Neanderthals in the 20th Century

Neanderthals, who preceded Homo sapiens are thought to of existed from around 130,000 years ago, the last becoming extinct about 30,000 years ago.

It is believed that inter breeding between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens took place between 50,000 and 30,000 years ago. The Homo sapiens genes continuing to become the predominant, until eventually 30,000 years ago the Neanderthal genes became non existent.

It is still being disputed if a skull, dated as being 22,000 years old, recently found on the southern coast of Gibraltar is that of a Neanderthal.

In the mid nineteenth century, in Georgia, Russia, a wild woman was caught.

She was covered in hair, had huge breasts, thick arms, legs and fingers. She was very violent and at first, her captors kept her in a cage, throwing food through the bars.

Eventually she became less violent. She showed an avarice appetite for grapes and loved wine, often drinking to excess.

It was possibly this excessive drinking that led her to become the mother of many children from different fathers.

Her captors had named the woman Zana. She liked the cold and did not like being in heated houses. This love of cold resulted in the deaths of several of her children, who she would insist on bathing in the freezing river. Eventually the villagers took away and minded her remaining children.

Unlike their mother, the children were able to learn how to communicate.

Zana died in 1890 and the youngest of her children died in 1954.

Her grandchildren have dark skin and one of her grandsons named Shalikula, has jaws so strong it is said that, with his jaws, he can lift a chair with a man sitting in it.

Is it possible that somehow Zana was a direct descendent of Neanderthals? If so how did they remain undetected for so long?

Are there still more, once thought, extinct species alive in the World today?

We should not be surprised, as each year dozens of new animals are discovered, also some that were previously thought extinct.

Does the story of Zana give more credence to the legends of the Bigfoot or Yeti?

Knowledge is exactly that: what we know. Yet there is so much in this World that we only think we know.

We still have a lot more to learn about our planet, its history and our own.