stone age europe
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Smart Neanderthals Made Tools Using Glue, Study Finds
A trove of Neanderthal tools made between 120,000 and 40,000 years ago were forged with glue, according to a team of researchers that recently studied the objects. The research revealed the oldest evidence of a complex adhesive in Europe, according to an NYU release. The adhesive—composed of bitumen, an asphalt component that also occurs naturally…
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Neanderthal Genes Could Explain Why Some of Us Are Morning People
If you’re irritated by the morning people in your life, you might have Neanderthals to blame for their existence, at least a little bit. New research suggests that our hominin relatives possessed genetic variations that predisposed them to waking up early and that they passed on these genes to our Homo sapiens ancestors through interbreeding.…
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Spanish Cave Was an Art Studio for Neanderthals and Ancient Humans, Researchers Say
Two hundred years ago, an earthquake revealed the entrance to a large cave system in southern Spain; sealed within the dark chambers were artworks made tens of thousands of years ago by early modern humans and Neanderthals, our closest relatives. Now, excavations and scientific analyses have revealed the precise age of many of the cave’s…
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How Do We Know What Neanderthals Looked Like?
When quarry workers dislodged a skullcap and a bunch of bones from a cave near Düsseldorf in 1856, little did anyone realise the remains would reveal an entirely new branch on the tree of life, that of the genus Homo and its many constituents, including Homo neanderthalensis, to which those bones belonged. The name “Neanderthal”…