^^^THE ABOVE PICTURES ARE TOTALLY INACCURATE!!!^^^
The pictures you have just seen look nothing like the real thing. They can be considered fictitious, and nothing more than a profound inaccuracy made by scientists, or a clever product of the imagination, borderline of fantasy. For the first time in almost 30 000 years, we shall see faces that have not been seen since the Cro-Magnon wiped them out (genocide, out-competing, who knows?), and to me, it is definitely a sight not to forget. First off, here's a good comparison between Homo Sapiens (us) and the Neanderthal:
One can easily tell from the above photo and diagrams that Neanderthals were built quite differently from us - their structure defined as that of a being of durability, brute strength, and cold adaptation. They had thicker, denser bones, far greater muscle mass, heavy brow ridges (generally considered a "primitive" trait), large noses, powerful, protruding, heavy jaws with almost no chin, more horizontal streamlined skulls, long flexible arms, and a generally short stocky build, including a wide ribcage and almost no waist. Homo Sapiens on the other hand are defined by a long, slender, build - the most gracile of all Homo species - smaller facial features with a more prominent chin, and an erect skull. Strong, short and dense versus tall, slender and weak pretty much sums up the major physical differences. Now for the pictures to both shock and impress you, here are the reconstructions you have all been waiting for:
^Neanderthal Woman (right-hand side)
^Neanderthal Child (Girl)
These reconstructions were created using the most modern forensic technology available (the same kind police would like to use to reconstruct a burnt body or a badly decomposed corpse), along with the latest in genetics that allow us to understand what their eye, skin and hair color was like. In fact, many Neanderthals were redheads! Scientists have found the gene for red hair in some Neanderthal samples, and have determined that some - though probably not all - Neanderthals had red hair very much like the kind you see in some Homo Sapiens today. I'm sure there were plenty of brunettes too, but this post is not about speculation, so I'll avoid that for now. However, they look close enough to us that one may even mistake a Neanderthal for a really unattractive and robust Homo Sapiens. If they REALLY are a subspecies of Homo Sapiens like a few scientists claim, then it's no surprise; if they are a separate species altogether, we could still easily sit down and share a cup of tea with them, and perhaps even have children with them as well (if a love affair ever comes to light). Let's not get into the wedding details though, as that will always remain a mystery..
So there you have it, a view into the past, once shrouded by years of nothingness and later an amalgamation of flaw and imagination; the Neanderthal man has been revived enough for our eyes to see that which only our ancestors have seen. Now trying to understand what it would have been like to live in a world shared by another species of human is a whole 'nother story - something that we could only comprehend by either travelling back in time somehow, or reviving Homo Neanderthalensis in the flesh. Good dreaming, eh?
