A Neandertal with an excellent tool.
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 ...
Wonder exactly how much of the Neanderthals skeleton was actually found, this "reconstruction" word seems a bit misleading?
Any interbreeding was probably minimal.
Until very modern times, women were usually not even passed from one tribe or clan to another, much less all the way to another species.
Moreover, even primitive peoples have a sense of aesthetic, and by any sense of human aesthetics I'm aware of Neanderthals must've been butt ugly.
Finally, a child must not be merely born. It must be raised. Most cultures practiced infanticide of 'deficient' infants until relatively modern times. Raising an infant requires a great expenditure. Why on earth would modern humans want to raise a hybrid?
I think the arguments that humans and Neanderthals interbred are rather inane myself. And modern humans don't just "exhibit Neanderthal traits"; heck, modern humans exhibit chimpanzee traits, and even some duck-bill platypus traits. What that reveals is some degree of common ancestry, not human/duckbill interbreeding.
The argument that modern humans are smarter hardly seems silly. It is not just cranial capacity that matters. It is also brain/body proportions and neural structure.
The simplest answer is not interbreeding. That is a strained answer. Humans clearly did not emerge from Neanderthals; they emerged elsewhere and moved into Neanderthal territory. The simplest answer is that they killed the Neanderthals. That is what humans typically do to predecessor occupants of territory they conquer.
Technology? Nets, traps, and shoes come to mind. Maybe fire-making and its attendant uses?
Possibly the biggest advantage was language, the jury's out on that but some scientists say Neandertals weren't effective speakers. But that isn't technology of course, only the ability to pass it along.
"Now go cut me a switch, boy." :)
You may be correct: I do not know.
They may have been less inquisitive but evidence shows they cooperated with each other on most things. They buried their dead, they hunted in groups, they took care of their ill and wounded members as evidenced in the many broken bones that showed signs of having healed found in their fossils.
They appeared to be less imaginative, a lot like some modern people who say "if it was good enough for Dad it is good enough for me!".
This would explain their lack of progress once they discovered how to work flint(which is a mystery in itself, if they didn't have much imagination how did they discover flint tools?).
I think small differences can make a huge difference in the aggregate. Think of economies of scale as an analogy.
One good example is 'altruistic' behavior; the willingness to help a fellow in need. A chimpanzee will generally not help another in distress even when it would cost itself nothing. Humans obviously will help another human in distress, often at great cost to oneself (even to the point of outright sacrifice of one's life).
So, if Neanderthals were less inclined toward altruistic behavior, that would make a difference over time. And that's just one trait.
The objection can always be raised that this is all conjecture or 'just so' argumentation, but here's a fact: We're here; Neanderthals aren't. Obviously we were better at whatever it is we needed to do to make that so.
Larger usually means smarter, yet there is a steady improvement at modern-human sights in flints and tools, but Neanderthal sights show zero advancement in hundreds of years. There is also a lack of evidence (which is never conclusive) that they did not make drawings, although they did appear to bury their dead with some sentimentality (flowers). The interbreeding concept was the traditional thought, but modern DNA analysis appears to nullify it (see, THE NEANDERTHAL ENIGMA, by James Shreeve). It does seem odd that there would be no interbreeding, but we don't know the physical and cultural traits of Neanderthals. After all Wolves and Poodles aren't likely to make it happen, although it is possible. Another idea is that offspring were sterile like mules. I recommend the above book to anyone who has a curiosity about this. He is honest in not asserting what he really doesn't know, while exploring the possibilities.
Not necessarily. Better technique would serve as well.
Example: throwing a spear at your prey instead of stabbing it. Less chance of injury and shorter kill cycle. Either you're in range or you're not, if not you move on. Stabbing critters means stalking it to get up close and personal.
Of course this would be very important if your prey carries a spear as well!
They must have missed a few. After all, we still have Johnny Damon and the guy who drove the bus in "Speed" around, as proof.
Just to be very clear, I am not saying they weren't cooperative or altruistic or inquisitive at all. I am just hypothesizing that as a whole they were less of some or all of those (and probably other traits) than were humans as a whole.
A Neandertal with an excellent tool.
I saw a show where a guy theorized that humans had a huge advantage due to our ability to verbally communicate. The throat structure of the Neantrathal did not allow them to enunciate certain sounds and thus they never developed verbal communication skills.
How many Neandertals do we have now? Skeletons or partial skeletons?
Or it was just bad luck for them. Yet, the real problem isn't explaining how we might have won out as the prominent species, its explaining how they could have gone extinct globally, in such a short time. Remember, modern humans were hardly filling up the land masses, and mainly abandoned harsh climates, like the ones that Neanderthals survived in for a few hundred thousand years. So where did they go. Even intentional or untentional genocide can't explain full extinction, when modern humans occupied such a small percentage of the land mass.
So the scientists say.
From observation, the blue-eyed dogs ARE wolves.
If I'm not mistaken, wasn't this about the same time the Democratic party was founded?
So that explains my roots! I have always been considered by my friends as exceptionally intelligent, but I have trouble working this computer, not to mention changing out sparkplugs on my car and repairing a broken water line. It's my tool using skills, that's what it is. Oh happy day! Now I have my excuses. I must rush and tell my wife, who does all the maintenance work on the car and around the house,after making certain that the beer and chips are put within my reach before I settle in to watch football and golf on the television.
That movie also depicted four species of hominids interacting, one of which, the large bodied cannibal eating their captured Homo Sapiens, has never been found in the fossil record. The hair-covered species that evicted the Neanderthals from their cave in the beginning of the movie had disappeared at least a half-million years before the time the movie allegedly depicted.
You say it's "classic", I say it's no more than a fantasy movie. Especially the scene where the Neanderthals were confronted by a group of Mastodons that accepted the offering of a handful of grass on the steppe (?) and left them alone.
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