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 ShreeveNeanderthals Like Us"The Neanderthals... [l]ike Homo sapiens... had big brains, used tools, lit fires, and buried their dead. They thrived for 200,000 years in severe ice age climates, from Britain to Uzbekistan. When H. sapiens began to arrive from the south, the two species dwelled alongside each other for thousands of years... Milford Wolpoff, an anthropologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor... is the most vocal advocate of the multiregionalism theory, which submits that the Cro-Magnons who left Africa got on rather well with the natives they encountered in their travels. In this view, Neanderthals weren't so much driven to extinction as seduced... Even today, features thought to be Neanderthal are as familiar as the portraits in a grandparent's home: the sloping forehead, the heavy brow, the stocky, big-boned physique... many Neanderthal features persist in European visages today: a unique hole in the jawbone, the shape of a suture in the cheek, a highly angled nose... Meanwhile, archaeologists are questioning their assumptions about the Neanderthal lifestyle. In particular, it has become less clear exactly who invented the Upper Paleolithic. One assemblage in France, dated between 39,000 and 34,000 years ago, has bone and shell pendants, carved teeth and beads, as well as finely worked tools like the Cro-Magnons used. But the only bones found with this technology are Neanderthal. Archaeologist Steve Kuhn of the University of Arizona in Tucson says a confusing array of transitional technologies is now emerging from sites in Eastern Europe, Turkey, and the Middle East... And researchers have never found any signs of warfare between the groups... In the Middle East, Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons seem to have occupied much of the same territory for 60,000 years. So far, their cultures there are indistinguishable... Tattersall says studies that use DNA from contemporary populations to reconstruct human genealogy support the idea of a single, small source of Homo sapiens... The mtDNA extracted from Neanderthal bones doesn't match anything in the modern world. But last year, when geneticists compared mtDNA from an early modern Australian with contemporary mtDNA, it didn't match either."
by Karen Wright
Thanks for this post. It accords with all my biases in terms of "where the Neanderthals went"...into us, of course.