Whatever happened to the Neanderthals?

Neanderthals were already an endangered species when our early modern human ancestors migrated into Europe around 45,000 years ago. open image in gallery Yuval Noah Harari argues it was the distinctive human trait of gossiping that allowed us to inherit the Earth In contrast, a recent study carried out by the University of Denmark found that the genomes of contemporaneous early modern humans were far more genetically diverse which supports the theory that ancient humans lived in far larger networked communities that helped them swap sexual partners, genes and ideas with greater regularity. open image in gallery Vindija cave in Croatia, where a team of researchers sequenced the genome of a female Neanderthal from a bone discovered in 1980 Sewing may not seem like a revolutionary technology but associated skills like weaving allowed us to make nets, snares and traps which allowed younger and older members of early modern human communities to hunt smaller mammals and bring in a far wider range of protein-rich food. When it comes to language and intellectual development, symbolic representation matters, so it’s perhaps telling that recent research carried out by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology has used uranium-thorium dating to show that Neanderthals were producing cave art in three separate sites in Spain 20,000 years before modern humans first arrived in Europe.