Posted on 08/21/2004 7:25:32 PM PDT by blam
Neanderthal Man 'never walked in northern Europe'
By Tony Paterson in Berlin
(Filed: 22/08/2004)
Historians of the Stone Age fear that they will have to rip up their theories about Neanderthal Man after doubt has been cast on the carbon dating of skeletons by a leading German anthropologist.
Work by the flamboyant Professor Reiner Protsch von Zieten showed that Neanderthal Man existed in northern Europe. Calculations on skeletal remains found at Hahnofersand, near Hamburg, stated they were 36,000 years old.
Yet recent research at Oxford University's carbon-dating laboratory has suggested that they date back a mere 7,500 years. By that time, Homo sapiens was already well-established and the Neanderthals were extinct.
Chris Stringer, a Stone Age specialist and head of human origins at London's Natural History Museum, said: "What was considered a major piece of evidence showing that the Neanderthals once lived in northern Europe has fallen by the wayside. We are having to rewrite prehistory."
But Prof von Zieten, 65, the descendant of a famous 18th-century Prussian general, rejected the evidence from Oxford University last week.
"The new data from Oxford is all wrong," he told Germany's Der Spiegel. He said that the university's scientists had failed to remove shellac preservative from the specimens. As a result, the remains appeared to be much younger.
"Unfortunately, archaeologists and most anthropologists do not study physics or chemistry and therefore they cannot make judgments on carbon dating," he said. "Wrong measurements are made in all laboratories."
Prof von Zieten, who has a penchant for large Havana cigars and Porsche cars, has been considered an expert in carbon-dating techniques since the 1970s. He has tested hundreds of prehistoric bone finds from Europe and Africa over the past 30 years.
Now, however, important remains that Oxford scientists no longer believe are prehistoric include the female "Bischof-Speyer" skeleton, found near the south-west German town of Speyer with unusually good teeth. Their evidence suggests that she is 3,300 years old, not 21,300.
Another apparent misdating involved an allegedly prehistoric skull discovered near Paderborn in 1976 and considered the oldest human remain ever found in the region. Prof von Zieten dated the skull at 27,400 years old. The latest research, however, indicates that it belonged to an elderly man who died around 1750.
Germany's Herne anthropological museum, which owns the Paderborn skull, was so disturbed by the findings that it did its own tests. "We had the skull cut open and it still smelt," the museum's director, Barbara Ruschoff-Thale, said last week. "We are naturally very disappointed."
Concern about Prof von Zieten's carbon-dating estimates arose last year following a routine investigation of German prehistoric remains by the German and British anthropologists Thomas Terberger and Martin Street.
"We had decided to subject many of these finds to modern techniques to check their authenticity so we sent them to Oxford for testing," Mr Street told The Sunday Telegraph. "It was a routine examination and in no way an attempt to discredit Prof von Zieten."
In their report, though, both anthropologists described this as a "dating disaster".
The scandal engulfing Prof von Zieten goes further. Police are investigating allegations that he tried to sell 280 chimpanzee skulls from his university to buyers in America for $70,000 (£38,000).
Prof von Zieten denies the claims, saying that he legitimately obtained the skulls from a Heidelberg ethnologist in 1975. Frankfurt university last month suspended the professor from his post in the anthropology department while it runs its own inquiry.
Are you guys aware that Nixon sent John Kerry on a secret mission to Cambodia in 1968? This proves that all our presidential dating methods are wrong.
Yes. The existence of any inconsistency, any controversy at all, proves that all of our so-called "knowledge" is a house of cards. Our so-called "history" is just a theory.
Last Thursdayism is the real answer.
That's the way I read it too. They seem to be saying that if it's 30k years old, it has to be Neanderthal, regardless of what the bones look like, huh?
EWW, the twenty cent conundrum!
Surely, you jest in suggesting any one individual is capable of believing in such a collection of claptrap, that one person could be so addled as to ......... ooops! Oh, you mean HIM?
