Neanderthals take shape
Cold-adapted, powerfully built humans with brains as large as ours evolve across Europe and western Asia.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 180 thousand years
- Known to
- ± 50 thousand years
- Era
- Middle Pleistocene, Quaternary
Neanderthal features accumulate gradually across the Middle Pleistocene rather than appearing at once — a process sometimes called accretion, visible in the Sima and Atapuerca material. The finished form is stocky and barrel-chested with short limbs, conserving heat; a large projecting midface with a wide nasal aperture; and a cranial capacity averaging slightly above the modern human mean. They occupy Europe and western Asia for hundreds of thousands of years through repeated glacial cycles.