User:Renebach/Homo facts collection

Human evolution Human evolution, or anthropogenesis, is the origin and evolution of Homo sapiens as a distinct species from other hominids, great apes and placental mammals. The study of human evolution encompasses many scientific disciplines, including physical anthropology, primatology, archaeology, linguistics and genetics.

The term "human" in the context of human evolution refers to the genus Homo, but studies of human evolution usually include other hominids, such as the Australopithecines. The genus Homo had diverged from the Australopithecines by about 2.3 to 2.4 million years ago in Africa. Scientists have estimated that humans branched off from their common ancestor with chimpanzees - the only other living hominins - about 5–7 million years ago. Several species of Homo evolved and are now extinct. These include Homo erectus, which inhabited Asia, and Homo neanderthalensis, which inhabited Europe. Archaic Homo sapiens evolved between 400,000 and 250,000 years ago.

Australopithecus is a genus of extinct hominids, made up of the gracile australopiths, and formerly also included their larger relatives, the robust australopiths (which are now given their own genus). The genus Australopithecus is closely related to the human genus Homo, and may be ancestral to it. The brains of most species of Australopithecus were roughly 35% of the size of that of a modern human brain. Most species of Australopithecus were diminutive and gracile, usually standing between 1.2 and 1.4 m tall (approx. 4 to 4.5 feet).

Gracile australopiths shared several traits with modern apes and humans, and were widespread throughout Eastern and Northern Africa around 3.5 million years ago. The earliest evidence of fundamentally bipedal hominids can be observed at the site of Laetoli in Tanzania. This site contains hominid footprints that are remarkably similar to those of modern humans and have been dated to as old as 3.7 million years. Until recently, the footprints have generally been classified as australopith because that had been the only form of pre-human known to have existed in that region at that time; however, some scholars have considered reassigning them to a yet unidentified very early species of the genus Homo. [See Wikipedia for discussion of evolutive role [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecus ]]

 Homo habilis is a species of the genus Homo, which lived from approximately 2.3 million to 1.4 million years ago at the beginning of the Pleistocene period. The discovery and description of this species is credited to both Mary and Louis Leakey, who found fossils in Tanzania, East Africa, between 1962 and 1964. Homo habilis (or possibly H. rudolfensis) is the earliest known species of the genus Homo. In its appearance and morphology, H. habilis is thus the least similar to modern humans of all species in the genus (except possibly H. rudolfensis). H. habilis was short and had disproportionately long arms compared to modern humans; however, it had a less protruding face than the australopithecines from which it is thought to have descended. H. habilis had a cranial capacity slightly less than half of the size of modern humans. Despite the ape-like morphology of the bodies, H. habilis remains are often accompanied by primitive stone tools (e.g. Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania and Lake Turkana, Kenya).

Homo habilis has often been thought to be the ancestor of more gracile and sophisticated Homo ergaster, which in turn gave rise to the more human-appearing species, Homo erectus. Debates continue over whether H. habilis is a direct human ancestor, and whether all of the known fossils are properly attributed to the species. However, in 2007, new findings suggest that the two species coexisted and may be separate lineages from a common ancestor instead of H. erectus being descended from H. habilis.

Findings One set of fossil remains (OH 62), discovered by Donald Johanson and Tim White in Olduvai Gorge in 1986, included the important upper and lower limbs. An older (1963) finding from the Olduvai site found by N. Mbuika had included a lower jaw fragment, teeth and upper mandible possibly from a female dating 1.7 million years old. The remains from 3 skeletons stacked on top of each other demonstrated australopithecine-like body with a more human-like face and smaller teeth. Compared to australopithecines, H. habilis's brain capacity of 363 and 600 cm³ was on average 50% larger than australopithecines, but considerably smaller than the 1350 to 1450 cm³ range of modern Homo sapiens. These hominins were smaller than modern humans, on average standing no more than 1.3 m (4 ft 3 in) tall.

The small size and rather primitive attributes have led some experts (Richard Leakey among them) to propose excluding H. habilis from the genus Homo, and renaming as "Australopithecus habilis".

