Neanderthals are our closest extinct human relatives.
They lived in Eurasia about 200,000 to 30,000 years ago. Their appearance was similar to ours though they were shorter and stockier with angled cheekbones prominent brow ridges and wide noses they were perfectly evolved to survive the eternal winter of the Ice Age.
Initial discoveries of Neanderthals made them out to be savage cannibals but new evidence has been unearthed that has spiffed up the image of the Neanderthal people.
Like us they made tools, wore clothes, controlled fire, cared for their sick and buried their dead they also possess the same variant as us of the Fox p2 gene essential for language so they probably spoke, perhaps they even painted engraved on the walls of caves. So if the Neanderthals were such an intelligent well adapted species, then the Question is...
why did they go extinct?
A popular theory is that humans wiped them out. we had much more advanced tools and social systems. Humans also domesticated wolves which made them far superior hunters.Humans dominance for scarce resources at the end of the Ice Age could have pushed Neanderthals to extinction, perhaps it was a natural disaster that killed off the Neanderthals or climate change or a disease, Another emerging theory is that the Neanderthals never actually went extinct but instead inbreed with the larger human population.
There was roughly a 5,000 year period where both Neanderthals and humans lived in Eurasia together during this period there was in breeding between the two species the proof is in our DNA, In fact about 1.5 to 2.6 percent of the DNA of anyone outside Africa is of Neanderthal origin. Researchers think that 20% of the neanderthal genome is still found within humans so they never exactly went extinct instead their DNA just became part of the modern human genome.
So now that we know we have Neanderthal DNA coursing through our veins what exactly can we do with this information. Well it turns out that these Neanderthal can affect your personality. Psychologists have found that individuals with the higher level of the neanderthal genome have an aversion to strangers and are more prone to nervousness and anxiety.
So basically the more Neanderthal you are the less social you are. This makes perfect sense since Neanderthals were much less social than humans. So the next time you're feeling antisocial at a party ask yourself is this a lame party or am I just being a Neanderthal.
