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Neanderthals: New Findings & Theories

Between 35,000 and 45,000 years ago, modern humans spread throughout Europe. Around the same time, Neanderthals disappeared from the landscape—but not before interbreeding with Homo sapiens. Recent research has revealed that all non-Africans living today retain a genetic trace—1-3 percent of the genome—of Neanderthal ancestry. And 40,000 years ago, human genomes may have contained twice as much Neanderthal DNA, according to a study published today (June 22) in Nature.

Genetic material recovered from 40,000-year-old human bones unearthed in Romania harbors about 6-9 percent Neanderthal DNA, the study reports. Some of this DNA was contained in three relatively large chromosome segments, suggesting the individual had a Neanderthal ancestor only four to six generations back. “I think the conclusions are quite clear, and it’s really quite remarkable that they were lucky to find a hybrid that was so recent to be able to date it to a few generations back,” said Rasmus Nielsen, a University of California Berkeley population geneticist who was not involved with the work.

“What’s amazing about this sample is that we were so lucky to find it,” agreed Harvard Medical School population geneticist David Reich, a senior author on the paper.

Reich and his colleagues sequenced DNA from the jawbone of a so-called Oase individual, named for the region of Romania in which the modern human skeletal remains were found in 2002. The skeletal remains retained gross morphological features that suggested it was a human-Neanderthal admixture, so Reich decided to plumb the genome for such a relationship. Although contaminated with exogenous DNA, the jawbone yielded sequencable DNA that the researchers processed in order to isolate and analyze endogenous genetic material. “There are only minute amounts of humanlike DNA material in there,” Ludovic Orlando, an ancient-DNA researcher at the University of Copenhagen who was not involved with the study, wrote in an email to The Scientist. “That in itself is quite a challenge, but on top of that you have huge contamination levels from a mostly European background, meaning that you are really after a needle in a haystack here.”

The key to sussing out the individual’s own genetic material involved bioinformatic techniques that separated out contaminating DNA. “They were able to use recent approaches to identify endogenous parts of the genome,” said Ripan Malhi, a University of Illinois molecular anthropologist who was not involved with the study. ...

http://mobile.the-scientist.com/art...l-human-hybrid-unearthed#.VYhLgeqI3FU.twitter
 
IT WAS a two-way street. Many people carry ancient Neanderthal DNA in their genome as a result of cross-species liaisons around 50,000 years ago. Now it seems that some Neanderthals carried our DNA, too.

This particular group had, for example, a big chunk of modern human DNA right in the middle of a gene that may have a role in language development, called FOXP2. What’s more, they got that DNA from us at least 100,000 years ago, somewhere in Eurasia. The finding challenges an idea central to our thinking about human evolution: that our species didn’t properly leave Africa until about 60,000 years ago.

A team led by Sergi Castellano at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, compared 50,000-year-old DNA from four extinct human relatives: a Neanderthal and a Denisovan from Siberia, and two European Neanderthals. They also looked at 500 genomes from living Africans.

Neanderthals and Denisovans are more closely related to each other than they are to us, so their genomes should have more in common, too. But Castellano’s team found that parts of the Siberian Neanderthal genome were more similar to the genomes of modern-day Africans than those of the Denisovans or the European Neanderthals. Statistical analyses ruled out the possibility that those similarities were the result of contamination.

https://www.newscientist.com/articl...paign=hoot&cmpid=SOC|NSNS|2016-GLOBAL-twitter
 
Several Neanderthal sites in France have yielded large numbers of small black blocs. Neanderthals used these 'manganese oxides' in fire-making and not as previously thought for colouring.

The usual interpretation is that these 'manganese oxides' were collected for their colouring properties and used in body decoration, potentially for symbolic expression. Neanderthals habitually used fire and if they needed black material for decoration, soot and charcoal were readily available, whereas obtaining manganese oxides would have incurred considerably higher subsistence costs.

