The first Neanderthal fossils found in Europe, a fragmented infant skull in Belgium in 1830 and an adult skull in Gibraltar, were not immediately recognized as a type of divergent human . Only in 1856, after the discovery of a partial skeleton in a cave in the Neander Valley in Germany, did it become clear that these fossils belonged to an extinct human and our closest evolutionary relative (Hublin and Pääbo, 2006). Since then, questions relating to their relationship with modern humans have been the subject of heated debate among anthropologists. But what most attracts the interest of scientists and popular media is the possibility of hybridization between Neanderthals and modern humans if, in other words, they were a genetically different species or a single species capable of producing offspring. The first morphological traits that would later become typical of Neanderthals, the protruding central part of the face and a depression in the back of the skull, were observed in fossils found in Europe dating back 400,000 years (Stringer & Hublin, 1999). These fossils belonged to Homo heidelbergensis, which in one of the various evolutionary scenarios linking Neanderthals and modern humans is considered the ancestor of both Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens (Hubmlin, 2009). Neanderthals lived in Europe and western Asia between 200,000 and 30,000 years ago. Fossil finds show that around 150,000 years ago (Bar-Yosef, 1998; Grün & Stringer, 2000) their range extended from Europe to the Middle East and Asia extending to Uzbekistan and Russia (Herrera et al., 2009). They were probably the only hominin group that lived in Europe and western Asia for a long period of time until the arrival of modern humans. Their extinction is dated around 30,000 years ago... middle of paper... the origin and dispersal of modern man. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. Shreeve, J. (1995). The Neanderthal enigma. New York: Morrow. Soficaru, A., Dobos, A., & Trinkaus, E. (2006). Early modern humans from Pestera Muierii Baia de Fier, Romania. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103, 17196–17201. Stringer, C.B. & Hublin, J.J. (1999). New age estimates for the Swanscombe hominin and their significance for human evolution. Journal of Human Evolution 37, 873–877. Tattersal, I., & Schwartz, J. H. (1999). Hominids and hybrids: the place of Neanderthals in human evolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 96, 7117–7119.Trinkaus, E., Milota, S., Rodrigo, R., Mircea, G., & Moldovan, O. (2003). Early modern human cranial remains from Pesxtera cu Oase, Romania. Journal of Human Evolution 45, 245–253.