Modern Humans, Neanderthals Shared Earth for 1,000 Years

joffley writes "ABC News is reporting on new evidence that has emerged suggesting Neanderthals co-existed with anatomically modern humans for at least 1,000 years in central France, before gradually disappearing about 28,000 to 30,000 years ago. But why did they disappear?"

Comments

Is it always Violence?

[denissmith]

From TFA: In short, the indicators point to the likelihood that Homo sapiens crushed or ousted the Neanderthals in the fight to survive. Why do we always need to reduce the possibilities to just these two? Isn't it equally likely that in the ebb and flow of occupation of the area humans eventually exhausted the resources that the Neanderthal relied upon, while being able to exploit other resources that the Neanderthal couldn't? Since 1,000 years is the overlap epoch it doesn't appear that a policy of active antipathy is at work.

Re:they invented

[patio11]

Thats not offtopic, thats a reference to a bad sci-fi series. What could be more on-topic at Slashdot?

Chatelperronian vs. Aurignacian

[John Hawks]

There are two central issues. One is that the "Aurignacian" industry, which is proposed to have been made by modern humans, may not actually have been a single industry across Europe. In the current study, the "interleaving" of the two kinds of tools is documented by around 10 artifacts, out of 750 total.

The other issue is that no fossil remains of modern humans have yet been found associated with early "Aurignacian" tools. We simply don't know who made them. Since they are not technically very different from the Neandertal-associated Chatelperronian, it is hard to say that there is a real cognitive difference represented by those tools, whoever made them.

I have some pictures of the tools on my weblog post (John Hawks Anthropology Weblog), and conclude this:

But when two pictures look like the ones above, and they are supposed to be typologically identifiable products of "modern humans" on the one hand, and "Neandertals" on the other -- well, it seems to me there needs to be a bit more than an edge of retouch behind that conclusion.

--John

Re:No, natural selection in action

[timeOday]

We wouldn't have needed to actually kill them. Both Neanderthals and humans would have competed for the same food; because of our higher intelligence, we would have gotten it and they wouldn't have as a result.

I think in the end it would inevitably come to a fight. When somebody is hungry, they try to get food, even if somebody else happens to own it. Cf. New Orleans.

Re:Its both!

[flyingsquid]

The real theory of Intelligent Design

"Theory of intelligent design" is an oxymoron.

Merriam Webster's defines a theory as "A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena." Intelligent design doesn't qualify- it hasn't been tested (it's arguable whether it's even testable at all), it isn't accepted, and it explains absolutely nothing. It doesn't explain who the designer is or how the designer designed things, how the design was implemented, why, or when. It's the complete and total absence of a theory.

Which is the beauty of it. Creationists learned from the Young Earth Creationism disaster- as soon as you start making testable statements like "the earth is 6000 years old" scientists will disprove you and show what a bunch of idiots you are. So you avoid making testable statements at all costs.