Skull damage suggests Neandertals led no more violent lives than humans [View all]

Some 200 skulls show similar rates of damage between humans and our evolutionary cousins
BY BRUCE BOWER 1:00PM, NOVEMBER 14, 2018

Neandertals are shaking off their reputation as head bangers.

Our close evolutionary cousins experienced plenty of head injuries, but no more so than late Stone Age humans did, a study suggests. Rates of fractures and other bone damage in a large sample of Neandertal and ancient Homo sapiens skulls roughly match rates previously reported for human foragers and farmers who have lived within the past 10,000 years, concludes a team led by paleoanthropologist Katerina Harvati of the University of Tübingen in Germany.

Males suffered the bulk of harmful head knocks, whether they were Neandertals or ancient humans, the scientists report online November 14 in Nature.

“Our results suggest that Neandertal lifestyles were not more dangerous than those of early modern Europeans,” Harvati says.

More:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/skull-damage-suggests-neandertals-led-no-more-violent-lives-humans?tgt=nr