Neanderthals in Color

Archaeology, v65, n3 ^ | May/June 2012 | Zach Zorich

[SunkenCiv]

In 1981, when Wil Roebroeks of Leiden University was beginning his archaeological career, he ran across some red stains in the grayish sediments on the floodplain of the Maas River where his team was excavating. The site, called Maastricht-Belvèdère, in The Netherlands, was occupied by Neanderthals at least 200,000 years ago. Roebroeks collected and stored samples of the red stains, and 30 years later he received funding to analyze them. It became apparent that he and his team had discovered the earliest evidence of hominins using the mineral iron oxide, also known as ocher. Until now, the use of ocher -- as a red pigment in rock paintings, an ingredient in glue, and for tanning hides, among other things -- was thought to be a hallmark of modern human behavior. While the manner in which the mineral was used at Maastricht-Belvèdère is something of a mystery, the find has had an impact on the question of whether ocher use represents modern behavior. "This whole debate is now to some degree a non-debate," Roebroeks says, "because Neanderthals were already doing this 200,000 years ago."

(Courtesy Wil Roebroeks)

[SunkenCiv]

Lecture Notes: Neandertals and Archaic Homo sapiens
Ariane Pinson, Ph.D.

[snip] ...at Neandertal sites we find both manganese dioxide and red ochre. These natural pigments are found as nodules that have been scraped to produce pigment powder to be mixed with oils and applied to a surface (e.g., one/s body). We also see nodules of these pigments shaped into crayons for use in drawing images. We also see carved and engraved bone and ivory, sometimes smeared with ochre. These non-utilitarian objects are clearly symbols -- standing for some thing, probably an idea or concept (e.g., luck). Recently, we have even found evidence for music making among the Neandertals in the form of a fragment of a bone flute. So evidence for abstract thought among Neandertals is found in the practice of burial of the dead (implying belief in an afterlife and the continuity of the person/s affiliation with the group even after death) and in the present of symbolic art objects. [/snip]

[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]

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[CatherineofAragon]

That headline is racist.

[Lady Lucky]

hominins using the mineral iron oxide

Or homonyms you zing I earn ox-eyed.

[jimmygrace]

So easy even a caveman can do it.

[FrdmLvr]

ROTFL!

[JimSEA]

The idea that suddenly, twenty to sixty thousand years ago, man suddenly discovered speech, painting on cave walls and jewelry and became modern has always left me cold. Part of the reason is the discoveries such as this one and many in South Africa of modern behavior going back, in some cases, more than two hundred thousand years. The rest of the reason is the curious fact that physically man has has the capacity for speech for some two million years. Are we to believe this capacity has laid dormant until sixty thousand years ago. No, we like to gossip too much for it to be a recent development.

[donhunt]

Is Elizabeth Warren related to these people too?

[varmintman]

The idea that suddenly, twenty to sixty thousand years ago, man suddenly discovered speech, painting on cave walls and jewelry and became modern has always left me cold.

It should leave you cold, it's a bunch of BS. Cro Magnon man arrived on this planet fully capable of everything he ever did from day one, that says you're looking at some sort of a saltation and not evolution.

One version of a saltation theory which has turned up recently

[UCANSEE2]

“at Neandertal sites we find both manganese dioxide and red ochre. These natural pigments are found as nodules that have been scraped to produce pigment powder to be mixed with oils and applied to a surface (e.g., one/s body).”

Uh.... Cavewomen wore lipstick. What a surprise. They’ll probably find ground up cockroaches (eyeliner) as well.

[UCANSEE2]

Also near would be some small animal bones.

[BenLurkin]

A derived form of MCPH1 called haplogroup D appeared about 37,000 years ago (any time between 14,000 and 60,000 years ago) and has spread to become the most common form throughout the world except Sub-Saharan Africa; this rapid spread suggests a selective sweep.[9][10] However, scientists have not identified the evolutionary pressures that may have caused the spread of these mutations.[11] Modern distributions of chromosomes bearing the ancestral forms of MCPH1 and ASPM are correlated with the incidence of tonal languages, but the nature of this relationship is far from clear.[12]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcephalin

[UCANSEE2]

That headline is racist.

So... one wonders... were there any negro Neanderthals? Any Chinese ones ? Latino ?

