Are Neanderthals humans?

Question

i have a report and i believe that the neanderthals were human, i have reasons, but nothing that i could make a whole paragraph out of. Do you guys have any reasons that i could actually make something out of.

I would even consider reasons from the people who dont believe neanderthals were human.

Any help is greatly appreciated, and i will choose a best answer. i promise. thanks a bunch.

love, cheese

Answer 1

They're pre-human.  Not homo-sapiens.

Answer 2

No Neanderthals were NOT humans; they were the first Republicans!

As you can plainly see, they suffered from arested development and metamorphed into the unfortunate example of near-human we see today.

Answer 3

If you met a sentient being from another planet - Yoda - for example, would his being not human affect the rights he was entitled to?  The key is sentient, which I define as the ability to make rational moral thought, even if, especially if, that rational and morals are not ours.  That is why we have anthropologist.  

Like the caveman commercials for GIECO even if they are not human, but they can think they are entitled to the rights of a human being.  

This difference is what lead to the sterilization of people who where deemed not perfect even in the United States.  If you get a chance you should watch the movie A Judgement At Nurmberg and the role the great American judge Oliver Wendell Holmes played in that trial of n**i judges.

After all we are not even the smartest being on this planet.

Answer 4

If you believe in evolution, then Neanderthals were the ancestors of modern man.

But, just look around you ... Neanderthals are still among us!  LOL!  I'm sure you've met some boys in school who were absolutely Neanderthal in their behavior?  In today's day and age, it seems that being Neanderthal is merely a state of mind and attitude.

Answer 5

Neanderthals were hominids (our ancestors), so, yes they were human.

Answer 6

neanderthals are extinct (they lived in the middle paleolithic period) but some scientists think they may have bred with Cro Magnons (older humans like us). So interbreeding is possible, but they are a different species than homo sapiens.

Answer 7

Science says that they were probably a related species, which actually went extinct. Whether they could have bred with humans is being debated, but they probably lived at the same time.

Answer 8

I consider the definition to be sentience.

Neanderthals show it, even if you dismiss the old stand by of tool use, they still practiced ritual burial.

Answer 9

Some scientists use a very loose definition that all of the genus homo are human.  It is loose because we don't know how human or how closely related they all were.  At least with Neanderthal we have some evidence like DNA that says they share a common ancestor with moderns about 500,000 years ago.  That doesn't make them our ancestors.  

Who knows how human they were?  Nobody does, but they are very likely quite similar.

Answer 10

The accepted definition of human keeps changing.  I am reading a book called "A new type of Human" about the little Hobbit bones found in Indonesia.  Michael Moorewood, a very good paleontologist definitely has a very broad defintion of human.  Neanderthals are much closer to modern humans than the hobbits were so I am sure he would include them as Human too.  I personally would not call a Neanderthal a human but my definition is very narrow and only includes Homo sapiens, our species.

Answer 11

It depends on your definition.  Modern humans are homo sapiens. and Neanderthals, though certainly close relatives, are considered a separate species.  But it's always tricky to draw a line saying that humanity begins here.  As we learnmore about our ancient relatives, the differences seem to blur more and more.

Answer 12

I believe they were.  They made good stone tools and may have buried their dead with a ritual.  Since they lived in cold climates, they would have had to keep warm with fire.  Their brain size was the same or maybe larger.  It seems that they cared for their sick.  While some looked different from us, there are some that look somewhat the same.  They may have been primitive but they were people.