During the entire span of the Pleistocene up to the fourth or Würm glaciation, bands of human beings, probably including both sapiens and non-sapiens forms, shifted slowly from continent to continent with the changes of climate. During the fourth glaciation, the parts of Europe and Asia immediately south of the ice sheet, and in the tundra belt, were for the first time, under such conditions, inhabited. This was by Neanderthal man, who lived in caves, warmed himself over fires, and could, judging by his tool kit, dress skins, although, in default of needles, he was probably a poor tailor. The European branch of this species was a marginal, primitive form, and barely survived the fourth ice. During the Laufen interglacial, Neanderthal was replaced in Europe by pure and mixed sapiens men coming from the east in several waves. With the last major ice advance, Würm II, sapiens man stayed on, for by now he had developed the knowledge and skill to make warm clothing, as numerous skin-working tools and fine bone needles attest. In the meanwhile, other sapiens men must have lived in more favorable climates, as much on vegetable food as on meat. Some of these developed the microlithic cultural technique, which involved striking off small blades for composite instruments, and this spread to Europe north of the Pyrenees only after the retreat of the last ice. These sapiens men were, as we shall see, quite different from those in the North. The post-glacial movements of human groups completely changed the racial complexion of much of the habitable earth.
NEANDERTHAL
Neanderthal skulls were first discovered in Engis Caves (fr), in what is now Belgium (1829) by Philippe-Charles Schmerling and in Forbes' Quarry, Gibraltar (1848), both prior to the type specimen discovery in a limestone quarry of the Neander Valley in Erkrath near Düsseldorf in August 1856, three years before Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species was published.
The type specimen, dubbed Neanderthal 1, consisted of a skull cap, two femora, three bones from the right arm, two from the left arm, part of the left ilium, fragments of a scapula, and ribs. The workers who recovered this material originally thought it to be the remains of a bear. They gave the material to amateur naturalist Johann Carl Fuhlrott, who turned the fossils over to anatomist Hermann Schaaffhausen. The discovery was jointly announced in 1857.
The original Neanderthal discovery is now considered the beginning of paleoanthropology. These and other discoveries led to the idea these remains were from ancient Europeans who had played an important role in modern human origins.
The Neanderthal species still causes controversy.
At first they were described looking like apes, but now it is hypothesized that they were not very different from us. Even perhaps more intelligent and sensitive.
His brain was bigger than that of homo sapiens. And they had their own culture and methods of burial.
His brain was bigger than that of homo sapiens. And they had their own culture and methods of burial.
Neanderthals might have believed in the spiritual world before Homo sapiens did. A recently-uncovered Neanderthal burial site in Spain has provided intriguing evidence that these ancient hominids believed in an afterlife and were capable of complex symbolic thought, all possibly before early Homo sapiens demonstrated these abilities.
The 50,000-year-old site appears to be a burial ground for three Neanderthals. There's good evidence that their peers buried them intentionally, as all their hands were placed close to their heads. Other Neanderthals have been found buried in that particular position, perhaps indicating a broader cultural meaning for this practice. The three Neanderthals were found buried under piles of rocks.
His legacy to the homo sapiens may have been very important
But how were the Neanderthals? Neanderthal anatomy was more robust than anatomically modern humans and they had less neotenized skulls.
The reconstructions differ greatly from each other, here is the examples that I think are more realistic.
Now known that there was hybridization, the problem is who are their descendants, the skull of primitive man looks different from the neanderthal but modern men is also very different. Without chin and with receding forehead are contrary to the Cro-Magnon man.
Hybrid Neanderthal boy
Neanderthal Family
The Caucasoid race is of dual origin consisting of Upper Paleolithic (mixture of sapiens and neanderthals) types and Mediterranean (purely sapiens) types and Mediterranean (purely sapiens) types.
Is this true theory?
Could it be true, evolution and adaptation could make the Cro Magnon acquired a prominent chin and a completely straightface. What is certain is that the Neanderthal man was very different from Cro Magnon man.
But there is a question of which little has been said:
Do not Neanderthals had different races? Were all the same?
The most common is that being a new species, also have different phenotypes.
This may change in part the origin of Europeans, perhaps because some Neanderthal phenotype was more like Europeans of today than the typical Neanderthal that we know. Neanderthals became extinct, one theory is that were died by their own success. When mixed with sapiens disappeared.
