How to tell H. neanderthalensis from H. sapiens sapiens

You can’t see his chin because of his beard!

Sorry, I was looking at the wrong guy… You’re right.

There seems to be some variety in the Neanderthal reconstructions - some look very clearly different from modern humans, while others look very close to us. The Neanderthal photo I linked to above is from a recent exhibition at London’s Natural History Museum and they also made a model of an early Homo sapiens - see here to compare the two reconstructions side by side.

You can’t simply go by eyeballing bones or reconstructions. As I said, in combination the many distinctions should allow Neanderthals to reliably be distinguished from sapiens.

It has been said that if you shaved a Neanderthal, dressed him up in modern clothes, and put him on a subway car in New York he wouldn’t draw a second glance. That might be possibly be true, but that doesn’t mean that if a scientist took a careful look at him he wouldn’t be able to distinguish him immediately.

Was it Asimov who said that? I always took that as a clever way to convey that Neanderthals are closer to us than the stereotype of a brutish “cave man” would indicate, rather than a serious proposition. Because the boxer in the photo linked above, though not a Neanderthal, would definitely get a second glance. A quick, covert, second glance.

In addition to the boxer Valuev, the Neanderthal reconstruction reminded me of someone else, but I couldn’t put my finger on it - then it hit me.

From the neck down, hairless chimpanzees look relatively human. (Well, perhaps not every part of them - I was wondering whether to add a NSFW warning!).

Damn, that chimp is RIPPED.

That chimp is sitting, which hides the relative lengths of the legs and arms. Chimp’s arms are much longer than humans, relative their legs. But yeah, there is a lot of similarity.

It might have been, actually.

Here’s a hairless chimpanzee standing up, showing the evident differences in arm and leg length, as well as standing posture. Its gait as it walked would also be a clear giveaway.

Neanderthals were fully bipedal and probably walked fully upright, like we do, but research has shown that their heels were slightly different than Homo sapiens, being more adapted to walking than running and with less of a spring in their step. So perhaps one might recognise a Neanderthal by its gait as it walked.

Here’s a comparison of the skeletons of a chimpanzee, Neanderthal and human and one can see the clear similarities between the Neanderthal skeleton and our own, but also that it’s a much more robust frame.

What about this photo of a reconstructed Neanderthal dressed in modern clothing? He is a little unusual-looking, but if I passed by him without looking at him directly, I’m not sure he’d necessarily draw my attention.

Which is pretty much what I said in post #20.

If I saw the H. neanderthal dressed in a suit on the subway, I’d wonder what syndrome he had, but that’s just because of my profession. I’ve known so many people who were perfectly normal except their facial features were off the bell curve; they’d have “whatever” syndrome, and maybe had a minor hearing or vision impairment, or maybe nothing at all, but they would look more like an unrelated person with the same syndrome than their own family members.

The OP asks whether a “medical examination” could detect the differences, not casual observation on the street by an ordinary observer as you suggest. An examination by a medical doctor aware of the differences in bone structure would I think identify a Neanderthal 100% of the time.

Man is the only animal with a chin. Pointy side out.

I think I read that somewhere recently–Colibri probably knows. It certainly sounds good.

Neat little article/abstract I just found trying (haphazardly) to find my source (which this isn’t):

The ontogeny of the chin: an analysis of allometric and biomechanics scaling
N. E. Holton1,2,*, L. L. Bonner1, J. E. Scott2, S. D. Marshall1, R. G. Franciscus2 andT. E. Southard1
Article first published online: 11 APR 2015

Journal of Anatomy
Volume 226, Issue 6, pages 549–559, June 2015

Not Asimov. but some anthropologist or other. I’ve seen it attributed to Carlton Coon, but also to others. I still remember reading that quote in 1969 when I was doing research at the public library for my JHS term paper on “Early Man”, but don’t remember to whom it was attributed. I think it goes back at least to the 1950s, probably earlier.

I find the proposal for Homo Ergaster (third row, second picture) particularly striking. He looks like he wouldn’t be very noticeable (if at all) if he was passing by you in the street. I find this very surprising given how old this species is.

Listen to the speak.

There were people in Australia at least 50k years ago.

This lecture video shows a bit more of the Neanderthal (L) and Homo sapiens (R) reconstructions side by side.

What’s the latest theory on whether H. neanderthalensis had speech organs?

I know several linguists who think that the speech areas of the brain evolved before the speech organs of the throat and mouth, so it is possible that the first language was a combination of grunts and clicks, along with gestures and facial expressions. What I’m actually getting at is whether we had speech before H. Sapiens showed up, so neanderthal had it too. Did erectus have speech? habilis?

I used to be very current on all this when I used to browse bookstores, now, sadly, because I mostly read kindle, my books are more deliberately chosen. I usually zoom to what I’m looking for, and buy it. But that was also before I had kid at home.

The latest theory? All over the place.

But I’m not sure what you mean by “speech organs”. Chimps have “speech organs”, their just arranged differently than ours. There was a big to-do a few years back when a Neanderthal hyoid bone was discovered* (a very rare find) and it was virtually indistinguishable from ours in morphology and position.

There is, in fact, still a debate about our own species and whether we had “fully articulated language” from the beginning (about 200K years ago), or whether we only developed it just prior to our explosion out of Africa (about 60K years ago).

*I think it had been discovered earlier, but was not fully analyzed.

If youshaved his head, he would look like a pinhead. You would definitely notice him anywhere outside a sideshow.