The Neanderthal had a bigger brain. Why is the human brain smaller than the Neanderthal brain?

Man has always been interested in his origin. Who he is, where he came from and how he appeared - for a long time these were one of the main questions. In ancient Greece, during the period of the birth of the first sciences, the problem was fundamental in the emerging philosophy. And now this topic has not lost its relevance. Although over the past centuries, scientists have managed to move far ahead in the problem of the appearance of man, there are more and more questions.

None of the researchers can be completely sure that the accepted hypotheses of the origin of life, including the appearance of man, are correct. Moreover, both centuries ago and today, anthropologists are waging real wars of scientists, defending their ideas and refuting the theories of opponents.

One of the most well-studied ancient humans is the Neanderthal. This is an extinct representative of the human race, who lived 130 - 20 thousand years ago.

History of the origin of the name

In the west of Germany, near Düsseldorf, is the Neandertal Gorge. It got its name from the German pastor and composer Neander. In the middle of the 19th century, the skull of an ancient man was found here. Two years later, the anthropologist Schaafhausen, who was involved in his research, introduced the term "Neanderthal" into scientific circulation. Thanks to him, the found bones were not sold, and they are now in the Rhineland Museum.

The term "Neanderthal" (photos obtained as a result of the reconstruction of his appearance can be seen below) does not have clear boundaries due to the vastness and heterogeneity of this group of hominids. The status of this ancient man is also not precisely defined. Some of the scientists classify it as a subspecies of Homo sapiens, some distinguish it as a separate species and even genus. Now the ancient Neanderthal man is the most studied species of fossil hominids. Moreover, bones belonging to this species are still being found.

How it was discovered

The remains of these representatives were found the first of the hominids. Ancient people (Neanderthals) were discovered in 1829 in Belgium. Then this find was not given any importance, and its importance was proved much later. Then their remains were found in England. And only the third discovery in 1856 near Düsseldorf gave the name to the Neanderthal and proved the importance of all previous fossils found.

The quarry workers opened a grotto filled with silt. After clearing it, they found a part of a human skull and several massive bones near the entrance. The ancient remains were acquired by the German paleontologist Johann Fulroth, who later described them.

Neanderthal - structural features and classification

The found bones of fossil people were carefully studied, and on the basis of research, scientists were able to recreate an approximate appearance. The Neanderthal is undoubtedly one of the first people, since his resemblance to is obvious. However, there are also a huge number of differences.

The average height of an ancient person was 165 centimeters. He had a dense physique and, moreover, in terms of the volume of the cranium, the ancient people, the Neanderthals, surpassed the modern man. The arms were short, more like paws. Broad shoulders and a barrel-shaped chest indicate great strength.

Powerful very small chin, short neck - another feature of the Neanderthals. Most likely, these features were formed under the influence of the difficult conditions of the Ice Age, in which ancient people lived 100 - 50 thousand years ago.

The structure of the Neanderthals suggests that they had a large muscle mass, a heavy skeleton, ate mainly meat and were better adapted to the subarctic climate than the Cro-Magnons.

They had a primitive speech, most likely consisting of a large number of consonants.

Since these ancient people lived on a vast territory, there were several types of them. Some had features closer to the animal-like appearance, others looked like a modern person.

Habitat of Homo neanderthalensis

From the remains found today, it is known that the Neanderthal (an ancient man who lived millennia ago) lived in Europe, Central Asia and the East. They were not found in Africa. Later, this fact became one of the proofs that Homo neanderthalensis is not the ancestor of modern man, but his closest relative.

How did you manage to reconstruct the appearance of an ancient person

Beginning with Schaafhausen, the "godfather" of the Neanderthal, many attempts have been made to recreate the appearance of this ancient hominid from fragments of its skull and skeleton. The Soviet anthropologist and sculptor Mikhail Gerasimov achieved great success in this. He created his own method of restoring the appearance of a person using skeletal remains. He made more than two hundred sculptural portraits of historical figures. Gerasimov also reconstructed the appearance of the late Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon. The laboratory of anthropological reconstruction created by him continues to successfully restore the appearance of ancient people even now.

Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons - is there anything in common between them?

