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[Antonio Brittenham]

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The face of a lifelike Neanderthal model created for the Natural History Museum by Dutch artists, the Kennis brothers. The scientifically accurate model is based on 40,000-year-old Homo neanderthalensis remains found in Belgium.

Human evolution expert Prof Chris Stringer has studied Neanderthals his entire career. Here, he tells us what scientists have uncovered about the lifestyle of these early humans, their distinctive characteristics and what they were like.

Current evidence from both fossils and DNA suggests that Neanderthal and modern human lineages separated at least 500,000 years ago. Some genetic calibrations place their divergence at about 650,000 years ago.

Both dating issues and fossil anatomy mean that scientists are currently uncertain whether the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans was Homo heidelbergensis, Homo antecessor or another species.

The Neanderthals have a long evolutionary history. The earliest known examples of Neanderthal-like fossils are around 430,000 years old. The best-known Neanderthals lived between about 130,000 and 40,000 years ago, after which all physical evidence of them vanishes.

Neanderthal populations were adaptable, living in cold steppe environments in England and Siberia about 60,000 years ago, and in warm temperate woodlands in Spain and Italy about 120,000 years ago.

Their face was also distinctive. The central part of the face protruded forward and was dominated by a very big, wide nose. Some scientists think this feature may have been an adaptation to living in colder, drier environments. The large internal volume of the nose would have acted to moisten and warm the air they breathed.

Their front teeth were large, and scratch-marks show they were regularly used like a third hand when preparing food and other materials. Unlike modern humans, Neanderthals didn't have much of a chin.

Side views of an approximately 50,000-year-old Neanderthal skull from La Ferrassie, France, next to an approximately 20,000-year-old Homo sapiens fossil from Abri Pataud, France. The modern human has a more rounded skull and lacks the prominent brow ridge present in the Neanderthal.

Neanderthals had strong, muscular bodies, and wide hips and shoulders. Adults grew to about 1.50-1.75m tall and weighed about 64-82kg. Early Neanderthals were taller on average than later Neanderthals, but their weight was about the same.

Their short, stocky physiques were suited to cold environments. The bulky trunk, in addition to their short lower leg and lower arm bones, gave Neanderthals proportions that would have minimised the skin's surface area, presumably to conserve heat under the predominantly colder conditions of the last 200,000 years.

Despite their reputation as being primitive 'cavemen', Neanderthals were actually very intelligent and accomplished humans. These were no 'ape-men'. So it's unfair to them that the word Neanderthal is used as an insult today.

Around 300,000 years ago Neanderthals developed an innovative stone technology known as the Levallois technique. This involved making pre-shaped stone cores that could be finessed into a finished tool at a later time. It meant Neanderthals were free to travel away from sources of raw material and yet be able to make tools when needed.

Because many Neanderthal fossils and artefacts have been found in caves, the species became synonymous with the idea of cavemen. But many early modern humans also lived in caves - some of the most famous examples being the original Cro-Magnon Man, found in France, and Cheddar Man, who was found in Gough's Cave and lived in Somerset around 10,000 years ago.

Cast of a Neanderthal burial in Kebara Cave, Israel, from around 60,000 years ago. The position of the upper limbs suggests the body was deposited in the grave before rigor mortis set in. The head is absent. Some scientists believe it was removed after burial, but we don't know why.

Some of this jewellery was apparently fashioned from eagle talons. The oldest examples are about 130,000 years old. Pierced animal teeth and worked ivory have been found at Neanderthal sites such as the Grotte du Renne cave in France.

Modifications on these 130,000-year-old white-tailed eagle talons from the Krapina Neanderthal site in Croatia suggest they may have been part of jewellery such as a necklace or bracelet. Luka Mjeda, Zagreb (source: EurekAlert)

A study published in Science in 2018 found evidence that some Palaeolithic artwork in Spain was made by Neanderthals, as they dated to a time long before modern humans were in the region. Created using red pigment, the Spanish cave paintings included hand stencils and geometric shapes.

