Posted on 05/16/2008 6:14:42 AM PDT by chessplayer
25,000 B.C. In Europe, arctic glaciers reach as far south as London. Massive predators are on the prowl. Across the continent, two species of primitive man struggle to survive. The Neanderthals are natural hunters, built for brute strength and well-adapted to the cold. However, they lack the understanding of technology and ability to speak in abstract terms that our species has. The Cro-Magnon, Homo sapiens are smarter but more fragile. With exciting new research in anthropology, archaeology and genetics, follow these early humans through a season of survival.
which one is Helen Thomas?
There is more evidence that Neanderthals were capable of abstract thought/concepts, were capable of language, and believed in an afterlife.
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-6966307_ITM
http://www.unexplainedstuff.com/Afterlife-Mysteries/Oldest-Discovered-Burial-Site.html
I agree however, with Dr.Milford Wolpoff, that Europeans are a hybrid of Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon.
This is what is happening in the Rat Party with Baaarack in charge.
Uhhhh, no.
I watched it also. Good stuff.
Good book....very informative...unless you take the Out of Africa tripe politically correct POV
Did that count as bestiality or ..
I vaguely recall there being DNA studies that prove this is not the case.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/05/0514_030514_neandertalDNA.html
"A team of geneticists from Italy and Spain compared the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of two Cro-Magnons that were 23,000 and 25,000 years old respectively, four Neandertal specimens, 29,000 to 42,000 years old, and a large database of modern human mtDNA to shed some light on the issue."
"The authors found that the Cro-Magnon mtDNA fit well within the spectrum of genetic variation exhibited by modern Europeans, but differed sharply from that of the Neandertals. They conclude that it is unlikely that Neandertals contributed to the current European gene pool."
Next ice age the cro mags will again dominate and be too busy to fund welfare and the neandertals will go back into extinction.
There is no proof of the latter at all, while the former is based on flint weapons that were more rudimentary.
However, if you were naturally much stronger, which does seem certain from bone girth and tendon attachments, spending time making prettier flint points might not have seemed worthwhile. After all, tool technology is driven by requirements.
I'm surprised that historical anthropologists don't burst into laughter when they see each other.
Neandertal’s had larger brains than Cro Mag so were perhaps at least as intelligent. They were larger, and more robust. Since they died out people assume they weren’t as smart. Perhaps they were just less bloodthirsty than Cro mags. There are cultural reasons why populations die, not just physical or intelligence issues.
GGG ping
A very recent genetic study states otherwise.
I don’ know where you/he gets this stuff from. But if Neanderthal and Homo Sapien interbreeding were strictly a European thing, then those of European decent would be remarkably different as a DNA level than non Europeans. That simply is not the case.
Either we ALL are, or none are. I’ll not argue against the fact that we all are. But I will argue that Europeans are NOT a species offshoot(mix of Neanderthal and Homo Sapien). And that the rest of the world are all Homo Sapiens.
“The molecular stuff has been very important,” says Milford Wolpoff, an anthropology professor at the University of Michigan and a leading critic of the Out of Africa theory of human origins. “But in the end it has the same problem fossils have—the sample size is very small.” Earlier this month, the journal Science published a Wolpoff study of early human skulls, which suggests that Africans may have mixed with earlier hominids rather than supplanting them. The small number of living humans sampled by geneticists, Wolpoff says, and the effects of natural selection over the millennia, make it foolhardy to say with assurance that Out of Africa is right. The geneticists, for their part, readily admit that they need more samples, more markers, and more precise calculations. But they also say that even with today’s imperfect science, the DNA is right. And in places like India and China, where the fossil record is scanty, the genetic history will be the only history. “Genetics is moving so fast,” says Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London. “It’s well ahead of the fossil and historical record.”
Maybe Wolford would be better served by submitting those skulls to DNA analysis rather than doing "anthropological phrenology". And the "number of living humans" sampled by geneticists is already large enough to be a statistically valid sample. Many examples of all races have been "fingerprinted", with NO data to support Wolford's position.
A while back a theory was advanced that Neanderthal became extinct because of sinusitis.
That is, it was noticed that in the relatively few Neanderthal skulls that exist with sinus cavities intact, there were bony obstructions where Homo Sapiens had none. That extra bone would have slowed inhalation of air, helping it to warm and moisten before entering the lungs.
This would have been a big help to Neanderthal during the ice age. However, when the temperature warmed, the same warming that permitted the Homo Sapiens to travel North from Africa would have made life much more unpleasant for Neanderthal.
Sinus infections, nowadays just an annoying and debilitating nuisance, back then could have been lethal, slowly wiping out the Neanderthal. The rhinitis from hell.
Ironically, the Neanderthal might not have been able, or felt much need, to travel North, to colder climate, because while it would have been better for their health, their preferred game animals had no reason to go North, being more adaptable. They might have had plenty of food, but died out anyway.
Mungo Man, an anatomically modern skeleton, was discovered in 1974 in the dry bed of Lake Mungo in New South Wales, Australia. The skeleton made the news again recently when scientists dated his remains to 60,000 years ago. Mungo Man became the oldest human fossil that was physically similar to modern humans. But further analysis of Mungo’s mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) could not link him to any human population living today.
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