These two representatives of the human race lived for some time in the same era and existed side by side for twenty thousand years. Scientists attribute the Cro-Magnons to the early representatives of modern man. They appeared in Europe 40 - 50 thousand years ago and were very different from the Neanderthals physically and mentally. They were tall (180 cm), had a straight forehead without protruding brow ridges, a narrow nose and a more clearly defined chin. In appearance, these people were very close to modern man.

The cultural achievements of the Cro-Magnons surpass all the successes of their predecessors. Having inherited from their ancestors a large developed brain and primitive technologies, they made a giant leap forward in their development in a short time. Their discoveries are amazing. For example, Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons lived in small groups in caves and tents made of skins. But it was the latter who created the first settlements and finally formed. They tamed the dog, performed funeral rites, painted hunting scenes on the walls of caves, knew how to make tools not only from stone, but also from horn and bones. Cro-Magnons had articulate speech.

Thus, the differences between these two types of ancient man were significant.

Homo neanderthalensis and modern man

For a long time in scientific circles there were disputes about which of the representatives of ancient people should be considered the ancestor of man. Now it is known for sure that the Neanderthal (photos taken on the basis of the reconstruction of the remains of their bones clearly confirm this) is physically and externally very different from Homo sapiens and is not an ancestor of modern man.

Previously, there was a different point of view on this. But recent studies have given reason to believe that the reasonable lived in Africa, which lay outside the habitat of Homo neanderthalensis. In the entire long history of studying the remains of their bones, they have never been found on the African continent. But this issue was finally resolved in 1997, when Neanderthal DNA was deciphered at the University of Munich. The differences in genes found by scientists were too great.

The study of the Homo neanderthalensis genome continued in 2006. It has been scientifically proven that the divergence in the genes of this type of ancient person from the modern one began about 500 thousand years ago. To decipher the DNA, bones found in Croatia, Russia, Germany and Spain were used.

Therefore, we can say with confidence that the Neanderthal is an extinct species close to us, which is not a direct ancestor of Homo sapiens. This is another branch of the vast family of hominids, which includes, in addition to humans and their extinct ancestors, progressive primates.

In 2010, in the course of ongoing research, Neanderthal genes were found in many modern peoples. This suggests that there was mixing between Homo neanderthalensis and Cro-Magnons.

Life and life of ancient people

The Neanderthal man (an ancient man who lived in the Middle Paleolithic) first used the most primitive tools that he inherited from his predecessors. Gradually, new, more advanced forms of guns began to appear. They were still made of stone, but became more diverse and complex in processing techniques. In total, about sixty types of products were found, which are actually variations of three main types: axes, side-scrapers and pointed points.

During the excavations of Neanderthal sites, chisels, piercers, scrapers and serrated tools were also found.

Scrapers helped in the dressing and dressing of animals and their skins, the pointed ones had an even wider scope. They were used as daggers, knives for butchering carcasses, as spearheads and arrowheads. Ancient Neanderthals used bone to make tools. These were mainly awls and points, but larger items were also found - daggers and clubs made of horn.

As for the weapons, they were still extremely primitive. Its main type, apparently, was a spear. This conclusion was made on the basis of studies of animal bones found at the Neanderthal site.

These ancient people were not lucky with the climate. If their predecessors lived in a warm period, then by the time Homo neanderthalensis appeared, a severe cooling began, glaciers began to form. The landscape was like a tundra. Therefore, the life of the Neanderthals was extremely harsh and full of dangers.

As before, caves served as their dwelling, but buildings gradually began to appear in the open - tents made of animal skins and structures made of mammoth bones.

Lessons

Most of the time of the ancient man was occupied by the search for food. According to various studies, they were not scavengers, but hunters, and this activity suggests consistency in actions. According to scientists, the main commercial species for Neanderthals were large mammals. Since the ancient man lived on a vast territory, the victims were different: mammoths, wild bulls and horses, woolly rhinos, deer. An important game animal was the cave bear.

Despite the fact that hunting for large animals became their main occupation, Neanderthals continued to be engaged in gathering. According to studies, they were not completely carnivorous, and their diet included roots, nuts and berries.

culture

The Neanderthal is not a primitive creature, as was thought in the 19th century. The ancient man, who lived in the Middle Paleolithic era, formed a cultural direction, which was called the Mousterian culture. At this time, the birth of a new form of social life begins - the tribal community. Neanderthals took care of the members of their kind. The hunters did not eat the prey on the spot, but carried it home, to the cave to the rest of the tribesmen.

