Scientists find sign cave dwellers took care of elderly

Google News ^ | Tuesday, October 12, 2010 | AFP

[SunkenCiv]

Scientists said Monday they had uncovered evidence suggesting cave dwellers who lived in northern Spain some 500,000 years ago took care of their elderly and infirm.

University of Madrid palaeontologists discovered the partial skeleton of a male of a European species ancestral to the Neanderthals who suffered from a stoop and possibly needed a stick to remain upright, they said in a statement.

"This individual would be probably impaired for hunting, among other activities. His survival during a considerable period with these impairments allows us to hypothesize that the nomadic group of which this individual was part would provide special care to aged individuals," it said.

The remains suggested the cave dweller died when he was over 45. They were found at Atapuerca in northern Spain's Burgos province, the site of several caves containing evidence of prehistoric human occupation.

The results of the study have been accepted for publication in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, the scientists said.

An earlier study carried out at the same site in 2009 concluded that the cave dwellers who lived there were cannibals who valued the flesh of children and adolescents.

In 1994, palaeontologists also unearthed at Atapuerca the fossilised remains of Homo antecessor, or "Pioneer Man", believed to date back 800,000 years.

[SunkenCiv]

Workers carry out an excavation at the Atapuerca archaeology site in July

I thought this had been posted, but I couldn't find it.

• Neanderthals had feelings too, say York researchers
• Neanderthals more advanced than previously thought (they were a different kind of human)
• Neanderthals were able to 'develop their own tools'
• Neanderthals more advanced than previously thought
• Neanderthal's Cozy Bedroom Unearthed
• Did Neandertals Think Like Us?
• Neanderthals are part of the human family
• Neanderthals 'Hardly Differed at All' from Modern Humans
• Neanderthals, Humans Interbred—First Solid DNA Evidence -Most of us have some Neanderthal genes
• You're a Neanderthal: Genes say yes — a little bit
• Scientists prove humans bred with Neanderthals
• Neanderthals live on in DNA of humans
• Because they were worth it? Research finds Neanderthals enjoyed makeup
• Neanderthal 'make-up' containers discovered
• 2010 preview: Arise, Neanderthal brother
• Neanderthals wouldn't have eaten their sprouts either
• Neanderthals wouldn't have eaten their sprouts either
• In The Neanderthal Mind

[SunkenCiv]

The Neandertal Enigma
by James Shreeve
in local libraries

Frayer's own reading of the record reveals a number of overlooked traits that clearly and specifically link the Neandertals to the Cro-Magnons. One such trait is the shape of the opening of the nerve canal in the lower jaw, a spot where dentists often give a pain-blocking injection. In many Neandertal, the upper portion of the opening is covered by a broad bony ridge, a curious feature also carried by a significant number of Cro-Magnons. But none of the alleged 'ancestors of us all' fossils from Africa have it, and it is extremely rare in modern people outside Europe." [pp 126-127]

[SunkenCiv]

· GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach · · join list or digest · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post a topic · subscribe ·
	Antiquity Journal  & archive  Archaeologica  Archaeology  Archaeology Channel  BAR  Bronze Age Forum  Discover  Dogpile  Eurekalert  Google  LiveScience  Mirabilis.ca  Nat Geographic  PhysOrg  Science Daily  Science News  Texas AM  Yahoo  Excerpt, or Link only?	To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.
· History topic · history keyword · archaeology keyword · paleontology keyword · · Science topic · science keyword · Books/Literature topic · pages keyword ·

[muawiyah]

Quite a collection of relatively recent articles about Neanderthals.

The first folks to dig them up were of the impression they were human. Nice to know they still are.

Remember, they lived in Europe through several ice ages. They had to come up with biological and physical innovations to see them through safely (for 100,000 years at a clip).

For one thing they had to increase their birth rate ~ hence TWINS. With twins as a regular item, the females had to have FOUR milk giving breasts. To overcome the cold they needed additional fat padding.

So, I envision Neanderthal women as being rather like large beach balls with four breasts.

There may be some reasons here their mitochondrial DNA didn't get passed down to us.

[ExTexasRedhead]

The Imam and this Congress will be taking care of the elderly by sending them to Hospice Centers after denying them health care.

[Grizzled Bear]

Scientists said Monday they had uncovered evidence suggesting cave dwellers who lived in northern Spain some 500,000 years ago took care of their elderly and infirm.

Yet today many seek to starve, dehydrate and euthenize our elderly and other "useless eaters.

Is this proof of "evolution?"

