SCI Neanderthal extinction not caused by brutal wipe out

[Melodi]

More on one of my favorite topics, a new find both upends when they thought "modern" humans got to Europe and extends by 10,000 years (at least) when the two groups of humans lived in the same area. Also, bows and arrows may go back a lot further than was believed until now. Again, I think Neanderthals are just cousins, and science is suggesting more and more often that this is the case.

Neanderthal extinction not caused by brutal wipe out

New fossils challenge ideas that modern humans wiped out Neanderthals after arriving from Africa.

www.bbc.com

Neanderthal extinction not caused by brutal wipe out
By Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent

Published11 hours ago
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Image caption,
Neanderthals were a separate species of human that populated Europe for hundreds of thousands of years until they went extinct 40,000 years ago
New fossils are challenging ideas that modern humans wiped out Neanderthals soon after arriving from Africa.
A discovery of a child's tooth and stone tools in a cave in southern France suggests Homo sapiens was in western Europe about 54,000 years ago.

That is several thousands of years earlier than previously thought, indicating that the two species could have coexisted for long periods.

The research has been published in the journal Science Advances.

The finds were discovered in a cave, known as Grotte Mandrin in the Rhone Valley, by a team led by Prof Ludovic Slimak of the University of Toulouse. He was astonished when he learned that there was evidence of an early modern human settlement.
"We are now able to demonstrate that Homo sapiens arrived 12,000 years before we expected, and this population was then replaced after that by other Neanderthal populations. And this literally rewrites all our books of history."

IMAGE SOURCE,ROB HOPE FILMS
Image caption,
Archaeologists discovered modern human remains at Grotte Mandrin cave dating back to 54, 000 years ago, thousands of years earlier than previously thought
The Neanderthals emerged in Europe as far back as 400,000 years ago. The current theory suggests that they went extinct about 40,000 years ago, not long after Homo sapiens arrived on the continent from Africa.
But the new discovery suggests that our species arrived much earlier and that the two species could have coexisted in Europe for more than 10,000 years before the Neanderthals went extinct.
According to Prof Chris Stringer, of the Natural History Museum in London, this challenges the current view, which is that our species quickly overwhelmed the Neanderthals.
"It wasn't an overnight takeover by modern humans," he told BBC News. "Sometimes Neanderthals had the advantage, sometimes modern humans had the advantage, so it was more finely balanced."

Archaeologists found fossil evidence from several layers at the site. The lower they dug, the further back in time they were able to see. The lowest layers showed the remains of Neanderthals who occupied the area for about 20,000 years.
But to their complete surprise, the team found a modern human child's tooth in a layer dating back to about 54,000 years ago, along with some stone tools made in a way that was not associated with Neanderthals.

The evidence suggests that this early group of humans lived at the site for a relatively brief period, of perhaps about 2,000 years after which the site was unoccupied. The Neanderthals then return, occupying the site for several more thousand years, until modern humans come back about 44,000 years ago.

IMAGE SOURCE,LUDOVIC SLIMAK
Image caption,
The tools found with the child's tooth. There is speculation that the smaller points might be arrow heads
''We have this ebb and flow,'' says Prof Stringer. ''The modern humans appear briefly, then there's a gap where maybe the climate just finished them off and then the Neanderthals come back again.''

Another key finding was the association of the stone tools found in the same layer as the child's tooth with modern humans. Tools made in the same way had been found in a few other sites - in the Rhone valley and also in Lebanon, but up until now scientists were not certain which species of humans made them.

IMAGE SOURCE,LUDOVIC SLIMAK
Image caption,
This fragment of child’s tooth may well have changed the story of the emergence of modern humans

Some of the researchers speculate that some of the smaller tools might be arrow heads. If confirmed, that would be quite a discovery: an early group of modern humans using the advanced weaponry of bows and arrows, which may have been how the group initially overcame the Neanderthals 54,000 years ago. But if that were the case, it was a temporary advantage, because the Neanderthals came back.

So, if it wasn't a case of our species wiping them out immediately, what was it that eventually gave us the advantage?
Many ideas have been put forward by scientists: our capacity to produce art, language and possibly a better brain. But Prof Stringer believes it was because we were more organised.

