Posted on 02/25/2006 5:11:22 AM PST by ThreePuttinDude
LONDON — Neanderthals in Europe were killed off by the advance of modern humans thousands of years earlier than previously believed, losing a competition for food and shelter, according to a scientific study published Wednesday.
The research uses advances in radiocarbon dating to revise understanding of early humans, suggesting they colonized Europe more rapidly and coexisted for a much shorter period with genetic ancestors.
Paul Mellars, professor of prehistory and human evolution at the University of Cambridge and author of the study, said Neanderthals — the species of the Homo genus that lived in Europe and western Asia from around 230,000 years ago to around 29,000 years ago — succumbed much more readily to competition.
"The two sides were competing for the same territories, the same animals and fuel supplies and occupying the same cave spaces. With that kind of competition, the Neanderthals were always going to come out as the losers," said Mellars, whose paper was published in the journal Nature.
Modern humans — those anatomically the same as people today — were also better equipped to deal with a 6 degree Celsius (11 Fahrenheit) fall in temperatures around 40,000 years ago.
"Because they had better clothing, better technology(??) and a better mastery of fire, the humans were equipped to deal with it," Mellars said.
Mellars used the results of two recent studies of radiocarbon dating — a process of assessing age by counting radioactive decay of carbon in materials — to refine dates determined from fossils, bone fragments and other physical evidence that relates to the spread of humans.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
New Study Reveals Neanderthals Were As Good At Hunting As Early Modern Humans ^ Posted by blam On News/Activism ^ 01/19/2006 11:28:01 AM PST · 65 replies · 920+ views Science Daily ^ | 1-19-2006 | University Of Chicago
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/01/060118210756.htm
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.
They may not have understood that sex results in babies, but surely they understood that only women could produce babies and therefore would have had even a limited understanding that they needed their women in order to insure their survival as a group.
That's different. It's within the group, it's a social thing. Not consciously practiced for the protection of the bloodlines. Not to make sure they have good healthy offspring
How is it different? Because it's "within the group" it's now a social thing and not an instinctual thing to protect the life-givers of the group? How is that social instead of instinctually ensuring the group has viable offspring?
The instinct for any group to procreate and continue gives much weight to the protection of its females and its infants, regardless of whether the group is cognizant that intercourse = offspring.
If you start at the beginning of this thread and read through, you'll see we were puzzling over whether or not Neandertals interbred with Cro-Magnons. And if not, why not.
In that context, I was saying that a concern over bloodline purity could not have been a factor, around 30,000 years ago.
I was not talking about the physical protection of individual females from general dangers of everyday life.
I've been posting to this thread since nine this morning so I'm too tired to go over it all.
Another study, another theory, and the beat goes on. Bottom line: we're here, Neanderthals aren't. Best guess: diseases to which our ancestors were or became immune.
YEC INTREP - Neanderthals were "modern humans" - junkscience alert
And I was reading the thread since about 9 yesterday morning. :-) Just because I wasn't active in the discussion doesn't mean I don't have a grasp of what is being discussed.
Your point is most likely correct that the Neanderthals an Cro-Magnons did not have and understanding that sex=babies so most likely they did not have town council meetings about how to protect the bloodlines. I wasn't talking about dangers of everyday life either, since the discussion was about interbreeding. What I simply proposed is the instinctual part of every living creature to carry on its bloodline, whether on a conscious level or not. That is probably the second most powerful instinct after the instinct to stay alive. In any group of animals males spar to win the females and be the grand poopa of the gene pool. Why do we find this everywhere in the animal kingdom, including humans, and we would not have found it in the Neanderthal or Cro-Magnon? What you are saying is that they would not have protected their females in order to insure a pure bloodline. What I am saying is that whether they were consciously doing so, which is improbable, this was most likely going on at a very instinctual level.
Your posts have been very interesting and I've truly enjoyed following this thread! :-)
Your argument is profound.
Better weapons, tools, and skills at making clothing and shelters.
To say that the world is predictable and unchanging for generations is just plain wrong.
One year the winters are mild, the next year extremely harsh. Some summers are warm and mile, some summers are blazing hot and filled with violent storms. Some years winter comes early, some years it comes late.
There are droughts, floods, plagues of insects, hurricanes, tornadoes, typhoons, any number of natural phenomena that make life completely unpredictable; especially so for Neanderthals.
L
All of these phenomena are completely predictable variants in the Neaderthal experience, as they survived for tens of thousands of years and lived through a lot of change. I don't mean that their physical world was unchanging, I mean their mental image of the world was unchanging. All their experience with everyday fluctuations of their living conditions, never brought about a change in their way of being, nor did they seek progress. In essence, they lived in a predictable world.
I would put it this way: They lived predictably in an unpredictable world.
That may explain why they aren't around any more.
| Humans vs. Neanderthals: Game Over Earlier |
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| Posted by SunkenCiv On General/Chat 02/23/2006 1:25:12 AM EST · 16 replies · 239+ views LiveScience | 22 February 2006 | Associated Press Humans and Neanderthals, thought to have coexisted for 10,000 years across the whole of Europe, are more likely to have lived at the same time for only 6,000 years, the new study suggests. Scientists believe the two species could have lived side by side at specific sites for periods of only about 2,000 years, but Mellars claims they would have lived in competition at each site for only 1,000 years... Two new studies of stratified radiocarbon in the Cariaco Basin, near Venezuela, and of radiocarbon on fossilized coral formations in the tropical Atlantic and Pacific have given scientists a better... |
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| Modern humans took over Europe in just 5,000 years |
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| Posted by S0122017 On News/Activism 02/23/2006 7:20:40 AM EST · 13 replies · 460+ views www.nature.com/news | 22 February 2006 | Michael Hopkin Published online: 22 February 2006; | doi:10.1038/news060220-11 Better bone dates reveal bad news for Neanderthals Modern humans took over Europe in just 5,000 years. Michael Hopkin These drawings from the Chauvet cave were originally dated to around 31,000 years ago. But a new analysis pushes that back four or five thousand years. © Nature, with permission from the French Ministry of Culture and Communication. Advances in the science of radiocarbon dating - a common, but oft-maligned palaeontological tool - have narrowed down the overlap between Europe's earliest modern humans and the Neanderthals that preceded them. Refinements to the technique, which... |
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| Modern humans 'blitzed Europe'(Radiocarbon Dating Development) |
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| Posted by nickcarraway On News/Activism 02/23/2006 1:22:51 PM EST · 21 replies · 671+ views The Telegraph (U.K.) | 23/02/2006 | Roger Highfield Our ancestors colonised Europe and wiped out their Neanderthal cousins even faster than we thought, says a study published today. Argument has raged for years about whether our ancestors from Africa outsurvived, killed or bred with the Neanderthals, who were stronger, bulkier and shorter but had equally large brains. Now developments in radiocarbon dating suggest that many of the dates published over the past 40 years are likely to underestimate the true ages of the samples. Prof Paul Mellars, of the University of Cambridge, describes today in the journal Nature how better calibration of radiocarbon ages have led to revisions... |
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To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.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 Shreeve
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