http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10070

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?

“The consensus now sees Neanderthals as having been largely replaced rather than assimilated into the modern human gene pool,” says Katerina Harvati, at the department of human evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. “Genetic evidence from several Neanderthals shows that they were very distant genetically in their mitochondrial DNA from modern humans.”

So, if they did interbred, the Neanderthal genes did not survive. “The more realistic demographic models suggest that admixture (gene mixing) was unlikely, and probably minimal or zero,” says Harvati.

The finding has implications for the status of a skeleton known as the Lagar Velho child. This individual, purported to be a hybrid of a Neanderthal and a modern human, was found in Portugal and has been dated to 24,500 years ago.

Lagar Velho's juvenile nature has made it difficult to determine if it is indeed a hybrid, and one of the other objections has been the fact that it lived thousands of years after the Neanderthals were thought to have died out. “Clearly, our results show Neanderthals may have been around at the time,” says Finlayson.

Another link:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5343266.stm

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42083000/gif/_42083964_neander_sites2_416x268.gif

Researchers from Britain, Gibraltar, Spain and Japan obtained radiocarbon dates on charcoal from ancient hearths unearthed deep inside Gorham's Cave on Gibraltar, a mountainous peninsula on the southern tip of Iberia.

The charcoal comes from ground layers in the cave where archaeologists previously dug up stone tools of a type made exclusively by Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis).

The earliest samples of charcoal date to 33,000 years ago, while the youngest date to 24,000 years ago - much more recent than anyone could have imagined.

But evidence for a presence 24,000 years ago is limited, so the researchers can only say with confidence that Neanderthals were in the cave until 28,000 years ago.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42084000/jpg/_42084396_gorhamscave_gm_203.jpg

Even so, this date makes the cave the youngest Neanderthal occupation site known anywhere.

I think it's interesting, Sam, but what the hell difference does it make one way or the other? Or would you be implying that *I* am a descendant of Neanderthals, and you're a descendant of humans? ....LOL! Hey, that might be a good explanation for some of my more violent ideals and thoughts, huh? ...LOL!

Baron Max

Well we always thought that the Neanderthals and modern homo sapiens never co-existed. This find appears to contradict that notion.

There are two questions that concern us about Neanderthals:

1. Did they contribute to our gene pool?

There was a suggestion of this from the finding of a possible hybrid:

In 1999, the skeleton of a child was unearthed in Lapido, Portugal. Dated to around 25,000 years ago, the remains show a mixture of Neanderthal and modern features, suggesting it may be a hybrid.

But evidence from mitochondrial DNA does not support this.

Comparing mtDNA of these Neanderthals to mtDNA of living people from various continents, researchers have found that the Neanderthals' mtDNA is not more closely related to that of people from any one continent over another. This was an unwelcome finding for anthropologists who believe that there was some interbreeding between Neanderthals and early modern humans living in Europe (which might have helped to explain why modern Europeans possess some Neanderthal-like features); these particular anthropologists instead would have expected the Neanderthals' mtDNA to be more similar to that of modern Europeans than to that of other peoples. Moreover, the researchers determined that the common ancestor to Neanderthals and modern Homo sapiens lived as long as 500,000 years ago, well before the most recent common mtDNA ancestor of modern humans. This suggests (though it does not prove) that Neanderthals went extinct without contributing to the gene pool of any modern humans.
http://www.boston.com/globe/search/stories/health/science_musings/110298.htm

However, questions still remain.

But last year, when geneticists compared mtDNA from an early modern Australian with contemporary mtDNA, it didn't match either.
http://www.discover.com/issues/mar-02/departments/featworks/

2. The second question is, why did they die out?

They appear to have been skilled hunters with complex societies, who survived the ice age. Maybe they could not compete against the first homo sapiens?

The first humans with modern features appeared in Africa more than 100,000 years ago; 40,000 years ago, H. sapiens called Cro-Magnons made it to Europe. Cro-Magnons had stone-shaping techniques and symbolic art that were dramatically different from anything found in previous Stone Age cultures. They adorned themselves with necklaces, bracelets, and beads, painted cave walls, and played drums and flutes. Their campsites and graves became more elaborate. Judging from the artifacts of the Upper Paleolithic, our ancestors had discovered life beyond the next mastodon brisket.

In contrast, Neanderthal culture was more about grim subsistence. Neanderthals were the sole survivors of hominids that moved into Europe half a million years ago. They didn't have bone needles or shell beads, they didn't paint or play music, and their burials were no-nonsense affairs. It's easy to imagine that they didn't stand a chance once the Cro-Magnons showed up.

Other theories revolve around their diet :) :

A new study suggests that the extinction of the Neanderthals could have been caused by their choosy appetites - they ate virtually nothing but meat.
The key to the modern humans' survival appeared to be a more diverse diet, which gave them more choices in lean periods.
http://www.rense.com/general10/flawas.htm

As well as free trade:

Modern humans may have driven Neanderthals to extinction 30,000 years ago because Homo sapiens unlocked the secrets of free trade, say a group of US and Dutch economists. The theory could shed new light on the mysterious and sudden demise of the Neanderthals after over 260,000 years of healthy survival.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7221

It's interesting...

Well we always thought that the Neanderthals and modern homo sapiens never co-existed. This find appears to contradict that notion.

Hmm, Sam, I'm an old, old fart, and I can remember discussions in high school about those groups co-existing. There was some evidence even waaaaay back in the old days of my youth ....just not much of it nor was it widely accepted.

