Neanderthals Enjoyed Surf and Turf Meals

Discovery News ^ | Tuesday, January 12, 2010 | Jennifer Viegas

[seowulf]

Neanderthals are humans... well, sort of, anyway.

Oh, they were human all right.

I remember a photo of a grave holding the skeletons of a young woman with a young child cradled in her arms, both lying on a bed of flower pedals.

That is definitely a sign of humans mourning the loss of someone that was loved.

Nothing more human than that.

[SunkenCiv]

;’) They probably ate a lot of take-out, “hey Og, could you take out another slab of meat from that mammoth, I’ve got to step around the corner a second.”

[SunkenCiv]

I guess the experts were right, we are what we eat — and Neandertals were all mussel.

[SunkenCiv]

:’)

[SunkenCiv]

It wasn’t long ago that Neandertal was regarded as never haven eaten fish, because no fish bones had been identified in their old refuse piles. That was mostly I think another part of the kinda weird anti-Neandertal bias that has been around since shortly after the first discovery of their fossils.

[paulycy]

“Here, hold muh fermented mastadon milk...”

[SunkenCiv]

Hey, thanks, James, that reminds me:

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]

I can't believe I forgot that.

Mountainlion, there has been no disproving of any genetic relationship between living humans and Neandertal, neither has there been any disproving of interbreeding. The first such study used pre-Neandertal remains to try to replicate mitochondrial DNA, and fewer than 300 base pairs (out of a presumed 16,000+ originally) made the trip. That isn't an adequate sample to show anything. The recent study didn't use a massive database of Neandertal DNA either, it used reconstructed (iow, surmised) DNA sequences which were then attributed to Neandertal. It was what's known as a straw man argument.

Thanks seowulf, that's nice, I hope that's appeared in a topic of its own.

[fanfan]

[vamoose]

[mountainlion]

National Geographic says Neanderthals didn't mate...
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/08/080812-neandertal-dna.html

Just because something is not proved wrong does not mean it is fact. There are more theories than facts on Neanderthals.

[SunkenCiv]

National Geographic says global warming is real, too. And Express India says genetically, Neandertal was halfway between human and chimp.

Just because something is not proved wrong does not mean it is fact.

Just because a series of people opposed to the idea that humans were not created as-is has rejected Neandertal as ancestral to living humans since R. Virchow doesn't mean there's anything to the persistent fiction that Neandertal was inferior and went extinct. Morphology proves that Neandertal *is* ancestor to living humans.

[SunkenCiv]

Must have been tricky to milk those.

[paulycy]

Must have been tricky to milk those.

Worth it, though. No beer for another few thousand years. ;0)

[mountainlion]

I have read on both sides of the argument and there is no real proof as to either arguement being superior. The Discovery Channel had a good show discussing the theories. I think the DNA theory against is the most logical for me. Just because someone is for global warming does not make them wrong on everything. There still is not enough information. I tend to disbelieve many theories because of fraud in the profession ie “Nebraska Man” and such. It is an interesting discussion though.

[SunkenCiv]

There is no DNA theory, there are some inherently flawed studies by people who set out holding the conclusion as one of their assumptions (that Neandertal went extinct, iow, has no living descendants).

[SunkenCiv]

Hey, they probably would have invented beer, but until some early form of football is is discovered and attributed to them...

[paulycy]

but until some early form of football is is discovered and attributed to them...

You are clearly right on this. I defer to your historical insight.

But they weren't stupid. There's evidence that they invented cheerleaders many eons before the discovery of ball games of any kind.

[Tainan]

Hmmm...wore make-up...liked jewelery...loved a bit of sushi....'Metro-Retro-Neandro-Sexuals'...."Ogg like what you've done with cave"

[BIGLOOK]

“A brave man it was who first an oyster et”

Mostly attributed to Jonathan Swift but many believe it was a Samuel Johnson quote. On continental Europe it's believed to have been a Frenchman's musing.

But now we know better, it was a Neanderthal, probably a French Neanderthal.

[Stultis]

I tend to disbelieve many theories because of fraud in the profession ie “Nebraska Man” and such.

There was no fraud involved with "Nebraska Man". It was a mistake.

BTW, the primary researchers never even referred to it as a "man". That was an over enthusiastic English scientist, who made this suggestion in the popular press there. The serious scientific advocates of this short lived fossil phenom were only claiming that it was an anthropoid ape of some sort. That was extraordinary enough, as no apes whatever are known from the Americas, and not even monkeys from North America.

It was a single badly worn molar, actually from a pig as it turned out. Unfortunately, not only are pig teeth and ape/human teeth grossly similar (ironically the primary researcher studying and describing Hesperopithecus had made just this point in a previous paper!) but this particular tooth had been rotated in the jaw in life, in such a way that it acquired a human-like wear pattern.

Anyway, within a few years they found more of the material. The claim was corrected and retracted in 1927. (The tooth was first described in 1922.)

See this article for more.