Robert Franciscus

First discovered in a mining quarry in Germany in 1856, the Neanderthals have become the most widely known and most thoroughly studied extinct fossil human group. We now have the skeletal remains of many relatively complete individuals including newborn infants, children, teens, and adults. We also have abundant stone tools, occupation sites, and the animal remains that constituted a large portion of their diet. The past few years have seen exciting new technical developments and discoveries that have sparked renewed debate about their relationship to ourselves and their evolutionary fate. Among these is the direct extraction of DNA from Neanderthal remains and its comparison to the DNA of living people, and the discovery of a 25,000 year old child burial thought by some scholars to show direct anatomical evidence of mating between Neanderthals and early modern humans in Europe. While we have learned a lot, our knowledge of fundamental aspects of Neanderthal behavior, anatomy, and overall lifestyle continues to be refined.

In many ways, Neanderthals are still an enigma. They were the first fossil humans to bury their dead, but they seemed to have lacked the capacity for art and other symbolic expression. Their brains were as large as ours, and yet they appear to have lacked the full range of spoken language. The facial anatomy of Neanderthals is particularly distinctive in comparison to other extinct human groups and living people and has been linked to specialized adaptation to Ice-age climates, and an unusual use of their teeth as tools. The distinctive facial form of Neanderthals, more than anything else, has resulted in the widely held notion that they were a species apart from us. This presentation will highlight the results of recent research into Neanderthal facial anatomy, and what it tells us about their behavior, their relationship to ourselves, and their eventual disappearance sometime between 25,000 and 30,000 years ago.

Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology