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.
I'll bet you can't make him remember that. I'll bet you couldn't shoot it into his brain on a notched bullet.
He was a case study in grasping at a particular worldview despite evidence to the contrary.
He was a case study in posting and reposting and re-reposting his canned crap no matter how thoroughly you blew it out of the water.
Well, I don't remember it either! (what did I have for breakfast.. did I even HAVE breakfast...)
Just how do we know this FACT??
Gee, anthropologists simply followed the trail of prehistoric remains back through the archaeological record and drew conclusions based upon the evidence. 'Course, being a creationist means never having to connect the dots, doesn't it?
Instead of just repeating your belief, why don't you try supporting that assertion, if you can?
how is a claim that we are more than we see without merit?
Because it is no different than stating that "the Easter Bunny did it". A naked assertion is meaningless, a non sequitur, a fundamental exercise in illogical thinking.
You got that?
How many of his pseudonyms have been banned so far?
Well, for one thing, Homo erectus seemed to have been the first hominid to spread out of Africa to establish itself over much of Europe and Asia as far away as Java. That, and it looks like a probable ancestor, although the branching off of Neanderthal probably comes somewhere in the Archaic H. sapiens line. Some of the earlier Neanderthals in the Middle East look less "extreme Neanderthal" than the robust later European specimens (which were the first found and formed our idea of what a Neanderthal is). People fully dot-connect-enabled can see a pattern in the data.
This is probably his fourth or fifth time back. It's the first in a while (maybe a year?) so I've lost count.
Which does nothing to obviate my statement. Homo Erectus didn't just up and disappear once Neanderthals came on the scene, just as it didn't disappear when Archaic Homo Sapiens appeared.
Claiming that since we could not be descended from neanderthals, therefore we must be descended from HE or AHS is like claiming that dogs couldn't be descended from wolves and must therefore be descended directly from fish.
Ted, statements like this prove you've never been able to grasp concept one when it comes to evolution.
At least two, though he's angling for another one.
If either were LESS primitive, you can bet we'd have heard THAT as a rebuttal, too.
No, it's more like a dozen. Some lasted only an hour or so. Difficult to keep score. I'll give this one maybe another 24 hours.
Is it that hard to tell the difference without dates?
"Of those links, however, this ARN page lists it as an H. sapiens specimen."
I thought all Neanderthals had been reclassified to Homo Sapiens Neanderthal?
"Typically, you have to earn some trust before you can abuse it but there are historical exceptions. Two people named Clinton come to mind."
If I ever agreed that evidence for evolution existed, the Clintons and America's election of them would be it. Then again, I think that supports de-evolution more than evolution.
"Ask your butt why it thinks this is a question."
My butt said, "Evolution is a bunch of cr*p".
Could it be you just don't like the answers since about 1859?"
I don't like some of the conclusions and I'm doubtful of some of the observations. You know I have long been a critic of radiometric dating, so to see multiple researcher's prehistoric finds being re-dated into a creationist timeframe is sweet.
Which you refuse to employ, Ted. The "more primitive" appearance (your claim) of H. Erectus and Archaic H. Sapiens does not negate the descent tree the archaeological record indicates.
Geez, you'd think Saturn was hanging over the north pole, or something.
Are you following the conversation? I do not believe that any of the others were proposed as Neanderthals, as I have not heard of any 13,000-year-old, 18,000-year-old, etc. proposed Neanderthals in Germany or anywhere else. The latest date of which I had heard was a proposed hybrid, Lagar Velho in Portugal, 26,000 years old. The differences are supposed to be quite striking in adults, although the Lagar Velho case is a child, harder to tell. Some argue that it's just a chunky "modern."
I thought all Neanderthals had been reclassified to Homo Sapiens Neanderthal?
The trend is running against. Note that on the same linked page, neanderthals are listed as "H. neanderth" or simply "Neanderthal." Thus, any interpretation of the Hahnofersand find as a Neanderthal was less than universally accepted already. You and your pal Mikey-Mike could check a few things rather than creatively misunderstanding everything in sight.
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