2023 could likely be viewed as a coming-of-age story for our Neanderthal cousins, as they further shed their brutish image, revealing themselves as skilled hunters and surprising artisans. We learned so much about the Neanderthals capabilities, that some researchers even started to question whether they were really a separate species to us!
So let’s dive in to some of the biggest discoveries in human evolution from 2023…
The Oldest Art in the World Wasn’t Made By Homo sapiens
One of the most hotly debated questions in the history of Neanderthal research has been whether they created art. In the past few years, the consensus has become that they did, sometimes. But, like their relations at either end of the hominid evolutionary tree, chimpanzees and Homo sapiens, Neanderthals’ behavior varied culturally from group to group and over time.
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Neanderthals Hunted Elephants Twice the Weight of Modern Ones
Evidence has emerged from Germany dated to 125,000 years ago showing Neanderthals hunted elephants twice the size of contemporaneous ones.
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Reevaluating Neanderthals: Are They Actually the Same Species as Us?
Neanderthals have been recognized as a species distinct from modern humans for quite some time. But if a trio of researchers from universities in Portugal, Italy and Spain get their way, this designation may soon change. These archaeologists believe Neanderthals were not a different species at all but instead were simply another variety of humans, a conclusion that they draw after completing an analysis of the ingenious way that Neanderthals used fire to satisfy their survival needs.
