Posted on 05/19/2005 2:44:29 PM PDT by blam
Earliest European 31,000 years old
Agençe France-Presse
Thursday, 19 May 2005
Radiocarbon dating of human remains found in the Czech Republic has confirmed they come from the oldest European found so far (Image: iStockphoto)
Fossilised human bones found in the Czech Republic have been dated back to some 31,000 years, which scientists say confirms them as the oldest known examples of Homo sapiens found in Europe.
Austrian and US scientists publish their carbon-dating results in today's issue of the journal Nature.
An upper jaw, teeth and the skull of a female were found in a cave in Moravia in the 19th century, but scientists have debated how old they are.
University of Vienna researcher Dr Eva Wild and colleagues used a technique called accelerator mass spectrometry to analyse carbon 14 isotopes in the dental remains.
These isotopes decay at a known rate, allowing scientists to calculate the age of a dead organism.
Wild's team suggests the teeth are about 31,000 radiocarbon years old, a yardstick that can be somewhat different from calendar years.
Radiocarbon years and calendar years tend to diverge and converge at different periods in prehistory, consistent with varying amounts of carbon 14 in the atmosphere.
The discrepancy is significant during this period in prehistory, and calibrating radiocarbon and calendar years is a matter of ongoing research.
How does this relate to Neanderthals?
The fossil's age, as calculated in this latest research, concurs with artefacts from other sites in Europe that have been carbon-dated to the same era.
The finding is important, because it could help solve the mystery of what happened to the Neanderthals, a species of hominid that predominated in Europe before anatomically modern man showed up.
One school of thought suggests the Neanderthals were wiped out by the smarter H. sapiens or lost the battle for food and habitat, then simply faded away.
But another theory suggests the two hominid species lived side by side for many thousands of years and may have intermingled, which implies there could be Neanderthal genes in the human gene pool today.
Dang! Why didn't I think of that? Sloping forehead, vacant stare, hand out, salivating heavily when a free meal is presented. How could I have missed that?
The French are the offspring of the inter-mingling between Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens, so they're not 100% human.
The fossil in Spain from 24,000 is an early modern human child with some Neanderthal characteristics. The latest Neanderthal fossil remains that I'm aware of are the 28,000 year old specimans from Vindija, Croatia.
Actually, some sceintists have theorized that the gene for red hair is inherited from the Neanderthals. I reckon that would make the Irish the Neanderthals.
Tree-rings, which we have a record of for over 10,000 years now, is helping with these calibrations.
Exhibit A:
Neanderthal - Human Hybrid
As a redhead, I've done some research and I am told that red hair was introduced to Ireland by Viking raiders
Red hair is not just a European phenomenom. Australian Aboriginals and Melanasians also have a percentage of red haired kinsmen.
Ya.....but do they have fair skin and freckles? Not the same gene as the Euro red haired beasts.
I think that picture resembles Mary Kate and Ashley Olson (Olsen ?)
Yup. The Melanasians also have Cain and Abel type myths about tall, light-skinned, red-headed people.
read later
Of course, all that that article says is that a gene associated with red hair is quite old; there is nothing to associate it with the Neanderthals.
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Holy crap! That's my neighbor!
Sissy Spacek?
Better your neighbor than your cousin!
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