Neanderthals (/niˈændərtɑːl, neɪ-, -θɔːl/, also Neandertals,
Homo neanderthalensis or Homo sapiens neanderthalensis)
are an extinct species or subspecies of archaic humans who
lived in Eurasia until about 40,000 years ago.
Hypotheses on the fate of the Neanderthals include violence
from encroaching anatomically modern humans, parasites and
pathogens, competitive replacement, competitive exclusion,
extinction by interbreeding with early modern human populations,
natural catastrophes, and failure or inability to adapt to climate change.
KEY FACT Modern humans originated in Africa within the past 200,000
years and evolved from their most likely recent common ancestor,
Homo erectus. Modern humans (Homo sapiens), the species? that we are,
means 'wise man' in Latin.
When did Neanderthals live? The Neanderthals have a long evolutionary
history. The earliest known examples of Neanderthal-like fossils are around
430,000 years old. The best-known Neanderthals lived between about
130,000 and 40,000 years ago, after which all physical evidence of them vanishes.
On the biggest steps in early human evolution scientists are in agreement.
The first human ancestors appeared between five million and seven million
years ago, probably when some apelike creatures in Africa began to walk
habitually on two legs. They were flaking crude stone tools by 2.5 million years ago.
They used these variations to create a more reliable molecular clock
and found that Adam lived between 120,000 and 156,000 years ago.
A comparable analysis of the same men's mtDNA sequences suggested
that Eve lived between 99,000 and 148,000 years ago
