mojo
03-05-2008, 07:20 PM
The Mystery of the Neanderthals.
A bit of light reading for my AmKon friends, having trouble sleeping, try this. :)
They were expert toolmakers (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1766683.stm), they lived in communal groups and looked after each other, they fashioned clothing to keep warm, they may have developed art/sculptures and they may also have been able to communicate verbally. (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071018/sc_nm/neanderthals_speech_dc;_ylt=ArrUEZKfjXw5hI9cgD_OQb 0hANEA) Their brain capacity was as large or larger than ours, they were stronger physically.
Did they become extinct due to competition for resources from modern humans, did they become absorbed genetically with modern man. Their extinction seems to have occured very quickly somewhere between 25,000 - 30,000 years ago.
Neanderthals were basically carnivores, could this have had something to do with their demise, a shortage of game might have meant that they were unable to supplement their diet with flora (fruits/berries etc) unlike our ancestors.
BBC news (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1766683.stm)
The discovery suggests the ancient hunter-gatherers made tools by sticking stone heads to wooden handles with glue.
This requires technical competence and puts Neanderthals on an intellectual par with early modern humans,
www.archchannel page 2 (http://www.archchannel.de/main/EN/neandertaler/History/Did_the_Neanderthal_really_extinct_02/index,method=main.html)
The two lived alongside one another in Europe from 40,000 years ago until around 27,000 years ago. But did they also live with one another?
One thing is clear. The creator of the artworks from the late Paleolithic could not have been Neolithic man. So who was it? Surely not the Neanderthal, this ungainly companion? "There is that possibility," says Nicholas Conrad.
www.archchannel page 3 (http://www.archchannel.de/main/EN/neandertaler/History/Did_the_Neanderthal_really_extinct_03/index,method=main.html)
This conclusion, according to Serre, is wrong. "When," he emphasizes, "when there had been a gene flow, then it was presumably small. We can by no means rule out, however, that Neanderthals contributed to the genotype of modern man." And thus is not extinct in a biological sense, but is still present in the nuclei of our cells.
www.archchannel page 4 (http://www.archchannel.de/main/EN/neandertaler/History/Did_the_Neanderthal_really_extinct_04/index,method=main.html)
Stone tools have been discovered during mining for brown coal in eastern Germany that are over 100,000 years old and upon which the remnants of oak bark extract still adhere: A material still used today for tanning leather and making waterproof shoes. The Neanderthals must have developed the technique themselves because modern man was still not yet there.
www.ecotao.com (http://www.ecotao.com/holism/hu_neand.htm)
These early humans thus lived in the same area as Neanderthals during the same time. From this perspective, humans are NOT the only species that have developed culture, intelligence, language and self-awareness. Neanderthals were skilled
hunters and craftsmen who made tools, used fire, cared for their sick and injured and even had a few symbolic notions, probably with some facility for language.
These heavily built and muscled people had a brain volume of 1200 to 1800 cubic centimetres, equal to and even larger than modern human brains. Neanderthals were much more muscular than are modern humans - bulking about 30 percent more in weight.
Toolmaking (http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/N/neanderthal/survival_kit/toolmaking.html)
archaeology.about.com (http://archaeology.about.com/od/hominidancestors/a/neander_2.htm)
Neanderthals and Modern Humans in Western Asia (http://archaeology.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&sdn=archaeology&cdn=education&tm=10&gps=110_41_1012_621&f=00&tt=2&bt=0&bts=0&zu=http%3A//karmak.org/archive/2003/01/westasia.htm)
These similarities between young Neanderthals and modern humans indicate that some of the features that distinguished Neanderthals from early modern humans in adulthood may have resulted from behaviors that differentially altered skeletal traits during growth, not from genetic differences. This increases the chances that these two groups belonged to a single species.
A flint object with a striking likeness to a human face may be one of the best examples of art by Neanderthal man ever found, the journal Antiquity reports. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3256228.stm)
"This object shows that art was not born in the brain of Homo sapiens but much earlier in the brains of predecessors like the Neanderthal man and even, no doubt, in Homo erectus.
Neanderthals and humans lived side by side (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10070)
A species that had everything going for it or so it seems, comparable to modern humans at the time.
Was the Neanderthal extinction in the end just bad luck, the encroaching cold, scarce resources, competition from modern humans and the smaller population in comparison all playing a part in their demise? Does Neanderthal man still survive in some small part perhaps within our genome?
Was there some other reason for their extinction?
It is being debated whether these artifacts were actually made by Neanderthal and not Modern man. If they are proven to be Neanderthal they consist of artifacts that convey beauty (ornamentation) and esoteric thinking (hybrid man and lion).