Homo neanderthalensis did not yet know how to draw or create animal figures from stone or clay. But at the site of his camps, stones with skillfully made recesses were found. Ancient people also knew how to apply parallel scratches to bone tools and make jewelry from drilled animal teeth and shells.

The high cultural development of the Neanderthals is also evidenced by their funeral rite. More than twenty graves have been found. The bodies were located in shallow pits in the pose of a sleeping person with bent arms and legs.

Ancient people also possessed the rudiments of medical knowledge. They knew how to heal fractures and dislocations. Some finds indicate that primitive people took care of the wounded.

Homo neanderthalensis - the mystery of the extinction of ancient man

When and why did the last Neanderthal disappear? This mystery has occupied the minds of scientists for many years. There is no definitively proven answer to this question. Modern man does not know why the dinosaurs disappeared, and cannot say what led to the extinction of his closest fossil relative.

For a long time there was an opinion that the Neanderthals were supplanted by their more adapted and developed rival, the Cro-Magnon. And there is a lot of evidence for this theory. It is known that it appeared in Europe in the range of Homo neanderthalensis about 50 thousand years ago, and after 30 thousand years the last Neanderthal disappeared. It is believed that these twenty centuries of existence side by side in a small area became a time of fierce competition between the two species for resources. Cro-Magnon won thanks to the numerical superiority and better adaptability.

Not all scientists agree with this theory. Some put forward their own, no less interesting hypotheses. Many hold the view that the Neanderthals were killed by climate change. The fact is that 30 thousand years ago Europe began a long period of cold and dry weather. Perhaps this led to the disappearance of the ancient man, who could not adapt to the changed conditions of life.

A rather unusual theory was put forward by Simon Underdown, a specialist at Oxford University. He believes that the Neanderthals were struck down by a disease that is characteristic of cannibals. As you know, eating a person was not uncommon at that time.

Another version of the disappearance of this ancient man is assimilation with the Cro-Magnons.

The extinction of Homo neanderthalensis occurred unevenly in time. On the Iberian Peninsula, representatives of this species of fossil people lived a millennium after the disappearance of the rest in Europe.

Neanderthals in modern culture

The appearance of an ancient man, his dramatic struggle for existence and the mystery of disappearance have more than once become themes for literary works and films. Joseph Henri Roni Sr. wrote the novel Fight for the Fire, which was highly acclaimed by critics and was filmed in 1981. The film of the same name received a prestigious award - the Oscar. In 1985, the painting “The Tribe of the Cave Bear” was created, which told about how a girl from the Cro-Magnon family, after the death of her tribe, began to be brought up by Neanderthals.

A new feature film dedicated to ancient people was created in 2010. This is "The Last Neanderthal" - the story of Eo, the only survivor of his kind. In this picture, the cause of the death of Homo neanderthalensis was not only the Cro-Magnons, who attacked their camps and killed, but also an unknown disease. It also considers the possibility of assimilation of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. The film was shot in a supposedly documentary style and on a good scientific basis.

In addition, a large number of films are devoted to Neanderthals, telling about their life, occupations, culture, and considering theories of extinction.

Scientists have identified significant differences in the development of the brain of Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, which may partly explain evolutionary success. Homo sapiens. An article by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig is published in the journal current biology. Briefly, the results of the work are given in the Institute's press release.

The brain size of Neanderthals is not very different from the brain H. sapiens Moreover, there has been a lot of recent evidence that H. neanderthalensis they knew how to make quite "cunning" tools, which were comparable in complexity to the tools of a reasonable person.

At H. sapiens intellectual capabilities depend not only on the size of the brain, but also on its organization. The authors of the new work studied the structure of the Neanderthal brain by analyzing the bones of the skull - although the soft tissues of the brain do not persist for a long time, they leave a distinct mark on the inside of the skull. Scientists compared such marks left on the bones of the skull of a Neanderthal child under one year old and on the skull of an adult. H. neanderthalensis. Based on the data obtained, the authors were able to model the dynamics of the development of various parts of the brain as Neanderthals matured.

It turned out that in the first months after birth, the shape of the brain in representatives of two species of the genus Homo approximately the same. But then, in a reasonable person, the parietal and temporal regions begin to predominantly increase in size, while in Neanderthals such selective growth did not occur.

