Quest For Fire - Scientists Solve a Big Neanderthal Mystery

Scientists Solve a Big Neanderthal Mystery + Neanderthal Genes. To modern humans, Neanderthals have always served as a philosophical counterpoint. At first, they were the only other type of human that we were aware of existing on Earth, and even after the discovery of other extinct hominin species, they still held a special place as "the other," a kind of mirror against which we could measure ourselves. And at first, all of those comparisons were in our favor. After existing for thousands of years in western Eurasia, Neanderthals vanished around 40,000 years ago, and for a long time, this was thought to be proof that they must have deserved to go extinct in a scientific, if not moral, sense. However, as we shall see, they were much more "human" than once believed. Remarkably, not long ago anthropologists were still debating whether Neanderthals were even human, used fire or could speak. In truth, they had sophisticated fire-making technology, culture and spoken language. Our sister species were frequently portrayed as either noble savages or demonized as savage brutes. Though it's difficult to enter the mind of a long-extinct human species, new insights into the Neanderthal mind imply that they may have been much more cultured, than their previous reputation for being brutally ignorant suggests. The last Neanderthals may have died, but their legacy will live on in perpetuity. Scientists previously believed that Neanderthals were only capable of primitive thought and animalistic savagery, but The image of Neanderthals as brutish, club-wielding cave thugs is long gone. CHAPTERS: 0:00 Neanderthals, Our Sister Species 4:00 Neanderthal Inventors and Chemists 8:00 Neanderthal Artists and Scientists SOURCES: https://phys.org/news/2023-05-neander... https://www.sci.news/archaeology/nean...