Homo Sapiens And The Neanderthals example essay topic

The Latest Neanderthal Although Neanderthals had larger brain cavities than the modern man, researchers believe that Neanderthals were not quite as intelligent as the modern man. The Neanderthals are thought to have been violent and put into extinction by their much more sophisticated cousins, Homo sapiens. Researchers believe that Homo sapiens may have even slaughtered the last of the Neanderthals, nearly 34,000 years ago. The most recent discovery concerning Neanderthals, found in a cave in Vindija, Croatia, shows that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens must have lived at the same time in central Europe for at least six millennia. Paul Pettit t and his colleagues at the University of Oxford in England used direct accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon dating on two pieces of Neanderthal skulls from the cave in Vindija. Using this technique, the team discovered that the Neanderthals lived there between 28,000 and 29,000 years ago, this compared to the last Neanderthal find that was dated between 33,000 and 34,000 years ago.

More exciting discoveries from the cave in Vindija is evidence that may show that the Neanderthal and the Homo sapiens may have traded with each other. Neanderthals are known for their stone tools and Homo sapiens are associated with the much more advanced stone and bone tools. The tools found in the cave in Vindija are a mixture of the two cultures technique of tool making. Some researchers argue that the Neanderthals found in the cave in Vindija have human anatomical characteristics.

Erik Trinkaus and his European colleagues discovered the fossil of a 24,500 year old modern human child in Portugal. A group of scientist used DNA comparisons between the Neanderthal and the early humans and concluded that the two species probably didn't mate. The first depictions of Neanderthals based on the prototype specimen from Ne ander Tal gorge in 1856, was of a hunch backed, ape-like, club-carrying beast. Modern reconstructions of the Neanderthal show that Neanderthals weren't much more apelike than the early modern human being. Researchers also believe that the average Neanderthal was a skilled hunter and had a variety of stone-flake tools. It is also thought that the Neanderthal was an excellent fire maker and skillful cooking techniques.

"The extinction of the Neanderthals by early modern humans, whether by displacement or population absorption, was a slow and geographically mosaic process", said Trinkaus. The most recent discoveries concerning the Neanderthals and Homo sapiens are very remarkable and exiting. I think that these discoveries show that Neanderthals never became extinct, but that they integrated with their cousins, the Homo sapiens. These recent discoveries strengthen my belief that the Neanderthals and the Homo sapiens integrated and, I hope that more research is done to prove further into detail that the Homo sapiens and the Neanderthals integrated to form the early human beings.