Link 1 (http://www.archchannel.de/main/EN/neandertaler/History/Did_the_Neanderthal_really_extinct_02/index,method=main.html)
An ornamented lion, sculptures of waterfowl, wooly rhinos and wild horses, as well as figures half lion and half man. The pieces are between 30,000 and 36,000 years old
Link 2 (http://donsmaps.com/cavepaintings2.html), with pictures.
If Mousterian civilization is specific to Neandertals in Europe, "the Mask" thus leads us to think that Neandertals were capable of an artistic production more advanced than than anyone suspected until now.
This protofigurine is a flint improved by Mousterians to accentuate the appearance of a face which the stone offered
Washington State University (http://www.wsu.edu:8001/vwsu/gened/learn-modules/top_longfor/timeline/neander/neander-d.html)
The deceased was buried in a fetal position with tools and food; a bear skull lies at the edge of the grave. Flower pollen found in the grave suggests that medicinal plants were scattered over the body as well. These practices obviously suggest complex beliefs and rituals.
The fact that the individual with an injury this severe survived into a relatively advanced age implies the existence of a complex social life in which other group members would have shared food and life-supporting tasks. This individual must have contributed something other than physical strength to the social group in which he lived.
Their burial practices also suggest a belief in an afterlife hence tools and food buried with the deceased. Not the rituals of a species that would be unable to understand the concept of beauty, grief, love imo.
Some researchers believe they were able to interbreed. David Serre of the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology (EVA) says this (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v444/n7117/full/nature05336.html)
"when there had been a gene flow, then it was presumably small. We can by no means rule out, however, that Neanderthals contributed to the genotype of modern man."
They survived through at least 2 ice ages and other cold phases, and flourished in the warmer phases in between, moving north when the ice retreated and then moving south again during cold snaps. Though it seems that after each ice age their population density decreased, so that could have played a part in their downfall.
And then there is our own desciptions of how Neandertals would have appeared as slouching, hairy, knuckle scraping apes. That is not the case. Yes they were shorter, broader built physically with the sloping brow but they were not all that dissimilar in appearance to Homo Sapiens at that time.
Washington State University (http://www.wsu.edu:8001/vwsu/gened/learn-modules/top_longfor/timeline/neander/neander-e.html)
The painting at left illustrates popular prejudices and misconceptions about early humans given expression in the work of French paleontologist Marcellin Boule, who based his 1911 study of the Neanderthals on an individual who, as it turned out, was badly deformed by arthritis. Note the bent-kneed stance suggesting an imperfect or only partly erect posture, the head set forward on the spine much like that of a chimp or gorilla, and the clumsy, extremely hairy bodies.
Neandertals Hunted as Well as Humans, Study Says (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/01/0125_060125_neanderthal.html)
"These data are joining an increasing body of evidence that Neanderthal extinction was not due to any lack of ability to hunt," said John Shea, an archaeologist at Stony Brook University on Long Island, New York.
"There was no difference between what Neanderthals and modern humans could do [as hunters]," said Shea, who was not involved in the study. "Both of them were wolves with knives."
Theres not been a lot of Neandertal skeletons found . A lot of the really interesting cave sites were found over 100 years ago and not handled in a very professional manner at the time by amateurs, meaning layers were mixed up in the initial digging, see "Vogelherd skull" for evidence of this. Some sites were even destroyed during the second world war by allied bombing. Unfortunately relying on finding Neandertal and Homo Saps skeletons or artifacts together is going to be difficult. but there is circumstantial evidence.
Link (http://www.archchannel.de/main/EN/neandertaler/History/Did_the_Neanderthal_really_extinct_03/index,method=main.html)
When we plot on a map the discovery sites of the last Neanderthals together with the first modern man, we then see that both lived for many thousands of years together in the same region, at the latest 40,000 years ago."
Did they have contact with one another? As soon as one becomes conscious of the period of time involved, it is perhaps more obvious to ask, "Could they have avoided encounters?" They roamed, lived, hunted and gathered in the same sphere for at least 10,000 years. This is a timeframe that, calculated from today, stretches back further than construction of the pyramids in Egypt. Of course they encountered each other. What is missing, however, is irrefutable evidence of relation- ships between the two races
St. Césaire in France.
Link (http://archaeology.about.com/od/sterms/g/stcesaire.htm)
Discovered by French archaeologist François Lévêque in 1979, the site contained a nearly complete Neanderthal skull, and a Châtelperronian tool kit, which is normally associated with Homo sapiens sapiens, not Neanderthal. It is considered evidence of co-existence of Homo sapiens and Neanderthalensis, a coexistence that doesn't seem to have been consistently pleasant.
Also this from a cave site in croatia, Vindija Cave.
