50 Fun Facts About Neanderthals

Roughly when did Neanderthals become extinct?

Populations in Gibraltar and southern Spain may have held on for several thousand years longer.

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

Schoolteacher Johann Carl Fuhlrott recognised the bones from the Kleine Feldhofer Grotte as distinct from modern humans.

After whom was the Neander Valley named?

Joachim Neander's grandfather had changed the family name from Neumann to its Greek form, meaning "new man".

What did the family name Neander originally mean before it was Hellenised from Neumann?

That makes "Neanderthal" a fitting name for a newly recognised kind of human.

Which German spelling change explains why the valley is now Neandertal while the species keeps the "th"?

The scientific name Homo neanderthalensis keeps the th under the principle of priority.

Which Irish geologist proposed the name Homo neanderthalensis in 1863?

A year later he suggested Neanderthals belonged in a different genus, judging them incapable of moral conceptions.

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

He objected to defining a new species from a single find.

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

He also drew a lineage from the Piltdown hoax to modern Europeans, with Neanderthals as a dead end.

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

Philippe-Charles Schmerling recognised they lay with extinct animals, but their significance went unappreciated.

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

Gibraltar's caves later yielded evidence of Neanderthals eating dolphins, seals and 143 bird species.

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

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?

Specimens range from 147.5 to 177 cm, and the average male weighed about 75 kg.

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

Males averaged 1,640 cc, but the organisation differed in areas linked to cognition and language.

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

That is one of the largest brains ever recorded in any human.

Which stone tool industry are Neanderthals associated with?

They used the Levallois technique of preparing a core so flakes of predetermined shape could be struck off.

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

They may have used it to haft stone tips onto spears, and it also had medicinal uses.

How old are the German Schöningen spears, among the oldest wooden spears known?

The British Clacton Spear is even older at 400,000 years, and the Lehringen Spear is 120,000 years old.

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

Neanderthals seem to have selected particular woods deliberately.

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?

Other coastal groups ate fish and shellfish, and at Figueira Brava brown crabs were roasted to soften the shells.

How many bird species have butchered remains at Neanderthal sites on the Rock?

Many were ground-dwellers such as quail, corn crake and larks; golden eagles were butchered disproportionately.

At Kebara Cave in Israel, how many species of seeds, nuts, fruits and cereals did Neanderthals consume?

At El Sidrón in Spain they may have flavoured or medicated with yarrow and camomile.

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

The high rate is put down to dangerous hunting or frequent animal attacks; men and women show similar injury patterns.

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

His survival suggests others in his group cared for him.

A grave at the Iraqi cave that yielded the badly injured survivor was associated with the pollen of what?

Ralph Solecki argued that yarrow, centaury and hollyhock showed the buried man had "soul".

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

Many researchers think the holes were made by a carnivore chewing the bone.

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

They were probably for staying warm while sleeping, one person on either side of each fire.

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

Neanderthals had the speech-linked FOXP2 gene too, but not the modern human variant.

In which year was the first Neanderthal genome sequence published?

It strongly indicated interbreeding between Neanderthals and early modern humans.

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

They contained almost 4% archaic DNA, enough for near-complete sequencing.

Which Swedish geneticist won the 2022 Nobel Prize for his work on the genomes of extinct hominins?

He founded the genetics department of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig in 1997.

How much Neanderthal DNA do modern Europeans carry, according to one estimate?

East Asians carry slightly more, and about 20% of the Neanderthal genome survives in living people overall.

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

Any one person carries only a few percentage points, mostly non-coding.

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

Denisovans are known mainly from their genetic signature rather than skeletons.

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

Neanderthals kept an effective population of only about 3,000 to 12,000.

What is the estimated effective population from which Neanderthals descended?

Such a small population weakened natural selection and let harmful mutations spread.

To what is Neanderthal extinction predominantly ascribed?

Low population, mutational meltdown, Heinrich event 4 and the Campanian Ignimbrite eruption are cited as contributing factors.

How long may Neanderthal stone-tool culture have survived in southern Spain and on the Rock?

In Catalonia and Aragón it may have lasted to about 39,000 years ago.

Per the lead geneticist of the genome project, interbreeding mostly involved which pairing?

He suggested this shows modern humans were not obviously socially dominant.

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

They also proposed that Neanderthals used black feathers as an artistic medium.

How many purported Neanderthal engravings had been reported from Europe and the Middle East as of 2014?

They come from 27 different sites, scratched onto flints, bones, pebbles and stone slabs.

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

The variants do not seem to have been common, and Neanderthal pigmentation probably varied.

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

Oddly, their mitochondrial DNA aligns more closely with Denisovans.

Which modern-human group replaced Neanderthals in Europe?

Their diet was more varied than Neanderthals', even where food plants were hard to find.

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

He passed the bones to anthropologist Hermann Schaaffhausen to study in 1857.

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

They may also have been roasting and smoking meat at the site.

Neanderthals carried which speech-associated gene, though not in its modern human variant?

Their hyoid bone is almost identical to ours, but that does not reveal the whole vocal tract.

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

About 17 percent of one local specimen's genome derived from Neanderthals.

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

The extra warm air would fuel their assumed heightened metabolism; a big nose does not mean a better sense of smell.

Which garments may Neanderthals have worn, according to the Wikipedia summary?

They maintained and may have created fire, and ate mostly big game, plants and mushrooms found close to home.