The Task

Groups working on this task are reminded that they must first offer an abstract or summary to introduce / induct the reader to the event before offering their answers to the questions.

Questions

1. What can man learn from this project?

2. What are some of the benefits that man can glean from such a project?

neanderthal men lost his way and got trapped in iceeee!!!

The anatomical peculiarities of the Neanderthal men are known to exist within the normal boundaries of human variation potential. In other words, the Neanderthals were just regular humans who looked a little different than you and I do today (similar to how Australian aborigines look significantly different than Native American Indians and yet they are all human). The Neanderthals were known to bury their dead (whose bodies they covered in flowers), they used tools, worked with animal hides, took care of each other and generally acted like humans act. There is no indication that they were the brutish beasts they are seen as by many today. Their brain cavity was actually much larger than the average brain today. It appears that many of the Neanderthals suffered from a Vitamin D deficiency. This caused their bones to grow soft and deformed. This has contributed the popular hunched-over ape-man misconception. The Vitamin D deficiency may simply be indicative of the era in which they lived. Vitamin D comes from fish oils and dairy products and is produced in the body when the skin is exposed to the sun. The Neanderthals obviously had a very poor diet. In addition to this, they appear to have spent much of their time taking shelter in caves. It is believed by many scholars that the Neanderthals lived during an Ice Age. This would explain their poor diets and lack of exposure to the sun. So, while the ape-man perspective has been shown to be false, Neanderthal man was certainly a caveman in the true sense of the word.

marvellous details

What Ailed Old Neanderthal Man?
In 1912 the famous Piltdown skull was found in a gravel bed in southern England by Charles Dawson. It created a sensation since it clearly was a creature halfway between man and beast. Evolutionists were ecstatic.
While a few scientists were skeptical, it was accepted by scholarly opinion throughout the world. It is no exaggeration to say that one could fill a very large room with learned articles and books about Piltdown Man, including 500 doctoral dissertations! In 1953 - 41 years later - careful examination revealed the Piltdown Man to be a very crude forgery consisting of a recent human skull combined with the jawbone of a female orangutan, appropriately dyed with chemicals to give it the appearance of great age and slightly modified to fool the expert paleontologists of the British Museum.
The Piltdown hoax illustrates an eagerness to believe in anything that might help to support the theory of evolution. One can almost picture men in museums all over the world hurrying with gray paint and brushes to paint out that branch of the human tree on the day the hoax was exposed. The next day, Piltdown Man had never existed. All the supposed family trees in the textbooks before 1953 show how Piltdown Man fit into the great story of human evolution.
No orthodox expert would dare to propose a recent beginning of man which would correspond to the Biblical account. Although various authorities have pointed out that the variability found among human fossils is really no different from the amazing variability found among people today, little or nothing is made of this fact in the textbooks. White, middleclass scientists should not necessarily make themselves the model from which fossil bones are judged and compared (Custance, 1968, p.26-31).
In the business of studying human fossil remains, astonishingly different reconstructions have been made from casts of the same skull fragments. As someone has noted, the features of the ape or the philosopher may be constructed on the surface of the same skull (Time , 5/17/1973, p.75-76).
It is of more than passing interest in the consideration of fossil man than an anthropologist stated several decades ago that living style and habits, climate, and diet can influence the anatomical features of the skull to the point that experts may place such species into different genera. An additional factor of great significance is the physical degeneration and extraordinary physical variability that occurs among isolated inbred populations (CRSQ , 1968, 5:1, p.5-7).
It is not well known that when 'primitive' Java man was discovered in 1891, two other skulls were found in the same formation and of the same age which were no different from skulls of modern Australian aborigines. The news of the modern skulls found with Java man was not made public for twenty years because they were not what the man was looking for (CRSQ , 1964, 1:2, p.9).
In 1963 Dr. Leakey found a fossil, which he named Homo habilis , at the lowest level of strata where he was working. Homo habilis was much like modern man. The problem was that Homo habilis seemed to be much more advanced than fossil remains which had been found higher up in the strata. Since evolutionary theory requires a sequence of primitive to more advanced, the find became very controversial. On occasions such as these, explanations become very creative but strained in order to cling to evolutionary theory. Dr. Leakey suggested that all anthropology works be rewritten. A widely accepted 'solution' was that Homo habilis and the more primitive creatures were contemporaries, and that the search would continue in still older strata for the ancestor of Homo habilis (CRSQ , 1966, 3:1, p.14). Hope springs eternal!
Neanderthal man is a story by itself. When the first discovery was made about 1856, science at last thought it now had the overwhelming evidence it needed to show the intermediate stage between man and ape. Texts today still faithfully illustrate this famous beetle-browed, bent-kneed, subhuman slob. There was only one apparent slight drawback. Its brain on the average was more than 13% larger than the brain of modern man. It was still considered, however, to be the perfect illustration of an important step in the evolutionary sequence of man. Neanderthal man was still cited as the most compelling proof of evolution just a few decades ago (Time , 6/21/1968, p.34).
The famous names of early evolutionary theory made much of Neanderthal man, and texts published today still reflect their views. Haeckel proposed to solve the world riddles once and for all with Neanderthal man. Lyell and Huxley pointed confidently to the Neanderthal skull as evidence that there had been a low-caste, half-human creature, intermediate between man and ape (de Santillana, 1969, p.71; Victoria Institute , 1866, 2:72).
It is interesting that Time , May 17, 1971, proclaimed that the primitiveness of Neanderthal was unwarranted. Except for physical ailments, he could walk the streets today and be unrecognized. One writer commented that in later centuries historians may declare all of us insane, because the incredible blunder about Neanderthal man was not detected at once and was not refuted with adequate determination.
It is a tragic commentary on the scientific community that the following must be said. Back in 1872, Virchow, probably the greatest biologist of his day and the founder of medical pathology, cited evidence that the peculiarities of Neanderthal man were due not to a special place in the chain of evolution, but rather to a bad case of rickets. An authority reported in Nature , 1970, that every Neanderthal child's skull studied so far showed signs compatible with severe rickets.
Again back in 1872 another medical authority declared that Neanderthal skulls showed medical problems, and that similar skulls of modern man may be found in any medical school (CRSQ , 1968, 5:1, p.5-7; 1970, 7:4, p.232-233; 1964, 1:2, p.9). The obsession to 'prove' evolution with Neanderthal man was so overpowering that it took more than 100 years for the scientific community to face up to the obvious truth that Neanderthal man was fully human.
Hard work for the past 150 years has brought scientists no closer to finding the so-called 'missing link' between man and animal than when the search began. Every year or two another article appears in National Geographic with spectacular new discoveries about human evolution. Without exception they are without substance. The fossils are either fully human or fully apelike with nothing in between.
In the great eagerness to believe preconceived notions of what must have been, fraud and a great deal of humbug have been produced to fill the need.