Well, as Francis Uhrquart ("House of Cards") used to say: "You might think that, but I couldn't possibly comment."
the mechanism, as we see is chemicals. life itself is more than chemicals. if you dont get that out of what i said, you are beyond my help. perhaps a philosophy course for thinking outside of your mindset would help?
i never once said that we dont involve chemicals. ive said time and time again that we are more than just chemicals.
how is a claim that we are more than we see without merit? we dont see it all when we look from only religious or only scientific aspects.
if it turns out that their is another possible aspect that is not chemical and design in nature, that is for YOU to present. my presentation merely states that being simple compounds in the right amounts does not make life. it is more than just that. and this i have provided for time and time again.
if it turns out that their*
*there
We appear to have a set of bones, previously identified as neanderthal and umpteen thousand years old, now in question as to dating. If the new dating is used, the bones are too young to be identified as neanderthal. If the old dating is used, we must accept the results from an emerging charlatan over those developed by individuals at Oxford. Take your choice.(Well, maybe to some there is a third choice, they are all mistaken)
This raises several questions:
Carbon dating 'might be wrong by 10,000 years'Their study could force a reappraisal of when certain events occurred, notably in the period when modern humans lived alongside Neanderthals in Europe... Dr David Richards of the School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, made the study with colleagues in Arizona and Minnesota. He said: "Beyond about 20,000 years ago there are some dramatic swings in radiocarbon concentration, which means the age offset between the radiocarbon age and true calendar age can be up to 8,000 years." Radiocarbon dating, which depends on the steady decay of carbon-14, is less reliable if an artefact is older than 16,000 years. But the changes in radiocarbon, and dating, fluctuate greatly up to 45,000 years, the limit of the study.
by Roger Highfield
Saturday 30 June 2001Extremely large variations of atmospheric 14C concentration during the last glacial periodA long record of atmospheric 14C concentration, from 45 to 11 thousand years ago (ka), was obtained from a stalagmite with thermal-ionization mass-spectrometric 230Th and accelerator mass-spectrometric 14C measurements. This record reveals highly elevated Delta14C between 45 and 33 ka, portions of which may correlate with peaks in cosmogenic 36Cl and 10Be isotopes observed in polar ice cores. Superimposed on this broad peak of Delta14C are several rapid excursions, the largest of which occurs between 44.3 and 43.3 ka. Between 26 and 11 ka, atmospheric Delta14C decreased from approximately 700 to approximately 100 per mil, modulated by numerous minor excursions. Carbon cycle models suggest that the major features of this record cannot be produced with solar or terrestrial magnetic field modulation alone but also require substantial fluctuations in the carbon cycle.
Beck JW, Richards DA, Edwards RL,
Silverman BW, Smart PL, Donahue DJ,
Hererra-Osterheld S, Burr GS,
Calsoyas L, Jull AJ, Biddulph D.
Science
pub 2001 May 10
Welcome back, Ted. Seems you don't wander far from the "bear" thingy...
Most interesting and a story I will continue to follow.
Not true. Humans descended from Homo Erectus via archaic Homo Sapien. Homo Neanderthalensis also branched off Homo Erectus, making the former a sister species to us.
Protsch's work seems to be a major part of the evidence for the recent finding that Neanderthal Man lived in the extreme cold of Northern Europe at times when it had previously been assumed impossible. The existence of Neanderthal Man in Southern/Central Europe and the Middle East remains undisputed unless you have a scoop.
If Oxford is right that these Neanderthal bones were only 7500 years old, then what does that do to our understanding of Neanderthal? Do existing models have Neanderthal living as recently as 7500 years ago.
Most of the dates mentioned would be more likely Cro-Magnon than Neanderthal.
I believe the only "Northern Neanderthal" on this chart is the Hahnofersand specimen, now dated at 7,500 years old, previously trumpeted as an "advanced Neanderthal" and a possible hybrid. Of those links, however, this ARN page lists it as an H. sapiens specimen.
How easy is it for others to commit the same mistakes this researcher made?
Typically, you have to earn some trust before you can abuse it but there are historical exceptions. Two people named Clinton come to mind.
Have new techniques questioned enough results of the old techniques, that perhaps all prehistoric bones should be retested using the new techniques?
I don't think so. Ask your butt why it thinks this is a question.
In other words, how big of an indictment is this really?
Of the individual? Pretty big.
Is it just one guy or is it the whole field of study?
Could it be you just don't like the answers since about 1859?
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