How much of a Neanderthal are you ?

[Maciamo]

I explained in this thread that scientists have found numerous evidences that our Homo Sapiens ancestors from Africa intermingled to some extent with the indigenous Neanderthal of Europe and the Middle East. The strongest evidence of interbreeding were found in Eastern Europe, where the blond-haired and blue-eyed "Aryans" (Celts, Germans, Slavs...) originated before taking over the rest of Europe after the end of the Ice Age. It is thus possible that modern Europeans (and people of European descent) still have a tiny percentage of Neanderthal DNA, and thus also some physical characteristics of Neanderthal usually not found in other humans on the planet.

Wikipedia lists here the Neanderthal physical traits. As they are written in technical terms, let me rephrase below the ones that can easly be found by self-inspection. Please do not compare with your relatives as they are genetically similar to you.


- Occipital bun : a protuberance of the occipital bone (back of the head) that looks like a hair knot. You have it if you can feel a rounded bone just above the back of your neck (same height as the ears).

- Low, flat, elongated skull : What matters here is especially the "elongated skull", as opposed to the back of the skull being almost vertical, like East Asian people.

- Retromolar space posterior to the third molar : i.e. an empty space behind the "wisdom teeth".

- Supraorbital torus : protruding eyebrow bone (including big deep eye cavity between the eye and eyebrow).

- Bigger, rounder eyes than average.

- Broad, projecting nose : angle of the nose bone going more upward than average (not falling straight like a "Greek nose").

- Bony projections on the sides of the nasal opening : i.e. nose bone making a "triangle" between the nose and cheeks/orbits.

- Little or no protruding chin

- Larger mental foramen in mandible for facial blood supply : this means that the side jaw and cheek are bigger or better supplied in blood than average. This increased blood supply could result in the cheeks being red (like blushing) when doing physical exercise or when the weather is cold.

- Short, bowed shoulder blades : i.e. shoulder bones curving toward the front more than average.

- Large round finger tips : typically "flat" and wide finger tips, especially the thumb (e.g. if your thumb is more than 1.5 cm wide).

- Rufosity : i.e. having red hair, or brown hair with red pigments, or natural freckles.

- Fair skin, hair and eyes : Neanderthals are believed to have had blue or green eyes, as well as fair skin and light hair. Having spent 5x longer in northern latitudes than Homo Sapiens, it is only natural that Neanderthals should have developed these adaptive traits first, and that the first modern humans that arrived in Europe inherited the whole package through interbreeding.

Other details on the cranum shape or peculiarities are too difficult to examine by oneself for laymen, so we will limit our observations to the 12 above characteristics.

If you are a Caucasian (i.e. of European descent), how many of these physical traits do you have, and how marked are they ?

I have almost all of them, apart from the low, flat skull (it is in fact taller than average, although a bit elongated). I only have red hair in some parts of my body, but also a bit of natural freckles. My nose isn't broad, but slightly projecting.

The most obvious characteristics for me are the occipital bun, the broad and flat fingers, and the retromolar space (enough space for 2 more teeth behind my grown wisdom teeth !).

[Kinsao]

Interesting! I have hardly any ... I have a bit of a supraorbital torus and big roundish eyes, as well as large flat fingertips (of the 'spatulate' kinda shape) but that's about all I think...

[Maciamo]

I think that the "Neanderthal characteristics" are more obvious in Caucasians when compared to East Asian (e.g. Japanese) people. All the characteristics I have are much less marked than in actual Neanderthals, but they become apparent when I compare by body to the one of my Japanese wife, who doesn't have any such characteristics.

[cross-platform]

I always like to joke with my girlfriend that I am part Neanderthal because I have the Occipital Bun and Supraorbital Torus. Now I can add my projecting nose onto the list.

[stuibhard]

Well, I've got freckles galore, red-blond hair, flat finger tips...but that's it.

[Marianne]

I've got all the characteristics except for the round-flat finger tips.
My hair used to be a very light shade of white-blond when i was young but gradually it became darker as i was growing up and now it's a dark-warm shade of blond with red pigments, especially at sunlight they look even more red. My eyes are big and deep blue and u have to look very close to see my few freckles :P My cheeks are constantly rosy and i have a projecting nose.

Ive asked my parents and brother if they have those characteristics, cause I look nothing like them, and they have only 2-3 each.

Both my parents come from Crete, Greece.

[Barros Serrano]

Now let's not get carried away... just because you share some trait with neandertals doesn't mean it is from the same gene. I do believe that the red-haired gene in H. sapiens has been identified as originating in a separate mutation from that of neandertals... so red hair therefore means nothing in terms of inter-species relationships.

I think it is at this point indisputable that hybrids were produced... the Czech and Portuguese examples notably indicate this. How much of that hybrid ancestry persisted and survived until the present is still an open question... so, this does not in itself prove that neandertal genes survive in any modern humans.

I had a student... I think about 8th grader... when I first saw him, my jaw dropped. He had the football-shaped braincase, the nose, the big eyes, the small forehead vs large face, and even a suggestion of heidelbergensis/neandertal type of arching browridges... and I was sitting there thinking NEANDERTAL!!!... I would have LOVED to have had his genome analyzed...

He was of Mexican ethnicity but very lightskinned and without noticeable Native traits, so I assume he was mostly of Spanish ancestry... and of course Iberia was the last refuge of neandertals...

Well this is very subjective and means nothing, but I swear, seeing that kid was one of the things that made me stop being a strict Out-of-Africa believer and acknowledge the possibility of some mixing which might have survived. My wife insists that she has known some neandertals... and she means literally, not in the colloquial sense...

We shall see...