"We were networking better, our social groups were larger, we were storing knowledge better and we built on that knowledge," he said.
The idea of a prolonged interaction with Neanderthals fits in with the discovery made in 2010 that modern humans have a small amount of Neanderthal DNA, indicating that the two species interbred, according to Prof Stringer.
"We don't know if it was peacefully exchanges of partners. It might have been grabbing, you know, a female from another group. It might have been even adopting abandoned or lost Neanderthal babies who had been orphaned," he said.
"All of those things could have happened. So we don't know the full story yet. But with more data and with more DNA, more discoveries, we will get closer to the truth about what really happened at the end of the Neanderthal era."
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[marsh]

species (spē′shēz, -sēz) n. pl. species 1. Biology A group of closely related organisms that are very similar to each other and are usually capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. The species is the fundamental category of taxonomic classification, ranking below a genus or subgenus.

I have small amounts of Neanderthal DNA and since I exist, the crossing(s) were fertile. Ergo, both are the same species, but different varieties of that species.

 

[QWERT123]

True or not, there also exists the concept of people digging holes, whereupon 'stuff' can end up several feet deeper than it should.
Second thought, Homo Sapiens were around 300,00 years ago, and people identical to us(modern version of HS,) at least 100,000, so why is it unusual to think that a group were wandering around the Mediteranian from the African side to the European side on regular occasions as the climate warmed and cooled over hundreds of thousands of years. There are also studies that promote the theory that Neanderthals went through 4 distict changes in evolution over 430,000 years. Is it not possible that each stage was a possible merging of cultural and even genetic contact with early Homo Sapiens.?

 

[Melodi]

QWERT123, the problem has always been that archeologists (like many other scientists) get an idea in their head then a "theory." They then make careers out of that theory publishing papers and trying to "prove it." This can sometimes toxify into "Orthodox Narrative" which must never be questioned which is bad, really bad but it happens.

One of those "theories" kept American Archeology back for nearly 60 years - the "Clovis Only" idea that there were NO people in the Americas until the Clovis Point people about 9,000 years ago was taught as almost "gospel" truth and anyone who dared question it was often banished from ever working in the field again.

Finally, that was proved to be utter BS and in the last decade and a bit, astounding discoveries have pushed humans back in time in North America at least 24,000 years and probably before that.

A similar thing happened with the "theory" that "modern" humans didn't evolve until the first 80, then 100, and finally 200 thousand years ago; "only" in Africa and that they didn't come into Europe until about 30,000 years ago.

Then, the theory went, they brought with them their "superior" brains that understood art, culture, music, and better hunting skills and so wiped out the Neanderthals who it was "certain" never or seldom bred with humans.

From the moment my physical anthropology professor was measuring my head and nearly dropped his tools saying "My Dear, you have a perfect Neanderthal Skull!, It should have disappeared from the human race 30,000 years ago!" I had been skeptical of the above "narrative" (and that was 1974).

To make a long story short, the discovery of the entire Neanderthal Genome and the fact that almost all modern humans have some and some of us have up to four percent or higher proved the interbreeding. Going back and relooking at old finds from Neanderthal sites and in museums have shown they had art, music, jewelry, and families.

But there were still die-hards who insisted and still insist that "real culture" and "the cultural explosion" that happened 30,000 years ago was because "modern humans" finally entered Europe.

Now we know they were there at least 24,000 years before that - they may have had advanced technologies like bows and arrows, but they didn't use them to wipe out their cousins at least not 54,000 years ago, because the site was used by both groups again later.

Sorry, this is a bit long, but believe me, that is kind of the short version...

 

[db cooper]

QWERT123, the problem has always been that archeologists (like many other scientists) get an idea in their head then a "theory." They then make careers out of that theory publishing papers and trying to "prove it." This can sometimes toxify into "Orthodox Narrative" which must never be questioned which is bad, really bad but it happens.

One of those "theories" kept American Archeology back for nearly 60 years - the "Clovis Only" idea that there were NO people in the Americas until the Clovis Point people about 9,000 years ago was taught as almost "gospel" truth and anyone who dared question it was often banished from ever working in the field again.

