Neanderthals in Color

Archaeology, v65, n3 ^ | May/June 2012 | Zach Zorich

[SunkenCiv]

In 1981, when Wil Roebroeks of Leiden University was beginning his archaeological career, he ran across some red stains in the grayish sediments on the floodplain of the Maas River where his team was excavating. The site, called Maastricht-Belvèdère, in The Netherlands, was occupied by Neanderthals at least 200,000 years ago. Roebroeks collected and stored samples of the red stains, and 30 years later he received funding to analyze them. It became apparent that he and his team had discovered the earliest evidence of hominins using the mineral iron oxide, also known as ocher. Until now, the use of ocher -- as a red pigment in rock paintings, an ingredient in glue, and for tanning hides, among other things -- was thought to be a hallmark of modern human behavior. While the manner in which the mineral was used at Maastricht-Belvèdère is something of a mystery, the find has had an impact on the question of whether ocher use represents modern behavior. "This whole debate is now to some degree a non-debate," Roebroeks says, "because Neanderthals were already doing this 200,000 years ago."

(Courtesy Wil Roebroeks)

[SunkenCiv]

:’D

[SunkenCiv]

Genetic studies can't show anything for certain other than the current distribution of various base pair sequences (and that's well short of an exhaustive data set, since the samples amount to a tiny fraction of the 7 billion living humans), and here and there some fragments of a large handful of ancient individuals, and a small, even tiny, handful of prehistoric ones.

And they can't show geographic origins, and likely never will, due to that very dearth of early samples. Even an intelligent guess would require a complete chain of descent from, say, an early ancient person, down the family tree (unbroken or nearly unbroken line) to a living person.

I doubt that I could come up with the chance of DNA samples from any of my 16 great-great-grandparents, and I know where some of them are buried.

Reprise:

In her Plato Prehistorian: 10,000 to 5000 B.C. Myth, Religion, Archaeology, Mary Settegast reproduces a table which shows four runic character sets; a is Upper Paleolithic (found among the cave paintings), b is Indus Valley script, c is Greek (western branch), and d is the Scandinavian runic alphabet.

[piroque]

[xp38]

C'mon read the title of the thread

[Mr Rogers]

She didn’t need a verbal language...

[ThanhPhero]

Actually there are many tonal languages in Africa. A couple of them are highly tonal and lend themselves to being whistled, which they are over distances too great for vocal conversation.

[piroque]

Will this one do ?

[null and void]

The Holy Roman Neanderthal Empire?

[SunkenCiv]

Black ‘n’ white is also okay in context.

[Liberty Valance]

I believe Neaderthals were contemplative if nothing else.

[Little Bill]

Women seem to think that they need enhancements to advertise their availability and then when they have caught some poor guy to maintain their place in the pecking order. Attached women dress to impress other women and show the wisdom of their choice, as in he can afford me.

[varmintman]

were there any negro Neanderthals

There aren't too many Negroes who wouldn't run from a Neanderthal, this is what Neanderthals looked like (courtesy of www.themandus.org), some images without the 6" ice-age fur coat for illustration purposes:

There's a tendency to read that Neanderthals rarely got to 6' in height and wonder how strong something no more than 5-6 could be but you can see the problem in a contrast with a modern human at 5-6, i.e. a Neanderthal could easily be 5-6 and 300 lbs without any fat on him:

[Little Bill]

He got booted from FR years ago, unless you are him.

[varmintman]

The second image I just posted above would be the “contemplative” Neanderthal of the group. Those are Danny Vendramini’s reconstructions i.e. the first realistic ones. The Neanderthal was a bipedal and totally carniverous primate with huge eyes for nocturnal hunting and the same 6” fur coat as every other animal in ice-age Europe.

[Krankor]

[varmintman]

Even that would be closer than most of the images you ever see. Funny thing is that scientists who study this stuff have no compunction about presenting every other hominid as apelike but the Neanderthal has always been a poster child for kum-bay-ah religion and particularly in the past 40 years or so has been presented as a slightly different human (we’re-all-alike...) Danny Vendramini just blew all that stuff out of the water.

[Reeses]

evidence for abstract thought among Neandertals is found in the practice of burial of the dead (implying belief in an afterlife and the continuity of the person/s affiliation with the group even after death)

Atheists bury their dead too. It's pretty hard to have tribal religious beliefs without a language and rituals to share them. The evidence is not strong. This type of one-sided analysis is biased speculation.

[LifePath]

I think you accidentally posted a picture of one of Obama’s major bundlers receiving a Lewinski in the Lincoln bedroom from a grateful member of the campaign staff.

[LifePath]

Oops, that was meant for your picture, Krankor.

[xp38]

uh huh :)