Yesterday, there was a craze on the Internet about the "reappearance of an 8-year-old boy 40,000 years ago", and in a Weibo video released by Xinhua News Agency, the head of a boy who looked like a modern person shocked everyone. His face is vivid and realistic, with only slightly larger nostrils and a slightly forward and upward sloping nose bridge that is somewhat different from modern people. The news, though brief, attracted widespread attention. It turned out that the bioarchaeology team of Jilin University cooperated with Russian universities to successfully restore the fossil skull of a Neanderthal boy found in 1938 in the Taysik-Tash cave in the Bajsuntau Mountains of Uzbekistan, bringing back the appearance of this 8-9-year-old prehistoric human in Eurasia who lived 300,000 to 40,000 years ago.
Paradvisingly, however, the boy's appearance did not seem to match that of Neanderthals. Neanderthals typically had typical features such as large, high brow arches, flat foreheads, and retracted chins, but the boy looked more like a modern person. Is this a deviation in recovery? On the Internet, apart from this news published by Xinhua, there is hardly any other detailed description of the discovery.
However, there are some determined inquirers who do not give up easily. I decided to use a search engine and typed in the keywords "1938" and "Neanderthals." As a result, the search results on the first page were filled with information about Neanderthals as well as images of skulls.
It turned out that the little boy was named Taysik-Tash No. 1, and his skull was found in 1938 in the Taysik-Tash cave in the Bajsuntau Mountains of Uzbekistan. At the time, the skull was scattered in a shallow pit and had been crushed into 150 pieces. What's even more remarkable is that there are also five pairs of wild goat horns scattered around. Scientists have speculated that the boy may have been buried during a burial ceremony. Through the analysis of the teeth, the researchers determined that he was about 8 to 11 years old, but the specific date of death, based on the skull, archaeology and surrounding flora and fauna, can only be inferred to be between 300,000 and 40,000 years ago, a fairly wide time span.
The skull was indeed larger than that of modern children of the same age, because Neanderthals grew faster. The skull does carry some features typical of Neanderthals, but it is also mixed with some features of modern humans, which has sparked some controversy, with some suggesting that it may be closer to Late Homo sapiens. However, further mitochondrial DNA analysis definitively classified the skull as Neanderthal. It is worth mentioning that the Soviet anthropologist and sculptor Mikhail Gerasimov had previously restored the skull, but he believed that it was the skull of an eight- or nine-year-old girl, which was more in line with Neanderthal characteristics than the current digital 3D reconstruction.
Jilin University's digital 3D avatar restoration may be closer to the real appearance, but the age of 8 years old has raised many questions. Given the long-standing controversy that the skull may belong to late Homo sapiens, the representation of the true face should more accurately reflect this feature. Neanderthals, prehistoric humans who went extinct more than 30,000 years ago, had a genetic mix with Homo sapiens, and about 2% of the genes of humans outside of Africa today come from Neanderthals. Neanderthals were physically stronger and had larger brains, but why they went extinct remains a mystery.
It is generally believed that the sudden cold climate may have been one of the reasons for the extinction of Neanderthals. Neanderthals may have hid in caves, a lack of communication between groups, and increased intermarriage, combined with competition from modern Homo sapiens, eventually led to their extinction. Another view is that Neanderthals were genetically inferior and were gradually assimilated by modern Homo sapiens, rather than completely extinct. In short, the fate of Neanderthals still haunts the scientific community, as is whether the skull was a boy or a woman
There are also many controversies about whether it is Neanderthals or Homo sapiens, all of which seem to be an airtight fog that is difficult to fully uncover.
Neanderthals, as one of the mysterious representatives of prehistoric humans, still excite scientists and researchers. Their genetic trajectories are intertwined with our modern Homo sapiens, forming a complex and wonderful chapter in human evolution. The discovery that Neanderthal genes remain in the DNA of modern humans gives us a window into the distant past.
However, little is known about the Neanderthal character, habits, and cultural heritage. Perhaps this is because archaeologists and biologists have been working to unlock the mystery of this ancient race in search of the Neanderthal spiritual world. Perhaps, in the future, we will also be able to understand the cultural and social organization of Neanderthals more deeply, and thus understand them more fully.
In the end, no matter how the 8-year-old boy's appearance reappears, no matter how confusing the Neanderthal character and fate are, it cannot change the fact that the path of human evolution is so tortuous and full of unknowns and surprises. And it is the continuous efforts of scientists to explore the unknown that can give us a glimpse of this ancient human group, adding more clues to the puzzle of human evolution. Perhaps, there are more discoveries waiting for us to reveal in the future, so that we can understand our past more deeply and face the future in a more intelligent way.
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