Neanderthals: Our Misunderstood Cousins

Our species, Homo sapiens, is the last human standing, but it wasn’t always so. A couple hundred thousand years ago, we shared the planet ??" and possibly even the same caves ??" as several other species and subspecies of humans. This includes our close evolutionary cousins, the Neanderthals. After more than a century of studying Neanderthals, scientists now know these ancient people were anything, but the brutish cavemen sometimes depicted in pop culture. They made and used tools and weapons fashioned from stones, bones and wood. They painted figures and symbols on cave walls and made jewelry. They cared for their elders and buried their dead. The Neanderthals provide a view of ourselves through a looking glass; their rise and fall can help anthropologists understand how our species evolved to spread and thrive around the world. And in a way, Neanderthals aren’t really extinct. Bits and bobs of their DNA live on in the modern human genome, the result of interbreeding between modern humans and Neanderthals long, long ago. Mike will share what scientists have learned about our species’ long-lost cousins, and how that hard-won knowledge is shaping our understanding of human history.

Speaker: Mike Price, Science Writer & Reporter