Posted on 04/30/2007 3:04:45 PM PDT by blam
Spanish scientists point at climate changes as the cause of the Neanderthal extinction in the Iberian Peninsula
30 April 2007
Climate and not modern humans was the cause of the Neanderthal extinction in the Iberian Peninsula. Such is the conclusion of the University of Granada research group RNM 179 - Mineralogy and Geochemistry of sedimentary and metamorphic environments, headed by professor Miguel Ortega Huertas and whose members Francisco José Jiménez Espejo, Francisca Martínez Ruiz and David Gallego Torres work jointly at the department of Mineralogy and Petrology of the University of Granada (Universidad de Granada [http://www.ugr.es]) and the Andalusian Regional Institute of Earth Sciences (CSIC-UGR).
Together with other scientists from the Gibraltar Museum, Stanford University and the Japan Marine Science & Technology Center (JAMSTEC), the Spanish scientists published in the scientific journal Quaternary Science Reviews an innovative work representing a considerable step forward in the knowledge of human ancestral history. The results of this multidisciplinary research are an important contribution to the understanding of the Neanderthal extinction and the colonisation of the European continent by Homo Sapiens.
During the last Ice Age, the Iberian Peninsula was a refuge for Neanderthals, who had survived in local pockets during previous Ice Ages, bouncing back to Europe when weather conditions improved.
Climate reconstructions
The study is based upon climate reconstructions elaborated from marine records and using the experience of Spanish and international research groups on Western Mediterranean paleoceanography. The conclusions point out that Neanderthal populations did suffer fluctuations related to climate changes before the first Homo Sapiens arrived in the Iberian Peninsula. Cold, arid and highly variable climate was the least favourable weather for Neanderthals and 24,000 years ago they had to face the worst weather conditions in the last 250,000 years.
The most important about these data is that they differ from the current scientific paradigm which makes Homo Sapiens responsible for the Neanderthal extinction. This work is a contribution to a new scientific current leaded by Dr. Clive Finlayson, from the Gibraltar Museum according to which Neanderthal isolation and, possibly, extinction were due to environmental factors.
These studies on climate variability are part of the work of the group RNM 179, funded by the excellence project RNM 0432 of the Andalusian Regional Governments Department for Innovation, Science and Business and by the MARCAL project of the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science, both linked to the Andalusian Environment Centre (CEAMA - Centro Andaluz de Medio Ambiente).
Global Warming: Even a cave man can do it!
There were ceremonial burials of NTs -— beads and whatnot being part of what was recovered.
Drilling a hole in a bead is harder than making clothes -— and same basic technology.
They didn't use it for a SUV until later.
Dodge Durango
Don’t make me post that Looter-guy picture.
Was this a good thing or a bad thing?
O my! Is the fourth one in line a New Orleans looter? Great illustration!!!!!
Double Nah.
Neanderthals went extinct because the Paleo-Conservatives didn’t pay attention to Global Warming and all the glaciers melted and drowned them.
Heavier bones—couldn’t swim.
Too bad.
That depends: Are you a Neanderthal?
Oh sheets, that’s funny as hell!
Run this sequence in reverse, and we have the evolution of the left and democratic party.
Seems as though another group claimed something like this in 2004 (or so). :’) Let’s see... ah...
Big Chill Killed Off The Neanderthals
New Scientist | 1-21-2004 | Douglas Palmer
Posted on 01/21/2004 6:26:51 PM EST by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1062478/posts
Big chill killed off the Neanderthals
New Scientist | 24 January 2004 | Douglas Palmer
Posted on 09/21/2005 3:22:31 PM EDT by george76
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1488811/posts
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Yeah, that's right! Neandertal WENT EXTINCT because he ate too much meat. Nothing political about that, eh?Taste for flesh troubled NeanderthalsThe extinction of the Neanderthals could have been caused by their choosy appetites - they ate virtually nothing but meat... "They were picky eaters," says Dr Paul Pettitt, at the University of Oxford, UK. "And this tells me that they are really unchanging - doing the same old thing year after year... Neanderthals were excellent hunters," Dr Petitt told BBC News Online. "But the issue that was at stake was whether they hunted every day of their lives or whether it was just a summer outing." ...The early humans themselves may have been better hunters than the Neanderthals, depriving them of their kills. Or the hunted animals may have been struck by disease or migrated away.