Finally, that was proved to be utter BS and in the last decade and a bit, astounding discoveries have pushed humans back in time in North America at least 24,000 years and probably before that.

A similar thing happened with the "theory" that "modern" humans didn't evolve until the first 80, then 100, and finally 200 thousand years ago; "only" in Africa and that they didn't come into Europe until about 30,000 years ago.

Then, the theory went, they brought with them their "superior" brains that understood art, culture, music, and better hunting skills and so wiped out the Neanderthals who it was "certain" never or seldom bred with humans.

From the moment my physical anthropology professor was measuring my head and nearly dropped his tools saying "My Dear, you have a perfect Neanderthal Skull!, It should have disappeared from the human race 30,000 years ago!" I had been skeptical of the above "narrative" (and that was 1974).

To make a long story short, the discovery of the entire Neanderthal Genome and the fact that almost all modern humans have some and some of us have up to four percent or higher proved the interbreeding. Going back and relooking at old finds from Neanderthal sites and in museums have shown they had art, music, jewelry, and families.

But there were still die-hards who insisted and still insist that "real culture" and "the cultural explosion" that happened 30,000 years ago was because "modern humans" finally entered Europe.

Now we know they were there at least 24,000 years before that - they may have had advanced technologies like bows and arrows, but they didn't use them to wipe out their cousins at least not 54,000 years ago, because the site was used by both groups again later.

Sorry, this is a bit long, but believe me, that is kind of the short version...

My take on your comments is that science has always been corrupted much like it is to day with this covid junk and glow bull warming.

 

[alchemike]

I think the David and Goliath story is a real historical account of a battle between our human ancestors and a coexisting, older hominid species, like neanderthal...

Brains over brawn. Regardless of how long they co-existed, that was the real end of neanderthal...

 

[1-12020]

The fossil record should be full of transitional forms, like millions of years worth.
Why doesn't the fossil record show any transitional forms in a macro sense?

The moon and sun move away from the earth at a constant rate each year.
If the universe is so old the sun and moon would have been so close to the earth.
Look up how much and do the math.
The tides would have destroyed everything or the sun would have burned everything up.

 

[PghPanther]

Relative to other White Europeans I appear to have a significant amount of Neanderthal DNA in my profile (almost 2-3%) which results in my unusual iris eye color (blue outer ring with dark green middle and an amber interior ring) and a very heighten sense of smell......way beyond what most humans smell...........as well as having very large/long moral teeth that have crowded my jaw until I got some pulled and braces to line them all up.

I'm Celtic (Irish, Welsh and Scottish)........

 

[Satanta]

I see people that look like the images I used to see of Neanderthals when I was a kid.

Also some look like Apes.

So maybe the Neanderthals are not actually Extinct.

 

[Intestinal Fortitude]

I see people that look like the images I used to see of Neanderthals when I was a kid.

Also some look like Apes.

So maybe the Neanderthals are not actually Extinct.

there is a family down the street. . . . .

 

[BadMedicine]

I think the David and Goliath story is a real historical account of a battle between our human ancestors and a coexisting, older hominid species, like neanderthal...

Brains over brawn. Regardless of how long they co-existed, that was the real end of neanderthal...

Have you ever heard the account? I mean, more than "david the shepherd boy slew goliath the giant?"

Because there were TWO standing armies of modern humans with modern metalurgy, wheels, domesticated beasts of burden and food animals, agriculture, specialized expertise, like sword makers, garment makers, wagon makers, animal breeders, harvesters, slaves, and long supply chains. And the opposing army wasn't giants. Only Goliath was. Giants have been 'outliers' in size for various medical reasonsthroughout human history and there is much mention of them. Neanderthals were SMALLER in stature than modern humans, though probably weighed more due to bone mass and density and muscle mass. Giganthepithecus, an 8+ foot 3-400# hominin is about a million+ years old, did 'hypothetically' leave africa before spreading throughout the new-old world.. and eventually evolved in to several other smaller hominem species which PROBABLY back bred in to homo erectus, cro magnon, etall. These are the traces of "unknown archeic homenim" we see in densovan, neanders, and even 'modern' africans in africa.

