by Jonte Rhodes

Created on: February 17, 2009

Neanderthal man was a species of hominid which lived in Europe and parts of Asia, and likely competed with the modern humans for both resources and territory. They eventually became extinct between 30000 and 50000 years ago, probably due to a combination of factors. However their everyday lives are thought to have been somewhat different to homo-sapiens, and their culture and technology differed as well.

Neanderthal man lacked projectile weapons, and due to this had a different hunting method to modern humans at the same time. Instead of being able to chase and attack their prey from a distance, Neanderthals would have had to rely more on ambush hunting, and stabbing their prey from close quarters. This meant that they would routinely come into close contact with their prey, and would as a result tended to suffer from a lot of trauma and fractures to their bodies.

Compared to modern humans, Neanderthals were slightly shorter on average, with the males being around 5,5 and the females around 5,1. However they were also a lot more heavily built, and were a lot stronger and more resilient to damage also. Their legs were shorter and due to their structure, would have meant that they were probably poor runners, stopping them from being effective hunters in open ground.

Neanderthals are also thought to have been completely equal in terms of responsibilities between the sexes. Both men and women would have participated in hunting the large game that they primarily fed on, and other tasks were more shared as well. Whether this was a successful strategy or not is not known, although modern man by comparison tended to divide the labors between men and women, with men doing most of the large hunting.

Primarily Neanderthals were entirely carnivorous, and fed exclusively on large prey species, these are thought to have been ambushed in the dense forests in which Neanderthals lived. Because of this they are thought to have been transitory, and would have likely moved around as the herds of large animals that they hunted migrated.

The children of Neanderthals are known to have grown up a lot faster than in other species perhaps being fully grown and matured by the middle teens. This likely meant that they would be able to participate in hunting sooner, and would therefore need to rely on the care of adults for less time. Also the faster the young of a species can mature into adults, the sooner and longer they can have children of their own for, essentially making this a good skill

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