[BenLurkin]

Haplogroup D may have originated from a lineage separated from modern humans approximately 1.1 million years ago and later introgressed into humans. This finding supports the possibility of admixture between modern humans and extinct Homo spp.[10] While Neanderthals have been suggested as the possible source of this haplotype, the haplotype was not found in the individuals used to prepare the first draft of the Neanderthal genome.[13][14]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcephalin

[marsh2]

Without a written language and a longer life span, it must have been difficult to pass forward knowledge to new generations. Given that difference between modern man and pre-history, there may not have been a lot of difference between us. We are what we are because of thousands of years of knowledge passed forward.

[JimSEA]

Tonal languages are most common in Southeast Asia and East Asia. However, the Negritos and Australians predate forty thousand years by quite a bit. That would suggest two or more large “ waves” of settlement which is more than likely. Interesting that the Hobbits of Flores Island are thought by some to be microcephalic.

Also, Herto man from the Afar had a larger than average by modern standards brain some one hundred sixty thousand years ago. Yet the Afar region has not yielded up more than stone tools for that period. The South Africans seemed clearly ahead at that point (shell fish diet rather than genes?).

I just like reading about this and I ask questions. I’m by no means “expert”.

[wardaddy]

[COBOL2Java]

Hey, we've had the Neanderthals in color since 1960!

The foot-powered automobile and other Hanna-Barbara conveniences notwithstanding, my anthropology professor told us that the Neanderthals looked remarkably like Fred Flintstone...

[SunkenCiv]

Slinging Bull isn’t related to the other people she’s related to. :’)

[SunkenCiv]

:’D

[SunkenCiv]

Genetic studies can't show anything for certain other than the current distribution of various base pair sequences (and that's well short of an exhaustive data set, since the samples amount to a tiny fraction of the 7 billion living humans), and here and there some fragments of a large handful of ancient individuals, and a small, even tiny, handful of prehistoric ones.

And they can't show geographic origins, and likely never will, due to that very dearth of early samples. Even an intelligent guess would require a complete chain of descent from, say, an early ancient person, down the family tree (unbroken or nearly unbroken line) to a living person.

I doubt that I could come up with the chance of DNA samples from any of my 16 great-great-grandparents, and I know where some of them are buried.

Reprise:

In her Plato Prehistorian: 10,000 to 5000 B.C. Myth, Religion, Archaeology, Mary Settegast reproduces a table which shows four runic character sets; a is Upper Paleolithic (found among the cave paintings), b is Indus Valley script, c is Greek (western branch), and d is the Scandinavian runic alphabet.

[piroque]

[xp38]

C'mon read the title of the thread

[Mr Rogers]

She didn’t need a verbal language...

[ThanhPhero]

Actually there are many tonal languages in Africa. A couple of them are highly tonal and lend themselves to being whistled, which they are over distances too great for vocal conversation.

[piroque]

Will this one do ?

[null and void]

The Holy Roman Neanderthal Empire?

[SunkenCiv]

Black ‘n’ white is also okay in context.

[Liberty Valance]

I believe Neaderthals were contemplative if nothing else.

[Little Bill]

Women seem to think that they need enhancements to advertise their availability and then when they have caught some poor guy to maintain their place in the pecking order. Attached women dress to impress other women and show the wisdom of their choice, as in he can afford me.

[varmintman]

were there any negro Neanderthals

There aren't too many Negroes who wouldn't run from a Neanderthal, this is what Neanderthals looked like (courtesy of www.themandus.org), some images without the 6" ice-age fur coat for illustration purposes:

There's a tendency to read that Neanderthals rarely got to 6' in height and wonder how strong something no more than 5-6 could be but you can see the problem in a contrast with a modern human at 5-6, i.e. a Neanderthal could easily be 5-6 and 300 lbs without any fat on him:

[Little Bill]

He got booted from FR years ago, unless you are him.

[varmintman]

The second image I just posted above would be the “contemplative” Neanderthal of the group. Those are Danny Vendramini’s reconstructions i.e. the first realistic ones. The Neanderthal was a bipedal and totally carniverous primate with huge eyes for nocturnal hunting and the same 6” fur coat as every other animal in ice-age Europe.

[Krankor]

[varmintman]

Even that would be closer than most of the images you ever see. Funny thing is that scientists who study this stuff have no compunction about presenting every other hominid as apelike but the Neanderthal has always been a poster child for kum-bay-ah religion and particularly in the past 40 years or so has been presented as a slightly different human (we’re-all-alike...) Danny Vendramini just blew all that stuff out of the water.

