Posted on 07/22/2009 3:53:18 PM PDT by rdl6989
Newly analyzed remains suggest that a modern human killed a Neanderthal man in what is now Iraq between 50,000 and 75,000 years ago. The finding is scant but tantalizing evidence for a theory that modern humans helped to kill off the Neanderthals.
The probable weapon of choice: A thrown spear.
The evidence: A lethal wound on the remains of a Neanderthal skeleton.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
Neanderthal murder ping.
The world’s first “hate crime”. Where’s Al Sharpton when you really needed him?
Reparations?
This wouldn’t have happened had Neanderthals had spear control laws.
How do we know a modern human threw the spear? Did it have a luggage tag on it or something?
It wasn’t me! I was sleeping in bed with my sweetheart... Just ask her! Hey Honey? Honey?
Helen Thomas was there to cover the story as it happened.
CSI: Pleistocene Period
Okay, they have a skeleton with damage to a rib. Period.
From that they deduce that it was made by a projectile rather than a spear whose wielder held on to the spear as he thrust. They deduce by experimenting with dead pig carcasses. But remember that they have no soft tissue to examine—they are going by the mark left on the bone by a projectile as compared to the mark left on the bone by a hand-held spear.
On the bone of a modern pig.
Having decided that it was a projectile, then they deduce that the projector of the projectile had to have been a human rather than a Neanderthal because, humans had learned to use spear throwers and Neanderthals had not.
Notice that the question is not the nature of the weapon’s head—in either case it’s assumed to be a spear point. The issue is whether it was hurled or held and thrust.
That’s an awful lot to deduce from a single rib with a mark on it.
It could be true, of course. But it’s a huge theory based on very tiny evidence.
If I tried this sort of thing with historical arguments about something in, say, the high Middle Ages or something during the Thirty Years War, deducing this sort of momentous sociological theory about this or that group’s relations with some other group and did it on this slim a foundation of forensic evidence, I’d be laughed out of the court of historical scholarship.
But they get away with this because, after all, we’re never going to have much more evidence—we’re stuck with a single rib with a mark on it.
The more honest thing to do would be to say, “we just don’t know.”
But if they did that, their whole discipline of “evolutionary anthropology” would go up in smoke.
I don’t mind them playing around with speculative theories. I just despise the journalists and popularizers who treat this now as established fact: early humans killed off the po’ widdle Neanderthals” “Big bad human meanies are always killing of po widdle defenseless critters.”
Wait'll these frauds get a hold of man-made global warming theory.
Oh, wait...!
lol.
“Neanderthals didn’t use thrown spears as far as we know”
Argument ab silentio. Given the limited surviving Neanderthal evidence, what are you going to do when the first evidence of Neanderthal spear thrower use turns up?
I’ll stipulate that the evidence for humans having and using spear throwers. But the other half rests on absence of evidence, “so far” and that “so far” is always the kicker.
And the danger is that, since we “know” that only humans, not Neanderthals, used thrown spears, henceforth all evidence of thrown spears automatically gets ascribed to humans, as in the case at hand.
But what if, just by chance, some Neanderthals did use thrown spears but we just haven’t, so far, stumbled on any evidence? After all, of all the Neanderthals that ever lived and all the early homines sapientes that ever lived, what percentage of their bones have we now seen and examined? A relatively tiny sample, I think.
If we were doing contemporary sociology, we’d say, “not a very good sample size to predicate huge generalizations on.”
But since it’s purportedly 50,000 years ago and we are not likely ever to have a decent sample size, we still go ahead and make sweeping generalizations.
I’d have no problem with this if people just identified it as what it is, wild speculation based on slivers of evidence.
But then the research grant money might not flow as freely.
It is quite natural that when two related species that compete for the same resources but cannot or will not reproduce together are put into proximity, one will be driven to extinction.
And yes, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence; so the fact that we have no evidence of Neanderthals using thrown spears is not evidence that Neanderthals didn't use thrown spears.
But if a body from 1811 was dug up and had arrows in it you might suggest it was likely that he was shot by Native Americans.
And “evidence suggests” is not a sweeping generalization but carefully couched language that fits the data.
This comes from the crawl out of Africa and then crawl back in school. It seems to me that anatomically modern people weren't supposedly wandering around until 30K years ago.
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