different archaic group.

Which name is given to the early modern humans who replaced Neanderthals in Europe?

Cro-Magnons, named after a Dordogne rock shelter where five skeletons turned up in 1868, were the early modern humans who spread through Europe as Neanderthals vanished; their diet was broader.

Which local schoolteacher first recognised the Neanderthal 1 bones as distinct from modern humans in 1856?

Johann Carl Fuhlrott, a schoolteacher and naturalist from Elberfeld, saw that the bones the quarrymen had saved were ancient and human-like; he and Hermann Schaaffhausen presented them jointly in 1857.

Which two plants may Neanderthals at El Sidrón, Spain, have used for flavouring or medicine?

Yarrow and camomile, both bitter and of little food value, showed up in the dental calculus of El Sidrón Neanderthals in a 2012 study, suggesting self-medication or flavouring; the calculus also held traces of cooked plants and smoke.

Which gene, linked to speech and language, did Neanderthals share in its modern form?

FOXP2, the gene whose mutations cause severe speech disorders, carries two modern-human amino-acid changes that Neanderthals also had, per a 2007 study, though a regulatory region of the gene differed.

In which Siberian mountain range did Neanderthals interbreed with another local archaic population?

The Altai Mountains' Denisova Cave yielded 'Denny', a girl who died about 90,000 years ago with a Neanderthal mother and a father from the cave's other archaic population, a first-generation hybrid reported in 2018.

Neanderthals' large, wide noses were probably an adaptation for doing what?

Warming cold air and humidifying it is the likeliest job of the big Neanderthal nose; 2018 airflow modelling found it moved more air, fuelling a high metabolism, and a big nose does not mean a better sense of smell.

Which simple garments are Neanderthals thought to have worn?

Blankets and ponchos, simple cape-like wraps, are the likeliest Neanderthal clothing, since no bone needles are known from their sites; their hide-working tools suggest skins were prepared rather than tailored.