Posted on 06/14/2010 7:09:56 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
For the past two decades archaeologist João Zilhão of the University of Bristol in England has been studying our closest cousins, the Neandertals, who occupied Eurasia for more than 200,000 years before mysteriously disappearing some 28,000 years ago. Experts in this field have long debated just how similar Neandertal cognition was to our own. Occupying center stage in this controversy are a handful of Neandertal sites that contain cultural remains indicative of symbol use -- including jewelry -- a defining element of modern human behavior. Zilhão and others argue that Neandertals invented these symbolic traditions on their own, before anatomically modern humans arrived in Europe around 40,000 years ago. Critics, however, believe the items originated with moderns.
But this past January, in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, Zilhão and his colleagues reported on finds that could settle the dispute: pigment-stained seashells from two sites in Spain dated to nearly 50,000 years ago -- 10,000 years before anatomically modern humans made their way to Europe. Zilhão recently discussed the implications of his team's new discoveries with Scientific American staff editor Kate Wong. An edited version of their conversation follows.
(Excerpt) Read more at scientificamerican.com ...
This smells like a call for Neanderthal reparations
no kidding, welfare benefits are probably high on the list!! I didn’t realize that Chicago politics went back 500,000 years....on the other hand, their views are so antiquated that peerhaps the Neanderthals are their front runners.....GO GROG....he could make it.
Yes.
That's why they are extinct.
I’m sure in some aspects they did, and in some they couldn’t possibly think like us.
Neanderthals sure have come a long way...they’re now our ‘closest cousins.’
Neanderthals ruled the earth for upwards of 500,000 years. We should be so lucky . . .
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Early humans are invariably portayed as being dim, slow moving and clumsy.
Somehow I suspect they had an agility and bursts of speed and strength that would leave us in slack jawed amazment and fear if we could see it. The robust sturdiness of their skeletal remains are incredible.
CS Lewis once opined that if a modern was to encounter such a ‘primitive’, the modern would be tempted to fall down in awe at the blunt honesty and power of the ancestor.
Personally, I suspect they were rather feral, but I have little doubt about their power.
ME NOT KNOW. WHY YOU ASK?
How do you know they ruled? Maybe they just inhabited the world?
Without ridge:
The Neandertals didn’t die out, so it ain’t certain.
LOL!
Thanks!
They’ll have their own cigarette soon, blammy.
Like FReepers?
hmmmm.....nah...they died out.
Yea, something catchy like, Neander Blunts.
"The first draft sequence of the Neanderthal genome has provided the strongest evidence yet that modern humans and Neanderthals interbred and that all non-Africans today have Neanderthal gene fragments in their genetic codes. Although the Neanderthal contribution to the DNA of these individuals is estimated at being just one to four percent of the total, the finding, published in the latest issue of the journal Science, helps to resolve the long-standing controversy over whether or not humans mated with Neanderthals when the two groups encountered each other outside of Africa... co-author David Reich... and his colleagues analyzed over one billion DNA fragments taken from Neanderthal bones -- dating to approximately 38,000 years ago -- found in Croatia, Germany, Russia and Spain. Although 95 percent of the fragments consisted of bacteria and microorganisms that colonized the Neanderthal remains, special DNA isolation and anti-contamination measures enabled the scientists to piece together over 60 percent of the entire Neanderthal genome... compared the Neanderthal DNA to samples taken from present-day humans in southern Africa, western Africa, China, France and Papua New Guinea."
A reconstructed head based on a Neanderthal skull found in France is shown. -- Sven Traenkner (c), "Safari zum Urmenschen" ("Safari to Human Ancestors") exhibition, Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum, Frankfurt, Germany
That’s what liberals seem to think!
You bigot! Only inbred rednecks have neanderthal genes. The people who voted for Alvin Greene are all ingenious left wing intellectuals! [/sarc]
yes. they used improper grammar, too.
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