CRO- MAGNON
But there is a question of which little has been said:
Do not Neanderthals had different races? Were all the same?
The most common is that being a new species, also have different phenotypes.
This may change in part the origin of Europeans, perhaps because some Neanderthal phenotype was more like Europeans of today than the typical Neanderthal that we know. Neanderthals became extinct, one theory is that were died by their own success. When mixed with sapiens disappeared.
CRO- MAGNON
Were the first early modern humans (early Homo sapiens sapiens) of the European Upper Paleolithic. The earliest known remains of Cro-Magnon-like humans are radiometrically dated to 35,000 years before present.
Cro-Magnon were anatomically modern, straight limbed and tall compared to the contemporary Neanderthals. They are thought to have been 166 to 171 cm (about 5'5" to 5'7") tall. They also differ from modern day humans in having a more robust physique and a slightly larger cranial capacity. The Cro-Magnons had long, fairly low skulls, with a wide face, a prominent nose and moderate to no prognathism, similar to features seen in modern Europeans. A very distinct trait is the rectangular orbits.
Several works on genetics, blood types and cranial morphology indicate that the Basque people may be part descendents of the original Cro-Magnon population. A 2006 study of Basque DNA has shown a 1% incidence of mtDNA haplogroup U8a dated to the time of Cro-Magnon but noted that the low incidence of this ancestry and recent gene flow from neighbouring populations means the current Basque population cannot be considered reliable examples of the physical characteristics of Cro-Magnon.
Markku Niskanen (2002) of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Oulu, Finland, claimed the "strong cheekbones and flaring zygomatic arches of many Finno-Ugrians, commonly and erroneously assumed to be Mongoloid features, are actually inherited from European Cro-Magnons.
This is controversial, because the Basques are mostly Atlantic Mediterranean with influence of Alpine type and dinariced .It is found today, just looking at pictures of modern Basques and the Finns are mixed, but always been told they have some Mongoloid influence as all Scandinavians.
Both claim to be Cro-Magnons
Who are really the descendants of Cro-Magnon man?
Another thing that is troublesome is the reconstruction of Cro-Magnon man, varies greatly from one another.
CULTURE
The flint tools found in association with the remains at Cro-Magnon have associations with the Aurignacian culture that Lartet had identified a few years before he found the first skeletons. The Aurignacian differ from the earlier cultures by their finely worked bone or antler points and flint points made for hafting, the production of Venus figurines and cave painting.
Like Neanderthals, the Cro-Magnon were primarily big-game hunters, killing mammoth, cave bears, horses and reindeer. They would have been nomadic or semi-nomadic, following the annual migration of their prey. In Mezhirich village in Ukraine, several huts built from mammoth bones possibly representing semi-permanent hunting camps have been unearthed.
Finds of spun, dyed, and knotted flax fibers among Cro-Magnon artifacts in Dzudzuana shows they made cords for hafting stone tools, weaving baskets, or sewing garments, and suggest that they knew how to make woven clothing. Apart from the mammoth bone huts mentioned, they constructed shelter of rocks, clay, branches, and animal hide/fur. These early humans used manganese and iron oxides to paint pictures and may have created one early lunar calendar around 15,000 years ago.
