Around 200,000 years ago Neanderthals evolved in Europe and Eurasia. They shared 99.4% of their DNA with us and it was recently found that 1 to 4 percent of the genome for populations living outside of Africa is Neanderthal.

Neanderthals were expert hunters and were the inventors of the first spears. They often made tactical use of terrain features to gain as much advantage as possible, but administered the coup de grace with thrusting spears.

Neanderthals and modern humans found themselves competing across the European landscape 30,000 years ago. Although neanderthals had larger brains, humans had more sophisticated language and were great innovators able to adapt to every corner of the globe. This difference is what led to the extinction of neanderthals.