Posted on 02/25/2006 5:11:22 AM PST by ThreePuttinDude
LONDON — Neanderthals in Europe were killed off by the advance of modern humans thousands of years earlier than previously believed, losing a competition for food and shelter, according to a scientific study published Wednesday.
The research uses advances in radiocarbon dating to revise understanding of early humans, suggesting they colonized Europe more rapidly and coexisted for a much shorter period with genetic ancestors.
Paul Mellars, professor of prehistory and human evolution at the University of Cambridge and author of the study, said Neanderthals — the species of the Homo genus that lived in Europe and western Asia from around 230,000 years ago to around 29,000 years ago — succumbed much more readily to competition.
"The two sides were competing for the same territories, the same animals and fuel supplies and occupying the same cave spaces. With that kind of competition, the Neanderthals were always going to come out as the losers," said Mellars, whose paper was published in the journal Nature.
Modern humans — those anatomically the same as people today — were also better equipped to deal with a 6 degree Celsius (11 Fahrenheit) fall in temperatures around 40,000 years ago.
"Because they had better clothing, better technology(??) and a better mastery of fire, the humans were equipped to deal with it," Mellars said.
Mellars used the results of two recent studies of radiocarbon dating — a process of assessing age by counting radioactive decay of carbon in materials — to refine dates determined from fossils, bone fragments and other physical evidence that relates to the spread of humans.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
A reconstructed Neanderthal skeleton, right, and a modern human skeleton
on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, Jan. 2003.
"Because they had better clothing, better technology(??) and a better mastery of fire, the humans were equipped to deal with it," Mellars said.
What kind of technology did they have back then??
Or does the aurthor have to be dramatic with his linguistic ability??
Better tools. The Neanderthals seem to have been reasonably intelligent but for some reason their tool-making skills remained static for hundreds of thousands of years, while humans made comparatively rapid advancements.
An example of ----dare I say the word????!!!--
EVOLUTION.
I'm sure "better technology" just means better tools, which would be very accurate. Modern humans did have better tools than other Neanderthals.
PS. Note the cracked skull of the Neanderthal.. ;)
It may have been low technology, but at the time it was literally "cutting edge."
I did not mean to write "other Neanderthals"; only that modern humans had better tools than Neanderthals. Period.
Old news. The classic movie "Quest for Fire" vividly depicted this "discovery" years ago.
This is a valid question, perhaps the author failed to elaborate or was just fluffing the story a bit. I remember watching a anthropologist discuss the techniques on producing cutting blades from stone ( which isn't as easy as you would think ). One wonders if modern humans where just better at it - but I'd like to see the evidence.
In all likelihood he's including all technological advances: improved weapons, clothing, style of warfare, trapping, food storage/processing, etc. Granted, they didn't have cell phones but it's almost certain they had improved hunting/gathering techniques than Neanderthal.
To be honest, those skeletons don't look that much different to me. What was it that made modern humans superior to Neanderthals so much that Neanderthals died out?
Then what exactly do you call the 100 million muslim fascists living in the middle east today???????????????
The one on the left looks like a co-worker of mine - we always joke that he is a few million years behind the times.
Seeing the evidence is a simple task. Tools found with modern humans are far, far superior to those found with Neanderthals. If you literally want to see for yourself, just go to a museaum (such as the Smithsonian) where you can see artifacts found with Neanderthals and compare them to artifacts found with modern humans.
And of course, if I were being facetious, I would note that modern humans have built skyscrapers and sent spacecraft to the moon in less time than the Neanderthals spent trying to perfect the sharpening of flints..
Neanderthals are us.
Mitochondrial DNA says they aren't.
Zippo?
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