'Some previous claims for Neanderthal symbolic behaviour have dating uncertainties or lie within inferred overlaps between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens 40-60,000 years ago,' explains Prof Stringer, 'meaning that they could still be attributed to modern humans, or to the influence of modern humans on Neanderthal behaviour.'

However, food remains preserved in the calculus (hardened tartar) around their teeth show that the Neanderthal diet also included various plants, either collected directly or from eating the stomach contents of their plant-eating prey. Neanderthals also ate fungi.

It's very difficult to determine whether Neanderthals had spoken language as the tissue associated with the voice box doesn't preserve. However, they did have a similar vocal anatomy and their ear bones suggest they had a similar range of hearing to us.

The most recent fossil and archaeological evidence of Neanderthals is from about 40,000 years ago in Europe. After that point they appear to have gone physically extinct, although part of them lives on in the DNA of humans alive today.

We don't yet know. One view is that we are the reason. Early modern humans started to arrive in Europe more than 40,000 years ago. Perhaps Neanderthals were unable to cope with competition for resources from incoming groups of Homo sapiens.

Ancient DNA began to be recovered from Neanderthal fossils in 1997, and this has led on to the reconstruction of several complete genomes. These indicate that Neanderthals ranging from Spain to Siberia were relatively low in numbers and diversity during their last 20,000 years.

It seems that regular and sometimes extreme climatic fluctuations continually fragmented Neanderthal groups during the last 100,000 years, preventing them from building up large populations and continuous distributions across their range.

Neanderthals did not all become extinct at the same time. Their disappearance may have been staggered, suggesting that they were replaced by early modern humans as a result of local population extinctions, rather than being quickly overrun.

When severe changes in temperature happened rapidly, the plants and animals Neanderthals relied on were also affected. Faced with such conditions, only the most resourceful and adaptable could survive.

It was named as a new human species, Homo neanderthalensis, eight years later in 1864. It was the first ancient human species ever identified and is now known as Neanderthal 1 or Feldhofer 1, after the original name of the cave where it was found.

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This was the first well-written book I discovered when I went to the library as a young teen in hopes of finding more storytellers like Jean M. Auel who had clearly done their research about life in the prehistoric era.

He implanted that embryo into a human volunteer, named the resulting baby Ember, and raised her as his own. As she grew up, she began to explore her unusual past. She had many of the same questions that people who are transracially adopted have about their identity, and those questions lead to some very interesting developments in the plot that I still mull over to this day.

In Hominids, the first book of this series, humans from our Earth meet a modern-day Neanderthal from a parallel universe where their species survived and humans died out tens of thousands of years ago.

Im reading Earths Children Series for the second time. First time I was 17. Im now 50. MY what a difference 33 years makes in reading them. I see SO much I missed then. Of course at 17 I had no life experience. And way different interest in them. Yes the over descriptions of flowers and herbs and such are a bit much but they still add so much to the vividness of the surroundings and experience. Im currently on The Plains of Passage and Im sad that I only have two left. So Im looking for books that are similar because Im not ready to give them up anytime soon. I saw there is a 7th book, by Andy Black called The Sacred Mountain..I wondered if anyone had read it and what they thought?? Its supposedly a continuation 10 years after the last book?

Modern humans and Neanderthals: Did they or didn't they? The sordid truth is out, and its not what scientists expected. The closest-ever look at the Neanderthal genome reveals that yes, we did interbreed. But scientists are still fuzzy on the where, the when, and the why.

If you watched Becoming Human when it premiered this fall, you might be feeling some scientific whiplash. At the time, genetic analysis suggested that modern humans and Neanderthals kept to themselves and didn't share their, ahem, genetic material. So why the sudden turnaround? The first time around, scientists based their conclusions on mitochondrial DNA. This time, researchers looked at nuclear DNA, which provides a more sensitive comparison to the DNA of modern humans.

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