Homo ergaster (also called erectus ? - see below) is an extinct species (or subspecies) of hominid that lived in eastern and southern Africa from the end of the Pliocene epoch to the early Pleistocene, about 1.8-1.3 million years ago[2]. There is still disagreement on the subject of the classification, ancestry, and progeny of H. ergaster, but it is now widely thought (though not agreed) to be the direct ancestor of later hominids such as Homo heidelbergensis, Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis rather than Asian erectus[3]. It is one of the earliest members of the genus Homo, possibly descended from, or sharing a common ancestor with, Homo habilis.[4]

 Homo - Neanderthal issues Long discussion. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Renebach/Homo_Sapiens_-_Neanderthal_interactions,

Homo antecessor is an extinct hominin and a potential distinct species dating from 1.2 million to 800,000 years ago, that was discovered by Eudald Carbonell, J. L. Arsuaga and J. M. Bermúdez de Castro. H. antecessor is one of the earliest known hominins in Europe. Many anthropologists believe that H. antecessor is either the  same species or a direct antecedent to Homo heidelbergensis , who inhabited Europe from 600,000 to 250,000 years ago in the Pleistocene.

The best-preserved fossil is a maxilla which belonged to a 10-year-old individual found in Spain. Based on palaeomagnetic measurements, it is thought to be older than 780-857 ka (Falguères et al., 1999:351). The average brain was 1000 cm³ in volume. In 1994 and 1995, 80 fossils of six individuals that may have belonged to the species were found in Atapuerca, Spain. At the site were numerous examples of cuts where the flesh had been flensed from the bones, which indicates that H. antecessor could have practised cannibalism.[1] Homo heidelbergensis [Wiki page about heidelbergensis ] is an extinct species of the genus Homo which may be[1] the direct ancestor of both Homo neanderthalensis in Europe and Homo sapiens.[2] The best evidence found for these hominin date between 600,000 and 400,000 years ago. H. heidelbergensis stone tool technology was very close to that of the Acheulean tools used by Homo erectus.

Homo erectus [Wiki page to erectus ] is an extinct species of hominid that originated in Africa—and spread as far as China and Java—from the end of the Pliocene epoch to the later Pleistocene: about 1.8-.3 million years ago.[1] There is still disagreement on the subject of the classification, ancestry, and progeny of H. erectus, with two major alternative hypotheses: erectus may be another name for Homo ergaster, and therefore the direct ancestor of later hominids such as Homo heidelbergensis, Homo neanderthalensis, and Homo sapiens; or it may be an Asian species distinct from African ergaster.[2][3]

H. erectus originally migrated from Africa during the Early Pleistocene, possibly as a result of the operation of the Saharan pump, around 2.0 million years ago, and dispersed throughout much of the Old World. Fossilized remains 1.8 and 1.0 million years old have been found in Africa (e.g., Lake Turkana[4] and Olduvai Gorge), Europe (Georgia, Spain), Indonesia (e.g., Sangiran and Trinil), Vietnam, and China (e.g., Shaanxi). H erectus appears to have used rafts or some other sort of boat on occasion. Homo erectus, or some other hominid, used such craft to reach the island of Flores as evidenced by the discovery of Homo floresiensis in 2003. Flores and some other places Homo erectus reached have always been surrounded by very deep water, proving the use of watercraft of some sort.[36]

 The Neanderthal is an extinct member of the Homo genus that is known from Pleistocene specimens found in Europe and parts of western and central Asia. Neanderthals are either classified as a subspecies of humans (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) or as a separate species (Homo neanderthalensis). The first proto-Neanderthal traits appeared in Europe as early as 600,000–350,000 years ago. Proto-Neanderthal traits are occasionally grouped to another phenetic 'species', Homo heidelbergensis, or a migrant form, Homo rhodesiensis. By 130,000 years ago, complete Neanderthal characteristics had appeared. These characteristics then disappeared in Asia by 50,000 years ago and in Europe by 30,000 years ago. The youngest Neanderthal finds include Hyaena Den (UK), considered older than 30,000 years ago, while the Vindija (Croatia) Neanderthals have been re-dated to between 32,000 and 33,000 years ago. No definite specimens younger than 30,000 years ago have been found; however, evidence of fire by Neanderthals at Gibraltar indicate that they may have survived there until 24,000 years ago. Cro Magnons or modern human skeletal remains with 'Neanderthal traits' were found in Lagar Velho (Portugal), dated to 24,500 years ago and controversially interpreted as indications of extensively admixed populations.

