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Study: Modern Humans Killed Off Neanderthals Quickly
http://www.foxnews.com ^ | Saturday, February 25, 2006 | AP

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 ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: bear; bears; cave; caveart; cavedrawings; cavepainting; cavepaintings; crevolist; evolution; genocide; godsgravesglyphs; neandertal; neandertals; neanderthal; neanderthals; radiocarbondating
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To: ThreePuttinDude
I know its dangerous, but I was thinking............

I wonder if there is an analogy here with Western Civilization and those adherents of 'The Religion of Peace'.

61 posted on 02/25/2006 6:20:09 AM PST by DoctorMichael (The Fourth-Estate is a Fifth-Column!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
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To: ThreePuttinDude
Against that, the latest gene studies now show interbreeding happened.
62 posted on 02/25/2006 6:22:29 AM PST by VadeRetro (Liberalism is a cancer on society. Creationism is a cancer on conservatism.)
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To: ASA Vet
I wonder if that girl knows her picture is all over the internet?

Red hair, green eyes, a gun.

63 posted on 02/25/2006 6:23:00 AM PST by patton (Just because you don't understand it, does not mean that it does not exist.)
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To: patton
I also think that what we see as similarity in the skeletons leads us to presume way too much about similarity and the ability (or desire) to interbreed.

Consider that I could lay out the skeletons of a dozen different bird species, and you would consider them nearly identical. The same can be said of monkeys, rodents, etc.

Now although many of these different bird "species" have been shown to be capable of producing mixed offspring, they never do.

My point is that you shouldn't read too much into the skeletal similarities.

64 posted on 02/25/2006 6:23:22 AM PST by SampleMan
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To: aristotleman

Not to go off on to much of a tangent, but the push of a button cannot run 15,000 years of advancement. That smacks of being raised on Armageddon thinking. Even a large nuclear war would not touch vast parts of human-inhabited Earth. Have you seen anyone having trouble rebuilding in or near Hiroshima and Nagasaki (much dirtier bombs, then)?
The knowledge of how to rebuild a modern Earth now lies distributed quite well around the world, on computer and backup media. Not to worry.


65 posted on 02/25/2006 6:23:38 AM PST by Nabber
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To: patton

I just really don't find the arguments plausible myself. Those who argue that humans and Neanderthals interbred are reductionist in my opinion. People don't just sleep with anything that comes their way. Heck, most humans won't have sex with a rather large proportion of other humans. So, how did all this modern human / Neanderthal hanky panky take place?

We don't find mixed communities. If you conjecture rape, then who was raping whom? If modern humans raped Neanderthal females and then even if for some strange reason they kept the child that child would end up in the Neanderthal community. Whenever that Neanderthal community died out (as they all did) the intermixed genes would go with it.

And if the idea is that Neanderthals raped human females then you've got several problems. (a) You have to assume the human community survived, or else again the Neanderthal genes would not make it into the human gene pool. (b) Why would the humans raise a hybrid?

I already spoke to this. Even today there are women over in India and China right now who are killing their babies just because they're girls. Humans do not raise the offspring 'just because it's there' (we like to pretend that nowadays in our culture, but that's because we've internalized a bunch of socialization).

And if it wasn't rape, if it was willing, then where are the mixed communities? Why would humans *want* to mate with Neanderthals? *They were ugly.* I mean, really, really butt ugly. I can't think of anything that we'd actually need them for. And one more point that is often ignore: we have no idea what their speech capability was, but it's a good bet that it was very noticeably different than ours, and no doubt a separate language.

So, the idea here is that humans moved in - warlike, suspicious humans - found a group of Neanderthals, decided to get together, learn a second language, and sing kumbaya after sex??


66 posted on 02/25/2006 6:24:15 AM PST by AntiGuv
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To: patton

Seems to me that we could use someone with at least a high school education to moderate this "discussion" which, in many ways, sounds like one might expect from primitives discovering some modern tool like say a calculator.

Has anybody ever heard of the notion of the "opposable thumb"?

Did'nt think so.

Or anything having to do with Human Intelligence?...like the concept of "object permanence"?


Better "tools" are thought to be reflections of more advanced mental development and manual skills.


Maybe we should find a primer on Anthropology?
(And learn how to use our SpellCheckers?


And for at least the first hour avoid references to "BrokeBack Mountain"?)


67 posted on 02/25/2006 6:25:45 AM PST by CBart95
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To: SampleMan
the real problem ..., its explaining how they could have gone extinct globally

Neanderthals were never global. Their range was limited to Europe, which right there is a sign of their cognitive limitations by comparison to modern humans.