Scientists note that people with defects in these two departments have impaired social communication and speech skills. This fact indirectly indicates that Neanderthals could not develop these skills necessary to build complex societies to the same extent as H. sapiens.

In order to compensate for the small number of studied Neanderthal remains, the authors developed a computer model of brain development. H. sapiens, in which there is no predominant increase in the parietal and temporal regions. The final structure of the brain in this case was practically no different from the Neanderthal brain, the ScienceNOW portal clarifies.

Recently, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology deciphered the Neanderthal genome. His preliminary analysis and comparison with the Homo sapiens genome showed that these species. In addition, there has been much recent evidence that H. sapiens had children with other members of the family Homo. You can read more about this.

Neanderthals are a kind of alternative humanity, people who lived in Europe and Western Asia (in the Middle East to Central Asia, Altai inclusive), who developed relatively isolated and independently over hundreds of thousands of years, without any special ties with other humankind, which existed elsewhere at the same time. Our ancestors at that time lived in Africa, in East Asia, and Europe and West Asia were the territories of the Neanderthals.

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Neanderthals evolved from their ancestors Homo heidelbergensis smoothly and gradually. They can be considered the only super-native Europeans. The ancestors of the Neanderthals were the first to populate Europe and for all subsequent centuries, millennia and hundreds of millennia existed there. during this time they created their own unique cultures: this is the Mousterian (Mousterian culture), although some sapiens also used it, and the Mykok culture. They had their own way of life: Neanderthals were almost predatory. And in fact, these are the most predatory of all primates, which there are. Today, the most predatory modern populations are the Eskimos that exist in Alaska, in Greenland - who practically eat only meat. They are approaching the level of the Neanderthals.

Alekseev V.P. Hominids of the second half of the Middle and Early Upper Pleistocene of Europe // Fossil hominids and human origin. Proceedings of the Institute of Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, new. Ser., vol. 92, M., Nauka, 1966, p. 143-181.

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Neanderthals are unique in that their brain volume was the same as ours, and if you count in a certain way, even more than ours, on average. In other words, there were larger individuals, smaller ones, but on average their size was slightly larger than ours. However, their brain structure was different, it was more flattened, with flattened frontal lobes, very wide, with a huge occipital lobe. The skull was rather peculiar: huge brow ridges, large jaws, but not protruding forward, the back of the head sharply protruding back. Neanderthals are distinguished by their adaptability to very cold living conditions, since they lived during the alternation of glacial and interglacial periods. True, as paleontological reconstructions show, most Neanderthals still lived in a more or less warm climate. Nevertheless, they lived in a rather cold climate, despite the fact that their culture was rather low, which is why their body acquired such hypertrophied proportions: very broad shoulders, a wide pelvis, a large barrel-shaped chest, powerful muscles. Well, the closer the shape of the body to the ball and the more muscular it is, the better it is to keep warm, the less heat loss. Again, modern ones are as close as possible to this option. But the Neanderthals were even more powerful.

That is, Neanderthals were maximally adapted to their habitat. They lived and hunted for thousands of years. Moreover, they hunted mammoth, woolly rhinos, bison, cave bears, that is, large animals.

Alekseev VP Paleoanthropology of the globe and the formation of human races. Paleolithic. M., Nauka, 1978, 284 p.

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About 40 thousand years ago, Neanderthals became sharply smaller. Although before that there were few of them, since Neanderthals were predators, and there are never many of them. But, nevertheless, they became very few. And the last Neanderthals, as far as is known, died out about 28 thousand years ago. But here, in the range from 40 to 28, very small scattered groups remained, mainly in hard-to-reach mountain regions: in the Pyrenees, in the Alps, in the Caucasus, in the Balkans, that is, in the most mountainous hard-to-reach areas. Apparently, where the Cro-Magnons did not reach, that is, people of a modern structure, where sapiens have already come last. And in this time interval from 40 to 28 thousand years, Neanderthals are replaced by Cro-Magnons, our ancestors, sapiens.

