a fossil Paleoanthropine that lived 35,000 to 200,000 years ago, at the end of the Early Paleolithic and during the Middle Paleolithic periods.
Neanderthal man inhabited Europe, Asia, and Africa. This ancient human type was named after one of the earliest archaeological finds in the Neanderthal valley. The find was made near Düsseldorf, Federal Republic of Germany, in 1856. Neanderthals occupied a transitional position between Archanthropines and human fossils of the physically modern type. The Neanderthals of Western Europe typically had a short stature (approximately 160 cm), a large brain (up to 1,700 cu cm), a skull with a well-developed brow ridge and sloping forehead, and a lower jaw without a chin protuberance.
Many scholars consider the late Western European Neanderthals, who lived 35,000 to 50,000 years ago, to form a special phylogenetic branch that did not continue to develop in the course of human evolution. In support of this classification is the evidence that certain traits in Near Asian Neanderthals reached a more progressive level than in Western European Neanderthals, for example, a weakly expressed chin protuberance and a higher and rounder skull arch. These traits link Near Asian Neanderthal man to fossil humans of the physically modern type.
V. P. IAKIMOV