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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?"
I think it's fairly easy to know where they went. Because they were "different" than modern humans, with lower technology levels, we simply killed them off for trying to take our resources. It's a no-brainer, because it's what we do as humans. We try to related but we destroy people who are not like us. Look at it as an early form of racism, and it's pretty straight forward. I'm not saying it's good, but at the time, we were equally as primative. We are still as primative, generally.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
A period of a thousand years is long enough for the Cro-Magnon, with their superior abilities and traits, to become more numerous than the Neanderthals. At that point the Neanderthals were either killed off or crossbred with the Cro-Magnon. Over time, most of the Neanderthal genes in the offspring probably faded.
The Discovery channel ran a special recently about evolution and it offered similar information. Considering how long it takes to produce such a show, one would think this would have already made it's rounds around the internet.
As far as the question of why they are extinct, the show stated it as a matter of fact that homo sapiens simply over-ran their niche, as is prone to happen when two competing species inhabit the same environment.
I dunno if the show was pushing it's speculation as fact or if this source is out of date. It seems to make sense though. Smarter, team-working homo sapiens out-hunt the competition and the others starve.
Help a student gain some exp. http://www.halovariants.com/touchup/index.php
This guy's publications list pretty much ends in 1997. http://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/~pam/publications.html Where is this work published? If it can't stand up to peer review, why is ABC reporting on it?
I'd like to see his methods, and find out how exactly they dated samples, and if they did a check on sample prep in order to verify their results. Until that can be shown, why should we believe the report?
Because the Flying Spaghetti Monster decided so.
Ah yes, here it is, in the Book of Manicotti:
On the eighth day, The Noodly One examined his creations, and saw that they were good. Then, the Neanderthals began to eat meatballs, which made His Spaghettiness angry, for this was considered to be consumption of The Blessed Testicles. The Neanderthals were then cast out from the Holy Colander, where they were doomed to a life without marinara or alfredo and, even worse, certain death.
There is actually good reason to believe that homo neandertalis is still very alive in some parts of the world. Isolated regions of the planet often have some groups of people who are unable to interbreed with other groups that have been active members in the gene pool. Although homo neandertalis would probably have evolved just as much as our own homo sapiens since the time of the neanderthal skeleton, they could easily still be living. It is also possible that homo erectus could be alive, but this is less likely because of their smaller brains. Homo neandertal is able to compete with, though not dominate, homo sapiens because we have similar cranial mass, but homo erectus just didn't have enough brains to cut it.
The neanderthals had funerals, in many cases, they've found a few with life long crippling conditions. Probably many more with severe illness were revered as well. Essentially they kept what one in modern society would consider as a potential threat (mental, psychological disorders, birth defects, etc).
Hypothetically, let us say that xenophobia came into its own with homo sapiens. They spurned the old, the weak, the infirm, anything with a condition that could not be explained easily. Anyone with an unexplained illness, flaw, etc, would be left to die or killed outright.
Based on overall history, perhaps this is a learned trait, but every human today, no matter how "enlightened" still shudders at least mentally when faced with the horrors of disease, injury, differences, et al. Some of us are just better at blocking it than others, while others lapse into either disgust, hatred, or post traumatice stress disorder.
These elements are counterproductive to modern humans' perceived psychology, so the logical cause for the neanderthals' eventual demise may very well be ourselves, since as history shows, that very behavior has led to genocide many MANY times.
Look at ethnic cleansing today, some of these people and cultures that were being wiped out took less than a couple of thousand years til some group, culture, or society decided to try killing them off.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Was it possible?
One of many made extinct by the Cherokee's. The Shawnee's another tribe infamous for its mass killings/extinctions of rival tribes.
The way of the world.
So how do you explain it ? Zoophilia :) ?
With such hotly-debated scientific questions, I believe it is prudent not to jump to quick-and-easy conclusions.
The Raven
The reason this results in extinction of one of the races is due to the fact that when there is consistent gender bias in inter-racial mating, if there is any degree of polygyny or serial monogamy (de facto polygyny) then the gene flow tends to be from the race whose males are successfully mating to the population whose males are not as successfully mating. If there is any substantial inter-racial mating under such circumstances it could easily be that a millenium or so is all it would take to destroy the existence of the race whose males are experiencing lower fertility.
The question is what was the trigger that resulted in the presence of modern humans midst neanderthals?
Seastead this.
It is interesting to see proof of overlap in a single area, though this isn't surprising. Also, currently mitocondrial data indicates that there isn't a major influx of DNA from them, though some interbreeding could have occurred and survived to today, especially if it conferred a survival advantage in northern climes, for example.
