This film was made in Donegal, Ireland
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Found this on an old video, so please excuse the quality via Moviemaker.
Filmed “near home” in Glenveagh National Park, County Donegal, Ireland
the evolution of extinct DNA evolves
Directed by Tony Mitchell
Cast
Kenneth Cranham – Narrator (voice)
Mark Byron – Cromagnon
Jud Charlton – Neanderthal
Alison Johnston – Neanderthal
Cosh Omar – Neanderthal
Howard Salinger – Neanderthal
Samantha Seager – Neanderthal
Miltos Yerolemou – Neanderthal
Produced by Alex Graham
Assistant Producer – Ailsa Orr
Original music by Andrew Hulme
Dan Mudford
Neanderthals are an extinct species or subspecies of the genus Homo that is closely related to modern humans. They are known from fossils dating from the Pleistocene period, which have been found in Europe and parts of western and central Asia. The species is named after Neanderthal ("Neander Valley"), the place in Germany where it was first discovered. The species name is also sometimes spelled Neanderthal, as this is the modern German spelling of the valley's name.
Neanderthals are classified either as a subspecies of Homo sapiens (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) or as a separate species within the same genus (Homo neanderthalensis).
The first humans with proto-Neanderthal traits are thought to have existed in Europe between 600,000 and 350,000 years ago.
The date of extinction of the Neanderthals is controversial. Fossils found in Vindija Cave in Croatia have been dated to between 33,000 and 32,000 years ago, and Neanderthal artifacts from Gorham Cave in Gibraltar are believed to be less than 30,000 years old, but a recent study has redated fossils from two Spanish sites. as 45,000 years old, 10,000 years older than previously thought, and may cast doubt on recent dates at other sites. Skeletal remains of Cro-Magnon (early modern humans) exhibiting some "Neanderthal traits" were discovered at Lagar Velho (Portugal) and dated to 24,500 years ago, suggesting that there may have been had a significant admixture of Cro-Magnon. and the Neanderthal populations of this region.
The Mousterian stone tool culture dates back around 300,000 years. Late Mousterian artifacts have been discovered in Gorham Cave on the south coast of Gibraltar. Other tool cultures associated with Neanderthals include the Châtelperronian, Aurignacian, and Gravettian; their tool assemblages appear to have developed gradually within their populations.
The cranial capacity of Neanderthals is thought to have been as large as that of modern humans, perhaps larger, indicating that their brain size may have been comparable or even larger. In 2008, a group of scientists carried out a study using computer-aided three-dimensional reconstructions of Neanderthal children from fossils found in Russia and Syria. The study showed that the brains of Neanderthals and modern humans were the same size at birth, but as adults, the Neanderthal brain was larger than the modern human brain. They were much stronger than modern humans, possessing particularly strong arms and hands.
Genetic evidence published in 2010 suggests that Neanderthals contributed DNA to anatomically modern humans, likely through interbreeding between 80,000 and 50,000 years ago with the population of anatomically modern humans who had recently migrated from Africa. According to the study, by the time this population began dispersing across Eurasia, Neanderthal genes made up between 1 and 4 percent of its genome.
Neanderthal skulls were first discovered in the Engis Caves (fr), in present-day Belgium (1829) by Philippe-Charles Schmerling and in the Forbes Quarry, Gibraltar, nicknamed Gibraltar 1 (1848), all two prior to the discovery of the type specimen in a limestone. Neander Valley quarry at Erkrath near Düsseldorf in August 1856, three years before the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species.
The type specimen, named Neanderthal 1, consisted of a skull cap, two femurs, three bones from the right arm, two from the left arm, part of the left ilium, fragments of scapula and ribs. Workers who recovered this material originally thought it was the remains of a bear. They gave the material to amateur naturalist Johann Carl Fuhlrott, who handed the fossils over to anatomist Hermann Schaaffhausen. The discovery was jointly announced in 1857.
To date, the bones of more than 400 Neanderthals have been found.
The first Neanderthals lived during the last ice age for around 100,000 years. Due to the detrimental effects of the Ice Age on Neanderthal sites, little is known about the early species. Known remains include most of Europe south of the glaciation line, roughly along the 50th parallel north, including most of western Europe, including the south coast of Britain , Central Europe and the Balkans,
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