Combustion

A series of compositional analyses has led scientists from Leiden University and Delft University of Technology to infer that late Neanderthals at Pech-de-l'Azé I (Dordogne, SW France) were deliberately selecting manganese dioxide, 50,000 years ago. Statistically designed combustion experiments and thermo- gravimetric (TGA) measurements demonstrate that manganese dioxide reduces wood's auto-ignition temperature and substantially increases the rate of char combustion; in other words manganese dioxide facilitates fire making. (Youtube film showing the difference in combustion, lowering the ignition temperature from 350 to 250 degrees) Archaeological evidence for both fire places and the conversion of manganese dioxide blocs to powder supports the hypothesis that Neanderthals at Pech-de-l'Azé I used manganese dioxide in fire-making. Fire would have provided important subsistence benefits but its social and symbolic significance should not be overlooked.

Neanderthal cognitive capabilities

The selection and use of manganese dioxide for fire making is unknown from the ethnographic record of recent hunter gatherers. This knowledge had been lost. This unusual behaviour holds potential significance for our understanding of Neanderthal cognitive capabilities through the extent of their knowledge and insights. The actions involved in the preferential selection of a specific, non-combustible material and its use to make fire are not obvious nor intuitive. The knowledge and insights suggested by Neanderthal selection of manganese dioxide and use in fire-making are surprising and qualitatively different from the expertise commonly associated with Neanderthals.

http://phys.org/news/2016-03-neanderthals-deliberately-sourced-manganese-dioxide.html
 
Did Neanderthals Die Out Because of the Paleo Diet?
A new theory links their fate to a meat-heavy regimen

Miki Ben-Dor, a Tel Aviv University archaeologist, “you won’t be able to tell whether Neanderthals or Homo sapiens lived there, because they had all the same tools.” Which helps explain why, to fathom how our fates diverged, he recently scrutinized Neanderthals’ bodies instead of their skulls.

While humans have barrel-shaped chests and narrow pelvises, Neanderthals had bell-shaped torsos with wide pelvises. The prevailing explanation has been that Neanderthals, often living in colder and drier environments than their human contemporaries, needed more energy and therefore more oxygen, so their torsos swelled to hold a bigger respiratory system.

But Ben-Dor had a gut feeling this was wrong. What if the difference was what they ate? Living in Eurasia 300,000 to 30,000 years ago, Neanderthals settled in places like the Polar Urals and southern Siberia—not bountiful in the best of times, and certainly not during ice ages. In the heart of a tundra winter, with no fruits and veggies to be found, animal meat—made of fat and protein—was likely the only energy source.

Alas, though fat is easier to digest, it’s scarce in cold conditions, as prey animals themselves burn up their fat stores and grow lean. So Neanderthals must have eaten a great deal of protein, which is tough to metabolize and puts heavy demands on the liver and kidneys to remove toxic byproducts. In fact, we humans have a “protein ceiling” of between 35 and 50 percent of our diet; eating too much more can be dangerous. Ben-Dor thinks that Neanderthals’ bodies found a way to utilize more protein, developing enlarged livers and kidneys, and chests and pelvises that widened over the millennia to accommodate these beefed-up organs.


Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/scien...use-paleo-diet-180959066/#VsOIbPwSEYY2AdeO.99
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Neanderthal stone ring structures found in French cave

Researchers investigating a cave in France have identified mysterious stone rings that were probably built by Neanderthals.

The discovery provides yet more evidence that we may have underestimated the capabilities of our evolutionary cousins.

The structures were made from hundreds of stalagmites, the mineral deposits which rise from the floors of caves.

Dating techniques showed that they were broken off 175,000 years ago.

The findings are reported in the journal Nature.

The round structures were discovered in Bruniquel Cave in South-West France. The stalagmites had been chopped to similar lengths and laid out in two oval patterns up to 40cm (16in) high.

SOURCE: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-36381786
SEE ALSO: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature18291.html
 
Neanderthals were stocky from birth
May 26, 2016 in Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils

If a Neandertal were to sit down next to us on the underground, we would probably first notice his receding forehead, prominent brow ridges and projecting, chinless face. Only on closer inspection would we notice his wider and thicker body. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig have now investigated whether the differences in physique between Neandertals and modern humans are genetic or caused by differences in lifestyle. Their analysis of two well-preserved skeletons of Neandertal neonates shows that Neandertals' wide bodies and robust bones were formed by birth.

The evolutionary lines of modern humans and Neandertals diverged around 600,000 years ago. Paleoanthropologists know from bone finds that Neandertals possessed not only a receding forehead, prominent brow ridges and projecting, chinless face, but also a different physique. They had more robust bones, a wider pelvis and shorter limbs. This may have been an evolutionary adaptation to the colder climate of Europe and Asia, as a more compact body loses less heat to the environment. However, the skeletal differences may also have arisen as a result of different lifestyles and activity patterns, because mechanical stresses affect the formation of bones.

