Their Big Eyes May Have Caused Neanderthals' Demise
Prehistoric Face-Off A comparison of skull features of an anatomically modern human and a Neanderthal. WikipediaThe species may have gone extinct because their eyes demanded too many neural resources. Anyone stuck with glasses knows the envy of those with killer eyesight. But visual acuity apparently came at a price, at least for Neanderthals. According to a paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B this week, Neanderthals' visual acuity in the low-light conditions of northern Europe -- much higher than that of Homo sapiens -- came at the cost of other cognitive skills, such as extended social networks and innovation maintenance. Researchers at Oxford University compared the sizes of the orbital sockets (the holes in the skull where eyeballs go) to the size of the visual cortex (the part of the brain tasked with interpreting visual information) of five diurnal primate species: Humans, Rhesus macaques, marmosets, squirrel monkeys and...