neanderthals (Page 2)

Some people like broccoli and some people don’t, and those who do may be related to Neanderthals! This is even more likely if you’re a redhead.

Most people find the chemical PTC too bitter, but 25% can’t taste it at all, and these are the people who enjoy broccoli. It’s due to the kinds of taste buds we have on our tongues, and analysis of Neanderthal bones that are almost 50 thousand years old show that they would have liked broccoli fine (assuming there was any around in those days).
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…and some mysteries solved – Scientists have now obtained the entire Neanderthal genome, and 60% of it has been decoded, and there are some surprising findings. First, there is no evidence that Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals interbred. Second, they were genetically as capable of speech as we are, and may well have had complex languages. And we now know that our feet are older than we (modern humans) are. Ancient footprints found in Africa show that the earliest humans walked like us and did so on anatomically modern feet 1.5 million years ago.The footprints were discovered in two 1.5 million-year-old sedimentary layers in northern Kenya. These rarest of impressions yielded information about soft tissue form and structure not normally accessible in fossilized bones.read more

What kinds of meals did Neanderthals eat? It turns out theyate a wider variety of foods than scientists used to thinkthey did?including an early version of SUSHI.

Caves in Gibraltar that they once lived in reveal that theyate seals, dolphins and mussels.

In BBC News, Jonathan Amos quotes researcher Chris Stringeras saying, “These Neanderthals were skinning anddismembering seals. What’s interesting is that they didn’talways cook them; they often ate them raw…”

Researchers now know the Neanderthals were right: fish iseven BETTER for you than they thought!

Amid concerns about thesafety ofeating fish is the fact that the omega-3 fatty acids foundin fish may help lower the risk of cognitive decline andstroke in healthy older adults. read more

New research reveals that Neanderthals, who first appeared around 230,000 to 300,000 years ago, were not dumb, but had the technical and intellectual skills to put them on an equal basis with modern humans. They were capable of making sophisticated tools using a kind of prehistoric superglue that had to be made at a precise temperature.
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