To address this conundrum, Max Planck scientists examined two skeletons of Neandertal babies. One of the skeletons was from Mezmaiskaya Cave in the Caucasus, where in 1993 archaeologists discovered one of the best-preserved Neandertal skeletons ever found in an area only slightly larger than an A4 page. As it turned out, Neandertals had buried a roughly two-week-old newborn in the cave 70,000 years ago. The second specimen was an infant no more than four months old from a cave near the village of Le Moustier in the French Dordogne. "Both skeletons were exceptionally well preserved. Moreover, they come from two sites that are widely separated geographic ...

http://phys.org/news/2016-05-neanderthals-stocky-birth.html
 
Neanderthals built mystery underground circles 175,000 years ago


cnrs_20160048_0007-800x533.jpg

Made by Neanderthals – but what were they for?
Etienne Fabre/SSAC

By Colin Barras

They worked by torchlight, following the same procedure hour after hour: wrench a stalagmite off the cave floor, remove the tip and base, and carefully lay it with the others.

Today we can only guess as to why a group of Neanderthals built a series of large stalagmite structures in a French cave – but the fact they did provides a rare glimpse into our extinct cousin’s potential for social organisation in a challenging environment.

Gone are the days when we thought of Neanderthals as crude and unintelligent.

Archaeological evidence now suggests they were capable of symbolic thought, had a basic knowledge of chemistry, medicine and cooking, and perhaps some capacity for speech. They may even have taught modern humans new artisanal skills when the two species met and interbred.

A reassessment of evidence from Bruniquel cave, near Toulouse in south-west France, suggests even more Neanderthal sophistication. In one chamber, 336 metres from the cave entrance, are enigmatic structures – including a ring 7 metres across – built from stalagmites snapped from the cave floor.

Natural limestone growths have begun to cover parts of the structure, so by dating these growths a team led byJacques Jaubert at the University of Bordeaux could work out an approximate age for the stalagmite constructions. ...

https://www.newscientist.com/articl...mystery-underground-circles-175000-years-ago/
 
Some people think they could speak and had high voices ..

 
Sudden extinction of Neanderthals followed population peak
July 26, 2016 in Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils

Neanderthals once populated the entire European continent. Around 45,000 years ago, Homo neanderthalensis was the predominant human species in Europe. Archaeological findings show that there were also several settlements in Germany. However, the era of the Neanderthal came to an end quite suddenly. Based on an analysis of the known archaeological sites, Professor Jürgen Richter from Collaborative Research Center 806 – Our Way to Europe, in which the universities of Cologne, Bonn and Aachen cooperate, comes to the conclusion that Neanderthals reached their population peak right before their population rapidly declined and they eventually became extinct.

Neanderthals lived in the Middle Paleolithic, the middle period of the Old Stone Age. This period encompasses the time from roughly 200,000 to 40,000 before our times. In his article published in theQuaternary International journal, Richter comes to the conclusion that more than 50 percent of the known Neanderthal settlement sites in Germany can be dated to the Middle Paleolithic. More precisely, they date back 60,000 to 43,000 years before our times. Thus, the Neanderthal population peak seems to lie in this period. ...

http://phys.org/news/2016-07-sudden-extinction-neanderthals-population-peak.html
 
A structure that represents the biggest known genetic difference between humans and Neanderthals also predisposes humans to autism.

An international team of researchers led by UW Medicine genome scientist Evan Eichler published the findings today in Nature.

The structure involves a segment of DNA on chromosome 16 that contains 28 genes. This segment is flanked by blocks of DNA whose sequences repeat over and over.

Such stretches of duplicated DNA, called copy-number variants, are common in the human genome and often contain multiple copies of genes. Although most copy-number variants seem to have no adverse effect on health, some have been linked to disease.

However, when both strands of a segment of DNA are flanked by highly identical sequences, they can be susceptible to large copy-number differences, including deletion, duplication and other changes, during the process of cell division. In this case, deletion, which causes the loss of the segment's 28 genes, results in autism.