Link (http://archaeology.about.com/od/vterms/g/vindija.htm)
there are four to five stratigraphically separated hominin levels at Vindija Cave associated with humans and Neanderthals.
There are some other cave sites you can check out on archaeology.about.com.
I dont think we can rule out genetic mixing just because we dont have skeletons lying on top of each other. :D
Some more interesting articles that have turned up lately suggesting that the time we co existed with Neandertals was not as long as previously thought and why we should try to understand what happened to them.
The Scariest Thing about Neanderthals (http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20071103/sc_livescience/thescariestthingaboutneanderthals;_ylt=Amb2HBdsPJ_ KDvi3M7ewuqWs0NUE)
And so why have these interesting people been relegated to second-class citizen status?
Because they threaten us.
Neanderthals are chronologically the closest, and the most familiar, example that we have of our kind disappearing off the face of the Earth, and that means we can go too.
Neanderthals scare us because they are ghosts from the past, a few with wizardly Weasley hair and a sprinkle of freckles, and they are now turned in our direction whispering, "You're not so unique. Watch out."
link (http://www.livescience.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display.php?pic=060508_human_evolution_02.jpg&cap=The+timeline+of+human+evolution+is+long+and+co ntroversial,+with+significant+gaps.+Experts+do+not +agree+on+many+of+the+start+and+end+points+of+vari o)
http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o223/mojo4sale/060508_human_evolution_02.jpg
Perhaps they never met. (http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/060508_human_evolution.html)
The number of years that modern humans are thought to have overlapped with Neanderthals in Europe is shrinking fast, and some scientists now say that figure could drop to zero.
Anthropologists also disagree on whether modern humans and Neanderthals are the same species and interbred.
And now, some scientists dispute whether they lived side-by-side at all in Europe.
The overlap figure shrank in February with new research by Paul Mellars of Cambridge University based on improved carbon-14 dating to show that modern humans started encroaching from Israel upon Neanderthal territory in the Balkans 3,000 years sooner than previously thought. This rate suggests Neanderthals succumbed sooner to big climate shifts or competition from modern humans for resources and that they might have overlapped for only 1,000 years at sites in western France.
Article on Mellars research (http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/060222_neanderthals.html)
"This study suggests that the period of potential interaction was short, and also favors the idea that the impact of the newcomers was indeed a significant factor in the demise of the Neanderthals, something which has been disputed recently,'' said Stringer.
Related link on Aurignacian culture. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurignacian)
Aurignacian is the name of a culture of the Upper Palaeolithic located in Europe and southwest Asia. It dates to between 32,000 and 26,000 BC. The name originates from the type site of Aurignac in the Haute Garonne area of France. The Aurignacian culture is considered by some archaeologists to have co-existed with the Périgordian culture of tool making.
What we are learning is that what was true last week may no longer be true this week.
I think there is still a lot more to come.
Maybe women are to blame.
Stone Age feminism?]
Females joining hunt may explain Neanderthals' end (http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2007/11/10/stone_age_feminism/)
But a recent study introduces another explanation: Stone Age feminism. Among Neanderthals, hunting big beasts was women's work as well as men's, so it's a safe bet that female hunters got stomped, gored, and worse with appalling frequency. And a high casualty rate among fertile women - the vital "reproductive core" of a tiny population - could well have meant demographic disaster for a species already struggling to survive among monster bears, yellow-fanged hyenas, and cunning Homo sapien newcomers.
Just joking ladies. :D
Page 2 (http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2007/11/10/stone_age_feminism/?page=2)
"All elements of [Neanderthal] society appear to have been involved in the main subsistence pursuit" of hunting large animals, Kuhn said. "There's not much evidence of classic female roles.
"Putting the reproductive core of the population - pregnant women, mothers of infants, children themselves - at such danger could have put Neanderthals as a whole at serious demographic disadvantage," he said.
Not only would women suffer casualties, Kuhn said, their full participation in the hunt would mean they were not harvesting wild grains and other foods that could sustain their roving bands when game was scarce.
Makes sense. Not something i would have thought of.
Here's a slightly different slant.
Hyperphysics (http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/starlog/cygx3.html)
But its most unique aspect is the production of anomalous cosmic ray events in a proton decay detector deep in Minnesota's Soudran iron mine. These events have defied analysis and have led to questions about whether Cygnus X-3 is a standard neutron star or perhaps something more exotic, like a star made of quarks. Cygnus X-3 is a compact object in a binary system which is pulling in a stream of gas from an ordinary star companion.
