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Article: LIMBS ANCIENT AND MODERN
- Article from:
- The Independent (London, England)
- Article date:
- April 14, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 1996 The Independent - London. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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THE Neanderthals are the best known and least understood of all
human ancestors. To most people, the name instantly brings to mind
the image of a hulking brute, dragging his mate around by her hair.
This stereotype, born almost as soon as the first skeleton was
found in a German cave in the middle of the last century, has been
refluffed in comic books, novels, and movies so often that it has
successfully passed from did he to common parlance. But what
actually makes a Neanderthal a Neanderthal is not its size or its
strength or any measure of its intelligence but a suite of
exquisitely distinct physical traits, most of them in the face and
cranium.
All Neanderthal mandibles, for example, ...