Posted on 12/12/2010 12:19:16 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Many treasures compete for attention, but there is one sample, kept in a small plywood box, that deserves especial interest: the Swanscombe skull. Found near Gravesend last century, it is made up of three pieces of the brain case of a 400,000-year-old female and is one of only half-a-dozen bits of skeleton that can be traced to men and women who lived in Britain before the end of the last ice age. Human remains do not get more precious than this.
However, the Swanscombe find is important for another, crucial reason: the skull is that of a Neanderthal, that race of shadowy, evolutionary cousins of our own species who made complex stone tools and who once thrived in Europe before being wiped about 35,000 years ago, not long after modern humans had emerged from their African birthplace and had begun to spread across the planet.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
The Neandertal EnigmaFrayer'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]
by James Shreeve
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In before the Helen Thomas pics.
Can you imagine the reparations we would owe if a Neanderthal would show up? Shouldn’t we have sewn clothes for them to protect them from extinction and given them some of the food we were taking from them with our superior tools? Oh! The inhumanity of humanity!
"How do you think I affored all this?"
We are into a cycle where we have Ice for 100,000 years and an interglacial of just over 10,000 years.
Within the period of Ice there are smaller warm spells called Interstadials.
Our African ancestors were still pygmy people on the SW coast ~ and may well have lived furthest South long enough to have been selected for a variety of changes necessary for life in Europe later on after their big migration.
That’s not even good sarcasm.
BTW, even though I jest, I sincerely appreciate reading the info in all of these Ancient History threads, and the work you do to provide them.
I would suggest that the reason for the bony ridge in that area was to protect what is above it. Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon man didn’t have the convenience of a local meat grinder, and who knows what kind of tough skins the plant life had. You didn’t want anything ‘poking’ through that area while you were chewing it.
Now that we are more of an ‘agricultural’ civilization, the need for it has disappeared. Any part of the body not used, atrophies. Like my brain.
Actually a 400,000 year old female Neanderthal still works in the Bank of England, the bank itself is often called ‘the old lady of Threadneedle Street’
Actually, this same man was my high school phys ed coach...
/rimshot!
Uh-boy, nothing yet, but I am OUTTA here before those!
Admit it, you’re the Smothers Brothers.
Thanks muawiyah.
Thanks UCANSEE2.
Not bad, although I would put that the other way around — as those characteristics disappeared (due to luck o’ the draw, iow chromosome lines vanishing, and maybe mutation) other means of eating had to be innovated.
An American Neanderthal?
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