The Neanderthal was a species of the Homo genus that inhabited Europe and parts of western Asia. The first proto-Neanderthal traits appeared in Europe as early as 350,000 years ago. Neanderthals became extinct in Europe approximately 24,000 years ago.
In Siberia, Middle Paleolithic populations are evidenced only in the southern portions. Teeth from Okladniko and Denisova caves have been attributed to Neanderthals (Goebel 1999:213, citing Turner). Middle Paleolithic industries in Siberia are distinctly Levallois and Mousterian, reduction technologies are uniform, secondary reduction is largely unifacial with few bifacial retouched pieces, assemblages consist of scrapers, denticulates, notches, knives, and retouched Levallois flakes and points, though there is no evidence of bone, antler or ivory technology, or of art or personal adornment. Subprismatic blade and flake primary reduction technology characterizes the lithic industry, and microblade cores are absent. The Mousterian flake and simple biface industry that characterizes the Middle Paleolithic, wherever found with human remains, is found with Neanderthals, and wherever Aurignacian is found with remains, it is found with modern humans.
The transition to the Upper Paleolithic coincides with the appearance of modern Homo sapiens in Siberia. Early Upper Paleolithic sites in southern Siberia, found below 55 degrees latitude and dated from 42,000 to 30,000 B.P, correspond to the Malokheta interstade, a relatively warm interval in the mid-Upper Pleistocene.