> The real theory of Intelligent Design doesn't eliminate evolution. It actually proposes (hell, should I just say "proposed" at this point?) that evolution didn't stem only from random mutations, but from some that seem to have been encouraged.
ID "theory" doesn't even say that much. It just says "here's something evolution couldn't have produced, therefore it's the result of intelligent design".
And when you start asking what "intelligent design" means, you'll discover that they believe "someone did something".
The "someone" is clearly the Christian God (though they don't say that except when they're presenting their "research" to religious audiences), and the "something" is... completely unspecified. Presumably if God draws something on the back of a napkin it is allowed to come into being.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Lewis Binford, many years back, investigated another site (in Israel) where h. sapiens and h. neanderthalis existed in close proximity for MUCH longer, around 90,000 years IIRC. The same results otherwise, despite an incredibly long time period very close to each other, no genetic drift towards each other to be seen. Pretty much has to mean that they were not sexually compatible with each other.
Everyone assumes that OUR ancestors had the 'superior abilities and traits' but, other than the fact that we're here instead of them, there's no reason to think that. They were definately stronger, more muscular and with a more efficient musculature as well - if they were still alive today they would take all the top spots in just about any sport you can think of. The 'hunchback' stereotype is incorrect - one of the early neanderthal skeletons had those features and that was taken as typical, but it turns out it was just that that particular individual had massive crippling arthritic problems - it wasn't genetic. And despite the stereotype that they were dumb, there's really no evidence of that either - their brains were even larger than ours, and their artifacts are not inferior.
One difference is that there is a bone in the throat, (hyoid bone iirc) critical to the production of human speech, which was shaped differently in the neanderthal. They would not have been capable of making many of the sounds we use in speech as a result. However, that doesn't mean they couldn't have spoken their own languages, with different sounds - only that they would not have been able to make many of the sounds we use.
Still a great mystery. Maybe one day we'll know what happened.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
You can't really make the argument against ID plainer than this. I highly recommend everyone to read it, whatever you believe:
Guardian article
My german is pretty poor, but it was simple to pick up the basic story line:
The show followed a family of Neandrathals as they attempted to cross the Alps.
A young female wandered off from the family. Nearby, three "modern" human males had a camp and were cooking meat over a fire. The female picked up the scent of the meat and followed it to the camp.
The males lured her into the camp with the offer of food. She warily accepted and while she was eating, one of the males knocked her down to her hands and knees and took her from behind (much to her distress). The other males then took their turns.
The last shot was of the female wandering up into the snow-covered mountains, obviously pregnant.
Again, my german is not very good, but the impression I got was the show was attempting to explain how a neandrathal female corpse, preserved by altitude and cold, was found in the Alps with an unborn child that contained "modern" human DNA. . .
Got to love those European documentaries - they leave little to the imagination.
What?
Some time ago I saw a TV program on this subject. The investigators claimed to have found objects which they associated with Cro-Magnon people, objects with strange marks on them; marks which appeared to be a crude lunar calendar. If true, Cro-Magnon folks were much more intelligent than their Neanderthal neighbors -- able to forecast dark (or light) nights, able to record information and able to engage in non-verbal communication. And outsmart their enemies as well as become more efficient hunters and providers.
The 'cro-magnons' were taller, relatively weak, and good walkers but...not real bright. the Neandertals were much brighter but short, stocky, and not as good in the walking and throwing department. Then mix a Neandertal with a cute cro-magnon babe and...voila...'modern man' with his big brain and superb two-legged walking and baseball throwing ability. We are all descendants of those few hybridized offspring 38,000 years ago who then quickly multiplied and killed off the ancestral forms, of course.
I guess the Cromagnons could not find the Neanderthals sexually attractive - what was the turn off?
I've seen lots of chimps, orangs, and gorillas in zoos. Some I like the look of, be it dignified or humerous but I have never found any of them remotely sexually attractive nor have I found any that I would call gorgeous.
Which is strange because I have seen horses and dogs that I would call gorgeous. And this type of prettyness is tied in with some inate system of sexual attraction - not that I am sexually attracted to dogs or horses but that somehow a great horse ass can remind one of human females' asses.
I've known women from many of the so-called races and sub-races of the humans that I consider gorgeous and think such can be found everywhere.
However I find birth defects such as midgets or Down's Syndrome as anti-attractive.
So my hypothesis is that modern humans did not want to interbreed with Neanderthals or great apes because they looked like they had birth defects, and somehow this notion of 'not true to form' is inately tied to our notion of attractiveness.
Though I still don't know what the big Neanderthal turnoff is.
