neanderthals
About 150,000 or 200,000 years ago, Europe and western Asia witnessed the emergence of a distinctive new kind of human. The group is known informally as the Neanderthals, after the German site in the valley of the Neander River that in 1857. The earliest probable Neanderthal fossil is a broken braincase from Ehringsdorf, in germany, dated to 200,000 years ago or perhaps even earlier. However the reconstruction of this specimin is disputed and for better evidence we have to move up to about 150,000 years ago.The Neanderthal people were named after the Neander Valley near near Dusseldorf, Germany, through which the river Dussel flows. In1856 workers were quarrying lime, and they invetigated a cave about 20 yards up a cliff like slope in the narrow steep valley. Inside they found a collection of fossil bones in the deep mud of the cave floor. Not recognising their importance, the quarrymen excavated them but left them jumpled with other debris.A local teacher became interested in the find and he retrieved part of the top of the skull, along with some of the limb bones. He passed them to the professor of Anatomy at the university of Bonn, Hermann Schaaffhausen ,who concluded
The new dating techniques on associated teeth give an average of around 100,000 years. The posture was upright as in ourselves and not stooped and shuffling as the earlier reconstructions. The lower rear of the skull has the projecting Neanderthal shape type. This was the time when ice advanced from the north, down across much of Europe during the penultimate great Ice Age. Evidence from tools is also inconclusive. Discoveries pertinent to their distant past have been made in France and Wales. In the facial area the size of nasa aperture and cavity indicate a large nose which groves in the bone for blood vessels suggest that the face received a good supply of blood. Other French finds at La Chaise and Lazaret support this evidence and suggest that Neanderthal people were living in Europe more than 130,000 years ago another time of ice and cold. Recent search in Israel adds more data for consideration. Fossils of modern humans from Jabel Qafzeh near Nazareth have been studied since 1935. There are two other well known cave sites on Mount Carmel. What happened to the NeandethalsAfter about 30,000 years ago Neanderthal remains are conspicuously absent. The Cro-Magnons killed off the Neanderthal people. A large nose and nasal cavity would have warmed icy air before it reached the lungs while the rich blood supply to the face helped to prevent frostbite when this area was exposed. that they were probably human and very old.
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