A Must Know Fact!!!------------------Discovery!!!!
Neanderthal skulls were discovered in Engis, Belgium, in 1829 and Forbes' Quarry, Gibraltar, in 1848 prior to the "original" discovery in a limestone quarry of the Neander Valley in August, 1856, The type specimen, dubbed Neanderthal 1, consisted of a skull cap, two femora, three bones from the right arm, two from the left arm, part of the left ilium, fragments of a scapula, and ribs. The workers who recovered this material originally thought it to be the remains of a bear. They gave the material to amateur naturalist Johann Karl Fuhlrott, who turned the fossils over to anatomist Hermann Schaffhausen. The discovery was jointly announced in 1857.That 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. posted by YH²™,Yellow Helmet
The short, stocky build of Neanderthals conserved heat and helped them withstand extremely cold conditions that prevailed in temperate regions beginning about 70,000 years ago. Nothing is known about the skin color, the hair, or the shape of soft parts such as eyes, ears, and lips of Neanderthals.
Along with many physical similarities, Neanderthals differed from modern humans in several ways. The typical Neanderthal skull had a cranial capacity of about 1,500 cu cm (about 90 cu in), slightly larger on average than that of modern humans. There was also a groove above the inion and a projecting occipital bone. They also possessed a projecting mid-face, with a low forehead, a large nasal area (suggesting a large nose), a forward-projecting nasal and cheek region, a prominent brow ridge with a bony arch over each eye, a non-projecting chin. They had long, pointed teeth, or canine teeth. These teeth had no grooves, and a distinct feature is the space behind the third molar (in front of the upward turn of the lower jaw).
Neanderthals also had a more heavily built and large-boned skeleton than do modern humans. Other Neanderthal skeletal features included large, rounded finger tips, a bowing of the limb bones in some individuals, long collar bones, broad scapulae (shoulder blades), and a barrel-shaped rib cage. They had outward-turning hips, large kneecaps, a long and thin pubic bone, short lower leg and arm bones relative to the upper bones, and large surfaces on the joints of the toes and limb bones. Together, these traits made a powerful, compact body of short stature—males averaged 1.7 m (5 ft 5 in) tall and 84 kg (185 lb), and females averaged 1.5 m (5 ft) tall and 80 kg (176 lb).
Many of these traits occasionally manifest in modern humans, particularly among certain ethnic groups.
by the daniel and yann da
The idea that Neanderthals lacked complex languagewas widespread, despite concerns about the accuracy of reconstructions of the Neanderthal vocal tract. The hyoid is a small bone that connects the musculature of the tongue and the larynx, and by bracing these structures against each other, allows a wider range of tongue and laryngeal movements than would otherwise be the case. Therefore, it seems to imply the presence of anatomical conditions for speech to occur.
They had an auditory sensitivity similar to modern humans and very different from chimpanzees. Therefore, they were not only able to produce a wide range of sounds, they were also able to differentiate between these sounds.
Aside from the morphological evidence above, neurological evidence for potential speech in neanderthalensis exists in the form of the hypoglossal canal. The canal of neanderthalensis is the same size or larger than in modern humans. The canal carries the hypoglossal nerve, which supplies the muscles of the tongue with motor coordination. Researchers indicate that this evidence suggests that neanderthalensis had vocal capabilities similar to, modern humans. However, a research team suggests that the size of the hypoglossal canal is not an indicator of speech. His team's research shows no correlation between canal size and speech potential.
The popular view that the Neanderthals had a high larynx and therefore could not have produced the range of vowels supposedly essential for human speech is based on a disputed reconstruction of the vocal tract from the available fossil evidence, and a debatable interpretation of the acoustic characteristics of the reconstructed vocal tract. A larynx position as low as that found for modern female humans may have been present in adult male Neanderthals.The vocal tract is a plastic thing, and larynx movement is possible in many mammals.
More doubtful suggestions about Neanderthal speech suggest that it would have been nasalised either because i) the tongue was high in the throat, or ii) because the Neanderthals had large nasal cavities. Nasalisation depends on neither of these things, but on whether or not the soft palate is lowered during speech. Comments on the lower intelligibility of nasalised speech ignore the fact that many varieties of English habitually have nasalised vowels, particularly low vowels, with no apparent effect on intelligibility.
Finally, suggestions that a 'stout larynx' would result in a higher rate of vibration of the vocal folds and hence a higher percept of pitch are erroneous. If the existence of a 'stout larynx' suggests large vocal folds, these would vibrate relatively slowly, and therefore give a percept of a lower pitch. Any comment about 'pitch levels' ignores the fact that the rate of vocal fold vibration can be changed by altering the tension in the vocal folds and by changing subglottal pressure. In other words, whatever the biological characteristics of the vocal folds, Neanderthal speech would be likely to have shown variation in pitch, just as human speech or other mammalian vocalisations.
One anatomical difference between Neanderthals and humans, that deserves consideration regarding human speech, is the mental tubercle on the mandible, which is the attachment point for the depressor labii inferioris muscle and the mentalis muscle. These two muscles provide fine motor control of the lower lip, and are essential in controlled speech.
by the long and daryl
Tools
Fossil evidence indicating who may have made the tools found in Early Upper Paleolithic sites is still missing.
There is little evidence that Neanderthals used antlers, shells, or other bone materials to make tools; their bone industry was relatively simple.There is good evidence that they routinely constructed a variety of stone implements. The Neanderthal (Mousterian) tool kits 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.
They did not make any projectile weapons. They had spears, in the sense of a long wooden shaft with a spearhead firmly attached to it, but these were not spears specifically crafted for flight (perhaps better described as a javelin). However, a number of 400,000 year old wooden projectile spears were found in northern Germany. The lack of projectile weaponry is an indication of different sustenance methods, rather than inferior technology or abilities.
Although much has been made of the Neanderthal's burial dead, their burials were less elaborate than those of anatomically modern humans. In some cases Neanderthal burials include grave bison aurochs bones, tools, and the pigment ochre.
Neanderthals performed a sophisticated set of tasks normally associated with humans alone. For example, they constructed complex shelters, controlled fire, and skinned animals. Particularly intriguing is a hollowed-out bear femur that contains holes that may have been deliberately bored into it. 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 postulated that it might have been a flute while some others have expressed that it is natural bone modified by bears
The Neanderthals began to be displaced around 45,000 years ago by modern humans (Homo sapiens), as the Cro-Magnon people appeared in Europe. Despite this, populations of Neanderthals held on for thousands of years in regional pockets such as modern-day Croatia and the Iberian and Crimean peninsulas. The last known population lived around a cave system on the remote south facing coast of Gibraltar, from 30,000 to 24,000 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 percent to nearly 99.9 percent identical.

