The word “Neandertal” is sometimes used as an insult. But Neandertals were hardly dumb brutes. These extinct cousins of modern humans made clothes, jewelry and tools. They controlled fires and hunted animals. They even seem to have used natural forms of medicine and buried their dead.
Neandertals were part of the same genus as modern humans. Modern people are of the species Homo sapiens. Neandertals made up the closely related species Homo neanderthalensis. They were around about 400,000 to 40,000 years ago.
Neandertals lived in Europe and Asia. For thousands of years, their territory overlapped with that of our species. In those areas, some Neandertals mated with modern humans. As a result, Neandertal DNA makes up a few percent of the genetic material in many modern humans. So Neandertals may be extinct, but their legacy lives on in people today.
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Neandertals were a lot like our human ancestors From toolmaking to healthcare, new research finds that Neandertals shared many cultural and social similarities with our human ancestors. (1/19/2023) Readability: 6.3
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Researchers role-played as Neandertals to learn how they hunted birds By pretending to be Neandertals, researchers showed that the ancient hominids likely had the skills to hunt crowlike birds called choughs. (11/21/2021) Readability: 6.5
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