[Pharmboy]

This is what the Times does better than anyone else. They are finally admitting that the most likely thing that doomed these squat hominids were our ancestors.

And it likely was not very pretty.

Happy New Year to all the ScienceFreeps and non-science Freeps!

[Pharmboy]

New Year's *ping*

[LiteKeeper]

YEC bump for later

[Experiment 6-2-6]

Dr. Tattersall's initial reaction was visceral, then more analytical. "For the first time, I really feel I have met a Neanderthal," he said. "He was so much like us, but actually quite different."

I don't think this guy gets out very much... I've been meeting Neanderthals for quite some time now...

Meega, Nala Kweesta!

[Fiddlstix]

Good read

[lexington minuteman 1775]

Have noticed a resemblence to some well known Democrats, but that is probably all in my mind.Bwhahahahaha.Thanks for the post!

[Ku Commando]

Well, I feel vindicated now:

---

.....Dr. Tattersall disputed the notion, once current even among some scientists, that Neanderthals may have been so humanlike that if dressed in contemporary clothing, they could have passed unrecognized on the subway......

---

At least the phrase "Knuckle-draggin' neanderthal" might still be accurate for use as an analogy !!

[lizma]

Reconstruction of the face yielded the following:

[aruanan]

Standing 5 feet 4 1/2 inches, thought to be a typical height of a Neanderthal man, the skeleton will be on display at the museum, in New York City, in an exhibit opening on Jan. 11.

One major error was to show it compared to modern (and by historic standards) gigantic man. The average French male from the 17th century was 5 feet 2 inches and weighed scarcely over 100 pounds. Cro magnon folks living under hunting/gathering conditions back in the days when Neanderthals still lived were not likely to have been much larger than their 17th century descendents. Also, the Neaderthal had a much larger brain than modern man. So, so much for the size argument.

[Little Bill]

Is that a female pelvis to the right?

[Doug Fiedor]

This is interesting, but not hardly surprising. Because, today's humans come in all shapes and sizes. What we call today as a physiological "normal" is no more then an "average" found in a community of "healthy" people aged 20 to 40 years old.

There is nothing really inconsistent in this reconstructed Neanderthal that has not been seen often on x-rays at any major medical institution. So, either we still have these Neanderthals walking the streets today, or some of us have a lot of Neanderthal in our blood.

[APBaer]

"I appreciate the recognition"

Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer

[aculeus]

Thanks and Happy New Year to you.

[fire_eye]

This is what the Times does better than anyone else. They are finally admitting that the most likely thing that doomed these squat hominids were our ancestors.

And it likely was not very pretty.

Actually, it may have been rather unremarkable.

I read a statistical observation by someone, who pointed out that if every time two populations encounter each other, one of them incurs a decrease in population relative to the other, it can be statistically proven (given equal reproductive rates on the part of the two species) that one of them will eventually become extinct. (It does seem sort of intuitively obvious...).

The point was that it would not have required open warfare and genocide by the Cro-Mags (damn good band, btw) of the Neanderthals - just one more dead Neanderthal per normalized time period than dead Cro-Mags, overall - a good maxim to keep in mind today, when pursuing the global extermination of Islam...

[titanmike]

One thing you won't read in science journals, is the problem these recent studies of neanderthals create for evolution and evolutionists.

Recent studies of neanderthal DNA turned up the result that neanderthal DNA is "about halfway between ours and that of a chimpanzee", and that there is no way we could interbreed with them or be descended from them via any process resembling evolution. That says that anybody wishing to believe that modern man evolved has to come up with some closer hominid, i.e. a plausible ancestor for modern man, and that the closer hominid would stand closer to us in both time and morphology than the neanderthal, and that his works and remains should be very easy to find, since neanderthal remains and works are all over the map. Of course, no such closer hominid exists; all other hominids are much further from us than the neanderthal.

An evolutionist could try to claim that we and the neanderthal both are descended from some more remote ancestor 200,000 years ago, but that would be like claiming that dogs couldn't be descended from wolves, and must therefore be descended from fish, i.e. the claim would be idiotic.

That leaves three possibilities: modern man was created from scratch very recently, was genetically re-engineered from the neanderthal, or was imported from elsewhere in the cosmos.

The idea of modern man evolving is not tenable.

Neanderthals used to be drawn and painted as ape-men. More recent scientific reconstructions show them to be closely related to us, but definitely another species as opposed to another race:

Jay Matternes' reconstructions of neanderthals.

[Eternal_Bear]

In the Sumerian Legend of Gilgamesh there is reference to creature not quite human but very similar to us. This being was called Enkidu and was a friend of Gilgamesh. While the story was transcribed only thousands of years ago, perhaps it conveys in it the last vestiges of an oral tradition that stretches back tens of thousands of years perhaps to a time when man interacted with the Neanderthals?

[MissAmericanPie]

You tell me.

[ASA Vet]

an appropriate sobriquet. Any suggestions?

How about "Alley Oop"

[cookcounty]

What Bunk!

This side-by-side graphic comparison is a prime example of the unprofessionalism that dominates the whole paleontologist dream factory.

What are the first "contrasts" that strike the eye?

1. The bone color. The modern is depicted as off-white, the neanderthal is decked in markedly different yellow. In other domains of human endeavor, this would be called "deceit."

2. Height. The neanderthal is depicted at 5'4", the modern as 6'0". Why 6'0"? Modern well-fed man has a wide range of heights, and in the centuries before the 20th, 5'4" was probably exactly average for a male. Again, these depictions are about dreams, foundation grants and reputations, not about facts.

Beyond this, the current variants of the human family are widely varied. Just go to the beach sometime in a racially diverse area and take note of the wide variation in "upper leg to lower leg" ratios or the differing pelvic structures of different races and nationalities. Combining this with the lack of actual Neanderthal material, this seems to be a report angling for more funding, nothing more.

[blam]

Redheads 'Are Neanderthal'

[Cacique]

bump