Neandertal faces have been described as being derived with respect to their overall length or degree of anterior projection. A comparison of cranial and mandibular indicators of lower facial projection across archaic and modern Homo indicates that Neandertal facial lengths on average are similar to those of preceding archaic Homo and principally contrast with those of recent humans. Neandertal facial length is not derived. The shortness of recent human facial skeletons is the evolutionarily derived condition.
Since the discovery of a large male Neandertal skull with an essentially intact facial skeleton at the Bouffia Boneval near La Chapelle-aux-Saints in 1908 (1), descriptions of the Neandertals and comparisons of their facial dimensions have frequently emphasized the large size of their facial skeletons (e.g., refs. 2–9), with them being described recently, for example, as having an “extraordinary forward projection of the face along the midline” (10).
Since the La Chapelle-aux-Saints discovery, the sample of sufficiently complete Neandertal crania and mandibles that provides data on facial length has increased significantly. Moreover, similar samples of their archaic Homo predecessors back to early Homo erectus and of their Late Pleistocene early modern human contemporaries and successors have markedly expanded.
From this material, it has been recognized since the 1970s (11–16) that it is principally the combination of a projecting midface and a more posteriorly positioned lateral facial skeleton, along with a series of secondary morphological consequences of that “midfacial prognathism,” that differentiates the Neandertal face from those of other Pleistocene and recent members of the genus Homo. However, as the quote above illustrates, it remains unclear whether it is variation in the forward projection of the midface or contrasts in the position of the lateral face and detailed aspects of their facial skeleton that explain the overall configuration of the Neandertal face.
Most of the earlier quantitative comparisons of Neandertal facial projection (e.g., refs. 12 and 13) principally compared Neandertal facial projection to that of recent (late Holocene) human populations, though papers concerning other aspects of their facial skeletons (e.g., refs. 14 and 16–19) have provided data suggesting that their overall facial lengths were similar to those of at least their Middle Pleistocene non-Neandertal predecessors.
However, because the assessment of whether the Neandertals have a phylogenetically derived degree of overall prognathism provides a baseline for assessing the polarities and paleobiology of various characteristics of their facial anatomies, it is appropriate to reassess, with the currently available samples, whether the Neandertals did indeed have long faces.
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