Posted on 01/19/2006 11:28:01 AM PST by blam
Source: University of Chicago Press Journals
Date: 2006-01-19
New Study Reveals Neanderthals Were As Good At Hunting As Early Modern Humans
The disappearance of Neanderthals is frequently attributed to competition from modern humans, whose greater intelligence has been widely supposed to make them more efficient as hunters. However, a new study forthcoming in the February issue of Current Anthropology argues that the hunting practices of Neanderthals and early modern humans were largely indistinguishable, a conclusion leading to a different explanation, also based on archaeological data, to explain the disappearance of the Neanderthals.
This study has important implications for debates surrounding behavioral evolution and the practices that eventually allowed modern humans like ourselves to displace other closely-related species.
"Each population was equally and independently capable of acquiring and exploiting critical information pertaining to animal availability and behavior," write the anthropologists, from the University of Connecticut, University of Haifa, Hebrew University, and Harvard University.
The researchers use new archaeological data from a Middle- and Upper-Paleolithic rock shelter in the Georgian Republic dated to 60,000?20,000 years ago to contest some prior models of the perceived behavioral and cognitive differences between Neanderthals and modern humans.
Instead, the researchers suggest that developments in the social realm of modern human life, allowing routine use of distant resources and more extensive division of labor, may be better indicators of why Neanderthals disappeared than hunting practices.
"The establishment of larger social networks allowed the replacement of Neanderthals in the Caucasus," write the authors. "Our study also indicates that this process of replacement by modern humans spread beyond the traditional biogeographical barrier [of] Neanderthal mobility represented by the Caucasus Mountains."
Of course they were, they hunted to survive. People of today hunt as a sport and to put some game on the table if we actually get anything.
They don't really get into the subject matter or products of the company until it's too far into the commercial and even then, there is a complete transition away from the restaurant scene, so it's easy to miss the connection
Someone used to do a study every year on the worst commercials--from a strictly sales POV.
It seems that commercials that repeated their sales message over and over were successful while most of the artsy/craftsy, funny and message commercials didn't sell. People loved the latter, but they bought from the former.
In 1979, Nissan had a commercial that I found particularly irritating, blasting over and over, "NEW NISSAN SENTRA..YOU NEED THI CAR!"
I hated it. When time to purchase a new, economical car however (I lived in California at the time) I bought what else? A Nissan Sentra.
I'm a Jeep gal now, and I love their commercials.
Let's not forget about the atlatl !!
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