ANT 160: Neandertals & Modern Human Origins
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Description
Ever since the discovery of Neandertal fossils in 1856 at the Kleine Feldhofer Grotte near Düsseldorf, Germany, scientists and the general public alike have been fascinated with Neandertals. They have asked questions such as: were these fossil humans ancestral to later peoples? And how similar was their anatomy and behavior to ours? This course deals with the most up to date answers to these and related questions, as well as how scientists go about trying to answer them. More specifically, we will discuss the appearance, evolution, and disappearance of Neandertals; emergence of humans like us in both anatomy and behavior; fossil and archaeological records of Europe, western Asia, and Africa; and genetics of present-day and ancient humans.