The Monte Circeo 1 (Guattari) skull, detail.
Neandertals are the best known of the ancient humans, the only kind of ancient person in most people's imaginations.
I've worked so much on Neandertals because for some questions they're the only group for whom we have a hope of testing hypotheses. It just happens that we've found more of their bones than any other humans from their era -- a lot more in some cases. The skeletal evidence has emerged over more than 150 years, and today we can add the tremendous and growing store of genetic information from ancient DNA. Put these sources of evidence together, and Neandertals are providing the richest and most interesting scientific problems in paleoanthropology today.
Studying these people has given me a great appreciation of Neandertal lives. They faced and overcame challenges that few people living today can imagine.
You can keep up with my posts on Neandertals by checking on the page with all posts tagged "Neandertals" or its RSS feed.
Recent posts about Neandertals:
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I don't view Neandertals as a distinct species, yet still think "introgression" is a useful way to refer to gene flow from them into recent humans.
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I look more closely at a paper presenting the latest known radiocarbon dates for Mousterian in Iberia
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I thumb through some references about Neandertal and MSA use of aquatic resources.
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