Neanderthal stone tools provide further evidence for their presence where skeletal remains have not been found. The last traces of Mousterian culture, a type of stone tools associated with Neanderthals, were found in Gorham's Cave on the remote south-facing coast of Gibraltar. Other tool cultures sometimes associated with Neanderthal include Châtelperronian, Aurignacian, and Gravettian, with the latter extending to 22,000 years ago, the last indication of Neanderthal presence.

Neanderthal cranial capacity is often thought to have been as large or larger than that of humans, indicating that their brain size may have been the same or greater. In 2008, a group of scientists made a study using three-dimensional computer-assisted reconstructions of Neanderthal infants based on fossils found in Russia and Syria that shows that they had brains as large as ours at birth and larger than ours as adults. On average, the height of Neanderthals was comparable to contemporaneous Homo sapiens. Neanderthal males stood about 165 – and were heavily built with robust bone structure. They were much stronger, having particularly strong arms and hands. Females stood about 152 –. They were almost exclusively carnivorous and apex predators.

Neanderthals evolved from African apes along a path similar to humans. Sometime between 5 and 10 million years ago a common ancestral species between chimps and humans lived in Africa. The ancestor evolved along a path that might include Ardipithecus kadabba, Ardipithicus ramidus, Australopithecus anamensis, Australopithecus afarensis, Homo habilis, Homo ergaster (or Homo erectus). The last common ancestor between anatomically modern Homo sapiens and Neanderthals appears to be an African variant of Homo heidelbergensis known as Homo rhodesiensis, named after an Archaic Homo sapiens, Broken hill 1 (Kabwe 1) discovered in the territory of Rhodesia in 1921. Homo rhodesiensis arose in Africa an estimated 0.7 to 1 million years ago. The earliest estimates for Homo rhodesiensis reaching Europe are approximately 800 thousand years ago when a type of human referred to as Homo antecessor or Homo cepranensis. These two human types may be forerunners to European Homo heidelbergensis, however stone tools dating from 1.2 to 1.56 million years ago of an unknown creator have been discovered in Southwestern Europe. The evidence at the Sima de los Huesos (in the Atapuerca cave system on the Iberia peninsula) suggest that Homo heidelbergensis was already in Europe by 600,000 years ago. The molecular phylogenetics suggest that Homo rhodesiensis and Homo heidelbergensis continued to intermix until 350,000 years ago, after which they were separate species and sometime within the last 200,000 years Homo heidelbergensis evolved into Homo neanderthalensis, the classic Neanderthal man. If it is proven by further scientific research that Neanderthals provided no significant genetic input into modern populations of Homo sapiens, then it must be assumed that Neanderthal in fact is more distantly related to today's human than is Homo heidelbergensis.

The original Neanderthal discovery is now considered the beginning of paleoanthropology. These and other discoveries led to the idea that these remains were from ancient Europeans who had played an important role in modern human origins. The bones of over 400 Neanderthals have been found since.

Neanderthal fossils have to date not been found in Africa, but rather close to Africa, found in the area of modern Israel. At some sites in the Holy Land region, Neanderthal remains in fact date after the same sites were vacated by Homo sapiens. Mammal fossils of the same time period show that cold-adapted animals were present alongside these Neanderthals in this region of the Eastern Mediterranean. This implies Neanderthals were better adapted biologically to cold weather than H. sap. and at times displaced H. sap. in parts of the Middle East when the climate got cold enough. Homo sapiens appears to have been the only human type in the Nile River Valley during these periods, and Neanderthals are not known to have ever lived southwest of modern Israel. When further climate change caused warmer temperatures, the Neanderthal range likewise retreated to the north along with the cold-adapted species of mammals. Apparently these weather-induced population shifts took place before "modern" people secured competitive advantages over the Neanderthal, as these shifts in range took place well over ten thousand years before "moderns" totally replaced Neanderthals.

There were separate developments in the human line, in other regions such as Southern Africa, that somewhat resembled the European and Western/Central Asian Neanderthals, but these people were not actually Neanderthals. One such example is Rhodesian Man (Homo rhodesiensis) who existed long before any classic European Neanderthals, but had a more modern set of teeth, and arguably some H. Rhodesiensis populations were on the road to modern Homo sapiens sapiens.

To date, no intimate connection has been found between these similar people and the Western/Central Eurasian Neanderthals, at least during the same time as classic Eurasian Neanderthals, and H. rhodesiensis seems to have evolved separately and earlier than classic Neanderthals in a case of convergent evolution.

