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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?"
slider technology and left the planet. Unfortunatly they lost the coordinates for there home earth dimension. Also unfortunate that they became NAZI's.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm CERTAIN that I have seen a Far Side comic that dealt with this exact situation.
--jeff++
ipv6 is my vpn
Because the Flying Spaghetti Monster decided so.
they are still here...
huh?
Mebbe they weren't cross fertile (produced mules) and neanderthals had such a strong exogamy component, they died out trying too hard.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Well, everyone took a vote, and they got voted off the island.
nothing.can.stop.me.now
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.
I kid, I kid.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
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.
maybe the neanderthalls evolved, and modern humans were created by intelligent design?
by intellegent design, I of course mean Flying spahgetti monster.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
I have nothing to hide. So, why are you spying on me?
It's not implied in the article...but I've got a nagging suspicion we just slaughtered them for fun and sport.
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
You haven't been watching NBC, have you?
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?
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:
--John
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.
Based on that picture, I'd have to say that the Neanderthals died out because the Cro-Magnon women were way better looking.
Nerd Rock In Progress
*shrug* there doesn't have to be any evidence. but, that does mean it shouldn't be taught alongside evolution as an "alternate theory"
Great!
Why not include Scientology along with Judeo-Christian creation?
You think a Christian parents are pissed that Little Johnny was told by his teacher that man evolved from a common ancestor to apes, just wait until he comes home and tells Mommy and Daddy about a Galactic Federation founded 5,000,000 years ago, Teegeeack, H-Bombs, and body thetans.
I can't wait to see that one.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
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.
> *shrug* there doesn't have to be any evidence. but, that does mean it shouldn't be taught alongside evolution as an "alternate theory", just on the basis that there is no evidence.
Here are my favorite no-evidence theories that I want schoolkiddies to learn:
- Flying Spaghetti Monster Theory
- Intelligent Falling Theory
- Invisible Pink Unicorn Theory
- Last Thursday Theory
- 2+2=5 Theory
We've really got to quit letting the boring old farts set the agenda!Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> Or maybe they just didn't fuck like rabbits and decimate their natural environment and keep moving on like an uncontrollable scourge?
I, for one, welcome our new rabbity-fucking uncontrollably moving slightly higher evolved overlords! Er... our old overlords... er... I mean us. I welcome us.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
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.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
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?
Amazing, only in America would people teach in Public School that Earth was created by the Magrathean planetary construction engineer Slartibartfast. Douglas Adams would be proud!
Oh well, what the hell...
If the Scientologists get their theories in, so should Pastafarians.
;)
I can't prove my beliefs in the FSM (blessed be), but you can't disprove them either. So there!
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
My sister told me she's dated a few...
This information is obviously vital, and should no doubt be covered in Biology class!.
Heh, one should think so. But there are soooo many non-believers out there.
I told my local school district a couple of years back that if they continued to insist that prayer be not only allowed in school, but lead by a teacher, that I would first convert my children to their grandma's religion (she was of the Blackfoot tribe), and then sue under federal law to force the district to accomodate their worship in the school. Since they would have to accomodate my children during "prayer time", I knew that having a bunch of whooping, dancing students in the classroom would be too much for them to take.
They dropped their proposal because they eventually realized that in order to stay neutral with regard to the Establishment Clause they would have to accomodate every religious belief to avoid having their policy ruled unconstitutional.
Intelligent Design will have the same fate when every religion in the world demands equal time in the science classroom.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Innan and Nordborg
Seastead this.
For those not familiar with it: The Invisible Pink Unicorns are a counter-argument to a common straw-man attack on atheism.
The attack is "You can't know whether there is a god, so to disbelieve is every bit as much an act of faith as to believe."
The counter goes as following.
Atheist (A): "Do you believe there are herds of invisble pink unicorns somewhere unnoticed on the planet?"
Believer (B): "No, of course not."
A: "So this would be an absolute religious conviction, would it?"
B: "Well, no, not really"
A: "Right. I don't believe in god in the same way you don't believe in invisible pink unicorns."
