Posted on 09/13/2006 11:09:49 AM PDT by blam
Neanderthals and humans lived side by side
18:00 13 September 2006
NewScientist.com news service
Rowan Hooper
Neanderthals were thought to have died out as modern humans arrived in Europe. Now, artifacts found in a cave in Gibraltar reveal that the two groups coexisted for millenia before Neanderthals finally dwindled out of existence.
Homo sapiens moved into Europe about 32,000 years ago. But the newly unearthered artefacts shows that a remnant population of Homo neanderthalensis clung on until at least 28,000 years ago, a significant overlap.
Clive Finlayson at the Gibraltar Museum, and colleagues, recovered 240 stone tools and artefacts from sediments dated to the Upper Palaeolithic period – between 10,000 and 30,000 years ago. Mass spectrometry dating puts them between 28,000 and 24,000 years old.
The exciting point is that the tools are all of a type known to palaeontologists as Mousterian: they are flints, cherts and quartzites exclusively associated with Neanderthal manufacture.
“Mousterian technology is firmly associated with Neanderthals across Europe,” says Finlayson, who adds that in the sediment layers where the tools where found there is no hint of intrusion from more recent layers, and no sign of tools made by modern humans.
Genetically distinct
Since modern humans and Neanderthals seem to have overlapped for thousands of years in Europe, the big question is: did they interbreed?
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
Us neanderthals are conservative, you know. We are still debating fire.
LOL! I type fast!
I have a real (not a replica) Neanderthal stone tool from southern France dated to about 60K years ago.
Have you read Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear? There's a good audio recording on Recorded Books narrated by George Guidall.
Ugly Neanderthal women need loving too!
They had more than 4-hour Viagra back then???
How terribly insensitive of you.
Now that's funny. I don't care who you are, that's a funny joke there!
Until the humans hunted them into extinction (or bred them out of existence).
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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
My neighbors are Neanderthals........Some of my best friends are Neanderthals.........
Maybe they interbred and produced Howard Dean.
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That's right! He needs to be more nuanced in his approach. This guy is our best "sensitivity" teacher.
Big fat Doh. Beowulf wasn't written by Dan Rather. There were and continue to be "interactions" between humans of varying development. You aren't going to convince me a Maury Aboriginal is the same strain of human as an a Dutchman for example.
Beowulf and his clan wiped out a good number of these bloodlusting, queen mother obeying brutes.
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