It appears incorrect, based on present research and known fossil finds, to refer to any fossil outside of Europe or Western and Central Asia as a true Neanderthal. True Neanderthals had a known range that possibly extended as far east as the Altai Mountains, but not farther to the east or south, and apparently not into Africa. At any rate, in Africa the land immediately south of the Neanderthal range was possessed by "modern" H. sap., since at least 160,000 years before the present.

Classic Neanderthal fossils have been found over a large area, from northern Germany to Israel and Mediterranean countries like Spain and Italy in the south and from England and Portugal in the west to Uzbekistan in the east. This area probably was not occupied all at the same time; the northern border of their range in particular would have contracted frequently with the onset of cold periods. On the other hand, the northern border of their range as represented by fossils may not be the real northern border of the area they occupied, since Middle-Palaeolithic looking artifacts have been found even further north, up to 60° N, on the Russian plain. Recent evidence has extended the Neanderthal range by about 1250 mi east into southern Siberia's Altay Mountains.

Neanderthals had more robust build and distinctive morphological features, especially of the cranium, which gradually accumulated more derived aspects, particularly in certain relatively isolated geographic regions. Evidence suggests they were much stronger than modern humans; their relatively robust stature is thought to be an adaptation to the cold climate of Europe during the Pleistocene epoch.

A 2007 study suggested some Neanderthals may have had red hair and pale skin color.

Distinguishing physical traits


The magnitude of autapomorphic traits in specimens differ in time. In the latest specimens, autapomorphy is fuzzy. The following is a list of physical traits which distinguish Neanderthals from modern humans; however, not all of them can be used to distinguish specific Neanderthal populations, from various geographic areas or periods of evolution, from other extinct humans. Also, many of these traits occasionally manifest in modern humans, particularly among certain ethnic groups traced to Neanderthal habitat ranges. Nothing is certain (from unearthed bones) about the shape of soft parts such as eyes, ears, and lips of Neanderthals.

When comparing traits to worldwide average present day human traits in Neanderthal specimens, the following traits are distinguished. The magnitude on particular trait changes with 300,000 years timeline. The large number of classic Neanderthal traits is significant because extreme examples of Homo sapiens may sometimes show one or more of these traits, but not most or all of them.
 * Cranial
 * Suprainiac fossa, a groove above the inion
 * Occipital bun, a protuberance of the occipital bone which looks like a hair knot
 * Projecting mid-face
 * Low, flat, elongated skull
 * A flat basicranium
 * Supraorbital torus, a prominent, trabecular (spongy) brow ridge
 * 1200 – skull capacity
 * Lack of a protruding chin (mental protuberance; although later specimens possess a slight protuberance)
 * Crest on the mastoid process behind the ear opening
 * No groove on canine teeth
 * A retromolar space posterior to the third molar
 * Bony projections on the sides of the nasal opening, projecting nose
 * Distinctive shape of the bony labyrinth in the ear
 * Larger mental foramen in mandible for facial blood supply
 * Sub-cranial
 * Considerably more robust, stronger build
 * Long collar bones, wider shoulders
 * Barrel-shaped rib cage
 * Short, bowed shoulder blades
 * Larger round finger tips
 * Large kneecaps
 * Thick, bowed shaft of the thigh bones, bowed femur
 * Short shinbones and calf bones, shorter torus proportionally longer legs
 * Long, gracile pelvic pubis (superior pubic ramus)

Tools Neanderthal and Middle Paleolithic archaeological sites show a smaller and different toolkit than those which have been found in Upper Paleolithic sites, which were perhaps occupied by modern humans which superseded them. Fossil evidence indicating who may have made the tools found in Early Upper Paleolithic sites is still missing.

Neanderthals are thought to have used tools of the Mousterian class, which were often produced using soft hammer percussion, with hammers made of materials like bones, antlers, and wood, rather than hard hammer percussion, using stone hammers. A result of this is that their bone industry was relatively simple. However, there is good evidence that they routinely constructed a variety of stone implements. Neanderthal (Mousterian) tools most often consisted of sophisticated stone-flakes, task-specific hand axes, and spears. Many of these tools were very sharp. There is also good evidence that they used a lot of wood, objects which are unlikely to have been preserved until today.

There is some evidence for interpersonal violence among Neandertals. A 36,000 year old Neadertal skull found near St. Césaire has a healed fracture in its cranial vault that was most likely caused by the impact of a sharp implement. The location of the wound suggests interpersonal violence rather than an accident. Because the wound healed, we know that the individual survived the attack.

