ANTH 145 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Mousterian, Steven Mithen, Body Painting
Document Summary
Collective evolution resulted in transition from neanderthals to modern humans. There was a migration of homo erectus out from africa into china and southeast asia. Neanderthals and modern humans were in the middle east and europe at the same time. Neanderthals existed from around 170,000 bp to 30,000 bp. Modern humans enter europe at around 40,000 bp. Neanderthals and modern humans shared a common ancestors some 400,000 bp. Neanderthals have influence on ancestors all around the world. Suggests that humans and neanderthals were able to reproduce and create viable offpsring, who then migrated. Some neanderthal genes don"t seem to have other effect. One gene seems to allow human understanding of grammar. Perhaps neanderthals possessed the same capacity for understanding and language as did humans. Estimated to have some 200 to 600 neanderthal genes in human genome (compared to 20,000-25,000 or so in total) We may have outcompeted them and they eventually went extinct.