But no known particles can produce such events! Muons themselves are too short-lived to have traveled 37,000 light years so they must be secondary. The particles must be neutral to arrive with that precise directionality. They must be traveling at the same speed, essentially the speed of light, and there are no reasonable candidates for such a particle.
link (http://www.andrewcollins.com/page/articles/thecygnusmystery.htm), this is a link to a book by Andrew Collins, i am in no way advertising this book, merely posting these excerpts to promote some discussion. :)
COSMIC RAYS AND THE CYGNUS MYSTERY
Did Cosmic Radiation change evolution and kick-start religion?
What caused this sudden leap forward? The Cygnus Mystery proposes that it was a dramatic rise in cosmic rays reaching Earth - and provides evidence that the rays, which left subatomic traces in those same deep caves, emanated from a binary star system known as Cygnus X-3. These findings, Collins explains, challenged the certainties of the scientific establishment - until, in 2005, a U.S. think tank went public with its own conviction that a binary system producing powerful jets of cosmic rays triggered a rapid acceleration in human evolution during the last Ice Age.
I have a couple of query's regarding this but.... could a cosmic event have determined the demise of the Neandertals and the rise of Homo Sapiens?
40,000-year-old Skull Shows Both Modern Human And Neandertal Traits
(http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/104/4/1165)
Humans continued to evolve significantly long after they were established in Europe, and interbred with Neandertals as they settled across the continent, according to new research published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) USA.
By comparing it with other skulls, Professor Zilhao and colleagues found that Oase 2 had the same proportions as modern human crania and shared a number of modern human and/or non-Neandertal features.
However, there were some important differences: apparently independent features that are, at best, unusual for a modern human. These included frontal flattening, a fairly large juxtamastoid eminence and exceptionally large upper molars with unusual size progression which are found principally among the Neandertals.
Related link (http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/104/4/1165)
www.sciencedaily.com (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/11/061103083616.htm)
A reexamination of ancient human bones from Romania reveals more evidence that humans and Neandertals interbred.
There just seems to be so many alternate theory's from the scholars, perhaps we may never know the full story.
Heres some new research that suggests that they died out due to the fact they were not able to make warm clothes during the last glacial maximum. Problem i have with this is that some Neandertal fossils and artifacts have been found after this period, unless these were just from the last remnants of the Neandertal population?
Neanderthals Stitched Too Little Too Late (http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/01/03/neanderthal-clothes.html?dcitc=w19-502-ak-0000)
Neanderthals probably froze to death in the last ice age because rapid climate change caught them by surprise without the tools needed to make warm clothes, finds new research.
Ian Gilligan, a postgraduate researcher from the Australian National University argues his case in the current issue of the journal World Archaeology. By the time some Neanderthals developed sewing tools it was too little too late, said Gilligan.
Page 2 (http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/01/03/neanderthal-clothes-02.html)
A 40000 year old tooth found in Southern Greece has experts now believing that Neandertals were much wider travelled than previously thought.
www.archaeologynews.org (http://www.archaeologynews.org/story.asp?ID=261609&Title=Ancient%20tooth%20suggests%20Neanderthals%20 were%20more%20mobile)
Analysis of a 40,000-year-old tooth found in southern Greece suggests Neanderthals were more mobile than once believed, paleontologists and the Greek Culture Ministry said Friday.
Analysis of the tooth — part of the first and only Neanderthal remains found in Greece — showed the ancient human to whom it belonged had spent at least part of its life away from the area where it died.
"Our findings prove that their mobility was significant and that their settlement networks were broader and more organized than we believed," she said.
Given that Neanderthals also coexisted with modern man in some parts of Europe, "one could presume that this mobility would facilitate the contacts of the two populations on a cultural and, perhaps, on a biological level."
Does that rule out one of the proposed reasons for their demise, that they weren't able to hunt as widely as Cro Magnon.
Did Neandertal die off because of cannibalism and transmissible spongiform encephalopathies?
(http://anthropology.net/2008/02/29/did-neandertal-die-off-because-of-cannibalism-and-transmissible-spongiform-encephalopathies/)
TSEs are also known as prion diseases, a communicable disease where the infectious agent is a malformed protein that replicates by imprinting and transforming other proteins. Most TSEs manifest in the host’s neurological tissues because he or she ate infected nervous tissue. Ultimately, the host’s tissues degenerate and lead to serious problems, most often death. In anthropology, one form of TSEs has been well documented, the spread and eradication of kuru in the Fore from Papua New Guinea.
Links to the paper are on this page as well as information about the author and other related topics. You need to register to view the full article but it is free or you can just read the summary.
Maybe the Neandertals are the archetype Zombie, brainsss...brainssss.