Also, while they had weapons, whether they had implements which were used as projectile weapons is controversial. They had spears, made of long wooden shafts with spearheads firmly attached, but they are thought by some to have been thrusting spears. Still, a Levallois point embedded in a vertebra shows an angle of impact suggesting that it entered by a "parabolic trajectory" suggesting that it was the tip of a projectile. Moreover, a number of 400,000 year old wooden projectile spears were found at Schöningen in northern Germany. These are thought to have been made by the Neanderthal's ancestors, Homo erectus or Homo heidelbergensis. Generally, projectile weapons are more commonly associated with H. sapiens. The lack of projectile weaponry is an indication of different sustenance methods, rather than inferior technology or abilities. The situation is identical to that of native New Zealand Māori — modern Homo sapiens, who also rarely threw objects, but used spears and clubs instead.

Although much has been made of the Neanderthals' burial of their dead, their burials were less elaborate than those of anatomically modern humans. The interpretation of the Shanidar IV burials as including flowers, and therefore being a form of ritual burial, has been questioned. On the other hand, five of the six flower pollens found with Shanidar IV are known to have had 'traditional' medical uses, even among relatively recent 'modern' populations. In some cases Neanderthal burials include grave goods, such as bison and aurochs bones, tools, and the pigment ochre.

Neanderthals also performed many sophisticated tasks which are normally associated only with humans. For example, it is known that they controlled fire, constructed complex shelters, and skinned animals. A trap excavated at La Cotte de St Brelade in Jersey gives testament to their intelligence and success as hunters.

Particularly intriguing is a hollowed-out bear femur with holes which may have been deliberately bored into it, known as the Divje Babe flute. This bone was found in western Slovenia in 1995, near a Mousterian fireplace, but its significance is still a matter of dispute. Some paleoanthropologists have hypothesized that it was a musical instrument, while others believe it was created by accident through the chomping action of another bear; or possibly was in fact not the work of Neanderthals.

Pendants and other jewelry showing traces of ochre dye and of deliberate grooving have also been found with later finds, particularly in France but whether or not they were created by Neanderthals or traded to them by Cro-Magnons is a matter of controversy. Intentional burial and the inclusion of grave goods are the most typical representations of ritual behavior in the Neanderthals and denote a developing ideology. However, another much debated and controversial manifestation of this ritual treatment of the dead comes from the evidence of cut-marks on the bone which has 'historically been viewed' as evidence of ritual defleshing.

Grooves in bones are hypothesized to be cuts by Neanderthal tools, not animal teeth. The chances of them being random, as some writers attributing them to animals have proposed, is debated.

 Genome

Previous investigations concentrated on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which, owing to strictly matrilineal inheritance and subsequent vulnerability to genetic drift, is of limited value to disprove interbreeding of Neanderthals with Cro-Magnon people.

In July 2006, the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and 454 Life Sciences announced that they would be sequencing the Neanderthal genome over the next two years. This genome is very likely to be roughly the size of the human genome, three-billion base pairs, and probably shares most of its genes. It is thought a comparison will expand understanding of Neanderthals as well as the evolution of humans and human brains.

Svante Pääbo has tested more than 70 Neanderthal specimens and found only one which had enough DNA to sample. Preliminary DNA sequencing from a 38,000-year-old bone fragment of a femur found at Vindija cave, Croatia, in 1980 shows that Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens share about 99.5% of their DNA. From mtDNA analysis estimates, the two species shared a common ancestor about 500,000 years ago. An article appearing in the journal Nature has calculated the species diverged about 516,000 years ago, whereas fossil records show a time of about 400,000 years ago. Scientists hope the DNA records will answer the question of whether there was interbreeding among the species. A 2007 study pushes the point of divergence back to around 800,000 years ago.

Edward Rubin of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California states that recent genome testing of Neanderthals suggests human and Neanderthal DNA are some 99.5% to nearly 99.9% identical.

On 16 November 2006, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory issued a press release suggesting that Neanderthals and ancient humans probably did not interbreed. Edward M. Rubin, director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Joint Genome Institute (JGI), sequenced a fraction (0.00002) of genomic nuclear DNA (nDNA) from a 38,000-year-old Vindia Neanderthal femur bone. They calculated the common ancestor to be about 353,000 years ago, and a complete separation of the ancestors of the species about 188,000 years ago. Their results show the genomes of modern humans and Neanderthals are at least 99.5% identical, but despite this genetic similarity, and despite the two species having coexisted in the same geographic region for thousands of years, Rubin and his team did not find any evidence of any significant crossbreeding between the two. Rubin said, "While unable to definitively conclude that interbreeding between the two species of humans did not occur, analysis of the nuclear DNA from the Neanderthal suggests the low likelihood of it having occurred at any appreciable level."

