244 INTRODUCTION TO EVOLUTION 



They had stocky chests, broad shoulders, and large hands, though the fin- 

 gers were short. 



The Neanderthal culture was of the Old Stone Age type known as 

 Mousterian; chipped flint tools and crude carvings remain as evidence. 

 Some of the skeletons give evidence of reverent burial and are accom- 

 panied by ornaments and flint tools; the implication would seem to be that 

 these people had some form of belief in immortality of the spirit. 



Neanderthal peoples are best known from Europe. Fossils from other 

 portions of the globe indicate that people of this general type, but difi'er- 

 ing in details, were living in such diverse places as Palestine (Mount Car- 

 mel), Rhodesia (Rhodesian man). South Africa (Saldanha man), Iraq 

 (Shanidar man), and Java (Solo man). While these remains exhibit 

 "neanderthaloid" characteristics, some of them also resemble typical 

 Homo sapiens in certain respects, thereby again emphasizing the human 

 variability mentioned previously. The skeletons found in caves on Mount 

 Carmel in Palestine are interesting in that both neanderthaloid and Homo 

 sapiens characteristics are represented. The various skeletons are some- 

 times regarded as having belonged to members of a single population. 

 These people have been variously considered to be ( 1 ) hybrids between 

 typical Neanderthals and typical Homo sapiens or (2) intermediate forms 

 in the ancestry of typical Neanderthals, representing stages by which the 

 earlier transitional forms (pp. 240-242) gave rise to the classic Neander- 

 thals. It is possible, however, that the skeletons do not represent members 

 of a single population but that "an early variety of modern man lived side 

 by side, so to speak, with a Neanderthal variety" (Stewart, 1960). 



This raises the question as to whether or not a distinct line can be drawn 

 between Neanderthal man and Homo sapiens. Because typical Neander- 

 thal peoples are possessed of a set of distinctive characteristics, most in- 

 vestigators conclude that while Neanderthal man should be placed in the 

 same genus with ourselves he should be regarded as a separate species, 

 i.e., that he should be classified as Homo neanderthalensis. In view, how- 

 ever, of the varying combinations of characteristics noted above, as wefl as 

 of the possibility that Neanderthal peoples and Homo sapiens might have 

 intermarried if they came into contact, a minority of investigators place 

 Neanderthal man in our own species, sapiens (Mayr, 1950). If desired he 

 may be regarded as constituting a separate subspecies in that species and 

 be called Homo sapiens neanderthalensis . 



The "extreme" or "classic" Neanderthals (i.e., those most unlike mod- 

 ern Homo sapiens) apparently lived only in Europe and became extinct 

 there before the end of the last glacial period. They were succeeded by 