This "modern" battle happened about...historically, about 1100BC... or only 3,000 years ago.

Agriculture as we know it started about 10 thousand years ago. Neanderthals at their very last outposts in spain died out 25,000. years ago. At that time ALL humans on earth were living in small bands of hunter gatherers. Only agriculture can get family groups above about 50 people, in REALLY HIGH resource areas.

So no, the two standing armies in Palestine in biblical times were not different species. There would be a LOT more archeological evidence of neanderthals if that was the case. The phillistines were def modern man.

 

[Melodi]

I think the David and Goliath story is a real historical account of a battle between our human ancestors and a coexisting, older hominid species, like neanderthal...

Brains over brawn. Regardless of how long they co-existed, that was the real end of neanderthal...

Their brains were often larger than modern humans, we now know (as I predicted here on Timebomb when the DNA was confirmed in modern humans) that they had art, music, tools, a really complex glue used to hold spearheads on (made from pine resin) and were not in any way of low intelligence.

But what I suspect are two possibilities that are not mutually exclusive.

1. There were severe cultural differences, Neanderthals-aka Human Beings, were in Europe for 400,000 years and lived through several Ice Ages in Europe and Asia. They tended to stay in one place for centuries and lived in small family groups that tended to interbred a lot locally (sometimes with Denesovians). They did get around, they were not totally immobile, but they did what "worked" and were probably extremely conservative when it came to doing things a "new" way - because when you live on the edge of survival - what works is what works and you don't have the luxury of changing it.

2. The Disease factor, it is entirely possibly but not in any way proven (yet) that the new colonists in that last big wave of "modern" humans that came into Europe 30,000 years ago brought diseases with them that many Neanderthals were a "virgin field" for. Consider that up to NINETY PERCENT of the then pre-European populations of the Americas died off in just 100 to 200 years after exposure to European diseases - that would not be the first time in history such a massive die-off after thousands of years of mostly being separated took place.

There are other "theories" out there but only a few of the old die-hards think that Neanderthals were less intelligent than modern people, they may have thought very differently and their culture/lifestyle discouraged innovation and perhaps unnecessary travel. But that doesn't mean they were stupid, it does mean it is likely (but not yet proven) that they did not share the modern human passion for wanderlust (even in a single lifetime, new testing showed people sometimes traveled thousands of miles very early on). They may also have been very reluctant to change the tool-making kit that had worked for so very long and I suspect they were more conservative in their choices of food.

Modern humans will eat almost anything that doesn't eat them first, Neanderthals (at least in Europe) seemed to have preferred Big Game as well as a diverse group of plants and smaller animals when the weather allowed for gathering or the Big Game was not in season.

That was probably again a cultural decision rather than a genetic one, although their robust build and cold adaptations did need a lot more calories than modern humans can subsist on if they have to.

And yes, the mess with the COVID narrative is also likely a combination of entrenched thinking, though I think human greed played a large part with that one.

Yes, there probably was some limited contact between the Americas and Europe or Asia for thousands of years. We know some of it like Lief the Lucky Erickson and suspect others like Prince Madoc, Brendan the Navigator or the Chinese in the 1400s or the "Japanese/Joma" in Peru about 7,000 years ago but it wasn't a lot of contact from what we know (which could change).

 

[Profit of Doom]

The fossil record should be full of transitional forms, like millions of years worth.
Why doesn't the fossil record show any transitional forms in a macro sense?

The moon and sun move away from the earth at a constant rate each year.
If the universe is so old the sun and moon would have been so close to the earth.
Look up how much and do the math.
The tides would have destroyed everything or the sun would have burned everything up.

Have you done the math? It’s your theory, show your work. Oh, the sun doesn’t move away from the earth.
“Tides would have destroyed everything” What was there to destroy? There was nothing built back then. Any natural things, like coastlines and river banks, are going to change anyway.

 

[KFhunter]

I think the Neanderthal boars really liked the hotty homo-sapien womens over the ugly Neanderthal womens, and bred themselves to extinction with trophy wives

 

[AppleJacks]

The Neanderthals went woke. Then they went bye-bye.

