Surviving Neanderthals

neanderthal skull

Transcript: (Video Above)

Scientists have updated the time period Neanderthals were absorbed into the rest of the Homo sapien population. They used to believe they went extinct between 40,000 to 42,000 years ago. Now, they believe they went extinct 37,000 years ago. All this is based on Neanderthal artifacts they found in Spain. There’s an area in what is now considered Spain called the Ebro River depression and it cut off the rest of humanity and it was just a group of Neanderthals that lived there.

As regular Homo sapiens allegedly migrated out of Africa and into Europe starting around 50,000 years ago, this area was cut off and for an additional 3,000 years distinct Neanderthals that were separate from Homo sapiens that looked totally like Neanderthals lived on. Then, around 37,000 ago, regular humans had access to the area and they made with the Neanderthals and just out of sheer numbers of regular Homo sapiens mating with Neanderthals then the neanderthals were absorbed into the population. That’s why outside of Africa all peoples have one to three percent Neanderthal DNA.

There used to be a lot of negativity associated with Neanderthals and movies, for example, they portrayed Neanderthals as sluggish slow dim-witted creatures but the fact is they had actually larger brains than modern humans. Modern humans have 1,400 cubic centimeter cranial capacity and Neanderthals had 1,600 cubic centimeter cranial capacity, which isn’t to say that Neanderthals were smarter than modern human but it’s also not to say they were less intelligent than modern humans. As there used to be, or still is to some degree, a negative connotation associated with Neanderthal. Now there can be a positive association with Neanderthal or, at the very least, some mystery associated with Neanderthal

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