In the new study, researchers determined that this structure, located at a region on chromosome 16 designated 16p11.2, first appeared in our ancestral genome about 280,000 years ago, shortly before modern humans, Homo sapiens, emerged. This organization is not seen in any other primate – not chimps, gorillas, orangutans nor the genomes of our closest relatives, the Neanderthals and Denisovans. Yet today, despite the fact that the structure is a relatively new genetic change, it is found in genomes of humans the world over. ...

http://medicalxpress.com/print389508010.html
 
A quartet of researchers at Simon Fraser University in Canada has found evidence that suggests that the reason early humans were able to survive the ice age while the Neanderthal perished is because humans figured out how to make parka-like clothing to keep warm and Neanderthals did not. In a paper published in Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, Mark Collard, Lia Tarle, Dennis Sandgathe and Alexander Allan describe their study of camp site evidence from both groups and offer some ideas on why just one group was able to survive.

As scientists continue to explore why humans managed to survive to the modern age while other hominids did not, new evidence has emerged that suggests at least one of them: Neanderthals might have perished because they were not able to sufficiently warm themselves using animal fur.

The study consisted of analyzing data describing campsites used by early humans and Neanderthals and then comparing the two to find similarities or differences. One major difference they noted was the lack of the type of animal remains around Neanderthal sites that would have suggested they were used to make warm clothes



Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-08-neanderthals-failure-parkas-demise.html#jCp
 
A team with members from across Europe has found evidence that suggests bone fragments found with ancient jewelry in the Grotte du Renne cave at Arcy-sur-Cure (in France) show that they were made by Neanderthals. They have published a paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences outlining their work, their results, and what their finding may mean regarding the abilities of Neanderthals.

The Grotte de Renne was discovered in 1949 to be an archaeological treasure as archaeologists found bones and other artifacts that were subsequently dated to a time approximately 40,000 years ago—during the period when modern humans are believed to have been replacing the Neanderthals living in the area. Early evidence pointed to the Neanderthals as the makers of the artifacts, which included jewelry, but the consensus has been that Neanderthals did not possess the brain power to create such items; thus, some suggested there must have been a mix-up by the digging team. In this new analysis, the researchers took a closer look at some bone fragments from the site that were too small to be identified by conventional means. Because there was not enough DNA in the bones, the team chose to use a new method of identification: protein analysis. That allowed them to determine that the fragment was from a human, but more was needed to determine if it was modern human or Neanderthal. ...



Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-09-evidence-ancient-jewelry-grotte-du.html#jCp
 
The caves that prove Neanderthals were cannibals
December 30, 2016 in Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils

Deep in the caves of Goyet in Belgium researchers have found the grisly evidence that the Neanderthals did not just feast on horses or reindeer, but also on each other.

Human bones from a newborn, a child and four adults or teenagers who lived around 40,000 years ago show clear signs of cutting and of fractures to extract the marrow within, they say.

"It is irrefutable, cannibalism was practised here," says Belgian archaeologist Christian Casseyas as he looks inside a cave halfway up a valley in this site in the Ardennes forest.

The bones in Goyet date from when Neanderthals were nearing the end of their time on earth before being replaced by Homo sapiens, with whom they also interbred.

Once regarded as primitive cavemen driven to extinction by smarter modern humans, studies have found that Neanderthals were actually sophisticated beings who took care of the bodies of the deceased and held burial rituals.

But there is a growing body of proof that they also ate their dead.

Neanderthal bone fragments

Cases of Neanderthal cannibalism have been found until now only in Neanderthal populations in southern Europe in Spain, at El Sidron and Zafarraya, and in France, at Moula-Guercy and Les Pradelles.

The caves at Goyet have been occupied since the Paleolithic era. The 250-metre- (820-feet-) long galleries were dug into the limestone by the Samson, a small stream that still flows a few metres below.

They began to reveal their secrets in the middle of the 19th century thanks to one of the fathers of palaeontology, Edouard Dupont (1841-1911).

A geologist and director of the Royal Museum of Natural History of Belgium, he searched several caves, including that of Goyet in 1867, and collected an enormous quantity of bones and tools. ...

http://phys.org/news/2016-12-caves-neanderthals-cannibals.html
 
Neanderthals may have medicated with penicillin and painkillers

What a difference 1000 kilometres make. Neanderthals living in prehistoric Belgium enjoyed their meat – but the Neanderthals who lived in what is now northern Spain seem to have survived on an almost exclusively vegetarian diet.