If they did in fact have larger brains than us the reason may have been so that they could feed the whole family. :D
Article: dsc.discovery.com/news (http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/02/27/neanderthal-cannibalism.html)
Its one of the truly great mystery's that may never be solved.
mojo
A bit of light reading for my AmKon friends, having trouble sleeping, try this. :)
They were expert toolmakers (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1766683.stm), they lived in communal groups and looked after each other, they fashioned clothing to keep warm, they may have developed art/sculptures and they may also have been able to communicate verbally. (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071018/sc_nm/neanderthals_speech_dc;_ylt=ArrUEZKfjXw5hI9cgD_OQb 0hANEA) Their brain capacity was as large or larger than ours, they were stronger physically.
Did they become extinct due to competition for resources from modern humans, did they become absorbed genetically with modern man. Their extinction seems to have occured very quickly somewhere between 25,000 - 30,000 years ago.
Neanderthals were basically carnivores, could this have had something to do with their demise, a shortage of game might have meant that they were unable to supplement their diet with flora (fruits/berries etc) unlike our ancestors.
BBC news (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1766683.stm)
The discovery suggests the ancient hunter-gatherers made tools by sticking stone heads to wooden handles with glue.
This requires technical competence and puts Neanderthals on an intellectual par with early modern humans,
www.archchannel page 2 (http://www.archchannel.de/main/EN/neandertaler/History/Did_the_Neanderthal_really_extinct_02/index,method=main.html)
The two lived alongside one another in Europe from 40,000 years ago until around 27,000 years ago. But did they also live with one another?
One thing is clear. The creator of the artworks from the late Paleolithic could not have been Neolithic man. So who was it? Surely not the Neanderthal, this ungainly companion? "There is that possibility," says Nicholas Conrad.
www.archchannel page 3 (http://www.archchannel.de/main/EN/neandertaler/History/Did_the_Neanderthal_really_extinct_03/index,method=main.html)
This conclusion, according to Serre, is wrong. "When," he emphasizes, "when there had been a gene flow, then it was presumably small. We can by no means rule out, however, that Neanderthals contributed to the genotype of modern man." And thus is not extinct in a biological sense, but is still present in the nuclei of our cells.
www.archchannel page 4 (http://www.archchannel.de/main/EN/neandertaler/History/Did_the_Neanderthal_really_extinct_04/index,method=main.html)
Stone tools have been discovered during mining for brown coal in eastern Germany that are over 100,000 years old and upon which the remnants of oak bark extract still adhere: A material still used today for tanning leather and making waterproof shoes. The Neanderthals must have developed the technique themselves because modern man was still not yet there.
www.ecotao.com (http://www.ecotao.com/holism/hu_neand.htm)
These early humans thus lived in the same area as Neanderthals during the same time. From this perspective, humans are NOT the only species that have developed culture, intelligence, language and self-awareness. Neanderthals were skilled
hunters and craftsmen who made tools, used fire, cared for their sick and injured and even had a few symbolic notions, probably with some facility for language.
These heavily built and muscled people had a brain volume of 1200 to 1800 cubic centimetres, equal to and even larger than modern human brains. Neanderthals were much more muscular than are modern humans - bulking about 30 percent more in weight.
Toolmaking (http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/N/neanderthal/survival_kit/toolmaking.html)
archaeology.about.com (http://archaeology.about.com/od/hominidancestors/a/neander_2.htm)
Neanderthals and Modern Humans in Western Asia (http://archaeology.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&sdn=archaeology&cdn=education&tm=10&gps=110_41_1012_621&f=00&tt=2&bt=0&bts=0&zu=http%3A//karmak.org/archive/2003/01/westasia.htm)
These similarities between young Neanderthals and modern humans indicate that some of the features that distinguished Neanderthals from early modern humans in adulthood may have resulted from behaviors that differentially altered skeletal traits during growth, not from genetic differences. This increases the chances that these two groups belonged to a single species.
A flint object with a striking likeness to a human face may be one of the best examples of art by Neanderthal man ever found, the journal Antiquity reports. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3256228.stm)
"This object shows that art was not born in the brain of Homo sapiens but much earlier in the brains of predecessors like the Neanderthal man and even, no doubt, in Homo erectus.
Neanderthals and humans lived side by side (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10070)
A species that had everything going for it or so it seems, comparable to modern humans at the time.
Was the Neanderthal extinction in the end just bad luck, the encroaching cold, scarce resources, competition from modern humans and the smaller population in comparison all playing a part in their demise? Does Neanderthal man still survive in some small part perhaps within our genome?
Was there some other reason for their extinction?
It is being debated whether these artifacts were actually made by Neanderthal and not Modern man. If they are proven to be Neanderthal they consist of artifacts that convey beauty (ornamentation) and esoteric thinking (hybrid man and lion).
