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New views of Neanderthal are reshaping prehistory

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https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/...prehistory

EXCERPTS: Neanderthals have long been portrayed as dullards who survived the Ice Age through animalistic tendencies alone. New research into their lives challenges that understanding.

[...] Neanderthal appears to have mastered and used fire for a variety of purposes including cooking after their appearance in Eurasia some 300,000 or more years ago. They also made carvings into ivory, and they almost certainly communicated using speech...

[...] Neanderthals, at least those in the Altai mountain region, traveled upon marriage to their husband’s family group. Yet this flow of women may have been insufficient to ensure the genetic diversity of Neanderthals in general because the numbers involved had become small—if they were ever large. Inbreeding became a problem, which may have been solved in some areas by repeated cross-mating between Neanderthals, Denisovans, and early Homo sapiens. Such cross-breeding can cause its own problems by diluting the gene pool for both or either species. Whether these were voluntary unions or the result of rape, we don’t know. The upshot of all of this mixing appears to be that 1-2% of people today who live outside sub-Saharan Africa have some percentage of Neanderthal genes, while the recently identified Denisovans account for genetic material in about 4-6% of some Southeast Asians and Pacific Islanders.

[...] Elsewhere, we have learned that Neanderthal captured golden eagles and other raptors, presumably to take their talons and feathers for use in various rituals and decorative objects. ...  it is not unimaginable that they did not at least make an attempt to tame them... (MORE - missing details)
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