 

[Haybails]

The Neanderthals emerged in Europe as far back as 400,000 years ago. The current theory suggests that they went extinct about 40,000 years ago, not long after Homo sapiens arrived on the continent from Africa.

Just a quick (honestly uneducated) question:
If "Homo sapiens arrived on the continent from Africa" why are they displayed in that drawing with such a stereotypical 'Caucasian' appearance?
Just curious.

HB

 

[BadMedicine]

2. The Disease factor, it is entirely possibly but not in any way proven (yet) that the new colonists in that last big wave of "modern" humans that came into Europe 30,000 years ago brought diseases with them that many Neanderthals were a "virgin field" for. Consider that up to NINETY PERCENT of the then pre-European populations of the Americas died off in just 100 to 200 years after exposure to European diseases - that would not be the first time in history such a massive die-off after thousands of years of mostly being separated took place.

The books Plagues and Peoples, and also guns germs and steele refute this idea. There were no "waves" of hunter and gathers rushing out in to new area. there were travelling bands here and there occasionaly meeting other travelling bands.

"Herd diseases" that are rapidly fatal.. like flu, small pox, et.. that kill in a couple weeks, burn themselves out in populations of under 250,000. Numbers like that never existed pre agriculture/ pre-10k years ago.

They may have killed them off, or out resourced them, and bred a few of them...4 % in modern DNA equates to about 4 successful neanderthal breeders for ever 96 sapain breeders. In hunter and gatherers homo sapians women outnumber men because division of labor gives dangerous jobs to the men... neanders both hunted, so the femals lif expectancies, and birth rates were much lower, BARELY above replacement. I saw the math in an anthropology thing and it said Humans would only haveto have 10% more ofspring to out-breed them over X years... and we know humans average 1.5-2X the offspring, so... pretty much outbred, and then competing for best resources... our newer, 'organized' culture gave us a breeding and hunting advantage...and needles to sew cloths in colder climates..

 

[Melodi]

Jarad Diamond wrote that most excellent book over 20 years ago and like his other great work Collapse - there have been some updates and changes in archeology and history during that time.

For example, it is unlikely that Greenland ended in quite the way his research seemed to indicate at the time; it is much more likely that either the population (of at least the young men) simply either got tired of living on the very edge of Europe and left and/or (and these are not mutually exclusive) we know now that hunting played a vastly larger role in the last days of the European Colony. It is speculated that if most of the men from the Western Settlement went on one large hunt and the weather turned, they could all have been lost at sea.

The Inuit version is that "all the men left and we took in the women and children," which is probably also at least partly true. But there were people in Europe with names like "So and So the Greenlander" until the early 1500s, which crosses over the 1492 boundary.

We THINK most people in the earlier periods were spread out, and probably didn't have nearly the level of diseases that came later; however, in the America's disease spread like wildfire although it did take up to 100 yeas to reach some of the more isolated folks who were still hunting and gathering both in North and South America.

Besides, I didn't say disease did wipe out the Neanderthals, just that it was one possibility. Personally, I think that there was a lot of mixing, not all of which led to the current genetic lines (90 percent of lines in the Americas may have died out to, that doesn't mean they never existed).

I suspect that over time, the majority of Neanderthals either interbred with/married in with the locals or died out because of a much lower birthrate and higher isolation from other people and/or having difficulty adapting ot the sudden changes at the end of the last Ice Age.

Even modern humans had serious problems when the ice went away the last time, ways of life that worked for thousands of years suddenly didn't - you go from the high art of the Cave Paintings to people mostly decorating their tools. People go from Big Game Hunting to a lot more fishing and dependence on gathering (as well as smaller game like deer).

Also, we now know there were early urban centers in Scandinavia of all places about 20,000 years ago that MAY hae been wiped out by Plauge (Black Death). Also, there have been at least one village with weaving and pottery found about 38,000 years ago in Eastern Europe; someone had a fire and burned the imprint of their woven trousers into the mud that was naturally fired into the clay floor of the house. They were also burying their dead beneath the floor.

Neanderthals were still very much around at that time, so you did have some town/village sized populations where diseases COULD have started to get going, that doesn't mean they did but they could have.

I'm open, I'm also very open to being wrong...that wouldn't be the first time lol.