In 2008 Richard E. Green et al. from Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology published the full sequence of Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and suggested that "Neandertals had a long-term effective population size smaller than that of modern humans." Writing in Nature about Green et al.'s findings, James Morgan asserted that the mtDNA sequence contained clues that Neanderthals lived in "small and isolated populations, and probably did not interbreed with their human neighbours."

In the same publication, it was disclosed that the previous work at Max Plank Institute that according to Svante Pääbo "Contamination was indeed an issue," and eventually realized that 11% of their sample was modern human DNA. Since then, more of the preparation work is done in clean areas and 4-base pair 'tags' are added to the DNA as soon as it is extracted so the Neanderthal DNA can be identified.

With 3 billion nucleotides sequenced, analysis of about 1/3rd shows that there is no sign of admixture between modern humans and Neanderthals, according to Pääbo. This concurs with the work of Noonan from two years earlier. The variant of Microcephalin common outside Africa, which was attributed to rapid brain growth in humans and suggested to be of Neanderthal origin, was not found in Neanderthals. Nor was the MAPT variant, a very old variant found primarily in Europeans.

Fate

Possible hypotheses for the fate of Neanderthals include the following:

Since the 1990s there has been a consensus on the recent African origin of modern humans, based on evidence from mitochondrial DNA. This consensus precludes possibility three.
 * 1) Neanderthals were a separate species from modern humans, did not interbreed, and became extinct (due to climate change or interaction with humans) and were replaced by early modern humans traveling from Africa. Competition from H. sapiens probably contributed to Neanderthal extinction. Jared Diamond has suggested a scenario of violent conflict and displacement.
 * 2) Neanderthals were a contemporary subspecies which incidentally bred with Homo sapiens and disappeared through absorption.
 * 3) Neanderthals never split from Homo sapiens and are the ancestors of some anatomically modern humans (see Multiregional origin of modern humans).

Extinction

According to the Out of Africa theory, modern humans (Homo sapiens) began replacing Neanderthals around 45,000 years ago, as the Cro-Magnon people appeared in Europe, pushing populations of Neanderthals into regional pockets, such as modern-day Croatia, Iberia, and the Crimean peninsula, where they held on for thousands of years. The last traces of Mousterian culture (without human specimens) have been found in Gorham's Cave on the remote south-facing coast of Gibraltar, dated 30,000 to 24,500 years ago. Proponents of this model believe that modern humans and Neanderthals were separate species that were not inter-fertile. They cite the following evidence:


 * The Neanderthals and modern humans were contemporaneous species. The two species maintained distinct morphologies over hundreds of thousands of years. On a number of occasions the habitats of modern humans and the Neanderthals overlapped. However, despite this overlap, the respective morphologies remained distinct based on the available fossil record.
 * For example, remains associated with modern human anatomy have been found at Qafzeh in Israel dating to 90,000 years ago. These remains predate Neanderthal remains such as those at Kebara Cave, also in Israel, by about 30,000 years. Since Neanderthals appear after modern humans, it is unlikely that these modern humans evolved from the Neanderthals.
 * No incontrovertible fossils that demonstrate intermediate characteristics between modern humans and Neanderthals have been found.
 * Studies using non-recombinant DNA point to a recent African origin of Europeans. Mitochondrial DNA studies of a Neanderthal specimen revealed modern humans and Neanderthals last shared a common ancestor circa 600 000 years ago.
 * Currently all European mtDNA lineages trace back to African lineages. Haplogroup N (mtDNA), the ancestral haplogroup for all Europeans, is thought to have emerged in East Africa 60–80,000 years ago.
 * A study conducted in 2008 of 28,000 year old Cro-Magnon remains found that the mtDNA haplogroup of the specimen was a common haplogroup in contemporary Europeans. The haplogroup differed substantially from known Neanderthal mtDNA sequences.
 * A recent statistical simulation found either no or insignificant admixing between modern humans and Neanderthals. Another mtDNA analysis showed no evidence for Neanderthal contributions to the gene pool of modern humans. The authors of the study concede this does not exclude Neanderthal contributions of other genes. They nevertheless argue other genetic and morphological data also suggest little or no Neanderthal contribution.
 * The most recent patrilineal ancestor of all living humans (traced via Y-chromosome inheritance), Y-chromosomal Adam, is estimated to have lived in Africa 60,000 years ago.

