Brother or other: The place of Neanderthals in human evolution

Abstract

Few have provided insights and thoughtful explanations for Neanderthals that equal what have been a central theme in Yoel Rak’s publications. One of his deep understandings is that Neanderthals are another way of being human: not inferior, not superior, but different. Looking at what we now understand, Rak has been fundamentally correct in this insight, and where new discoveries have been unexpected, they serve to expand its scope and meaning. Unexpected new information about Neanderthal body form, demography, and even breeding behavior support and flesh out Rak’s essential insight about the place of Neanderthals in human evolution. In this paper some of the new discoveries and interpretations of Neanderthals and their evolution are discussed in this context. We examine three aspects of how Neanderthals are another way of being human: body shape (as revealed in the pelvis), population structure (as revealed in their paleodemography), and breeding behavior (as revealed by paleogenetics, in the pattern of ancient gene flow). In these ways Neanderthals are like their ancestors, or more broadly are the plesiomorphic condition.