Link 1 (http://www.archchannel.de/main/EN/neandertaler/History/Did_the_Neanderthal_really_extinct_02/index,method=main.html)
An ornamented lion, sculptures of waterfowl, wooly rhinos and wild horses, as well as figures half lion and half man. The pieces are between 30,000 and 36,000 years old
Link 2 (http://donsmaps.com/cavepaintings2.html), with pictures.
If Mousterian civilization is specific to Neandertals in Europe, "the Mask" thus leads us to think that Neandertals were capable of an artistic production more advanced than than anyone suspected until now.
This protofigurine is a flint improved by Mousterians to accentuate the appearance of a face which the stone offered
Washington State University (http://www.wsu.edu:8001/vwsu/gened/learn-modules/top_longfor/timeline/neander/neander-d.html)
The deceased was buried in a fetal position with tools and food; a bear skull lies at the edge of the grave. Flower pollen found in the grave suggests that medicinal plants were scattered over the body as well. These practices obviously suggest complex beliefs and rituals.
The fact that the individual with an injury this severe survived into a relatively advanced age implies the existence of a complex social life in which other group members would have shared food and life-supporting tasks. This individual must have contributed something other than physical strength to the social group in which he lived.
Their burial practices also suggest a belief in an afterlife hence tools and food buried with the deceased. Not the rituals of a species that would be unable to understand the concept of beauty, grief, love imo.
Some researchers believe they were able to interbreed. David Serre of the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology (EVA) says this (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v444/n7117/full/nature05336.html)
"when there had been a gene flow, then it was presumably small. We can by no means rule out, however, that Neanderthals contributed to the genotype of modern man."
They survived through at least 2 ice ages and other cold phases, and flourished in the warmer phases in between, moving north when the ice retreated and then moving south again during cold snaps. Though it seems that after each ice age their population density decreased, so that could have played a part in their downfall.
And then there is our own desciptions of how Neandertals would have appeared as slouching, hairy, knuckle scraping apes. That is not the case. Yes they were shorter, broader built physically with the sloping brow but they were not all that dissimilar in appearance to Homo Sapiens at that time.
Washington State University (http://www.wsu.edu:8001/vwsu/gened/learn-modules/top_longfor/timeline/neander/neander-e.html)
The painting at left illustrates popular prejudices and misconceptions about early humans given expression in the work of French paleontologist Marcellin Boule, who based his 1911 study of the Neanderthals on an individual who, as it turned out, was badly deformed by arthritis. Note the bent-kneed stance suggesting an imperfect or only partly erect posture, the head set forward on the spine much like that of a chimp or gorilla, and the clumsy, extremely hairy bodies.
Neandertals Hunted as Well as Humans, Study Says (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/01/0125_060125_neanderthal.html)
"These data are joining an increasing body of evidence that Neanderthal extinction was not due to any lack of ability to hunt," said John Shea, an archaeologist at Stony Brook University on Long Island, New York.
"There was no difference between what Neanderthals and modern humans could do [as hunters]," said Shea, who was not involved in the study. "Both of them were wolves with knives."
Theres not been a lot of Neandertal skeletons found . A lot of the really interesting cave sites were found over 100 years ago and not handled in a very professional manner at the time by amateurs, meaning layers were mixed up in the initial digging, see "Vogelherd skull" for evidence of this. Some sites were even destroyed during the second world war by allied bombing. Unfortunately relying on finding Neandertal and Homo Saps skeletons or artifacts together is going to be difficult. but there is circumstantial evidence.
Link (http://www.archchannel.de/main/EN/neandertaler/History/Did_the_Neanderthal_really_extinct_03/index,method=main.html)
When we plot on a map the discovery sites of the last Neanderthals together with the first modern man, we then see that both lived for many thousands of years together in the same region, at the latest 40,000 years ago."
Did they have contact with one another? As soon as one becomes conscious of the period of time involved, it is perhaps more obvious to ask, "Could they have avoided encounters?" They roamed, lived, hunted and gathered in the same sphere for at least 10,000 years. This is a timeframe that, calculated from today, stretches back further than construction of the pyramids in Egypt. Of course they encountered each other. What is missing, however, is irrefutable evidence of relation- ships between the two races
St. Césaire in France.
Link (http://archaeology.about.com/od/sterms/g/stcesaire.htm)
Discovered by French archaeologist François Lévêque in 1979, the site contained a nearly complete Neanderthal skull, and a Châtelperronian tool kit, which is normally associated with Homo sapiens sapiens, not Neanderthal. It is considered evidence of co-existence of Homo sapiens and Neanderthalensis, a coexistence that doesn't seem to have been consistently pleasant.
Also this from a cave site in croatia, Vindija Cave.