There are several concepts of what happened to the Neanderthals, where they went. There are three main points of view. The first point of view, the main author of which is considered to be Alesh Hrdlichka, is an American anthropologist (although he did not invent it, he developed it in full). This view says that the Neanderthals were our ancestors, that they were some stage of evolution that gradually changed, evolved and eventually became a group of Cro-Magnons. But, despite the fact that this point of view in the middle of the 20th century was sometimes even dominant among anthropologists, since the 70s of the 20th century it has not been considered relevant and no one adheres to it at present.

Bunak VV Genus Homo, its origin and subsequent evolution. M., Nauka, 1980.

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The problem is that morphologically, Neanderthals were very different from us. And when we study cave deposits, we see a sharp change both in culture and morphology. We don't have any smooth transition. So there was clearly a change. A second concept arose that the Neanderthals were literally exterminated by the Cro-Magnons. The question remains how they did it, forcefully or not. And they have nothing to do with the modern population. This point of view at the end of the 20th century and at the very beginning of the 21st century was dominant, but nevertheless, since the 30s of the 20th century and later, finds of people with intermediate features were found, which, in terms of features, seem to be Neanderthals, but parts seem to be Cro-Magnons. An example of this is Saint Sezer in France, or Skhul in Israel, or Qafzeh in the same place in Israel. In these areas, they are almost sapiens, but with Neanderthal features. Accordingly, a third concept arose, which says that Neanderthals could still have crossed paths with modern humans. That is, they were more or less independent, but they made some kind of genetic contribution to the modern population. Well, the question was when and where they gave this contribution. This point of view has actually existed since the 19th century, but somehow it has always been in third roles.

Vishnyatsky L. B. Neanderthals: the history of a failed humanity. L., Nestor-History, 2010.

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There are several theories as to why they disappeared. It is flattering to think that the Cro-Magnons somehow surpassed the Neanderthals in intelligence (they definitely did not surpass the physical strength), especially since the culture of the Cro-Magnons was noticeably better than that of the Neanderthals. Neanderthals were mowed down by natural disasters. One of these global cataclysms, which not only crippled, but created the Neanderthals, was the eruption of the Toba volcano in Sumatra. A grandiose eruption, one of the most powerful in the entire history of the planet, after which a volcanic winter set in for almost two years. This happened 73.5 thousand years ago. At this time, the Neanderthals acquired their hyperarctic proportions. But their number has drastically decreased. And to a greater extent, perhaps, Neanderthals were crippled by other eruptions, on a much smaller scale, about 40 thousand years ago. Well, a little more, 40-42 thousand years ago occurred. Eruptions of the so-called Phlegrean fields in Italy and the eruption of Kazbek in the Caucasus. Very powerful eruptions, which, with an interval of 2 thousand years, poisoned the soil, air, water, and there was also a volcanic winter, but on the scale of Europe and the Caucasus, after which a decrease in the species of ungulates, the extinction of, say, bison, including Neanderthals . It turns out that the Neanderthals were actually not so much inferior to the Cro-Magnons, but they were simply unlucky with the place and time. And when the Cro-Magnons once again looked out of the corner of their eye into Europe, they found that there was practically no one there and it was possible to settle in empty territories. On the other hand, there is such a version that the heyday of the Upper Paleolithic (that is, the era of the first modern people, Cro-Magnons, about 40-30-20 thousand years ago) is associated with the competition of Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals. That is, when they collided, they began to compete and, accordingly, both of them tried to overtake each other. The Neanderthals were less successful. And the Cro-Magnons, which again is flattering to think to us, since we are the descendants of the Cro-Magnons, got ahead. And the Neanderthals were on the sidelines of the evolutionary and safely disappeared. And the Cro-Magnons replaced them.

Drobyshevsky S. V. Predecessors. Ancestors? Part V "Paleoanthropes". 2nd edition. M., publishing house LKI, 2010, 312 p., ill.

