Fun Facts About Neanderthals

This is a fun adventure and it is moving forward slowly but surely, Check out our Face Book page, The Original Neanderthal. We are also introducing merchandise as we accumulate it into our inventory. Over the past few weeks, I took some time to research the Neanderthals.

Here are several interesting things I gleaned from the Internet Search I did using Wikipedia.com, donsmaps.com, and Natural History Museum http://www.nhm.ac.uk. There are many other articles from the Smithsonian, Science magazine and other sources on the Internet for a more in-depth investigation if interested. For this blog, following are some of the Fun Facts gleaned.

• The original Neanderthal skeleton was discovered in the Kleine Feldhafer Grotte in the Neander Valley in Western Germany.
• Neanderthal means Man from the Neander Valley.
• The discovery of the Original Neanderthal bones is now considered the beginning of Paleoanthropology.
• The bones of over 400 Neanderthal individuals have been identified.
• A distinguishing feature of the Neanderthal is the prominent brow ridge.
• The skull size of the Neanderthal is well within modern skull size for Homo Sapiens.
• Oldest known date for Neandertal remains is 430,000 years ago.
• The last known date for a Neanderthal discovery is 40,000 years ago.
• These folks were around on this earth for over 390,000 years.
• They ranged from Western, Central, Eastern and Mediterranean Europe as well as Southwest , Central and Northern Asia.
• Neanderthal technology was quite sophisticated with a stone tool industry, the ability to create fire, cave hearths, adhesives, simple but effective clothing, sea travel, medicinal plants and the ability to treat traumatic injuries and sickness.
• They were robust, adapted to conserve heat in a cold environment.
• Their total population remained small.
• As hunter gatherers they lived in small extended family groups.
• They lived in a high stress environment with high trauma rates.
• They were intelligent and accomplished humans.
• They were proficient hunters and able to communicate well.
• They looked after their sick and buried their dead with simple ceremony.
• They completely disappeared from the fossil record around 40,000 years ago, it is believed that rapid and dramatic climate change along with interbreeding due to small family groups contributed to their extinction.
• Many modern humans have Neanderthal DNA.

There are a lot of misconceptions about the Neanderthals that are being shattered as scientists discover more about these interesting peoples. Hang with us as we go forward with The Original Neanderthal LLC introducing merchandise and sharing ideas.