The conquest of the Americas nearly cause a similar event with the Native Americans. Disease, domination, and marginalization of territory nearly wipe out the Amerindians. My guess it was simlar set circumstances that did in the Neanderthals. First, Humans and Neanderthals are related closely just as a horse an a donkey are. So, diseases that human had long evolved to resist Moreover, these are the humans whose descendants will be the most notorious conquerors in human history. Live and let live and share and share alike were probably not well practice back then either. Humans with superior numbers and technology wipe out whole tribes. Then, the final blow was neanderthals, due to war, probably limited themselves to smaller stretches of territory in less hospitable regions where they finally went extinct. Native Americans were lucky in that they could interbreed with the conqueror; however, since human and neanderthals are different species, any interbreeding may have lead to sterile offspring if that.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
The Scientific American reviewer commented that the author of COTCB had done a reasonable amount of homework. She got details about the technology right. But that her heroine was like a Californai "vallery girl" transplanted to the paleolithic.
Various contributors to this thread have said "We killed them. We were smarter than they were. That's life." But there is no evidence that we were more intelligent. Some anthropologists have suggested that one advantage modern humans had over Neanderthals was that the shape of our throat and larynx allows modern humans to make sounds that Neanderthals couldn't -- and that this allowed a richer, more expressive, vocal expression.
The fact of the matter is that Homo sapiens have been around for 200 THOUSAND YEARS!! Neanderthals were the dominant species for most of that time, until they died off approximated 30-35k ago ... it's not such a big leap to suggest that coexistence goes back to far earlier times, but the big deal about these caves is that the neanderthals were competing for the same resources as Homo sapiens, and were outhunted (the BIG mystery the article claims is unknown...you gotta love media) to extinction. Neanderthals used flake technology, while Homo sapiens used blade tech. Without going too heavily into it, Homo sapiens were killing up a storm with thrown spears and using prismatic cores and all that high tech jazz. Neanderthals still had to close in for the kill, and as such could not compete at all.
The important thing to understand is that there were two variants of hominids during the middle and upper paleolithic periods (assuming we disregard the Homo erectus groups off in Asia that were still hanging in there), rather than one being descended from the other. Neanderthals were adapted for the Ice Age, and were limited to Europe because of this. The highly adaptable (yet peabrained) little Homo sapiens spread like wildfire across the continents, killing as we went. Neanderthals are believed to have been very gentle and possibly even possessors of culture (although this is in constant debate), even taking care of the sick and wounded around them. One skull was even found with a hole beveled into it, suggesting some attempt at early surgical treatment (it was done premortem, and the individual lived for several years after the hole was made).
Whereas we were honed to kill.
Disclaimer: It's highly improbable that Homo neanderthalensis and homo sapiens mingled, or that the Homo sapiens killed off the neanderthals. But until we can send a time machine back to record all this shit, nobody can be 100% certain.
Oh and A.C., I'm not making any corrections to what you've said, just trying to expand on it a bit. Seemed like as good a place as any. :) I agree about the communication, and how large Neanderthal brains were.
I caught only the end of it on TV. It was like the last Neaderthal on Earth. Very sad. He ate some sort of hallucenegenic plant and had a drug trip toward the end...
Can anyone help me find the title of the movie? It was really good.
Material culture (lithic industry in this case) commonly associated with the "later Ancients" (e.g. Neanderthals) is called "Mousterian" and was widespread in Middle East and Europe between 250-200 Ka and 30 Ka. It is based on flake technology and consists of mainly scrapers, denticulates and points, which are often made in "levalois" technique. It doesn't include any bone tools (bone points are typical Aurignacian tool). There is a striking (cognitive) difference between Chatelperonronian and Aurignacian on one side (which use blade technology) and Mousterian on the other. Since Chatelperronan material culture was found together with Neanderthal burials (cave Sant-Cesaire) it is now widely thought that Chatelperronian industry is handiwork of Ancients. However, this transittion in technology is not evident in other aspects of material culture. Chatelperronian sites have same nest-like organisation of space as Mousterian and are in striking contrast to the Aurignacien campsites (with huts, structures etc.). It is possible that the reason behind Mousterian-Chatelperronian technological (and cognitive?) transition is imitation rather than invention.
Hmmm... Seems to be an amusing gibe at the expense of that whole fossils theory.
Hmmm... Don't understand how this reaction could be prompted by such a light-hearte... Oh, wait. He said secularist. Now I get it - everybody who doesn't have "True Faith" is a woolly-minded, liberal pot-smoker bent on the destruction of all that is good and holy in the world. Good, holy things like mass murder, denial of free-will and subjugation of women. Gimme that old-time religium! </rhetoric>
Don't whine at us because your logic deficiency precludes having the ability to tell the difference between an imaginary friend and a real friend. Trust me, if you didn't have that faith shit pushed into your head with the twin fangs of sin and guilt back when your head was still soft you would be a much happier person today.
