Posted on 09/15/2011 7:42:53 AM PDT by Red Badger
Neanderthal cavemen supped on shellfish on the Costa del Sol 150,000 years ago, punching a hole in the theory that modern humans alone ate brain-boosting seafood so long ago, a new study shows.
The discovery in a cave near Torremolinos in southern Spain was about 100,000 years older than the previous earliest evidence of Neanderthals consuming seafood, scientists said.
Researchers unearthed the evidence when examining stone tools and the remains of shells in the Bajondillo Cave, they said in a study published online in the Public Library of Science.
There, they discovered many charred shellfish -- mostly mussel shells -- left by Neanderthals. They were able to date the shells by radiocarbon testing to about 150,000 years ago.
That is "almost contemporaneous" to the earliest evidence of modern humans eating shellfish at Pinnacle Point in South Africa 164,000 years ago, said the study led by the University of Seville's Miguel Cortes Sanchez.
"This discovery makes the Bajondillo Cave the oldest record of this activity among Neanderthals, as the earliest evidence until now did not go back further than 50,000 years," said Francisco Jimenez Espejo, researcher at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), which was part of the study.
"Many researchers argue that eating shellfish is one of the behaviours that define modern humans and to a certain extent an adaptive advantage that allowed homo sapiens to expand," Espejo said.
"But this investigation shows that at the same time as homo sapiens in southern Africa, homo neanderthalensis in the southern Iberian peninsula used the same resources."
The study was released Wednesday and is available online at: http://www.plosone … #authcontrib
The first Neanderthal to eat a raw oyster must have been very brave, starving or horny.
S Africa, shell jewelry 75K ago:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1118872/posts
blam’s post, Homo Florienensis made shell necklaces 82K ago:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1418969/posts?page=18#18
rejoinder, shell jewelry in N Africa, 82K ago:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1844620/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1855689/posts
Apparently they hadn’t got the memo, Israel 90K to 100K ago:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1654022/posts
Oops, make that 100K to 135K ago
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1663929/posts
If he wasn’t horny before, he would have been after.
Not scallops, real ones, that is...........
Well that settles it.
Neaderthals were not Jewish.
You left out the garlic and white wine reduction sauce. :-))
Rocks are dated using:
Fossils are dated:
Of course, some of these methods are "derivative" of others, and each has associated difficulties.
But the "gold standard" is radiometric dating, and when several different materials agree, then that's as good as it gets.
which doesn't happen as often as you imply.
What happens is that 3-4 methods are used, the results are wildly different, and so the person tests it asks "what fossils do you see in the layers above and below this sample?", and the "indexing fossils" are used to determine which of the radiometric tests to use.
You meant to say: What has been reported, on occasion, is that..."
Sure, no method is fool-proof, all are subject to errors depending on circumstances.
When several methods -- including indexing fossils -- can be used to produce similar results, then the data is more reliable.
This is especially true when the ages of those "indexing fossils" were confirmed by several different radio-metric methods.
But those who use all this to argue that therefore the Earth is only 6,000 years old, are in no sense being scientific.
“But those who use all this to argue that therefore the Earth is only 6,000 years old, are ...”
...being silly. God is not bound by time. Whatever methods he used to bring all this about could take as much or as little time as He pleased.
After you get past the fact that God created the heavens and the Earth, all that is seen and unseen, what does it matter whether He did it in the twinkling of an eye or billions of years?
When you say that God created Adam from dirt, are you really excluding the possibility that He used a method that is in complete congruence with what science has discovered about the origins of the universe and our planet?
I’ve been toying with a spectulation—and that’s all it is, just idle speculation—that when God breathed life into Adam, that is, when He ensouled humanity, it might have been just after the big die-off after Toba.
Maybe the dieback served to eliminate some genes He didn’t want in homo sap.
Again, just idle speculation for the purpose of amusing myself.
Neanderthal cavemen supped on shellfish on the Costa del Sol 150,000 years ago...
It’s amazing to think that Ketsup and Horseradish
have been around that long.
and lemon juice.....
I agree with you, but apparently a good many FRiends here don't agree with us, and for reasons that -- even after many lengthy discussions -- are not obvious to me.
What's blindingly obvious is that everywhere you look scientifically, God left us with abundant clues about what He did and how He did it.
It remains only to ask "why", and for that, of course, nature and science have no answers.
For that, you must turn to the Bible, and to a church or other institution expressly intended to answer such questions.
;-)
“for reasons that — even after many lengthy discussions — are not obvious to me.”
In some cases, I think it’s because a belief in the literal, historical truth of the Bible requires it.
Gott sei dank, my mother taught me the meaning of the words “parable” and “allegory” at a young age.
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