What distinguished neanderthals from homo habilis?

Answer 1

Homo Habilis looked very much like a modern ape does today, and lacked many of human traits. For a start, he only stood a around 5 foot tall and he was far from being mentally on a par with modern man. The modern human brain capacity is c.1260 cm3. Homo Habilis's brain capacity was c.800 cm3 or less.

Archaeologists attribute this small brain size due to Homo Habilis's lifestyle. He was a gatherer/scavenger. if you think about it, it doesnt take much brain power to sneak up of a bush and pounce on it. Therefore Habilis didn't need all the complex mental capacity needed to hunt. The idea that hunter/gatherers need more complex though processes is borne out by the Neathandrals, who had much larger brains than Homo Habilis and even modern man (How difficult is it to ambush a beef burger anyway?).

Homo Habilis lived from approximately at the beginning of the Pleistoceneperiod, but he wasn't the only proto-human around at the time. His rival was Paranthropus_boiseiwhich eventually went extinct. Toward the end of Habilis's period, Homo Sapien (The new kid on the block.) may have encountered him in Africa, as scientists believe that their existence overlapped for around half a million years.