This is according to new DNA analysis that also suggests sick Neanderthals could self-medicate with naturally occurring painkillers and antibiotics, and that they shared mouth microbiomes with humans – perhaps exchanged by kissing.

Neanderthals didn’t clean their teeth particularly well – which is lucky for scientific investigators. Over time, plaque built up into a hard substance called dental calculus, which still clings to the ancient teeth even after tens of thousands of years.

Researchers have already identified tiny food fragments in ancient dental calculus to get an insight into the diets of prehistoric hominins. Now Laura Weyrich at the University of Adelaide, Australia, and her colleagues have shown that dental calculus also carries ancient DNA that can reveal both what Neanderthals ate and which bacteria lived in their mouths.

The team focused on three Neanderthals – two 48,000-year-old specimens from a site called El Sidrón in Spain and a 39,000-year-old specimen from a site called Spy in Belgium. The results suggested that the Spy Neanderthal often dined on woolly rhinoceros, sheep and mushrooms – but no plants. The El Sidrón Neanderthals ate more meagre fare: moss, bark and mushrooms – and, apparently, no meat. ...

https://www.newscientist.com/articl...ocial&utm_source=Twitter#link_time=1489059076
 
Neanderthals treating toothaches?

A discovery of multiple toothpick grooves on teeth and signs of other manipulations by a Neanderthal of 130,000 years ago are evidence of a kind of prehistoric dentistry, according to a new study led by a University of Kansas researcher.

"As a package, this fits together as a dental problem that the Neanderthal was having and was trying to presumably treat itself, with the toothpick grooves, the breaks and also with the scratches on the premolar," said David Frayer, professor emeritus of Anthropology. "It was an interesting connection or collection of phenomena that fit together in a way that we would expect a modern human to do. Everybody has had dental pain, and they know what it's like to have a problem with an impacted tooth."

The Bulletin of the International Association for Paleodontology recently published the study. The researchers analyzed four isolated but associated mandibular teeth on the left side of the Neanderthal's mouth. Frayer's co-authors are Joseph Gatti, a Lawrence dentist, Janet Monge, of the University of Pennsylvania; and, Davorka Radovčić, curator at the Croatian Natural History Museum.

The teeth were found at Krapina site in Croatia, and Frayer and Radovčić have made several discoveries about Neanderthal life there, including a widely recognized 2015 study published in PLOS ONEabout a set of eagle talons that included cut marks and were fashioned into a piece of jewelry.

The teeth and all the Krapina Neanderthal fossils were discovered more than 100 years ago from the site, which was originally excavated between 1899-1905.

However, Frayer and Radovčić in recent years have reexamined many items collected from the site. ...

https://phys.org/print417875436.html
 
"What is emerging from the human fossil and Paleolithic archeological records across the Eurasia and Africa is that, at any one slice in time during this period, they were all doing—and capable of doing—basically the same things, whatever they looked like.”

A lesson we humans have yet to fully absorb ... :pipe:
 
Pitching a new idea.

Neandertals took stick-to-itiveness to a new level. Using just scraps of wood and hot embers, our evolutionary cousins figured out how to make tar, a revolutionary adhesive that they used to make formidable spears, chopping tools and other implements by attaching sharp-edged stones to handles, a new study suggests.

Researchers already knew that tar-coated stones date to at least 200,000 years ago at Neandertal sites in Europe, well before the earliest known evidence of tar production by Homo sapiens, around 70,000 years ago in Africa. Now, archaeologist Paul Kozowyk of Leiden University in the Netherlands and colleagues have re-created the methods that these extinct members of the human genus could have used to produce tar.

Three straightforward techniques could have yielded enough adhesive for Neandertals’ purposes, Kozowyk’s team reports August 31 in Scientific Reports. Previous studies have found that tar lumps found at Neandertal sites derive from birch bark. Neandertal tar makers didn’t need ceramic containers such as kilns and didn’t have to heat the bark to precise temperatures, the scientists conclude. ...

https://www.sciencenews.org/article...ow-how-neandertals-could-have-easily-made-tar
 
An international team of researchers has conducted a new test of Neanderthal remains found at Vindija Cave in Croatia and found them to be older than previous studies indicated. In their paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team describes their dating technique and the possible implications of their findings.

