European scientists have discovered that the newborn brains of Neanderthals looked remarkably similar to human brains at birth and then began to diverge drastically over the first year of life。
A team led by paleoanthropologist Philipp Gunz of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, scanned the skulls of several Neanderthals, including a newborn, and mapped out the shape of the brain cavity。
Human and Neanderthal brains were remarkably similar in shape right after birth, the scientists found - perhaps because of the common need to squeeze a baby's head through its mother's birth canal. Then during the first year, human brains begin to morph from an elongated shape to a more rounded one. The Neanderthal brains, similar to chimpanzee brains, retained their oblong shape。
"We think shape indicates a difference in the speed of development," Gunz said, "because if you grow faster or slower, the brain shape changes differently.... We know from modern humans that the way you grow your brain affects the pattern of neural wiring."
The findings could help paleoanthropologists figure out the cognitive differences between modern humans and their extinct relatives - and when, exactly, those differences developed。