7. Scientists Get Inside the Mind (and Genes) of the Neanderthal
For a span of 200,000 years or more, Neanderthals thrived from Gibraltar to Uzbekistan. Big-brained and robust, they weathered the depths of the last ice age, only to vanish around 30,000 years ago, about when modern humans entered Europe. Did the new arrivals annihilate the natives, or were Neanderthals absorbed by interbreeding? Two studies offer new perspectives on the nature and fate of the Neanderthals. One is a project devoted to analyzing Neanderthal DNA; the other is a reconstruction of hunting strategies that suggests the Neanderthals were not slow-witted brutes unable to compete with modern humans.
Archaeologist Daniel Adler from the University of Connecticut, working with David Lordkipanidze and Nikolaz Tushabramishvili of the Georgian State Museum and their colleagues at the University of Haifa, Hebrew University, and Harvard University, analyzed animal remains in a rock shelter in the Republic ...
