The Short Legs Of The Neanderthal

Neanderthals had shorter legs than their Homo sapiens contemporaries, leading many to believe that the locomotion of the former was less efficient (basically, they have to take more steps to traverse a certain distance). But a new study, performed by researchers at the John Hopkins School of Medicine, questions this notion.What’s new in this study is that it takes the terrain into account. Whereas previous studies looked only at flat land, this one considered sloped, mountainous terrain more like the environment in which Neanderthals could be found. The colder climate they were exposed to, led to a ‘compaction’ of the Neanderthal body (less surface area, thus less loss of body heat) (see figure 1).     read more

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