Neandertal: not gently into the night

Our primary ancestors, the skinnies, arrived in Europe about 40,000 years ago. There they found the remnants of the Neandertal (var: Neanderthal), one of many variants (species? subspecies? "breeds"? races?) of human. Cold adapted they'd survived for what we'd call a "long time", seemingly changing little. Thousands of years before the coming of the skinnies, however, the Neandertal were already suffering greatly....

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Hungry ancients 'turned cannibal'

.... Starvation and cannibalism were part of everyday life for a population of Neanderthals living in northern Spain 43,000 years ago, a study suggests.

Bones and teeth from the underground cave system of El Sidron in Asturias bear the hallmarks of a tough struggle for survival, researchers say.

Analysis of teeth showed signs of starvation or malnutrition in childhood and human bones have cut marks on them.

Details appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Some bones appeared to have been dismembered and broken open, possibly to allow access to marrow and brains.

"Given the high level of developmental stress in the sample, some level of survival cannibalism would be reasonable," the scientists wrote in their research paper.

The team, led by Dr Antonio Rosas from the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid, also found that the bones shared physical features with other European Neanderthals from the same period.

Dr Rosas and colleagues found a north-south variation in Neanderthal jaw bones, suggesting that populations from southern parts of Europe had wider, flatter faces.

The findings may help shed light on the life and death of the Neanderthals, which became extinct about 10,000 years after the arrival of modern humans in Europe around 40,000 years ago.

Many experts believe they were not able to compete with the moderns for food and shelter.

The Neandertal did not go gently, or slowly. For 13,000 years, about four times the length of our recorded history, they declined as the earth warmed and the techies flourished -- taking caves and food with adaptive technologies and techniques. The skinnies liked the warmer weather. The Neandertal probably did too ... until they realized it came with a price.

Thirteen thousands years is a lot of hardship, though there must have been centuries of better times ...