Link (http://archaeology.about.com/od/vterms/g/vindija.htm)
there are four to five stratigraphically separated hominin levels at Vindija Cave associated with humans and Neanderthals.
There are some other cave sites you can check out on archaeology.about.com.
I dont think we can rule out genetic mixing just because we dont have skeletons lying on top of each other. :D
Some more interesting articles that have turned up lately suggesting that the time we co existed with Neandertals was not as long as previously thought and why we should try to understand what happened to them.
The Scariest Thing about Neanderthals (http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20071103/sc_livescience/thescariestthingaboutneanderthals;_ylt=Amb2HBdsPJ_ KDvi3M7ewuqWs0NUE)
And so why have these interesting people been relegated to second-class citizen status?
Because they threaten us.
Neanderthals are chronologically the closest, and the most familiar, example that we have of our kind disappearing off the face of the Earth, and that means we can go too.
Neanderthals scare us because they are ghosts from the past, a few with wizardly Weasley hair and a sprinkle of freckles, and they are now turned in our direction whispering, "You're not so unique. Watch out."
link (http://www.livescience.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display.php?pic=060508_human_evolution_02.jpg&cap=The+timeline+of+human+evolution+is+long+and+co ntroversial,+with+significant+gaps.+Experts+do+not +agree+on+many+of+the+start+and+end+points+of+vari o)
http://i121.photobucket.com/albums/o223/mojo4sale/060508_human_evolution_02.jpg
Perhaps they never met. (http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/060508_human_evolution.html)
The number of years that modern humans are thought to have overlapped with Neanderthals in Europe is shrinking fast, and some scientists now say that figure could drop to zero.
Anthropologists also disagree on whether modern humans and Neanderthals are the same species and interbred.
And now, some scientists dispute whether they lived side-by-side at all in Europe.
The overlap figure shrank in February with new research by Paul Mellars of Cambridge University based on improved carbon-14 dating to show that modern humans started encroaching from Israel upon Neanderthal territory in the Balkans 3,000 years sooner than previously thought. This rate suggests Neanderthals succumbed sooner to big climate shifts or competition from modern humans for resources and that they might have overlapped for only 1,000 years at sites in western France.
Article on Mellars research (http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/060222_neanderthals.html)
"This study suggests that the period of potential interaction was short, and also favors the idea that the impact of the newcomers was indeed a significant factor in the demise of the Neanderthals, something which has been disputed recently,'' said Stringer.
Related link on Aurignacian culture. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurignacian)
Aurignacian is the name of a culture of the Upper Palaeolithic located in Europe and southwest Asia. It dates to between 32,000 and 26,000 BC. The name originates from the type site of Aurignac in the Haute Garonne area of France. The Aurignacian culture is considered by some archaeologists to have co-existed with the Périgordian culture of tool making.
What we are learning is that what was true last week may no longer be true this week.
I think there is still a lot more to come.
Maybe women are to blame.
Stone Age feminism?]
Females joining hunt may explain Neanderthals' end (http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2007/11/10/stone_age_feminism/)
But a recent study introduces another explanation: Stone Age feminism. Among Neanderthals, hunting big beasts was women's work as well as men's, so it's a safe bet that female hunters got stomped, gored, and worse with appalling frequency. And a high casualty rate among fertile women - the vital "reproductive core" of a tiny population - could well have meant demographic disaster for a species already struggling to survive among monster bears, yellow-fanged hyenas, and cunning Homo sapien newcomers.
Just joking ladies. :D
Page 2 (http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2007/11/10/stone_age_feminism/?page=2)
"All elements of [Neanderthal] society appear to have been involved in the main subsistence pursuit" of hunting large animals, Kuhn said. "There's not much evidence of classic female roles.
"Putting the reproductive core of the population - pregnant women, mothers of infants, children themselves - at such danger could have put Neanderthals as a whole at serious demographic disadvantage," he said.
Not only would women suffer casualties, Kuhn said, their full participation in the hunt would mean they were not harvesting wild grains and other foods that could sustain their roving bands when game was scarce.
Makes sense. Not something i would have thought of.
Here's a slightly different slant.
Hyperphysics (http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/starlog/cygx3.html)
But its most unique aspect is the production of anomalous cosmic ray events in a proton decay detector deep in Minnesota's Soudran iron mine. These events have defied analysis and have led to questions about whether Cygnus X-3 is a standard neutron star or perhaps something more exotic, like a star made of quarks. Cygnus X-3 is a compact object in a binary system which is pulling in a stream of gas from an ordinary star companion.