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
From God's Roadmap:
Beta
Release version: Homo neanderthalensis
Build name: Adam
Release date: 4,569,770,000 years after cooling
Deprecated: 4,569,971,000 years after cooling
Stable
Release version: Homo sapiens
Build name: Eve
Release date: 4,569,800,000 years after cooling
Deprecated:
[Sigh] Still deciding. I mean, the codebase is starting to look a bit creaky in a few places, and they're starting to tinker with it themselves (they think it's open source - hah!). Inquisitive little so-and-so's can't leave well enough alone... They've noticed the legacy code from the previous build too - ick, some cruft in there. Very tempting to trash the lot and start again using AOP. Mind you I mightn't have to lift a finger if they don't stop blowing each other to smithereens.
[sigh] TODO: Take oort cloud inventory - look for something nice and big...
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'm sick of people touting Intelligent Design when they don't even understand Evolution.
Evolution is NOT about "random mutations". There is nothing at all RANDOM about evolution. Sure, there are random mutations going on all the time, but that's not what evolution is about. Evolution is about NATURAL SELECTION which is definitely NOT a random process.
There is a very specific rule that is applied to the "random mutations" to see which ones move forward and that is (more or less) this: Those mutations that tend to make a creature at least slightly more successful will tend to spread throughout a population. And "successful" means (essentially) living long enough to reproduce and raise young.
This is NOT random at all. Most (nearly all) mutations are either BAD and cause damage, or effectively do nothing. Only a few rare mutations actually pass the natural selection test of being positive and therefore spread through successive generations.
In a given context a mutation is either going to tend to be helpful to the survival of the creature or not. So I say once again Evolution is NOT random.
I could go on and on and explain how natural selection often leads to results that APPEAR to look "planned", even though they were not planned with any intelligent forethought, but that would be a whole book. Instead, read Richard Dawkins "The Blind Watchmaker".
Because this is a democracy, where majority rules.
Pardon my french, but that is pure bullshit. Majority doesn't have anything to do with what is science or not. A huge portion of the population also believes in Astrology, should that be included in science class? Of course not.
ID and Creationism are religious ideas. They have nothing to do with science. If they are to be taught in schools they should be taught where they belong, along side of Buddhism, Islam, Astrology and all the other superstition. Science class is for scientific theory, and ID, all though a theory, doesn't qualify as a scientific theory. If you do not know what a scientific theory is, and why ID and Creationism doesn't qualify, I suggest you read up on the subject. It isn't all that hard.
REQUEST FOR URGENT BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP
Dear Mr Neanderthal,
First I must solicit your strictest confidence of this transaction. This is by virtue of its nature as being utterly confidential and "Top Secret".
You must be surprised hearing from me in this manner as we have not previously communicated.
Please allow me to introduce myself. I am HOMO SAPIENS SAPIENS, descendant and heir of the late HOMO HEIDELBERGENSIS of AFRICA.
Before he passed away my late ancestor secreted one hundred thousand (ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND) african elephants in the plains of Africa and I seek your assistance to export these animals to Europe where the growing shortage of the similar "Woolly mamoths" would make them highly marketable.
While the seas and deserts seperating Africa from Europe are easily overcome, African Animals are unable to tolerate cold and I will need a number of large fur coats to protect them for the journey.
In return for the suply of these furs and acting as my agent for the sale I would be delighted to offer you a full 50% of the realised market value.
Yours Faithfully
Homo Sapiens Sapiens,
Lagos,
Africa
Are you somehow unaware of the over riding laws of real men ?
1) Every hole's a goal.
2) You don't look at the mantlepiece when you're stoking the fire.
The "all native americans lived in harmony with the land and used every part of the animal" myth also needs to die.
I'm not holding my breath, though.
"A good proof for the christian anti-darwinists that it is not always the fittest that survive..."
Actually you misunderstand the meaningof that term. The word fittest is termed as something that is "the best at surviving.", not necessarily the best at something like strength, eating, building, etc. So in the real world those species that are best at learning, or adapting to their environment (read as: able to survive in their environment), are those that evolve and thus "survive".
So the fittest always do servive, because they are the best at surviving.
--
Does anyone remember