Posted on 03/25/2005 3:54:29 AM PST by Woodworker
Economics-free trade may have contributed to the extinction of Neanderthals 30,000-40,000 years ago, according to a paper published in the “Journal of Economic Organization and Behavior.”
“After at least 200,000 years of eking out an existence in glacial Eurasia, the Neanderthal suddenly went extinct,” writes University of Wyoming economist Jason Shogren, along with colleagues Richard Horan of Michigan State University and Erwin Bulte from Tilburg University in the Netherlands. “Early modern humans arriving on the scene shortly before are suspected to have been the perpetrator, but exactly how they caused Neanderthal extinction is unknown.”
Creating a new kind of caveman economics in their published paper, they argue early modern humans were first to exploit the competitive edge gained from specialization and free trade. With more reliance on free trade, humans increased their activities in culture and technology, while simultaneously out-competing Neanderthals on their joint hunting grounds, the economists say.
Archaeological evidence exists to suggest traveling bands of early humans interacted with each other and that inter-group trading emerged, says Shogren. Early humans, the Aurignations and the Gravettians, imported many raw materials over long ranges and their innovations were widely dispersed. Such exchanges of goods and ideas helped early humans to develop “supergroup social mechanisms.” The long-range interchange among different groups kept both cultures going and generated new cultural explosions, Shogren says...
(Excerpt) Read more at newswise.com ...
Nope, it was their SUV's. Ask any liberal.
I suspect it's more likely they were just pillaged to extinction..
free ping!
ping
Neanderthal wasn't wiped out. They moved to Florida and became judges.
Bad news for Pat Buchanan and the paleocons
READ the article again PLEASE. The humans, by applying the principle of free-trade among themselves, out-competed the Neanderthals who I guess used Buchanomics. Any country that turns its back on free trade will go the way of the Neanderthals.
ping
One of the main things that distinguishes Neanderthal digs from Cro-Magnon ones is that Neanderthals only used materials that could be found locally, while modern man could have say, obsidian that was mined maybe hundreds of miles away.
Modern man could communicate and understand new things and ended up filling all the niches much better than the Neanderthals who were always protecting themselves from foreigners.
The adjective is nonsense in this context. Their thesis is that the Neanderthals were outcompeted due to human trade, period. Nothing suggests that the trade was "free" in any sense meaningful to contemporary analogues. If their journal article actually frames it as "free trade" the same way as does this article, then they are subordinating their scholarship to their ideology.
It's unclear, however, why the human ability to organize trading networks would drive the Neanderthals to extinction in any event. Obviously some additional factors must've been involved since otherwise they could just carry on as they had despite their benighted, tradeless subsistence..
"Obviously some additional factors must've been involved"
It was all downhill when they failed to invest in Ipods?
To expand on my remarks, in order to suggest that early humans 40,000 years ago engaged in "free trade" you would have to establish that they regarded the products supplied by foreign tribes the same as identical products of their own making, and facilitated direct competition between the two. In the first place, there is no way I can think of to interpret such a thing; and second, there is very little reason to believe that they would trade for anything they could procure on their own.
We know more or less how basic subsistence cultures operate from experience with those that have entered the historical record, and "free trade" as commonly understood is hardly an accurate characterization. There are all kinds of direct and indirect barriers to trade with neighboring groups (even more so with distant, alien peoples). What reason is there to think that rudimentary cultures 40,000 years ago behaved any differently?
Bascially what happend was the neanderthals wiped themselves out.
(My personal opinion is that the Neanderthals went extinct because of a shortage of toilet paper.)
More like what the Free World vs Communism, IMO. The free market, which includes free trade, drove the commies under.
I question this. "Free trade" (or any other trade) is not based on groups going toe-to-toe over the merchandising of "identical products of their own making". Rather, trading hinges on Group A supplying the needs (real or created) of Group B, and visa versa.
IOW, it's not trading your length of rope for my length of rope; it's to trade your length of rope for my length of cloth, or my netting (made from your rope,perhaps?), or 1/2 dozen of my chickens, or whatever.
The question then becomes: What would Neanderthals have that the Cro-Mag. want? Esp. if, as one Freeper pointed out, the Neanderthals were highly territorial -- and contentedly so. Frankly, the only thing I can think of is human chattel, whether slaves/field hands/mates(wives).
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