Neanderthals, according to Jordan (2001), appear to have had psychological traits that worked well in their early history but finally placed them at a long-term disadvantage with regards to modern humans. Jordan is of the opinion that the Neanderthal mind was sufficiently different from that of Homo sapiens to have been "alien" in the sense of thinking differently from that of modern humans, despite the obvious fact that Neanderthals were highly intelligent, with a brain as large or larger than our own. This theory is supported by what Neanderthals possessed, and just as importantly, by what they lacked, in cultural attributes and manufactured artifacts. Essentially, the Neanderthals lost out because their behaviors and tools eventually became second-rate.

There once was a time when both human types shared essentially the same Mousterian tool kit and neither human type had a definite competitive advantage, as evidenced by the shifting Homo sapiens/Neanderthal borderland in the Middle East. But finally Homo sapiens started to attain behavioral or cultural adaptations that allowed "moderns" an advantage. There are early glimmers of this from Zaire where in the area of Katanda bone harpoon points have been found of fine workmanship, dating to perhaps 80,000 years ago. These featured backwards-pointing barbs and lateral grooves so they could be easily installed on a wooden shaft, used to harpoon local fish. These appear to have been made by modern humans and make for a more sophisticated spear than any that Neanderthals are known to have made. Jordan admits some of these innovations were "flash in the pan" local affairs that faded away for a while, but there does not seem much question that Homo sapiens in Africa was taking steps toward better tools and a more complex social life, while the Neanderthal ways and technology remained the same. It is noted that fishing was never much of a Neanderthal accomplishment (they did eat fish on occasion) but is more a behavior of modern human types. There is an example of a barbed point made from bone, evidently made by a Neanderthal, but such finds are very rare. Per Jordan the Neanderthals made wooden and stone artifacts, but bone and ivory ones were not common, implying that the Neanderthal mind tended to be rather resistant to learning new methods or materials.

Neanderthal people mastered complex tasks such as the making of fire, shelters with post holes, and stone tools. In their later career Neanderthals appear to have sometimes buried their dead and their placement of Cave Bear bones in order shows some sort of reverence or perhaps religion toward this animal. Yet there were many Cro-Magnon tools and behaviors that the Neanderthals seem to have never developed: organized fishing, using fish hooks and fish nets; headgear or hats, shoes, sewn clothing, needle-and-thread, and long-distance trade. It is still debated whether Neanderthals had significant art or music.

Other researchers think that the Neanderthals had little sexual division of labor, with Neanderthal women alongside the men hunting big game. Such a lifestyle was not as energy efficient as that of modern humans, whose hunter-gatherer lifestyle secured supplemental food of a much greater variety, including plant materials such as tubers or wild grains, fish, edible fungi, and small edible animals secured by women, young boys/girls and elderly men, while males in the prime of life could hunt big mammals. Since the Neanderthals were mostly carnivorous and targeting big mammals, a shortage of large mammals meant possible bouts of starvation or malnutrition, which affected Cro-Magnon people less. The Neanderthals appear to have stored food against lean times much less than Cro-Magnon people did. Neanderthals got food in a haphazard, catch-as-catch-can manner. In addition, the Cro-Magnon sites show a lot of animal remains of small creatures best hunted with traps and snares, such as squirrels and rabbits, whereas Neanderthal sites show few such fossils. In short, inferior methods shut Neanderthals out of many food sources that Cro-Magnons exploited.

Cro-Magnons could carry more people on the land than Neanderthals could, and one may infer that Cro-Magnons would have familial and tribal organization that Neanderthals could not match, if they had the latter at all.

Neanderthals appear to have never used boats or rafts, as evidenced by the lack of Neanderthal fossils from North Africa, yet in stark contrast Homo erectus, their more primitive ancestor, appears to have used rafts or some other sort of boat on occasion. Homo erectus, or some other hominid, used such craft to reach the island of Flores as evidenced by the discovery of Homo floresiensis in 2003. Flores and some other places Homo erectus reached have always been surrounded by very deep water, proving the use of watercraft of some sort.