Their results show that the genomes of modern humans and Neanderthals are at least 99.5-percent identical, but despite this genetic similarity, and despite the two species having cohabitated the same geographic region for thousands of years, there is no evidence of any significant crossbreeding between the two. Based on these early results, Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis last shared a common ancestor approximately 700,000 years ago." Edward Rubin, director of both JGI and Berkeley Lab’s Genomics Division: “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.”


two marvellous questions

What are the similarities between the neanderthal and human?
Both interbred and became one species.
Modern human and neanderthal are similar by having smaller eyebrow ridges, very narrow holes where the nostrils join the skull, and a shin bone that is flat on one side and concave on the other. Another similarity is that they have a large bulge at the back of the skull, a prominent projection around the elbow joint, and a narrow socket at the shoulder joint.

Why are the neanderthals dying out?
They were less well-adapted to the climate changes that occurred across Europe at that time. Others cite evidence of a more brutal end, in which Neanderthals were slaughtered by modern humans.
According to the researchers, the populations probably blended together through sexual reproduction. One said, "Extinction through absorption is a common phenomenon."

Etymology and classification!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The name Neanderthal was given by irish anatomist,William King on 1853. The Neanderthal or "Neander Valley" was named after theologian Joachim Neander, who lived there in the late seventeenth century.
For many years, professionals vigorously debated about whether Neanderthals should be classified as Homo neanderthalensis or as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, the latter placing Neanderthals as a subspecies of Homo sapiens. However, recent evidence from mitochondrial DNA studies have been interpreted as evidence that Neanderthals were not a subspecies of H. sapiens. Some scientists, for example Milford Wolpoff, argue that fossil evidence suggests that the two species interbred, and hence were the same biological species. There is no evidence on cultural interaction.

Posted by YH²™,Yellow Helmet

pictures of neanderthal man



































































BIGGER SKULL,

its brain on the average was more than 13% larger than the brain of modern man, this is due to late closure of the epiphysis and fontanels.

by, yh and yh

Neanderthal

Neanderthal

The Neanderthal (IPA pronunciation: [niː.ændə(ɚ)θl, neɪ.ændə(ɚ)θɒl, niː.ændə(ɚ)tɒl, neɪ.ændə(ɚ)tɒl,]), (Homo neanderthalensis) or Neandertal was a species of the Homo genus that inhabited Europe and parts of western Asia. The first proto-Neanderthal traits appeared in Europe as early as 350,000 years ago. By 130,000 years ago, full blown Neanderthal characteristics had appeared. Neanderthals became extinct in Europe approximately 24,000 years ago.

In Siberia, Middle Paleolithic populations are evidenced only in the southern portions. Teeth from Okladniko and Denisova caves have been attributed to Neanderthals (Goebel 1999:213, citing Turner). Middle Paleolithic industries in Siberia (dated to 70,000 to 40,000 years ago) are distinctly Levallois and Mousterian, reduction technologies are uniform, secondary reduction is largely unifacial with few bifacial retouched pieces, assemblages consist of scrapers, denticulates, notches, knives, and retouched Levallois flakes and points, though there is no evidence of bone, antler or ivory technology, or of art or personal adornment.[5] Subprismatic blade and flake primary reduction technology characterizes the lithic industry, and microblade cores are absent. The Mousterian flake and simple biface industry that characterizes the Middle Paleolithic, wherever found with human remains, is found with Neanderthals, and wherever Aurignacian is found with remains, it is found with modern humans.