But no known particles can produce such events! Muons themselves are too short-lived to have traveled 37,000 light years so they must be secondary. The particles must be neutral to arrive with that precise directionality. They must be traveling at the same speed, essentially the speed of light, and there are no reasonable candidates for such a particle.
link (http://www.andrewcollins.com/page/articles/thecygnusmystery.htm), this is a link to a book by Andrew Collins, i am in no way advertising this book, merely posting these excerpts to promote some discussion. :)
COSMIC RAYS AND THE CYGNUS MYSTERY
Did Cosmic Radiation change evolution and kick-start religion?
What caused this sudden leap forward? The Cygnus Mystery proposes that it was a dramatic rise in cosmic rays reaching Earth - and provides evidence that the rays, which left subatomic traces in those same deep caves, emanated from a binary star system known as Cygnus X-3. These findings, Collins explains, challenged the certainties of the scientific establishment - until, in 2005, a U.S. think tank went public with its own conviction that a binary system producing powerful jets of cosmic rays triggered a rapid acceleration in human evolution during the last Ice Age.
I have a couple of query's regarding this but.... could a cosmic event have determined the demise of the Neandertals and the rise of Homo Sapiens?
40,000-year-old Skull Shows Both Modern Human And Neandertal Traits
(http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/104/4/1165)
Humans continued to evolve significantly long after they were established in Europe, and interbred with Neandertals as they settled across the continent, according to new research published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) USA.
By comparing it with other skulls, Professor Zilhao and colleagues found that Oase 2 had the same proportions as modern human crania and shared a number of modern human and/or non-Neandertal features.
However, there were some important differences: apparently independent features that are, at best, unusual for a modern human. These included frontal flattening, a fairly large juxtamastoid eminence and exceptionally large upper molars with unusual size progression which are found principally among the Neandertals.
Related link (http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/104/4/1165)
www.sciencedaily.com (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/11/061103083616.htm)
A reexamination of ancient human bones from Romania reveals more evidence that humans and Neandertals interbred.
There just seems to be so many alternate theory's from the scholars, perhaps we may never know the full story.
Heres some new research that suggests that they died out due to the fact they were not able to make warm clothes during the last glacial maximum. Problem i have with this is that some Neandertal fossils and artifacts have been found after this period, unless these were just from the last remnants of the Neandertal population?
Neanderthals Stitched Too Little Too Late (http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/01/03/neanderthal-clothes.html?dcitc=w19-502-ak-0000)
Neanderthals probably froze to death in the last ice age because rapid climate change caught them by surprise without the tools needed to make warm clothes, finds new research.
Ian Gilligan, a postgraduate researcher from the Australian National University argues his case in the current issue of the journal World Archaeology. By the time some Neanderthals developed sewing tools it was too little too late, said Gilligan.
Page 2 (http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/01/03/neanderthal-clothes-02.html)
A 40000 year old tooth found in Southern Greece has experts now believing that Neandertals were much wider travelled than previously thought.
www.archaeologynews.org (http://www.archaeologynews.org/story.asp?ID=261609&Title=Ancient%20tooth%20suggests%20Neanderthals%20 were%20more%20mobile)
Analysis of a 40,000-year-old tooth found in southern Greece suggests Neanderthals were more mobile than once believed, paleontologists and the Greek Culture Ministry said Friday.
Analysis of the tooth — part of the first and only Neanderthal remains found in Greece — showed the ancient human to whom it belonged had spent at least part of its life away from the area where it died.
"Our findings prove that their mobility was significant and that their settlement networks were broader and more organized than we believed," she said.
Given that Neanderthals also coexisted with modern man in some parts of Europe, "one could presume that this mobility would facilitate the contacts of the two populations on a cultural and, perhaps, on a biological level."
Does that rule out one of the proposed reasons for their demise, that they weren't able to hunt as widely as Cro Magnon.
Did Neandertal die off because of cannibalism and transmissible spongiform encephalopathies?
(http://anthropology.net/2008/02/29/did-neandertal-die-off-because-of-cannibalism-and-transmissible-spongiform-encephalopathies/)
TSEs are also known as prion diseases, a communicable disease where the infectious agent is a malformed protein that replicates by imprinting and transforming other proteins. Most TSEs manifest in the host’s neurological tissues because he or she ate infected nervous tissue. Ultimately, the host’s tissues degenerate and lead to serious problems, most often death. In anthropology, one form of TSEs has been well documented, the spread and eradication of kuru in the Fore from Papua New Guinea.
Links to the paper are on this page as well as information about the author and other related topics. You need to register to view the full article but it is free or you can just read the summary.
Maybe the Neandertals are the archetype Zombie, brainsss...brainssss.
If they did in fact have larger brains than us the reason may have been so that they could feed the whole family. :D
Article: dsc.discovery.com/news (http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/02/27/neanderthal-cannibalism.html)
Its one of the truly great mystery's that may never be solved.
mojo