Who are Neanderthals?

The Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) were a Later Pleistocene archaic taxonomic human group in Eurasia, distributed from Iberia to Uzbekistan, the UK to the Near East. They live between 18o,ooo -3o,ooo years ago an overlapped in time with modern humans.

Neanderthals were notable for their stocky build, but it is their cranial characteristics that are the most diagnostic: a protruding mid-facial region, emphasize by the lack of a distinct chin, thick, well-developed brow-ridges over the eyes, which are backward into a weakly developed forehead.

Neanderthals use caves and rock shelters where they existed, but in all probability, constructed shelters in open environments. They probably organized in small groups, and ranged over relatively small and fairly circumscribed territories. Like archaic humans in Africa, the Neanderthals made composite tools, hafting stone points onto shafts of organic material (wood, bones, etc).
Who are Neanderthals?

Cro-Magnon: Animal hunting

The Cro-Magnon lived during period encompassing what archeologists refer to as Aurignacian and Magdalenian cultural eras which hit their peaks respectively about 20,000 and 12,000 years ago.

Evidence from skeleton remains, tools and weapons show that Cro-Magnon was a hunter and fisherman of skill. The animals were the game for which Cro-Magnon hunters looked: reindeer, bison, cattle, deer and horses.

Cro-Magnons were well equipped with all of the necessary weapons for a successful hunt, but in spite of all their powers and equipment they knew that they would face extremely dangerous animal s that could cost them their lives.

Scientists believed that not only did the Cro-Magnon hunter have an understanding of the behavior and the patterns of the animals they hunted, they also understood the qualities of the raw materials that certain animals would provide for tool and weapon making.

During this era, man appears to have had a grasp of the properties of the materials they used and experimented with various spear shapes and bases throughout the Late Ice Age.
Cro-Magnon: Animal hunting