МАЭ № 6080-5

Neanderthal

circa 1945

plaster

A well preserved skeleton of a male Neanderthal aged 55-60 was found by the Bouyssonie brothers and L. Bardon in 1908 in the Bouffia Bonneval grotto near Limoges, La Chapelle-aux-Saints commune, France. Anatomically Neanderthals were more advanced than members of the Homo erectus species: their brain was even larger than in modern humans. The cranial pattern, however, remained archaic with a low vault, sloping forehead, supraorbital torus, and projecting jaws. Based on the occipital morphology, Gerasimov claimed that the poise of the head in Neanderthals differed from that in modern humans, suggesting stoop rather than being vertical. Most researchers regard Neanderthals as a separate species (Homo neanderthalensis) that had gone extinct. This view is supported by the analysis of DNA extracted from Neanderthal bones and showing to be genetically quite distinct from modern humans. However, the same results suggest that the gene pool of modern human groups, except Africans, contains a small (1-3%) Neanderthal admixture.

Anthropological plastic reconstructions, lifetime masks. 19th - 20th centuries