Homo Neanderthalensis

Neanderthals, or more rarely Neandertals, named for the Neandertal region in Germany) were a species or subspecies of archaic humans in the genus Homo that became extinct about 40,000 years ago. Neanderthals and modern humans share 99.7% of their DNA and are hence closely related.(By comparison, both modern humans and Neanderthals share 98.8% of their DNA with their closest non-human living relatives, the chimpanzees.) Neanderthals left bones and stone tools in Eurasia, from Western Europe to Central and Northern Asia. Fossil evidence suggests Neanderthals evolved in Europe, separate from modern humans in Africa for more than 400,000 years. They are considered either a distinct species, Homo neanderthalensis,or more rarely as a subspecies of Homo sapiens (H. s. neanderthalensis).

Hundreds of lithic assemblages were created by Neanderthals in Europe and in Western Asia. Almost all of them are of the so-called Mousterian techno-complex, which begins c. 160,000 years ago when the makers started making fewer hand axes, and instead started to make tools out of flakes.

Compared to modern humans, Neanderthals had a lower surface-to-volume ratio, with shorter legs and a bigger body, in conformance with Bergmann's rule, as an energy-loss reduction adaptation to life in a high-latitude (i.e. seasonally cold) climate. Male Neanderthals had cranial capacities averaging 1,600 cm3 (98 cu in), females 1,300 cm3 (79 cu in),extending to 1,736 cm3 (105.9 cu in) in Amud 1.This is notably larger than the 1,250 to 1,400 cm3 (76 to 85 cu in) typical of modern humans. Males stood 164 to 168 cm (65 to 66 in) and females 152 to 156 cm (60 to 61 in) tall.

The Neanderthal genome project published papers in 2010 and 2014 stating that Neanderthals contributed to the DNA of modern humans, including most humans outside sub-Saharan Africa, as well as a few populations in sub-Saharan Africa, through interbreeding, likely between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago.Recent studies also show that some Neanderthals mated with ancestors of modern humans long before the "out of Africa migration" of present-day non-Africans, as early as 100,000 years ago. In 2016, research indicated that there were three distinct episodes of interbreeding between modern humans and Neanderthals: the first encounter involved the ancestors of non-African modern humans, probably soon after leaving Africa; the second, after the ancestral Melanesian group had branched off (and subsequently had a unique episode of interbreeding with Denisovans); and the third, involving the ancestors of East Asians only.