Caveful of Clues About Early Humans: Interbreeding With Neanderthals Among Theories Being Explored

Washington Post ^ | September 20, 2004 | Fredric Heeren

[SunkenCiv]

For the seven-member team, the hazards of reaching the site, accessible only by diving through frigid underwater passages, were worth it. Their finds may help answer some of the most hotly debated questions about early humans: Did they make love or war with Neanderthals? Were Neanderthals intellectually inferior to our human ancestors? ...The team included a Portuguese shipwreck diver and archaeologist, a French Neanderthal specialist, a Romanian cave biologist, and the three Romanian adventurers who discovered the human fossils while exploring submerged caves... [T]he ceiling lowered until they were forced, first, to swim on their backs and, finally, don their diving masks and enter a narrow, 80-foot-long underwater passage called "the sump." Underwater visibility was about three feet... The original entrance caved in long ago, sealing off the galleries from the outside... Trinkaus said the Oase fossils show features of modern humans: projecting chin, no brow ridge, a high and rounded brain case. But they also have clear archaic features that place them outside the range of variation for modern humans: a huge face, a large crest of bone behind the ear and enormous teeth that get even larger toward the back... "To find wisdom teeth that big," he said, "you have to go back 500,000 years."

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks, Blam, for pointing it out here:

In The Neanderthal Mind Science News ^ | 9-18-2004 | Bruce Bower Posted on 09/22/2004 5:32:57 PM PDT by blam http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1224142/posts?page=15#15

Sure, I'm slow, but **** how thorough! ;')

[SunkenCiv]

Pretty sure this never got posted. Anyone know what happened to fedup.com? That was a handy service.

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on, off, or alter the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
The GGG Digest -- Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

[SunkenCiv]

One more time, without the HTML problem.

Thanks, Blam, for pointing it out here:

In The Neanderthal Mind
Science News ^ | 9-18-2004 | Bruce Bower
Posted on 09/22/2004 5:32:57 PM PDT by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1224142/posts?page=15#15

[Schnucki]

This would help explain the existence of democrats.

[cyborg]

Or the relationship between Mary Matlin and James Carville.

[msdrby]

ping

[SunkenCiv]

Ping!

[judywillow]

I can picture protohumans having a use for larger canine teeth but what would they need significantly larger molars for?

[LiteKeeper]

SPOTREP

[SunkenCiv]

Sorry, I meant to use my ;') file, pinged you instead.

[SunkenCiv]

It's not really about need, it's about just one of those things. :') As omnivores, humans eat a very wide variety of foods, and so we have a wider variety of less specialized dentition. :') Hey, I'm 46 and that's the first time I'd used dentition in a sentence. And that was the second. Oooh, witnessing history here, I'm all a-tingle.

[JudyB1938]

www.fedup.com is a valid site - except - it's anti-Bush. What did it used to be?

[SunkenCiv]

Huh. It was a password skipping service -- one just put in the website (such as a newspaper) to find a valid user name and password (which was shared, obviously). It worked fine when I first heard of it less than a month ago. When I tried it this week it was "this site for sale". Must be the DUmmies read these GGG threads, and pounced on it. ;')

[SunkenCiv]

All of these are old (probably expired links), but I figured you'd appreciate 'em. :')

One of the PC complaints about archaeology and anthropology is that the stone tools survive basically forever, while things like cloth, skin clothing, weaving, and other "female" technology doesn't. Even human remains are in that category when it gets right down to it. Every site with stone tools probably would have had human fossils, but the remains just rotted away along with the designer fashions the dead person wore. (':

Neanderthal 'face' found in Loire
by Jonathan Amos
Tuesday, 2 December, 2003

A flint object with a striking likeness to a human face may be one of the best examples of art by Neanderthal man ever found, the journal Antiquity reports. The "mask", which is dated to be about 35,000 years old, was recovered on the banks of the Loire in France. It is about 10 cm tall and wide and has a bone splinter rammed through a hole, making the rock look as if it has eyes... "It should finally nail the lie that Neanderthals had no art," Paul Bahn, the British rock art expert, told BBC News Online. "It is an enormously important object." [T]he Roche-Cotard mask should set the record straight on Neanderthals' artistic capabilities. "There are now a great many Neanderthal art objects. They have been found for decades and always they are dismissed as the exception that proves the rule. "This is not just a fortuitous bone shoved into a hole in a rock. Whether the Neanderthal artist saw a rock that looked like a face and modified it, or conceived the thing from the start - who knows? Either way it is pretty sophisticated." And Marquet added: "This object shows that art was not born in the brain of Homo sapiens but much earlier in the brains of predecessors like the Neanderthal man and even, no doubt, in Homo erectus.

Evidence of earliest human burial
by Paul Rincon
Wednesday, 26 March, 2003
BBC online

Scientists claim they have found the oldest evidence of human creativity: a 350,000-year-old pink stone axe. The handaxe, which was discovered at an archaeological site in northern Spain, may represent the first funeral rite by human beings. It suggests humans were capable of symbolic thought at a far earlier date than previously thought... The axe is skilfully crafted from quartzite rock, which is abundant in the region... [T]he researchers claim the striking colour is crucial to its importance... The human remains belong to the species Homo heidelbergensis, which dominated Europe around 600,000-200,000 years ago and is thought to have given rise to both the Neanderthals and modern humans (Homo sapiens).

"Capable of symbolic thought at a far earlier date than previously thought," sounds familiar somehow... ;'D

Late Neanderthals 'more like us'
by Paul Rincon
Wednesday, 24 December, 2003

The skull comes from ground layers dating to between 42,000 and 38,000 years ago. The researchers also found other fragments of Neanderthal bone from later ground layers in the cave. Analysis of this cranium appears to confirm suggestions from earlier finds at Vindija that the Neanderthals there were evolving a more "gracile" anatomy - less sturdy than classic big-boned Neanderthals. The skull's supraorbital torus - an arching, bony ridge above the eyes - is not as thick and projecting as in other Neanderthal remains. The specimen also has a higher braincase than is typical in Neanderthals... Many researchers believe they did not contribute genes to present-day populations.

"Believe" is the operative word in that sentence.

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George W. Bush will win reelection by a margin of at least ten per cent.
Election 2004 topics list

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[SunkenCiv]

Updated ping message, no re-ping.

The Neandertal Enigma
by James Shreeve
in local libraries

"Frayer's own reading of the record reveals a number of overlooked traits that clearly and specifically link the Neandertals to the Cro-Magnons. One such trait is the shape of the opening of the nerve canal in the lower jaw, a spot where dentists often give a pain-blocking injection. In many Neandertal, the upper portion of the opening is covered by a broad bony ridge, a curious feature also carried by a significant number of Cro-Magnons. But none of the alleged 'ancestors of us all' fossils from Africa have it, and it is extremely rare in modern people outside Europe." [pp 126-127]