The Fall of Neandertals

It was the extinction that puzzled many anthropologists across the globe. How is it possible that living humans now outlived a subspecies of a hominid with a larger brain than our own? The first Neandertals, otherwise known as the Homo Neandertalensis, appeared in the Eurasian region approximately 150,000 years ago and are believed to roam the planet until just about 30,000 years ago. With their strong and muscular bodies, it was no surprise that they were a likely candidate of survival. The Neandertals endured treacherous weather conditions, shrugged off many broken bones, and barely escaped the clutches of death that came with their risky hunting techniques. What we may deem as extraneously harsh living conditions was a quotidian part of their lives. Neandertals were considered the most advanced of their species in the icy tundra of Europe and they lived longer than modern humans despite those conditions; but, somehow they began to die out as we first arrived. There are many reasons that are believed to have caused the declination of such a sophisticated hominid. We begin to explore the probable theories anthropologists provide to explain the phenomenon that we cannot even begin to understand.

There are many reasons that are believed to cause the extinction of the Neandertals. First and foremost, we will discuss the anatomical differences between the modern human and the Neandertal. The Homo Neandertalensis is actually considered to be the closest fossil relatives with abundant evidence of their life ways and skeletal remains spread at many sites across Europe and western Asia (Glover, 2014). Despite the common stereotype that Neandertals are apelike cavemen with the mental capacity the size of a peanut, their brain size is ac...

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Glover, G. (2014, February 24). Neanderthals may have faced extinction long before modern humans emerged. Neanderthals may have faced extinction long before modern humans emerged. Retrieved May 10, 2014, from http://phys.org/news/2014-02-neanderthals-extinction-modern-humans-emerged.html#jCp

Rana, F. (2013, April 1). Reasons To Believe : Neanderthal Brains Make Them Unlikely Social Networkers. Reasons To Believe : Neanderthal Brains Make Them Unlikely Social Networkers. Retrieved May 10, 2014, from http://www.reasons.org/articles/neanderthal-brains-make-them-unlikely-social-networkers

Stanford, C. B., Allen, J. S., & Anton, S. (2013). Biological Anthropology: the natural history of mankind (3 ed.). Boston, Mass: Pearson Education.

Sorensen, B. (2011). Demography and the Extinction of European Neanderthals. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 30(1), 17-29.