[SunkenCiv]

/bingo

[Behemothpanzer]

—For one thing they had to increase their birth rate ~ hence TWINS. With twins as a regular item, the females had to have FOUR milk giving breasts. To overcome the cold they needed additional fat padding.—

Sorry, what? Neanderthal women didn’t have four breasts. There’s no claims of that anywhere that I can find. In fact, a google search for “neanderthal four breasts” returns your post as the first hit.

Where did you get this idea from?

[GunRunner]

Even if the Neanderthals were a subspecies of homo sapien, that doesn’t make them exactly “human”.

[dayglored]

>> females had to have FOUR milk giving breasts

> Sorry, what? Neanderthal women didn’t have four breasts. There’s no claims of that anywhere that I can find. In fact, a google search for “neanderthal four breasts” returns your post as the first hit. Where did you get this idea from?

I'd post a pic, but I'd get banned for sure. :)

[SaraJohnson]

The cave dwellers were more advanced than are our progressives of today who would easily abandon and kill the elderly and the infirm if it was to the collective economic advantage of their society. That is a society without even the love and honor of a cave man. Progressives and their amoral material state cluture of humanism is downright evil. They had no right to cleanse our culture and replace it with humanism in the name of separation of church and state.

[x_plus_one]

You can't make this stuff up...

Polymazia is of much more frequent occurrence than is supposed. Julia, the mother of Alexander Severus, was surnamed "Mammea" because she had supernumerary breasts. Anne Boleyn, the unfortunate wife of Henry VIII of England, was reputed to have had six toes, six fingers, and three breasts. Lynceus says that in his time there existed a Roman woman with four mammae, very beautiful in contour, arranged in two lines, regularly, one above the other, and all giving milk in abundance. Rubens has pictured a woman with four breasts; the painting may be seen in the Louvre in Paris.

There was a young and wealthy heiress who addressed herself to the ancient faculty at Tubingen, asking, as she displayed four mammary, whether, should she marry, she would have three or four children at a birth. This was a belief with which some of her elder matron friends had inspired her, and which she held as a hindrance to marriage.

Leichtenstern, who has collected 70 cases of polymazia in females and 22 in males, thinks that accessory breasts or nipples are due to atavism, and that our most remote inferiorly organized ancestors had many breasts, but that by constantly bearing but one child, from being polymastic, females have gradually become bimastic. Some of the older philosophers contended that by the presence of two breasts woman was originally intended to bear two children.

http://www.enotalone.com/article/14881.html

[dayglored]

> You can't make this stuff up...

Indeed. And if you did, few would believe you.

> Some of the older philosophers contended that by the presence of two breasts woman was originally intended to bear two children.

Two breasts allows twins to survive better, but it also gives a survival advantage to one child in case one breast has trouble (which happens very often). I suspect it's a combination of redundancy and symmetry, rather like having two kidneys.

[muawiyah]

Greek goddess Artemis of Ephesus has nearly 20 breasts. But nevermind. The ancient Greeks were among the first to observe that breast count is ordinarily double the normal birth count, and why that should apply to animals and not humans is a good question.

Wiki says, in answer to the question that: "The nipples and glands can occur anywhere along the two milk lines, two roughly-parallel lines along the ventral aspect of the body. In general most mammals develop mammary glands in pairs along these lines, with a number approximating the number of young typically birthed at a time."

For Neanderthal to have, with certainty, had "twins" they'd had to have had a lot of triplets and quadruplets since "twinning" is necessarily a biological minimum.

The Twa' people in Africa almost always have twins ~ and at the same time they are a pygmy people much like our very own San ancestors.

It's possible that during extensive migration humans lost the capacity for widespread twinning where the more settled Twa have retained it, as did the Neanderthal.

[muawiyah]

They are not a subspecies ~ they are the same species. Think of them as a Fourth Race long separated from what became the main line of development.

A genetic isolate ~ nothing more than that.

[GunRunner]

Who told you this?

I've never seen any biological study of the Neanderthal that didn't either classify them as a subspecific variation of homo sapiens or a different species altogether.

[muawiyah]

Read the latest stuff ~

[muawiyah]

Go to response #1 above and check out those articles. That’s the main thrust of current responsible research into Neanderthals.

[GunRunner]

Quoting from the very second article in post #1:

"The fact that Neanderthals could adapt to new conditions and innovate shows they are culturally similar to us," [anthropologist Julien Riel-Salvatore] said. "Biologically they are also similar. I believe they were a subspecies of human but not a different species."

From the third article:

"He added that they were also similar biologically, and should be considered a subspecies of human rather than a different species."

From the fifth article:

"The big question, according to Cabanes, is how such a resourceful species went extinct."

I'm not seeing anything there to back up your contention.

[muawiyah]

The one about humans having Neanderthal DNA.