[Reeses]

evidence for abstract thought among Neandertals is found in the practice of burial of the dead (implying belief in an afterlife and the continuity of the person/s affiliation with the group even after death)

Atheists bury their dead too. It's pretty hard to have tribal religious beliefs without a language and rituals to share them. The evidence is not strong. This type of one-sided analysis is biased speculation.

[LifePath]

I think you accidentally posted a picture of one of Obama’s major bundlers receiving a Lewinski in the Lincoln bedroom from a grateful member of the campaign staff.

[LifePath]

Oops, that was meant for your picture, Krankor.

[xp38]

uh huh :)

[piroque]

You need a picture to go with that.

[BIGLOOK]

[Little Bill]

Titled: As we go smiling to our enslavement?

[UCANSEE2]

So.... Europeans ancestors were Neandethals?

[varmintman]

So.... Europeans ancestors were Neandethals?

NOBODY's ancestors were Neanderthals, in any way, shape, or manner, we're not related to Neanderthals or any other ape or hominid at all. The claim that Asians and Europeans have 4% Neanderthal genes while Africans don't is idiotic to the extent that people are using that to claim that European or Asian ancestors interbred with Neanderthals, it never happened. There's almost no genetic diversity in modern humans compared to other mammals. That indicates a very recent bottleneck at which the human population numbered no more than fifty to a hundred individuals. Any crossbreeding with a glorified ape PRIOR to that bottleneck and Africans would not get left out. Any crossing with a glorified ape AFTER the bottleneck but not involving Africans, and the genetic gap between Africans and everybody else would be gigantic, and not minuscule as it is.

Hominids such as the Neanderthal were the most advanced member of the same family of creatures as chimpanzees and gorillas; we are simply not a member of that family.

[wardaddy]

you can google

http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1CHMO_enUS472US472&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=europeans+and+neadertals#hl=en&safe=off&rlz=1C1CHMO_enUS472US472&sclient=psy-ab&q=europeans+and+neadertals&oq=europeans+and+neadertals&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_l=serp.12...0.0.0.168218.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0..0.0.cqn%2Crate_low%3D0-01%2Crate_high%3D0-01%2Cmin_length%3D2..0.0.U3NmPvdSE_Q&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=d0f8cd49a0fc8cd2&biw=1920&bih=979

some anthro folks think so to some degree

and contrary to some ideas...Neandertals were far more advanced than has been previously thought

they have been given the Gaul blanket...a bunch of dummies when not true

blam is smarter than me...i always leave 3-4 pegs at Cracker Barrel

[blam]

"and contrary to some ideas...Neandertals were far more advanced than has been previously thought"

I agree with that...In fact, there is some thought that maybe we (modern humans - Caucasian/Asians) got some of our higher IQ from the Neanderthals.

There has been a recent discovery of a new human species in China.

Mysterious Chinese Fossils May Be New Human Species

[varmintman]

As I've noted, we now know what Neanderthals looked like:

You may have gotten YOUR IQ from that guy, none of mine comes from him. In fact, every Neanderthal who ever lived past eight or ten had some sort of a "tool kit" or a bag with knives, scrapers, and spear points, and in all those thousands of tools the one thing they've never found is a needle; that's right, a creature with a 6" fur coat doesn't NEED clothing or needles. By contrast, a google image search on "cro magnon needle" turns up lots of good ancient needles:

Another good google search is "neanderthal rodeo", which turns up any number hits comparing the kinds of injuries found amongst Neanderthal remains with those seen in rodeo performers, some such as one Wiki artgicle noting that The pattern of fractures, along with the absence of throwing weapons, suggests that they may have hunted by leaping onto their prey and stabbing or even wrestling it to the ground.[12]

The problem: I can easily enough picture a group of large and aggressive primates doing that (leaping onto aurochs and mammoths with knives and spears), but I don't have any picture of humans doing that or of anything close to a human doing that. Danny Vendramini is right; the Neanderthal was basically a bipedal and carniverous ape.

[Notforprophet]

Wow, that is some some first rate crazy at the link. :)

NFP

[varmintman]

Friend’s site, no crazier than any other theory of human origins near as I can tell, quite a bit DIFFERERNT....