Abstract
From the first recognition of Western European Neandertals as physically distinct from present-day Homo sapiens, the significance of these differences for the relationships between the two kinds of hominids has been a topic of continuing debate among students of human evolution. The nature and substance of these arguments have been described in detail elsewhere (e.g., Klein 1989; Trinkaus and Howells 1979) and will not be treated extensively here. Some of the basic questions around which the discussions have centered concern possible differences in intellectual and physical abilities, and the genetic relationships of the two forms. Despite the length of time these questions have been considered, there is still relatively little general agreement on the interpretation of this Late Pleistocene fossil and cultural evidence. The discussion below is an attempt to integrate some of the cultural, biological, and paleoenvironmental evidence in an interpretive framework that emphasizes the kinds of potentially meaningful relationships among these variables that may take us closer to answers to the basic questions of the relationships between Neandertals and early examples of hominids like ourselves.
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Jelinek, A.J. (1994). Hominids, Energy, Environment, and Behavior in the Late Pleistocene. In: Nitecki, M.H., Nitecki, D.V. (eds) Origins of Anatomically Modern Humans. Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-1507-8_3
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