Posted on 06/13/2007 3:23:54 PM PDT by blam
Neanderthals bid for human status
13 June 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Rowan Hooper
NEANDERTHALS as innovators? That the concept seems amusing goes to show how our sister species has become the butt of our jokes. Yet in the Middle Palaeolithic, some 300,000 years ago, innovation is what the Neanderthals were up to.
This period is usually regarded as undramatic in cultural and evolutionary terms, with little in the way of technological or cognitive development. Palaeoanthropologists get more excited about the changes in tools found later, as the Middle Palaeolithic gave way to the Upper, and as modern humans replaced Neanderthals, some 40,000 years ago.
Terry Hopkinson of the University of Leicester, UK, has now challenged this view, showing that Neanderthals were far from behaviourally static. They incorporated different forms of tool construction into a single technique, and learned to cope with the ecological challenges posed by habitats in eastern Europe.
"There has been a consensus that the modern human mind turned on like a light switch about 50,000 years ago, only in Africa," says Hopkinson. But the putatively modern traits accompanying the change, such as abstract art, the use of grindstones and elongated stone blades, and big game hunting began to accumulate in Africa from 300,000 years ago, he says. "It was the same in Europe with Neanderthals, there was a gradual accumulation of technology." If Homo sapiens developed human traits gradually, then why not Neanderthals?
“As with Homo sapiens in Africa, Neanderthals gradually accumulated technology and developed human traits” Archaeological finds from across Europe show that the Neanderthals fused two forms of toolmaking, the façonnage and the débitage techniques.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
GGG Ping.
We shouldn’t be giving liberals too much credit.
Would it be racist to post a Jesse Jackson picture?
There’s seriously supposed to soon be a television series starring these “Cavemen”.
Its time to nip this in the bud. The next step after this will be a demand for amnesty under the Immigration Bill, then they will be registering to vote under the Motor Voter Act, and we all know that Neaderthals vote overwhelmingly for the Democrat Party.
I object to that characterization - just because we are so conservitive that we argue over the idea of fire, does not mean we vote democrat.
Stone tools? I thought they invented car insurance.
LOL!...I'LL SECOND THAT NOTION. :D
The missing link has been found! It's us!
Typical neanderthal brain, 1350 cc. typical brain of homo sapiens sapiens, 1250 cc.
and homo means same, not man.
idiot children - a little red hair means a lot.
Democrats: So stupid, even a caveman wouldn't vote for them!
I would like to point out that all Neaderthals are dead. I have yet to find a single dead person who has voted for a Republican.
I’m not dead yet!
Excellent point!
Take that, caveman!
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