The Neanderthal remains were originally found in the cave approximately 40 years ago and have been tested for age several times. They have also been the subject of much speculation, as it was thought that the remains represented the last of the Neanderthals in that part of Europe and that they existed for a short period of time in close proximity to modern humans. Initial testing suggested the remains were approximately 28,000 to 29,000 years old. More recent tests have put them at 32,000 to 34,000 years old. Both time frames coincide with the arrival of modern humans into the area, keeping alive the theory that the two groups mixed, both physically and socially. But now, using what is being described as a more accurate technique, the group with this new effort has found that the remains are older than thought.

The new technique, called ZooMS involves radiocarbon dating hydroxyproline—an amino acid taken from collagen samples found in bone remains. The team also purified the collagen to remove contaminants. The researchers report that the new technique indicates that the remains—all four samples—were approximately 40,000 years old. This new finding puts the Neanderthal in the cave well before the arrival of modern humans, thus, there could not have been mixing of the two. ...

https://phys.org/news/2017-09-dating-neanderthal-vindija-cave-older.html
 
A new study shows that Neanderthal brains developed more slowly than ours.

An analysis of a Neanderthal child's skeleton suggests that its brain was still developing at a time when the brains of modern human children are fully formed.

This is further evidence that this now extinct human was not more brutish and primitive than our species.

The research has been published in the journal Science.

Until now it had been thought that we were the only species whose brains developed relatively slowly. Unlike other apes and more primitive humans, Homo sapiens has an extended period of childhood lasting several years.

This is because it takes time and energy to develop our large brain. Previous studies of Neanderthal remains indicated that they developed more quickly than modern humans - suggesting that their brains might be less sophisticated.

But a team led by Prof Antonio Rosas of the Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid found that if anything, Neanderthal brains may have developed more slowly than ours. ...

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-41351019
 
It's curious to think that Neanderthals may have been more intelligent than Sapiens.
But why did we survive, and they didn't?
I'm guessing we'll never find that out.
 
It's curious to think that Neanderthals may have been more intelligent than Sapiens.
But why did we survive, and they didn't?
I'm guessing we'll never find that out.

We interbred with them. Possibly a mixture of assi,ilation ans genocide. We may even have eaten them, another form of assimilation I guess.
 
We interbred with them. Possibly a mixture of assi,ilation ans genocide. We may even have eaten them, another form of assimilation I guess.
That's probably all true, yes.
Maybe they were gentler than us, and we were the savages? I can quite believe that.
 
Could be a simple as a higher fluid intelligence in H. Sapiens vs crystallised in Neanderthal. Even a tiny difference in the ability to adapt to new situations would result in a huge evolutionary advantage if the environment was changing around them.
 
There's a more straightforward implication to this study's claim than speculation on relative intelligence ...

Compared to other species, human children take a relatively long, long time to mature into functional adult form. During this extended developmental period the adult family / clan collective must accommodate and protect their young. This need to foster and protect the young represents an unavoidable burden on the collective and a vulnerability with respect their long-term survival.

The longer the requisite developmental period, the higher the cumulative burden and the potential vulnerability. In other words, a longer developmental period entails greater risk for the long-term survival of individual collectives / groups and the lineage overall.

Such a difference in relative burden / risk would be expected to affect selection pressures and outcomes.
 
The Neanderthal In You Is Probably To Blame For Your Mood

Researchers have found that Neanderthals passed on a lot more traits than you might think including skin tone, hair colour, sleeping patterns and even mood.

Around 2% of the DNA of non-African people is Neanderthal, which means that inevitably there were always going to be some traits that were passed down.

Until now though, it had never been clear how many traits there were or indeed what they were.

A study led by Janet Kelso at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany has revealed not only the amount of traits, but how they affect us.

What they found was interesting. All the traits associated with Neanderthal DNA were related in some way to sunlight exposure.

When humans moved from Africa to Eurasia around 30,000-100,000 years ago, Neanderthals had been living in communities for thousands of years. Their bodies had adapted to the cooler temperatures and lower light levels.

“Skin and hair color, circadian rhythms and mood are all influenced by light exposure,” the researchers wrote.


Full story here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/20...a_23236328/?utm_hp_ref=au-homepage?benref=smh

 
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