Posted on 02/26/2006 3:25:01 AM PST by Pharmboy
No, not really. It's intriguing to think about though. As I said in another thread just yesterday, it's perfectly OK by me if people want to fantasize hot sweaty cavesex between Neanderthals & Cro-Magnons....>>>
The reality wouldn't make a nice fantasy at all. If it happened at all it was very likely brutal rape.
My question: Is it possible that the story of Cain and Abel is actually a faint race memory of our first genocidal war--against the Neandertal?
What we need is a time machine so we can go back and collect the information on the theories we keep coming up with.
In my personal view, yes.
The real test is identifying the pistol by make and model.
The Neanderthal phenotype coupled with the complete absence of technological advance over hundreds of thousands of years indicates that they are a distinct species. There were and are some human groups that use very primitive tools, but there were no Neanderthal groups that used advanced tools.
LOL
I better get out there and do my part!
It is problematic at best, which is why it is hardly definitive on its own, which is why Neanderthals are not conclusively regarded as a fully distinct species, because they clearly had inferior tools and inferior culture.
It is one of multiple factors that appear to point toward the same general direction, or at least don't contradict it. If instead Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons had very similar or indistinguishable technology and artistry, then that would be a strong signifier of intermixing, and a powerful argument in favor of sub-species, if not closer than that even.
But it is worth noting that in paleo-anthropology tool-making and cultural behaviors are conventionally regarded as the barometers of intelligence. Therefore, if the Neanderthals were clearly inferior to the Cro-Magnon in those regards, then it is extrapolated that were clearly less intelligent.
And finally, it is worth noting that it is a fallacy to craft an analogy between modern post-Industrial society and the pre-urban subsistence world of the Cro-Magnon. Back then, and until relatively very recent times (about 5000 years ago) the degree of technological aptitude or cultural sophistication was all but indistinguishable between humans worldwide.
How does this impact the theory of evolution then?
DNA evidence that they're a seperate line of hominid is pretty conclusive.
It's impossible for them to divorce their modern beliefs and then draw objective conclusions for the fact that they *want* to establish a name for themselves and get further funding. It's one of the most self-fulfilling 'sciences' today.
Apart from skeletal differences, their claims in the past (prior to DNA analysis) rested upon tool use and tool design. This is tenuous evidence as even today there are tools in use that aren't much different than what was used thousands of years ago. Those of us in the West can go to Home Cheapo and buy tools that most people in the world can't imagine.
And as for using customs to define species, one only need look at the Masai practice of tonguing a cow's arse to stimulate milk production where in the West we load them up with chemicals for that, yet you and I could certainly breed with some hot Masai chick.
Today's archaeologists are really no different than the British expeditions into deepest and darkest Africa where their findings made outrageous claims that the people they encountered were subhuman primitives.
Until unimpeachable DNA evidence is offered up, the debate of modern man's taxonomic uniqueness over Neanderthal's is moot.
It comes down to the Out of Africa crowd vs. the multiregional hypothesis bunch. The former believe that about 150,000 or so years ago Homo sapiens emerged from Africa and spread out over the old world replacing local populations of more ancient types, whereas the latter believe that emerging modern humans interbred with local populations eventually giving rise to races.
Data that will not go away that the OOA people cannot explain are the anatomical similarities shared by Peking Man and modern east Asians, in the teeth, for example.
Yes, yes. But I think the author wants to know what they did afterwards...
I think I tried that once, and have the fractured bones to prove it! :)
"..the analysis by Duarte et al of the Lagar Velho child's skeleton is "a brave and imaginative interpretation" which the majority of paleoanthropologists will consider unproven. The archeological context of Lagar Velho is that of a typical *Gravettian burial, with no sign of *Mousterian cultural influence, and the specimen itself lacks not only derived Neanderthal characteristics, but also lacks any suggestion of Neanderthal morphology.
6) the authors conclude: "The probability must thus remain that this is simply a chunky Gravettian child, a descendant of the modern invaders who had evicted the Neanderthals from Iberia several millennia earlier."
http://scienceweek.com/2001/sw011019.htm
"Research on the Lagar Velho child is carried out by an international and interdisciplinaryresearch team (Instituto Português de Arqueologia; Washington University, St. Louis; University of Zurich, and others). During computer-assisted reconstruction of the skull the severely fragmented and dispersed cranial remains were assembled, and plastic deformation caused by taphonomic compression of the cranial vault was corrected. Taking into account several reconstruction variants, a comparative geometric-morphometric analysis of the Lagar Velho cranium clusters this individual with modern human children of age 3 to 4 and does not reveal Neanderthal affinities." http://www.ifi.unizh.ch/~zolli/res_db/lv.htm
I misread that as: Scientology books need[ed to be] recalled for unsupported claims.
I was going to point out that "What to Audit" was merely reissued as "A History of Man"...
Hey! That's my Fa-a-a-a-a-ather!
The evidence certainly points in that direction, but it's very far from conclusive. Going back to the article linked on the last page, it appears that there have only been three Neanderthal specimens from which mDNA has been extracted. These three exemplars were then compared to a vastly broader sample of modern mDNA, and conclusions were drawn from that.
You have to be skeptical of an study that bases its conclusion on such a narrow sample of Neanderthal mDNA because you cannot exclude the possibility that there are other Neanderthal mDNA sequences that existed at the time of interbreeding, but are not present in the three Neanderthal samples to which modern mDNA is being compared. For example, note that the article compared the Neanderthal sample from the Neander Valley to the one taken from the Caucasus, one had ~27 differences from the modern sequence, while the other had only ~22, or about 25% less. Therefroe, a greater sample of Neanderthal mDNA could reasonable be expected to have many other mDNA sequences not found in the three samples tested, and some of those might have been detected in modern mDNA. Based on the data the article presents, you cannot exclude that possibility.
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