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Most recently, in the 2010s, there were, in particular, studies of the skeleton of a Neanderthal child from the Mezmaiskaya cave in the Caucasus, made by St. Petersburg archaeologists, anthropologists, who show that in the Mezmaiskaya cave, the number of Neanderthals, apparently, was most fundamentally influenced by eruptions volcanoes. That is, this is one of the strongest confirmations of the catastrophic hypothesis of the extinction of the Neanderthals. On the other hand, there are sites in the European Arctic, which show that Neanderthals lived quite late, after these catastrophic eruptions. Perhaps some groups of Neanderthals survived very late, when the whole of Europe was practically occupied by the Cro-Magnons. In fact, archaeological data for different regions show a slightly different picture. In the south of Europe, there may have been a mass extinction (it is possible that the first Cro-Magnons also died out there safely), and in the north, in Siberia, for example, in Altai, some groups of Neanderthals could have survived for a very long time. In Spain, such a situation with the “Ebro border” is known: at almost the same time, Cro-Magnons lived on the northern bank of the Ebro River, and Neanderthals lived on the southern bank - the latest, but in very poor conditions (there were edaphic - dry, arid - steppes ). And there the last Neanderthals lived out their lives. Determining the moment of existence of the last Neanderthals is now the most interesting moment in this area.

Roginsky Ya. Ya. Extra-European paleoanthropes // Fossil hominids and human origin. Proceedings of the Institute of Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, new. Ser., vol. 92, M., Nauka, 1966b, pp. 205-226.

Patte E. Les Neanderthaliens. Anatomy, physiology, comparisons. Paris, Masson et Cie, 1955, 559 p.

Anthropologists classify Neanderthals as ancient fossils - paleoanthropes, who lived on our planet during the Paleolithic in Europe, Africa and Asia 200 - 35 thousand years ago. For the first time the remains of these creatures were found in 1856 in the Neandertal valley (Germany). It is thanks to the place of discovery that the species got its name. Neanderthals are considered an intermediate link between archanthropes and fossil humans of a modern physical type. Neanderthals were small, no taller than 160 centimeters, but had a large brain up to 1700 cm3. Many paleontologists consider Western European Neanderthals to be a special branch in human evolution that was a dead end. Nevertheless, the Neanderthals from Western Asia had progressive features that bring them closer to the ancient people of modern appearance.

The average height of men of this species was from 164 to 168 centimeters, and they weighed about 78 kilograms. Neanderthal women grew no more than 156 centimeters, and weighed up to 65 kilograms, respectively.
The brain volume of Neanderthals did not exceed the average brain volume of modern humans and was about 1500-1900 cm3. The skull had a long and low arch, the face was flat, and the superciliary arches were massive, the forehead was low and strongly sloping back. The jaws were long and wide, in which were large teeth, strongly protruding forward. The chin protrusion was absent. Neanderthals were mostly left-handed, as evidenced by the wear and tear of their teeth.
They had more massive bodies than modern humans. The chest was barrel-shaped, the torso was long, but the legs were relatively short. Scientists suggest that such a dense physique of Neanderthals was an adaptation to a colder climate, because. in connection with a decrease in the ratio of the surface of the body to its volume, the body's heat transfer through the skin decreases. The bones of the skeleton were very strong, which is associated with well-developed muscles. Neanderthals were much bigger and stronger than modern humans. The bones of the skeleton were also much stronger than ours, since they carried a large amount of muscle.

The first Neanderthal skull was found in 1829 in Belgium. The second skull was found in 1848 near the British military base on Gibraltar. But they were able to correctly classify these finds only after the discovery of a complete copy of the Neanderthal skeleton in 1856.
The volume of the Neanderthal skull was larger than that of modern humans. The configuration of the frontal bones was sloping and strongly sloping back. The eye sockets were very large, with bony protrusions in the form of arches hanging over them. The massive lower jaw very little resembled a human jaw, had a streamlined smooth shape and did not protrude forward. Only a few types of teeth from the jaws of Neanderthals matched in appearance with ordinary human teeth. For the first time, it was Mr. Fuhlrott who decided to show such an unusual skull to specialists. This accidental find from the grotto caused a sensation in scientific circles. The skull of this creature had significant differences from the human, but at the same time there were a number of similar features. Experts who examined the skull unwittingly concluded that a distant ancestor of modern humans was discovered.
But only in 1858 this hypothetical progenitor was given the name Neanderthal, he was perfectly able to fit into the new theory of Darwin, which seized the scientific minds at the end of the 19th century.
Charles Darwin (1809-1882) was able to create a fairly logical and demonstrative concept that claimed that all modern humans descended from apes through the processes of biological evolution. It was Neanderthals who began to be considered a transitional species between ape-like ancestors and humans. Supporters of Darwinism believed that Neanderthals had a primitive mind, and were able to create stone tools and live in organized communities.