Wikipedia:Peer review/Neanderthal/archive1

Neanderthal

I'd like to get creative and professional input regarding this article. One day, I think it could be a Featured Article candidate. Jason Potter 10:30, 16 Feb 2005

This article is in bad shape factually. Don't feature it without a substantial rewrite. 72.177.40.111 (talk) 00:54, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

A lot of interesting stuff here, but a few things occur to me. Content-wise, there is not a huge amount about what they evolved from and nothing about why they were superceded by modern man. Also, I recall reading that Neanderthal and modern man may have co-existed for a while, more information on that would be interesting. You mention the term Mousterian in the intro, but I think it should also be discussed when it first appears in the main text. And a minor point, but at one point the article says they were about 5'6", then later says they are known for their greater size compared to modern humans.

Style-wise I think a general proofread would be good, there are a few sentences which seem slightly awkwardly worded. I will give it a proofread myself shortly. Worldtraveller 17:27, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• It looks good. I didn't notice anything about the controversy over whether humans and neanderthals interbred. Otherwise I generally agree with above comments. — RJH 23:56, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I was surprised also by the lack of mention of human-neanderthal interbreeding aside from in external links. Also would like to see the possible reasons for extinction considered (I've read evidence - cited in Guns, Germs and Steel I think - that modern humans had no perceptible advantage over Neanderthals in overlapping territories such as modern Israel until a time period when modern human suddenly began rapidly developing new tools. The conclusion from this is supposed to be that the sudden spurt of new developments and inventions was due to the advent of advanced language, and that this became our major evolutionary advantage over neanderthals). Point is that there's a lot of theories out there on what gave us the edge that seem to belong to this article.

Also, I think that the Human evolution link should be more prominent instead of an afterthought, and that the main article should discuss more thoroughly how neanderthals fit into human evolution (ie where we think they evolved from, if any date has been mentioned as last common ancestor between us and them, etc). Laura Scudder 00:47, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Ah, I've found the Neandertal interaction with Cro-Magnons article at the bottom now. Seems important enough to warrant a summary section in the Neanderthal article with a "Main article:" link. At least right now the article doesn't seem fully fleshed out on its own. Laura Scudder 00:51, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

In the Tools section you are missing much learned from Ötzi the Iceman, and other sites in recent years in that they did use bone tools and performed copper smelting. The few simple things he carried with him are known to have a multitude of uses. The specific specie of polypore he carried is used for tinder, medicine, leather, and as a razor strop. Schlüggell 01:48, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This isn't my area of expertise, but I do read a lot. I'd like to add a little spin to this discussion. I see no reference in any of this discussion on the Neandertal infant skeletal remains documented in Bruce Bower, “Neandertal Tot Enters Human-Origins Debate,” Science News 145 (1994), and Schwartz and Tattersall, “Significance of Some Previously Unrecongnized Apomorphies in the Nasal Region of Homo Neanderthalensis,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, vol. 93 (1996), pages 10852-10854, which conclude that Homo Erectus neither descended from nor bears any biological connection to the Neandertal species.

Nor can I find reference to the following genetic studies: Kahn and Gibbons, “DNA from an Extinct Human,” Matthias Krings, et all, “Neandertal DNA Sequences of the Mitochondrial Hypervariable Region II fromthe Neandertal Type Specimen,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, vol 96 (000), Matthias Hoss, “Neanderthal Population Genetics,” Nature 404 (2000), Igor V. Ovchinnikov, et al., “Molecular Analysis of Neanderthat DNA from the Northern Caucasus,” Nature 404 (2000) or Matthias Krings, et al., “A View of Neandertal Genetic Diversity,” Nature Genetics 26 (2000), which conclude and reinforce the position that Neandertals did not contribute mtDNA to the contemporary human gene pool.

Correct. And this is a glaring error, and it makes all the hybridization discussions laughable to those in the field. 72.177.40.111 (talk) 00:55, 16 January 2008 (UTC)