The transition to the Upper Paleolithic coincides with the appearance of modern Homo sapiens in Siberia. Early Upper Paleolithic sites in southern Siberia, found below 55 degrees latitude and dated from 42,000 to 30,000 B.P, correspond to the Malokheta interstade, a relatively warm interval in the mid-Upper Pleistocene.

Neanderthals had many adaptations to a cold climate, such as large braincase, short but robust builds, and large noses — traits selected by nature in cold climates. Their brain sizes have been estimated to be larger than modern humans, although such estimates have not been adjusted for their more robust builds. On average, Neanderthal males stood about 1.65 m tall (just under 5' 5") and were heavily built with robust bone structure. Females were about 1.53 to 1.57 m tall (about 5'–5'2").
The characteristic style of stone tools in the Middle Paleolithic is called the Mousterian Culture, after a prominent archaeological site where the tools were first found. The Mousterian culture is typified by the wide use of the Levallois technique. Mousterian tools 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. Near the end of the time of the Neanderthals, they created the Châtelperronian tool style, considered more advanced than that of the Mousterian. They either invented the Châtelperronian themselves or borrowed elements from the incoming modern humans who are thought to have created the Aurignacian.

Etymology and classification

The term Neanderthal Man was coined in 1863 by Irish anatomist William King. Neanderthal is now spelled two ways: the spelling of the German word Thal, meaning "valley or dale", was changed to Tal in the early 20th century, but the former spelling is often retained in English and always in scientific names, while the modern spelling is used in German.

The Neanderthal or "Neander Valley" was named after theologian Joachim Neander, who lived there in the late seventeenth century.

The original German pronunciation (regardless of spelling) is with the sound /t/. (See German phonology.) When used in English, the term is usually anglicised to /θ/ (as in thin), though speakers more familiar with German use /t/.

For many years, professionals vigorously debated about whether Neanderthals should be classified as Homo neanderthalensis or as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, the latter placing Neanderthals as a subspecies of Homo sapiens. However, recent evidence from mitochondrial DNA studies have been interpreted as evidence that Neanderthals were not a subspecies of H. sapiens.[7] Some scientists, for example Milford Wolpoff, argue that fossil evidence suggests that the two species interbred, and hence were the same biological species. Others, for example Cambridge Professor Paul Mellars, say "no evidence has been found of cultural interaction".

Discovery
Neanderthal skulls were discovered in Engis, Belgium, in 1829 and Forbes' Quarry, Gibraltar, in 1848 prior to the "original" discovery in a limestone quarry of the Neander Valley (near Düsseldorf) in August, 1856, three years before Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species was published.
The type specimen, dubbed Neanderthal 1, consisted of a skull cap, two femora, three bones from the right arm, two from the left arm, part of the left ilium, fragments of a scapula, and ribs. The workers who recovered this material originally thought it to be the remains of a bear. They gave the material to amateur naturalist Johann Karl Fuhlrott, who turned the fossils over to anatomist Hermann Schaffhausen. The discovery was jointly announced in 1857.
That 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.

Some projects on neanderthal project(by Lim Kai Fan)

Work on the Neanderthal Genome Project is starting to bear fruit as two scientific papers are published in journals Nature and Science. So far a large portion of the Neanderthal DNA has been assembled. The Neanderthal, who became extinct 24,000 years ago may be our closest relatives!!!(not those you collected ang pao from)

The DNA information obtained comes in part from a Neanderthal thigh bone, and has allowed scientists to identify more than a million base pairs of Neanderthal DNA. Professor Edward Rubin with the Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek California, used cutting-edge DNA sequencing techniques to collect genetic material from a Neanderthal femur bone found in the Vindija Cave, Croatia. lative.

Scientists in Germany and the US are beginning a groundbreaking study to sequence the DNA of Neandertal fossils.The project, which intends to sequence the entire 3 billion base pairs that make up the Neandertal genome, hopes to clarify the evolutionary relationship between human and Neandertals. Using the already sequenced human and chimpansee genomes, the scientists hope to identify those genetic changes that enabled humans to migrate out of Africa and spread around the world.