What happened to the Neanderthals?

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The Neanderthal Man In Retrospect

We have always been fascinated by Darwin and his theories of evolution With so many schools of thought ' of how the earth came into existence , it seemed impossible to narrow down our choices , analyze each theory , and prove everything that it postulates . It was a clear indication that the search for our ancestors , and the missing link will continue until an answer is sought . But , will we ever find out ? For now , that remains to be seen

The Neanderthal

man is believed to be one of the missing links ' in our ancestry . Like the Cro-Magnon man , Peking man , and Java man , this species ' became extinct 32 ,000 years ago . The purpose of this is to familiarize the reader with the Neanderthal man and the possible theories that might have led to his extinction

The remains of the Neanderthal man , also known as Homo (sapiens neanderthalensis , was discovered in 1856 by workers quarrying for limestone in Neander Valley , Dusseldorf , Germany . These fossils were also found in other parts of Europe and Asia . They were considered a subspecies of humans because upon examination , they had features that are almost similar with humans , except for heavy brow ridges , a long low skull , and a robust skeleton (Foley , 2002

Neanderthals were shorter than the modern man , and as previously stated , had prominent brow ridges . Aside from that , they had low sloping foreheads , a chinless and heavy , forward-jutting jaw , extremely large front teeth , wider shoulders and pelvis , more conical rib cage and shorter forearms and lower legs (Columbia Encyclopedia , 2005 . Some scientists , majority of which are paleoanthropoloists , claim that these were not a subspecies of humans because of their more primitive appearance . According to Stringer and Gamble (1993 , the Neanderthals are a late form of Homo erectus or a descendant of that species

It was believed that the Neanderthals have been living in Europe 200 ,000 years before the Homo sapiens arrived (BBC News , 2007 .In van der Dennen 's Book Review Essay on Neanderthal Man (2005 , he stated that

This was the first evidence of a distinct (and now extinct ) species or subspecies of human , Homo (sapiens ) neanderthalensis , that lived during the later part of the Pleistocene epoch , more familiarly known as the Ice Age , some 200 ,000 to 30 ,000 years ago

During 1917 , Emil Bachler , in one of his excavations in the mountains of Switzerland , found no fossils of the Neanderthals (Van der Dennen 2005 . However , Mousterian tools and the remains of many cave bears were in abundance . Mousterian tools were most closely associated with Neanderthals . Bachler also felt that the bones and the tools were part of a ritual , and believed that the Neanderthals practice some sort of bear cult (Van der Dennen , 2005 . This led to the notion that the Neanderthals , like humans , had some form of communication and culture

When the fossil of this subspecies was studied by world-renowned pathologist and anatomist , Rudolf Virchow , he found out that the...