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

they invented

[geekoid]

slider technology and left the planet. Unfortunatly they lost the coordinates for there home earth dimension. Also unfortunate that they became NAZI's.

Re:they invented

[FosterKanig]

It's my understanding that the Neanderthals lived in caves located below sea level. A big storm came and wiped them all out.

Re:they invented

[patio11]

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

Re:they invented

[lanswitch]

They invented Intellectual Property Rights and sued each other to oblivion?

Far Side?

[statusbar]

I'm CERTAIN that I have seen a Far Side comic that dealt with this exact situation.

--jeff++

Re:Far Side?

[Thangodin]

I'm reminded of that line by Londo Mollari in Babylon 5: "You know, there were two intelligent species on our planet, but we wiped the other one out. Do you know what the last one said just before he died? AAAAAAAAGGGHHH!!!."

It's obvious...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the Flying Spaghetti Monster decided so.

I'm pretty sure....

[FraggleMI]

they are still here...

Re:I'm pretty sure....

[hotspotbloc]

they are still here...

... in management. A Dilbert comic has come true.

Are you there God? it's me, Neanderthalis

[way2trivial]

Mebbe they weren't cross fertile (produced mules) and neanderthals had such a strong exogamy component, they died out trying too hard.

Well.

[Jediman1138]

Well, everyone took a vote, and they got voted off the island.

Where they went...

[mfh]

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.

Re:Where they went...

[Gulthek]

Ahh yes. The "primitive" neanderthal who survived the brunt of the last major ice age and thrived. Who had a larger cranial capacity than we Homo Sapiens. (Note that larger brain size is used as evidence for Homo Sapiens mental superiority in all cases comparing to other genetic lines (Australopithecus, etc) except when comparing to Neanderthals. In that case textbooks commonly claim that our brains operated "more efficiently" than the Neanderthals' when there is little reason to make such a conclusion.

I suggest you read up some more. The issue is more complex than you summarize, there is a reason that there is still a debate.

They're still here..

[GreyWolf3000]

The humans got sick of the neanderthals and moved away. The neanderthals just...stayed in France :)

I kid, I kid.

We have a pretty good idea where they went.

[Pantero Blanco]

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.

Re:We have a pretty good idea where they went.

[Thanatopsis]

What is the mechanism by which genes fade? I suggest that you take a basic biology class. Mitochrondrial DNA tests indicate that Neanderthals were an entirely seperate species with no interbreeding.Here's more on MtDNA highlight the discovery of Eve who lived 200,000 years ago.

Re:We have a pretty good idea where they went.

[jc42]

Mitochrondrial DNA tests indicate that Neanderthals were an entirely seperate species with no interbreeding.

Actually, this merely says that any Neanderthal ancestors we may have weren't through the pure-maternal line. It says nothing at all about the nuclear DNA, which is over 99% of our DNA.

I've been watching for reports on Neanderthal DNA, and I've been repeatedly disappointed by people making conclusions from mtDNA samples. This basically indicates cluelessness about how inheritance works. Your mtDNA is a rather special case, and it's inherited very differently from your nuclear DNA. It's only useful for tracing your purely-maternal line of ancestors. It carries no information about any male or any of his ancestors.

It's still entirely possible that a tiny part of the ancestry of Europeans is Neanderthal. This could mean a few hundred genes scattered through the nuclear DNA. It could mean just one gene. Until you convincingly show, for every single gene, that it's not of Neanderthal origin, you really haven't shown that there was no interbreeding at all.

This is significant because nobody suggests a significant Neanderthal contribution to the modern European gene pool. Even supporters of the conjecture would be surprised if 1% of our genes are of Neanderthal origin. The question is whether the number is exactly zero or something slightly higher.

My guess is that we'll never have good enough evidence of Neanderthal genes to show that there was no interbreeding at all. That requires study of the entire genome, and the fossil record doesn't have to have preserved it for us. Unless there's some very luck discovery, such as a deep-frozen Neanderthal in the permafrost (that's now rapidly melting, so we'd better hurry), it's unlikely that we'll ever have a complete sample of Neanderthal DNA. And even that wouldn't really be enough; the most it could prove is that that particular individual wasn't one of our ancestors.

In any case, arguments from mtDNA are supremely unconvincing. Interesting, yes, but unconvincing.

But that doesn't stop the media from publishing gee-whiz articles on the topic.

Re:We have a pretty good idea where they went.

[Michael Woodhams]

Actually, this merely says that any Neanderthal ancestors we may have weren't through the pure-maternal line. It says nothing at all about the nuclear DNA, which is over 99% of our DNA.

True, however:

My guess is that we'll never have good enough evidence of Neanderthal genes to show that there was no interbreeding at all. That requires study of the entire genome, and the fossil record doesn't have to have preserved it for us.

No - there would be a distinctive signal we can detect purely from modern human genomes. Imagine that for gene X, 1% of Europeans have a Neandertal gene, and everyone else (including all non-Europeans) have the Sapiens gene. We sequence this gene from 10000 people, 1000 of whom are European, 10 of whom have the Neandertal gene. Those 10 Europeans have sequences which are similar to each other, but are much more different from the consensus than any other gene sequences - and most significantly, much more different than any of the African samples. (Africa being the homeland of Homo Sapiens means it has the largest genetic variability.)

Putting it another way: if we created a phylogenetic tree of the genes, we would observe some of the European genes being basal (separated from the bulk of the sequences by the first bifurcation on the tree), and by a large margin (after this bifurcation, there is a long time before the next bifurcation on the main branch.)

We haven't yet observed such a pattern, although I think people have looked. We may yet find this, but the longer we look without finding it, the less likely the interbreeding hypothesis becomes.

IAATMP. (I am a theoretical molecular phylogenist.)

Its both!

[geekoid]

maybe the neanderthalls evolved, and modern humans were created by intelligent design?

by intellegent design, I of course mean Flying spahgetti monster.

Re:Its both!

[XXIstCenturyBoy]

Yep.. God killed the Neanderthalls. Thats being an Intelligent Designer.

And he left their bones to test our faith.

Re:Its both!

[hungrygrue]

Or they were a prototype. ;-)

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.

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.

Heard this before...

[AsiNisiMasa]

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.

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.

Damn!

[ShadyG]

Based on that picture, I'd have to say that the Neanderthals died out because the Cro-Magnon women were way better looking.

Re:Interesting

[geomon]

*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.

Birth canal problems

[Baldrson]

One theory is that when neanderthals mated with modern humans the offspring would survive if the father was a modern human and mother was a neanderthal because the neanderthal woman's birth canal was wider. However, if a neanderthal man mated with a modern human the mother and child could die in labor due to the fact that the birth canal was too narrow for the hybrid child. There has been speculation on differing gestation periods as well.

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?

Re: Interesting

[Black Parrot]

> *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!

Re:No, natural selection in action

[hoggoth]

> 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.

This is only marginally new

[Arker]

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.

Saw A Program About This On German TV 2 Years Ago

[aquatone282]

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.

Re:Interesting

[danharan]

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! ;)

Neanderthals DO exist

[FredThompson]

My sister told me she's dated a few...

IPU

[Michael Woodhams]

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."

God's Roadmap

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

Re:Voice box - no communication

[EtherealStrife]

Slashdot has once again made a big deal out of nothing. In one of my archaeology classes a few years ago we discussed these very caves, and covered the EVIDENCE (that's right, evidence) that damn near proves the existence of Homo sapiens and neanderthals in fairly close quarters.

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.

Evolution is NOT "random"!!!

[adrenaline_junky]

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".