I'm not open-minded - I don't have the sort of time required to listen to everybody's point of view. I shave down the time required to hear what something's all about by cutting out people whose reasoning skills I don't respect. If you have an imaginary friend I'm not going to take you too seriously on other matters - same if you read horoscopes or partake in the lottery... I'm no Spock but I do know how to spot someone with a severe logic deficiency.
Unfortunately, as all too often happens: you come up with a disposable prototype and management insists on tweaking it and deploying it as a final product.
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
Following science to the exclusion of anything else is also a religion.
This not true. Unfortunately, statements like this all to often remain unchallenged. The false assumption behind it is that every approach to the mysteries of the world we are living in qualifies as a religion. Science is different, however.
As opposed to religion, science is based on evidence. It is about making informed choices. These are not necessarily the right choices (in hindsight). But they are the only ones you can come up with without simply relying on tradition, authority or 'revelation'. Usually, adopting the scientific method is an informed choice in itself.
How much different are religions! The vast majority of religious people did not pick their specific religion based on an informed choice. Most just believe what their parents believe or what was planted in their minds by other authorities when they were children.
Like the GP I'll also take science any day of the week. Not because I am converted but because I am convinced.
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<Wingman> hi
<AlphaHelix> hi Wingman
<MutatedTaxon> morning Wingman
<Wingman> finished my project at work today
<Wingman> the boss upstairs asked me to design something that could fly
<AlphaHelix> =O=
<MutatedTaxon> awesome
<Wingman> so I knew it would have to be something small with wings
<Wingman> but I didn't what to do for eyes
<AlphaHelix> hundreds and thousands
<Wingman> tahts what I did, compound eyes
<MutatedTaxon> l33t
<Wingman> 4000 on each side
<MutatedTaxon> w00t
<AlphaHelix> what about a couple of eyes on the back of the head?
<Wingman> thought about that too
<Wingman> got three
<Wingman> good to have a spare
<AlphaHalix> lol
<MutatedTaxon> does it walk?
<Wingman> Its got six legs with feet
<Wingman> so it can jump up and start flying if anything comes too close
<Wingman> and it can even land upside down on a ceiling or roof
<MutatedTaxon> h4x0r sk1llz
<Wingman> and it will eat absolutely anything
<AlphaHelix> no way!!!!
<Wingman> it regurgitates its stomach acid on anything tasty
<Wingman> and sucks it back up
<AlphaHelix> Yuck!
<AlphaHelix> what are you going to call it?
<Wingman> The Fly
<Wingman> cos it flies, gettit?
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Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
That is the most ridiculous "common straw-man attack" ever. Anyone that would use it, whatever their angle may be, doesn't deserve a lot of credit. So the need to counter it is somewhat diminshed.
... because you are hard-wired to? You really don't care about life at all, you are just following directions from your brain? Even then, why not just get a simple job, reproduce at age 20, raise your kids until they are 20 and you are 40, then die? Perhaps atheists are just short-sighted and aren't thinking about the long-term implications? The responses to this discussion from atheists are interesting.
A better, perhaps less-common, straw-man attack is to discuss the point of living with atheists. If they truly believe that there is no spiritual life to humans (or other animals, as prescribed on a religion-by-religion case ), then why live at all? If you completely cease to exist in any form whatsoever when your physical body dies, then what is the point of living your life? In the end, everything you do now will not matter. Well, maybe you just want to enjoy the ride? To what end? Why enjoy it, if the enjoyment means nothing after you die? People take vacations to relax and take a break from working. The effects of the vacation are felt after it completes as you get back to your work, you feel refreshed, the fact that you took the vacation really matters. You can remember it and reminisce about the events. But if there is nothing beyond death, then everything you do in life is meaningless. You will not recall anything you did in life. Everyone that is still alive when you die will not remember anything about you when they die. And so on. You might as well stop living right now. The only reason you have a will to live your life is because of the hard wiring in your brain to not die long enough to reproduce and raise young. But isn't that an absurd reason to live your life
Who said that atheists don't believe in a spiritual life? You can have spirituality aplenty without a deity or anything supernatural at all. As the old Zen master said - if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!
I personally have plenty of reasons to live (I'm leaving in 10 minutes to go pick one of them up from preschool) without a supernatural invisible friend or a fantasy (nighmarishly dull) afterlife. They're my reasons, not someone else's, and not delusions.
Helium balloons want to be free.