"Neanderthals fascinate us: so much like us, yet not quite us. We have long known that they overlapped with modern humans in prehistoric Europe, but recent genetic evidence suggests widespread interbreeding of the two groups. University of Wisconsin biological anthropologist John Hawks is at the forefront of this species-shaking research. He presents the latest findings from the lab and field and discusses what may or may not make us uniquely human".
Well, I always knew that my husband, along with most other men I've known, were Neanderthals. Now science seems to have proven it!! it's nice to know that I was right. Just kidding, guys. Once we get you housebroken and trained, you make rather nice companions!! And you're great to have around to reach the stuff in the top cabinet - I mean, what would we do without you!!
haha, I think you are more 'right' than you know... (or could know)... It seems that when men (and women) lived a lot longer than they do today (for the last few thousand years), their bones change with age, naturally, and they 'look' different - they 'look' like neanderthaws.... and, just like with the fake news about covid, anything that suggests a loss of money for those who make their money from so-called ancient history (in any fashion), don't want their source of income (and prestige) to be challenged.
Human Family Tree on Nat Geo | National Geographic (2009) On a single day on a single street, with the DNA of just a couple of hundred random people, National Geographic Channel sets out to trace the ancestral footsteps of all humanity.
How Our Understanding of Neanderthals Has Dramatically—and Rapidly—Shifted "Modern humans were part of what one could term a 'hominin metapopulation'—that is, a web of different hominin populations, including Neanderthals, Denisovans and other groups, who were linked by limited, but intermittent or even persistent, gene flow." "That evidence began to appear in 2010, when the first draft of a full Neanderthal genome was published. The new genomic data wasn't conclusive, but it did show that, though all humans today are descendants of the original modern humans who evolved in Africa, there were surprising genetic similarities between Neanderthals and contemporary non-Africans. This seemed to suggest that Neanderthals mixed with an early population of non-African humans, perhaps living in the Middle East, who would later settle the Eurasian continent, carrying Neanderthal genes with them".
The anti-social mini-brains of Neanderthals Neanderthals’ problem of credibility is not being alive today, so they can’t become professors and prove the inferiority of sapiens brain. Image: Neanderthal Museum, Düsseldorf.
Which parts of us are Neanderthal? Our genes point to skin and hair (link) "A double-barreled comparison of ancient Neanderthal DNA with hundreds of modern-day genomes suggests that many of us have Neanderthal skin and hair traits — but other parts of the Neanderthal genome appear to have been bred out of us along the way".
Did Neanderthals eat their vegetables? "The popular conception of the Neanderthal as a club-wielding carnivore is, well, rather primitive, according to a new study conducted at MIT. Instead, our prehistoric cousin may have had a more varied diet that, while heavy on meat, also included plant tissues, such as tubers and nuts". Illustration: Christine Daniloff/MIT
Fwiw, nean's were just regular (although A LOT HEALTHIER than us) people. When they lived 200 to 600 years old, naturally their bones etc aged also, just like we do when we age over 50 to 90 today... but of course more changes with more hundreds of years.