by Dr Damian Carrington
BBC News Online
Monday, 12 June, 2000
Hey, Henry Ford tried feeding his employees grass sandwiches. Maybe that was during his vegetarian fanatic phase, not unlike that of Paul and Linda who threatened to fire anyone working for their last tour who ate meat for the duration, or Ford's good friend and role model, Hitler.What the Hominid AteAnalyzing carbon atoms locked up in tooth enamel, two researchers challenge the widely held belief that Australopithecus africanus -- an upright, walking pre-human hominid that lived in southern Africa -- ate little more than fruits and leaves. Matt Sponheimer, an anthropology graduate student at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and Julia Lee-Thorp of the University of Cape Town, South Africa, looked at four A. africanus fossil skeletons unearthed from South Africa. Living about 3 million years ago, A. africanus may be a direct ancestor of modern humans. A. africanus teeth were large and blunt with thick enamel, ideal for crushing nuts and chewing fruit as opposed to the sharp incisors one would want to rip into meat. The first stone tools, which would help in eating meat, didn't appear until about half a million years later. Sponheimer and Lee-Thorp took a new approach, looking at the chemical composition of the tooth enamel. After chipping about two milligrams of enamel with a diamond-tipped dental drill, the researchers analyzed the samples for the isotope carbon-13, which contains one extra neutron in the nucleus compared to the usual form of carbon. What Sponheimer and Lee-Thorp found was that the teeth of A. africanus had an in-between amount carbon-13 -- more than the fruit eaters, less than the grass eaters.
by Kenneth Chang
Laden and Wrangham wouldn't be vegetarians by any chance, would they?Veggies Really Are Brain FoodFire helped early humans evolve and become more intelligent not because it allowed them to barbecue meat, but because it allowed them to cook vegetables, researchers said on Tuesday. Learning how to cook probably also allowed humans to develop their unique monogamous society. Gregory Laden of the University of Minnesota, Richard Wrangham of Harvard University and colleagues noted that very early pre-humans, including the australopithecines such as "Lucy," had huge teeth and powerful jaws. By 1.9 million years ago, when Homo erectus appeared, teeth became smaller and jawbones less robust. Females got biggercloser in size to males. Brains and bodies both grew. While some anthropologists argue it was because meat entered the diet, Laden and a team of anthropologists, nutritionists and primatologists said the changes occurred because the pre-humans had discovered fire and learned how to make roots and other vegetables easier to eat and more nutritious.
Shift In Eating Habits Of Early Modern HumansCompared to Neanderthals living in inland Europe up to 100,000 years earlier, who relied primarily on land animals for their protein, early modern humans supplemented their diets with a significant amount of fish and waterfowl. The evidence has been outlined in a paper entitled 'Stable isotope evidence for increasing dietary breadth in the European mid-Upper Paleolithi', which is scheduled to appear in the May 22 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. Dr Michael Richards, of the Department of Archaeological Sciences, at the University of Bradford, said: "This new information highlights the differences in diets between Neanderthals and early modern humans and shows that modern humans were more flexible and adaptable in their dietary choices. This ability to adapt and use a range of resources could perhaps have given us, as a species, a competitive edge over the Neanderthals."
2 May 2001A Rumination on the Invention of SoupIt was a particularly tough and dangerous world back then. These hunter-gatherers were stuck in the last blast of the Wurm glaciation that killed off so much of their food and so many species. It was every man for himself as they ran fearfully from--and ran hungrily after--woolly mammoths, sabre-tooth tigers, wolves, and other hominids. And yet elderly Neanderthal skeletons have been found in France with teeth worn down below gum level--and deeply crippled skeletons have been found too. Implication: They could only have been kept alive through the compassion of their communities and the brilliance of some nouvelle cuisine chef who could find food alternatives to incredibly indigestible plants, meat tougher than my old aunt's shoes, and all of it cold. I try to put myself under the toque of that Stone Age Julia Child. I imagine him or her using bark to dip and carry water...putting food bits in it and noticing them soften or swell...marking how plants and berries, meat and marrow chunks would infuse the water with color and flavor. I imagine him or her getting the idea of warm broth from the 98.6 degree Fahrenheit mother's milk that kept little Neanderthal babies happy. That's when it hits me: Soup! It's an unbelievable achievement.
March 1, 2002The 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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That must be a really small human because neanderthals were pretty short dudes.
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