neanderthals

Long before the island of Gibraltar confused modern day tourists (is it Spanish? Is it British?), this rocky outpost just off the southern coast of Spain was home to our Neanderthal ancestors. Day-to-day Gibraltan life 30,000 years ago held essentially no resemblance to life today, except perhaps when it came to taste buds. New findings prove our pre-historic brothers and sisters shared our affinity for seafood. They actively hunted mussels and other mollusks, fish, and even seals and dolphins—and didn’t pay market prices for them either.

In Britain, redheads are known as gingers and are often treated as second-class citizens. The news that some Neanderthals may have been redheads probably wont help.

When a team of European research scientists looked at DNA samples from two Neanderthal specimens, they found a gene that affects the body's production of melanin, resulting in red hair and pale skin. The finding is reported in the forthcoming issue of the journal Science. The scientists say that the Neanderthal gene sequence is different from the sequence in modern humans that produces red hair, so they probably arose separately.

Although some people have theorized that modern redheads are descended from Neanderthals, scientists disagree about whether there was any interbreeding between Neanderthals and the ancestors of modern man. They coexisted for many years, but Neanderthals disappeared from Europe more than 24,000 years ago.—Dawn Stover

Image: Michael Hofreiter and Kurt Fiusterweier/MPG EVA