CNRS is 'Centre national de la recherche scientifique'.
Byzovaya site. © Photo Ludovic Slimak
Posted on 12/29/2011 10:14:08 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Dating of butchery marks crucial
A multi-disciplinary team of French CNRS researchers, working with Norwegian and Russian scientists, studied the Byzovaya site in the Polar Urals in northern Russia. Using carbon 14 dating and an optical simulation technique, the team was able to put an accurate date on sediments and on mammoth and reindeer bones abandoned on the site. The bones bore traces of butchering by Mousterian hunters.
The results intrigue scientists in more ways than one. They show that Mousterian culture may have lasted longer than scientists had originally thought. What's more, no Mousterian presence had ever been identified so close to the Arctic Circle. All other traces are at least 1000 km further south. Lastly, the Byzovaya site, in Eurasia, seems only to have been occupied once, approximately 28,500 years ago, which is over 8,000 years after Neanderthals were thought to have disappeared.
So this discovery raises many questions, not least about how Mousterian society was organised. Did Neanderthal Man live longer than thought? Or could these last bearers of Mousterian culture in fact have been Homo sapiens? If so, the theories explaining that Neanderthals died out because their culture was archaic would be put into question. The studies open up new perspectives on this turning point in human history.
(Excerpt) Read more at pasthorizonspr.com ...
Byzovaya site. © Photo Ludovic Slimak
Map showing the location of the Byzovaya site, in the northern Urals. Image: Science/AAAS
Mousterian tool from Byzovaya. © Photo Ludovic Slimak
Ludovic Slimak and Pavel Pavlov examining a mammoth tusk in Byzovaya. © Photo Hugues Plisson
|
|
|
| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
|
|
Thanks Renfield. The last refuge of Neandertal is in the human genome. |
|
|
|
|
The last refuge of Neandertal is FR religion threads. Oh...wait...they are bloodthirsty troglodytes...my bad.
/johnny
The Mousterian King was depicted by Tchaikovsky in the Nutcracker.
bookmark
Just a passing thought, but I wonder if they were refugees? Last survivors of the losing side of some ancient, nonviolent conquest/displacement? Forced to live in a marginal environment due to an influx of more aggressive, more adaptable homo sapiens?
The came the Oleanderthals, bunch of flower pickers.
Finally the Kneeanderthals, couldn't run away from predators because their knees were bad from all that bending down to pick flowers and walking around without Orthotic Insoles in their sandals.
The history of mankind is brutal, merciless slaughter. Run to the hills. Run for your life.
If I understand correctly, there wasn’t much difference in lifestyle between Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens until about twenty thousand years ago. Then suddenly there was an explosion of advancements in tools, weapons, clothing and especially art and Homo Sapiens vaulted ahead.
It’s still a mystery what got switched on in our heads but I guess the alien monolith from 2001 zapping our ancestors and turbocharging their brains is as good as any.
I LOLed at that. It's spot on true.
We be bad... We mostly own carnivores for pets... imagine a species that uses meat eaters for pets.
I'm ok with it... and so are the catz...
/johnny
But I personally think they couldn't handle the weather change. And my former BIL is just a hold-over.
/johnny
I find it interesting that the Neanderthals died out right about the time that the interglacial warming period began. I don’t make anything of that but the timing is interesting. Just their bad luck?
The Neandertal Enigma"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]
by James Shreeve
in local libraries
whoops, forgot to ping.
LOL!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
