Query: Humans have been through climate changes before- but mostly cold ones and

Relevant passages:
Paleolithic <=SEP=> The Paleolithic -LSB- ˌpæliːəˈlɪθᵻk -RSB- age is a prehistoric period of human history distinguished by the development of the most primitive stone tools and covers roughly 95 % of human technological prehistory . It extends from the earliest known use of stone tools , probably by Homo habilis initially , 2.6 million years ago , to the end of the Pleistocene around 10,000 BP .   The Paleolithic era is followed by the Mesolithic . The date of the Paleolithic -- Mesolithic boundary may vary by locality as much as several thousand years .   During the Paleolithic period , humans grouped together in small societies such as bands , and subsisted by gathering plants and fishing , hunting or scavenging wild animals . The Paleolithic is characterized by the use of knapped stone tools , although at the time humans also used wood and bone tools . Other organic commodities were adapted for use as tools , including leather and vegetable fibers ; however , due to their nature , these have not been preserved to any great degree . Surviving artifacts of the Paleolithic era are known as paleoliths .   About 50,000 years ago , there was a marked increase in the diversity of artifacts . For the first time in Africa , bone artifacts and the first art appear in the archaeological record . The first evidence of human fishing is also noted , from artifacts in places such as Blombos cave in South Africa . Firstly among the artifacts of Africa , archaeologists found they could differentiate and classify those of less than 50,000 years into many different categories , such as projectile points , engraving tools , knife blades , and drilling and piercing tools . The new technology generated a population explosion of modern humans which is believed to have led to the extinction of the Neanderthals .   Humankind gradually evolved from early members of the genus Homo -- such as Homo habilis , who used simple stone tools -- into fully behaviorally and anatomically modern humans ( Homo sapiens sapiens ) during the Paleolithic era . During the end of the Paleolithic , specifically the Middle and or Upper Paleolithic , humans began to produce the earliest works of art and engage in religious and spiritual behavior such as burial and ritual . The climate during the Paleolithic consisted of a set of glacial and interglacial periods in which the climate periodically fluctuated between warm and cool temperatures . Archaeological and genetic data suggest that the source populations of Paleolithic humans survived in sparsely wooded areas and dispersed through areas of high primary productivity while avoiding dense forest cover .   By BP , the first humans set foot in Australia . By BP , humans lived at 61 ° N latitude in Europe . By BP , Japan was reached , and by BP humans were present in Siberia , above the Arctic Circle . At the end of the Upper Paleolithic , a group of humans crossed Beringia and quickly expanded throughout the Americas .   The term `` Paleolithic '' was coined by archaeologist John Lubbock in 1865 . It derives from Greek : παλαιός , palaios , `` old '' ; and λίθος , lithos , `` stone '' , meaning `` old age of the stone '' or `` Old Stone Age '' .

Neanderthal <=SEP=> Neanderthals , or more rarely Neandertals , ( -LSB- niˈændərˌtɑːl -RSB- , also -LSB- neɪ -RSB- - , - -LSB- ˈɑːndər -RSB- - , - -LSB- ˌtɔːl -RSB- , - -LSB- ˌθɔːl -RSB- named for the Neandertal region in Germany ) were a species or subspecies of archaic humans in the genus Homo that went extinct about 40,000 years ago . Neanderthals and modern humans share 99.7 % of their DNA and are hence closely related . ( By comparison , both modern humans and Neanderthals share 98.8 % of their DNA with their closest non-human living relatives , the chimpanzees . ) Neanderthals left bones and stone tools in Eurasia , from Western Europe to Central and Northern Asia . Fossil evidence suggests Neanderthals evolved in Europe , separate from modern humans in Africa for more than 400,000 years . They are considered either a distinct species , Homo neanderthalensis , or as a subspecies of Homo sapiens ( H. s. neanderthalensis ) .   Hundreds of lithic assemblages were created by Neanderthals in Europe and Asia . Almost all of them are of the so-called Mousterian techno-complex , which begins c. 160,000 years ago when the makers started making fewer hand axes , and instead started to make tools out of flakes .   Compared to modern humans , Neanderthals had a lower surface-to-volume ratio , with shorter legs and a bigger body , in conformance with Bergmann 's rule , as an energy-loss reduction adaptation to life in a high-latitude ( i.e. seasonally cold ) climate . Male Neanderthals had cranial capacities averaging 1600 cm3 , females 1300 cm3 , extending to 1736 cm3 in Amud 1 . This is notably larger than the 1250 to typical of modern humans . Males stood 164 to and females 152 to tall .   The Neanderthal genome project published papers in 2010 and 2014 stating that Neanderthals contributed to the DNA of modern humans , including most humans outside sub-Saharan Africa , as well as a few populations in sub-Saharan Africa , through interbreeding , likely between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago . Recent studies also show that some Neanderthals mated with ancestors of modern humans long before the `` out of Africa migration '' of present day non-Africans , as early as 100,000 years ago . In 2016 , research indicated that there were three distinct episodes of interbreeding between modern humans and Neanderthals : the first encounter involved the ancestors of non-African modern humans , probably soon after leaving Africa ; the second , after the ancestral Melanesian group had branched off ( and subsequently had a unique episode of interbreeding with Denisovans ) ; and the third , involving the ancestors of East Asians only .   Claims that Neanderthals deliberately buried their dead , and if they did , whether such burials had any symbolic meaning , are heavily contested . The debate on deliberate Neanderthal burials has been active since the 1908 discovery of the well-preserved Chapelle-aux-Saints 1 skeleton in a small hole in a cave in southwestern France . In this controversy 's most recent installment , a team of French researchers reinvestigated the Chapelle-aux-Saints cave and in January 2014 reasserted the century-old claim that the 1908 Neanderthal specimen had been deliberately buried , and this has in turn been heavily criticised .   In 2013 , scientists sequenced the entire genome of a Neanderthal for the first time . The genome was extracted from the phalanx bone of a 50,000-year-old Neanderthal found in a Siberian cave .