Old man, eternal and enigmatic

Usage examples of neandertal.

Modern anthropologists and geneticists are currently engaged in a debate about whether Neandertals are our ancestors, based on evidence of mitochondrial DNA extracted from ancient bones.

Neandertals and Cro-Magnons had different numbers of chromosomes, a complication that commonly arises when species that are close but not quite identical conjoin.

In a red-green auroral glow, the Neandertals moved about, packing up their teepee and other gear, loading it all onto big sledlike vehicles, signing to each other busily.

But this time their conquest was not by conversion, for the Archaics and Neandertals lacked the associative water minds, the camaraderie of the arts, the unity of group self-awareness.

It is also known that Neandertals and modern humans coexisted in some fashion for tens of thousands of years in the Middle East.

But the techniques of genetic analysis continued to be refined, and in 1997 scientists from the University of Munich managed to extract and analyze some DNA from the arm bone of the original Neandertal man, and this time the evidence stood up.

The other version of Vaala, the one that spoke first in my dream, then through the Neandertal child, said that I had to get to a black mountain.

Three years ago, two of my postdocs did a research project on mitochondrial DNA sequences from Neandertal bone tissue.

Why did it prove to be beyond the capacity of Archaic or Neandertal man?

In the course of a few thousand years -- an eyeblink in terms of prehistory -- the superior technology and organization of modern mankind drove Neandertal man to extinction.

Neither Homo erectus nor his offshoot Neandertal man could compete.

And back further, shrinking and shriveling, eyes growing wider, minds simpler—" The last common ancestor of humans and another hominid species, the Neandertals, was a quarter of a million years deep.