68 posted on 02/25/2006 6:25:46 AM PST by AntiGuv
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To: patton

If human/Neanderthal hybridization occurred since humans eradicated the Neanderthals it would be more likely that the interbreeding Neanderthal stock would consist mostly of females (captured during warfare). If warfare was not significant, one might expect interbreeding with both sexes. It would be vanishingly unlikely that no Neanderthal females would interbreed in this situation.

I can't think of one scenario in which only Neanderthal males would interbreed.

All the evidence points towards no interbreeding.


69 posted on 02/25/2006 6:27:37 AM PST by ahayes
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To: patton
From observation, the blue-eyed dogs ARE wolves.

From observation, foxes are are canines. But they aren't, and cannot breed with them.

70 posted on 02/25/2006 6:27:44 AM PST by SampleMan
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To: Recovering Ex-hippie

>>>An example of ----dare I say the word????!!!--

EVOLUTION.>>>

That is not an example of evolution. Not that I don't believe in evolution, but that you think that a species making another species extinct is evolution? Not hardly.


71 posted on 02/25/2006 6:27:50 AM PST by sandbar
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To: AntiGuv

alchohol?


72 posted on 02/25/2006 6:29:21 AM PST by patton (Just because you don't understand it, does not mean that it does not exist.)
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To: ThreePuttinDude; zot

This article is so good for showing that Rich, White Europeans conducted genocide against a primitive native people that live as one with nature. Conversely, based upon "Mellars claims the first modern humans arrived in the Balkans from Israel around 46,000 years ago, about 3,000 years earlier than thought," one can bring into note all of the anti-semitic rhetoric about the Jews destroying an existing society because of their greed to control land.

Oh, the bigots and politically correct can do so much with this.


73 posted on 02/25/2006 6:31:22 AM PST by GreyFriar ((3rd Armored Division -- Spearhead))
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To: ThreePuttinDude
Ok since I'm ignorant about this stuff can someone clue me in on what was the difference between Neanderthals and Humans?

Is carbon dating an exact science now?

74 posted on 02/25/2006 6:31:45 AM PST by sirchtruth (Words Mean Things...)
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To: CBart95
And learn how to use our SpellCheckers?

I dunno why, but I have been in a seizure of typos for several days now. It's very unlike me, and starting to annoy me in a major way!

75 posted on 02/25/2006 6:32:21 AM PST by AntiGuv
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To: sandbar

Not to be picky, but part of natural selection is the ability to defend against predators, from the microbial to the more complex.


76 posted on 02/25/2006 6:32:45 AM PST by P.O.E.
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To: AntiGuv
So, the idea here is that humans moved in - warlike, suspicious humans - found a group of Neanderthals, decided to get together, learn a second language, and sing kumbaya after sex??

Maybe, if you got enough beer....

My anthropological studies are limited to bars and such, y'know, the mating rituals of Homo Trailertrash, but the one constant I always see in my subjects of observation is that the girls, they all get prettier the nearer closing time is. And a lot of them could be classified as "Neanderthal".

77 posted on 02/25/2006 6:33:45 AM PST by woofer (It is not necessary to understand things in order to argue about them.)
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To: Manic_Episode

LOL!


78 posted on 02/25/2006 6:33:56 AM PST by PistolPaknMama (Al-Queda can recruit on college campuses but the US military can't! --FReeper airborne)
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To: CBart95
Um, I can't spell in five or six languages. Speak them all, yes, but spelling? Sorry.

See, it has to do with root words - You say "Beer", I see "Bier". the former is the correct spelling in englisch, the latter in german.

I get confused. Mea Culpa.

79 posted on 02/25/2006 6:33:59 AM PST by patton (Just because you don't understand it, does not mean that it does not exist.)
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To: SampleMan

That's a good question, how they vanished completely. I'm thinking it had to be a serious plague to which they were vulnerable while our guys were not. Maybe related to cannibalism.
Otherwise---such gradual marginalization that eventually they were left to small isolated areas where inbreeding and its nasty social dynamics did them in. I think they had some sort of culture that broke down, and that alone can kill off a community, no plague necessary.
Still the question remains, since 100% gone (after that successful long run) does seem awfully strange. It's just that we are thinking in terms of the "last man" among them, and actually we have to think of the last community. Once the "community" has collapsed, from a social unit to mere numbers of individuals (every man for himself), the process of extinction speeds up real good.


80 posted on 02/25/2006 6:34:26 AM PST by Graymatter (...and what are we going to do about it?)
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