Neanderthals Had Better Posture Than Ordinary Human Beings

If the image that jumps to mind when you think “Neanderthal” is a stoop-over cavern occupant with a keg-like chest, you may need to think again.
An international team of researchers has tangled that boilerplate by creating a 3-D virtual restoration of the chest of a 60,000-year-old male Neanderthal skeleton. As it put out, not only did these ancient early humans stand perpendicular, with horizontal spines—they also had similar-size chests, but largest lung space, than humans today.
Researchers have long speculate about the shape of Neanderthals’ chests, and how completely they took in the larger amounts of oxygen decisive to power their substantial bodies through the hard circumstances of the last Ice Age. Neanderthals went disappeared about 40, 000 years ago—although not before interbreeding with early Homo sapiens, or modern humans.
Scientists from Spain, Israel and the United States oversee the new study, using the most effectuate Neanderthal (also spelled Neanderthal) skeleton exhume to date. Known as Kebara 2 or “Moshe for short, in early 1980s the skeleton was found in Northern Israel. In a prior study, the same team initiated an implied model of Moshe’s spine.
The new study focused on the torso, the area of the body consists of the ribcage and upper spine. After making a CT scan of each vertebra and every personal rib remnant, the scientists essentially rejuvenate them to create the 3D model.
Many Neanderthal residue have been construct at sites in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, but “ribs and vertebrae are frail and have a limited fossil record,” Gomez-Olivencia told New Scientist. To fill this gap, scientists had implied Neanderthals must have had bigger chests than modern humans, in order to hold larger lungs.
But with their virtual rehabilitation of the Kebara-2 thorax, Gomez-Olivencia and his companion scientists found that the Neanderthal’s chest and lungs apparently were not any larger than those of modern humans. Instead, they were shaped separately; the Neanderthal thorax was broad at the bottom, meaning he could have had a wider, larger diaphragm and been able to suck in more air than we can.

By – Tripti Varun
Content - https://www.history.com/news/neanderthal-chest-lung-size-discovery