Posted on 09/20/2006 3:49:12 PM PDT by JTN
Their very name has become a byword for all that is brutish, stupid and crude. In the popular imagination, these were the violent, shambling, grunting apemen of legend. If you accuse someone of being a Neanderthal, you are not paying them a compliment.
But Neanderthal Man, who represented one of the oddest and most mysterious chapters in the history of humanity, has been undergoing something of a makeover in recent years.
We now know that these extinct cousins were not the brutes of legend but a sophisticated and intelligent species, capable of creating fire, fashioning delicate tools, burying their dead and perhaps even making music.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
They weren't just apes. They had division of labor. The men would go out in a group and beat an ungulate to death with their bare hands and drag it home where the women, who had been gossiping about their mates various qualities would cook it up while the men complained about their many various hunting injuries.
What's the point of the article. We have actual Neanderthal DNA, and we know the answer is no.
Correct. And we have enough skeletons and bones that we know, even counting in the standard variance in Sapiens size and structure, that Neander was different. (larger craniums, shorter and much stockier in stature)
Scientists are squabbling over the evidence again
I hope they find the real answers soon.
Interesting.
You seeem to have a misconception. We share a good deal of DNA.
JERRY: So how's it goin' at work? They get tired of it?
GEORGE: Oh, yeah.
He unfurls a jersey that reads, "Koko 00."
JERRY: Double zero?
GEORGE: It's "ooh" As in "ooh ooh ah ah."
[...]
GEORGE: You know, if I could get this Coco woman down to Kruger, they wouldn't be able to call me Koko anymore because Kruger would never allow 2 Kokos.
JERRY: Sounds like he runs a real tight ship.
GEORGE: Say good-bye to Koko.
George leaves as Kramer enters.
JERRY: Good-bye, Koko.
KRAMER: Bye, Koko.
Please quote your sources...
NO2
OK -- I am all eyes. Let's see your proof of this.
You have dove to depths of depravity!!
IOW you made it up.
Honestly, I've read about this finding so many times now that I thought it had become fairly common knowledge by now. That's why I was so surprised to see some bonehead writing an article based on such outdated theories.
That Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens have no common root? If you had any evidence to back this up you would be a rich man.
That "I read it somewhere" stuff may fly on DU, but not here.
I invite you to substantiate your original claim.
And if I was you, I would hold off on the insults.
Sorry, I also don't remember the author and publisher of most of my college textbooks! That doesn't mean the information I gained from them is invalid! Why don't you check out the statements I made instead of attacking the report.
BTW, I didn't say we didn't have a common root, I said the studies show that we're NOT THEIR DESCENDANTS!
You made the assertion, you have to back it up. There is a thing called "Google." Go ahead and try it. You might get lucky and it will scientifically support your assertion (hint: It has yet to happen and we have people who do this for a living.)
BTW, I didn't say we didn't have a common root, I said the studies show that we're NOT THEIR DESCENDANTS!
A distinction witout a difference. The "studies" you hang your assertions on don't exist.
I appreciate your civility. See post #56. BTW, I was wrong in my first post; the researchers were evolutionary biologists, not paleontologists.
And another from Funk and Wagnell's 2006 Encyclopaedia:
"Although placed in the same genus and species, these early H. sapiens are not identical in appearance with modern humans. New fossil evidence suggests that modern man, H. sapiens sapiens, first appeared more than 90,000 years ago. There is some disagreement among scientists on whether the hominine fossil record shows a continuous evolutionary development from the first appearance of H. sapiens to modern humans. This disagreement has especially focused on the place of Neanderthals (or Neandertals), often classified as H. sapiens neanderthalis, in the chain of human evolution. The Neanderthals (named for the Neander Valley in Germany, where one of the earliest skulls was first found in 1856) were numerous in much of Europe and the Middle East from about 130,000 years ago until about 35,000 years ago, when they disappeared from the fossil record. Recently discovered evidence suggests that Neanderthals may have evolved in Spain some 300,000 years ago. Fossils of additional varieties of early H. sapiens have been found in other parts of the world.
The dispute over the Neanderthals also involves the question of the evolutionary origins of modern human populations, or races. Although a precise definition of the term race is not possible (because modern humans show continuous variation from one geographic area to another), widely separate human populations are marked by a number of physical differences. The majority of these differences represent adaptations to local environmental conditions, a process that some scientists believe began with the spread of H. erectus to all parts of the Old World sometime after a million years ago. In their view, human development since H. erectus has been one continuous, in-position evolution; that is, local populations have remained, changing in appearance over time. The Neanderthals and other early H. sapiens are seen as descending from H. erectus and ancestral to modern humans.
Other scientists view racial differentiation as a relatively recent phenomenon. In their opinion, the features of the Neanderthalsa low, sloping forehead, large brow ridge, and a large face without a chinare too primitive for them to be considered the ancestors of modern humans. They place the Neanderthals on a side branch of the human evolutionary tree that became extinct. According to this theory, modern humans first evolved perhaps 90,000 to 200,000 years ago in southern Africa or the Middle East. These people then spread to all parts of the world, supplanting the local, earlier H. sapiens populations. In addition to fragmentary fossil finds from southern Africa, support for this theory comes from comparisons of mitochondrial DNAa form inherited only from the mothertaken from women representing a worldwide distribution of ancestors. These studies suggest that humans derived from a single generation in sub-Saharan Africa or southeastern Asia."
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