Since the Neanderthals evidently never used watercraft, but prior and/or arguably more primitive editions of humanity did, there is argument that Neanderthals represent a highly specialized side branch of the human tree, relying more on physiological adaptation than psychological adaptation in daily life than "moderns". Specialization has been seen before in other hominims, such as Paranthropus boisei which evidently was adapted to eat rough vegetation.

Additionally, Neanderthals evidently had little long-term planning when securing food. French caves show almost no salmon bones during Neanderthal occupancy but large numbers during Cro-Magnon occupancy. In contrast, Cro-Magnons planned for salmon runs months ahead of time, getting enough people together at just the right time and place to catch a lot of fish. Neanderthals appear to have had little to no social organization beyond the immediate family unit. Why Neanderthal psychology was different from the modern humans that they coexisted with for millennia is not known.

Due to the paucity of symbolism that Neanderthal artifacts show, Neanderthal language probably did not deal much with a verbal future tense, again restricting Neanderthal exploitation of resources. Cro-Magnon people had a much better standard of living than the hardscrabble existence available to Neanderthals. With better language skills and bigger social groups, a better psychological repertoire, and better planning, Cro-Magnon people, living alongside the Neanderthals on the same land, outclassed them in terms of life span, population, available spare time (as shown by Cro-Magnon art), physical health and lower rate of injury, infant mortality, comfort, quality of life, and food procurement. The advantages held by Cro-Magnon people let them by this time to thrive in worse climatic conditions than their Neanderthal counterparts. As weather worsened about 30,000 years ago, Jordan notes it would have taken only one or two thousand years of inferior Neanderthal skills to cause them to go extinct, in light of better Cro-Magnon performance in all these areas.

Jordan states the Chatelperronian tool tradition suggests Neanderthals were making some attempts at advancement, as Chatelperronian tools are only associated with Neanderthal remains. It appears this tradition was connected to social contact with Cro-Magnons of some sort. There were some items of personal decoration found at these sites, but these are inferior to contemporary Cro-Magnon items of personal decoration and arguably were made more by imitation than by a spirit of original creativity. At the same time, Neanderthal stone tools were sometimes finished well enough to show some aesthetic sense. As Jordan notes: "A natural sympathy for the underdog and the disadvantaged lends a sad poignancy to the fate of the Neanderthal folk, however it came about."

Interbreeding hypotheses

One theory is that that Neanderthals and "moderns" could interbreed and produce fertile offspring, but that psychological/behavioural differences, as well as differences in language and appearance, prevented sexual attraction between these two human types; or that Neanderthals were different enough that there was little to no sexual contact at all, or if so, that there were no fertile offspring with any live offspring being sterile, like mules. If there were any fertile hybrid offspring, it is possible that the greater numbers of Homo sapiens simply drowned out the Neanderthal input or that Neanderthal traits were later "weeded out" of the hybrid population by natural or sexual selection.

The validity of such an extensive period of cornered Neanderthal groups is recently questioned. There is no longer certainty regarding the identity of the humans who produced the Aurignacian culture, even though the presumed westward spread of anatomically modern humans (AMHs) across Europe is still based on the controversial first dates of the Aurignacian. Currently, the oldest European anatomically modern Homo sapiens is represented by a robust modern-human mandible discovered at Pestera cu Oase (south-west Romania), dated to 34–36 thousand years ago. Human skeletal remains from the German site of Vogelherd, so far regarded the best association between anatomically modern Homo sapiens and Aurignacian culture, were revealed to represent intrusive Neolithic burials into the Aurignacian levels and subsequently all the key Vogelherd fossils are now dated to 3.9–5.0 thousand years ago instead. As for now, the expansion of the first anatomically modern humans into Europe cannot be located by diagnostic and well-dated AMH fossils "west of the Iron Gates of the Danube" before 32 thousand years ago.

Consequently, the exact nature of biological and cultural interactions between Neanderthals and other human groups between 50 and 30 thousand years ago is currently hotly contested. A new proposal resolves the issue by taking the Gravettians rather than the Aurignacians as the anatomically modern humans which contributed to the Eurasian genetic pool after 30 thousand years ago. Correspondingly, the human skull fragment found at the Elbe River bank at Hahnöfersand near Hamburg was once radiocarbon-dated to 36,000 years ago and seen as possible evidence for the intermixing of Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans. It is now dated to the more recent Mesolithic.