Impresionant art
PREHISTORIC MEDITERRANEANS
Portugal
BRITTISH
SWEDEN
In Europe, the Neolithic is primarily the period of the Mediterranean race, in one form or another. It was, apparently, the Mediterraneans who accomplished the change to a food-producing economy elsewhere, and who expanded into the territory of the food-gatherers. These Mediterraneans, while surprisingly homogenous in some respects, may be segregated locally and typologically into sub-groups on the basis of a few characters. Before proceeding much further with our geographical-historical reconstruction, it will be well to define what we mean by Mediterranean, to compare it with other races which we have already met, and to specify its principal subdivisions. By Mediterranean, in the skeletal sense alone, we mean the wide family of closely-knit racial types which are long headed, orthognathous, mesorrhine or leptorrhine, narrow faced, and of medium head size, descended from the general Galley Hill stock, and related to Combe Capelle and Afalou . Mediterranean, in this sense, is the name by which we propose to designate that one of the two major racial elements, concerned with the development of white peoples, which completely lacks Neanderthaloid ancestry. It differs from the major Upper Palaeolithic group of Europe and northern Africa in several respects, as shown on page 84. The "Mediterranean" racial family is just as "white," in the larger meaning of the word, as the Upper Palaeolithic family. Its chief differences from the latter are: a smaller brain size, a moderate body size, and a lack of the excessive specializations which characterize the northern group. The Mediterranean group seems to be of purely sapiens ancestry, without Neanderthaloid or other mixture. Before the Neolithic, the principal branches of the Mediterranean family must already have come into existence. Some Mediterraneans were probably white skinned, and others brown; it is also possible that the differences in hair and eye color which so strongly distinguish living Mediterranean sub-varieties had already come into existence. We cannot speak with authority about Nordics until we meet blondism in the flesh, nor make profitable surmises about them until we find it in literary references and artistic representations. We must not, therefore, let differences in pigmentation and soft parts confuse our understanding of the skeletal unity of the Mediterranean race. It can be shown that Sumerians who lived over five thousand years ago in Mesopotamia are almost identical in skull and face form with living Englishmen, and that predynastic Egyptian skulls can be matched both in a seventeenth century London plague pit, and in Neolithic cist-graves in Switzerland. Modern dolichocephalic whites or browns are very similar in head and face measurements and form. The Nordic race in the strict sense is merely a pigment phase of the Mediterranean. On the basis of the material to be covered in this chapter, we may distinguish the following branches of the general Mediterranean or Galley Hill group: [Upper Palaeolithic and Mediterranean characteristics] (1) Mediterranean Proper (hereafter meant when the word "Mediterranean" is used alone): Short stature, about 160 cm.; skull length 183-187 mm. male mean; vault height 132-137 mm. mean; cranial index means 73-75; browridges and bone development weak, face short, nose leptorrhine to mesorrhine. Type already met in Portugal and Palestine in Late Mesolithic. Represents the paedomorphic or sexually undifferentiated Mediterranean form, and often carries a slight negroid tendency. (2) Danubian: The same in body size and build, skull length and cranial index the same; individually, the index goes to 80. Vault is higher than breadth, means 137-140 mm. Nose mesorrhine to chamaerrhine. (3) Megalithic: Tall stature, means 167-171 cm., slender build; skull length over 190 mm.; cranial index 68-72 means, individual range below 78; vault moderate in height, less than breadth; forehead modrately sloping, browridges often of moderate heaviness, muscular markings stronger, skull base wider, face medium to long, nose leptorrhine, mandible often deep and moderately wide. The East African Elmenteitans represent an individual and extreme form of this. It represents a gerontomorphic or sexually differentiated Mediterranean or Galley Hill form, and in cranial features is closer to Galley Hill itself than any other branch. (4) Corded: Tall stature, means 167-174 cm.; build linear but muscular, perhaps heavier than the Megalithic; extremely long-headed, 194 mm. mean. Vault of great height, means over 140 mm., exceeding breadth; browridges and muscular markings medium to strong; face very long, and of slight to moderate breadth; mandible deep and chin marked, but narrow through the gonial angles. Nose leptorrhine, often prominent. This type, in western and northern Europe, approaches in some respects the Upper Palaeolithic type with which it mixed. (5) Other Forms: Include mixtures between the four named, as well as others which are also intermediate but perhaps ancestrally undifferentiated. The later "Nordic" forms are intermediate. In Asia Minor and the Irano-Afghan plateau appear forms noted for great prominence and convexity of the nasal skeleton, and lack of nasion depression. Since these features are found on individuals of varying size and proportions, as well as brachycephalic races of the same neighborhood, they seem to represent some local genetic tendency, and cannot be considered the exclusive property of a given race. However, one might name the small variety found in Asia Minor Cappadocian, while a larger form commoner farther east, and metrically close to the Corded, may be called Afghanian.
( Carleton coon Coon about mediterranean race in The races of europe )
This shows that already in ancient times the Mediterraneans had spread throughout Europe and their descendants are many European.
PREHISTORIC BRACHYCEFALICS
The brachycephalic Europeans are called Alpine or Alpine mixed.
Since ancient times has been brachycephalics in Europe , their origin is still a mystery, but today they found all over Europe, with a success equal to the Mediterraneans .
OTHER RESTS
The Upper Paleolithic was a very homogeneous, but have been found rests of the no Europeans who populated Europe.
The Grimaldi Man was negroid.
In addition to those other rests have been found in Europe, time will tell.
And maybe in the future there are new discoveries that change the story.