The second question is, why did they die out?

They were uglier and stupider than the Cro-Mags, so the Cro-Mags discriminated against them and wouldn't let them into the Grocery stores to buy the food they needed! Racial hatred at it's finest, huh?

Baron Max

PS - Yes, Sam, it is interesting to read and study, but I don't think it's something that we can discuss much here at the forums ....but I could buy you a cup of coffee and we could discuss at length. But do you have to wear your habib or headscarf ...it might embarrass me, ya' know? :)

Hmm, Sam, I'm an old, old fart, and I can remember discussions in high school about those groups co-existing. There was some evidence even waaaaay back in the old days of my youth ....just not much of it nor was it widely accepted.

Eyewitness evidence? :D

Seriously, do you remember what the arguments in favor coexistence were then?

They were uglier and stupider than the Cro-Mags, so the Cro-Mags discriminated against them and wouldn't let them into the Grocery stores to buy the food they needed! Racial hatred at it's finest, huh?

Quite possible.
The most widely held theory is that our ancestors killed them off.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13989908/site/newsweek/

PS - Yes, Sam, it is interesting to read and study, but I don't think it's something that we can discuss much here at the forums ....but I could buy you a cup of coffee and we could discuss at length. But do you have to wear your habib or headscarf ...it might embarrass me, ya' know? :)

Since habib means lover, that would be hard to wear!
If you mean hijab, I'm not from the ME.

I'm having the coffee right now, so go right ahead. :)

Eyewitness evidence?

...LOL! No, but pretty damned close! :)

Seriously, do you remember what the arguments in favor coexistence were then?

No, I don't ....I wish I could remember. It just seems that it was due to some paintings that were found in some caves in south France or Italy or some such place. But I really don't recall any of the particulars.

Sorry about the misworded ...ahh, word. But aren't you Muslim? And if so, doesn't that almost necessarily make your ancestors from ...well, over yonder somewhere?

Thanks for the offer of coffee ....and I'm enjoying some right now. :)

Baron Max

...LOL! No, but pretty damned close! :)

At grandpa's knee, hmm?

No, I don't ....I wish I could remember. It just seems that it was due to some paintings that were found in some caves in south France or Italy or some such place. But I really don't recall any of the particulars.

Spain?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_Spain

Spain has a wealth of prehistoric sites. Many of the best preserved prehistoric remains are in the Atapuerca region, rich with limestone caves that have preserved a million years of human evolution. Among these sites is the cave of Gran Dolina, were six hominin skeletons, dated between 780,000 and 1 million years ago, were found in 1994. Experts have debated whether these skeletons belong to the species Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, or a new species called Homo antecessor. In the Gran Dolina, investigators have found evidence of tool use to butcher animals and other hominins, the first evidence of cannibalism in a hominin species. Evidence of fire has also been found at the site, suggesting they cooked their meat.

Also in Atapuerca, is the site at Sima de los Huesos, or “Pit of Bones.” Excavators have found the remains of 30 hominins dated to about 400,000 years ago. The remains have been tentatively classified as Homo heidelbergensis and may be ancestors of the Neanderthals. No evidence of habitation has been found at the site except for one stone hand-ax, and all of the remains at the site are of young adults or teenagers. The age similarity suggests the remains were not the result of accidents. The seemingly deliberate placement of remains and lack of habitation may mean that the bodies were deliberately interred in the pit as a place of burial, which would make the site the first evidence of hominin burial.

Spain was also the first country where remains of Neanderthals were found when a Neanderthal skull was found in Forbes’s Quarry in Gibraltar in 1848. However, Neanderthals were not recognized as another species until the discovering of remains in Neandertal, Germany in 1856. Subsequent Neanderthal discoveries in Gibraltar have also been made including the skull of a 4 year old child and preserved excrement on top of baked mussel shells.


Sorry about the misworded ...ahh, word. But aren't you Muslim? And if so, doesn't that almost necessarily make your ancestors from ...well, over yonder somewhere?

Immigration? And invasion?

Arabs immigrated to India, Mongols (aka Mughals) invaded Arabia, then came to India.

They brought Islam with them. I'm from India.

Thanks for the offer of coffee ....and I'm enjoying some right now. :)


Cheers!

i also saw a documentary in which they found neanderthal remains in indonesia by homo-sapien remains near each other, perhaps the homo-sapien hunting the neanderthal. i cant find a link to back this up sorry

Immigration? And invasion?

Oh, my god! Now we're in trouble, huh? :)

Arabs immigrated to India, Mongols (aka Mughals) invaded Arabia, then came to India. They brought Islam with them. I'm from India.

Well, let's see ....99.9% of the medical doctors and scientists in the US are Indian, therefor you're a doctor or a scientist? :)

Baron Max

Oh, my god! Now we're in trouble, huh? :)

Depends on your definition.

After 1400 years of Islam, India has about 15% Muslims.

Well, let's see ....99.9% of the medical doctors and scientists in the US are Indian, therefor you're a doctor or a scientist? :)


Wannabe scientist. Doing my PhD.

Wannabe scientist. Doing my PhD.
Good ...and I wish you the best of luck.

Are you going to stay in the USA and earn a gazillion dollars an hour, or go to some backward nations to help them, thus earn something like $2 per day? :)

But, seriously, I wish you all the best of luck.

Baron Max

Good ...and I wish you the best of luck.

Are you going to stay in the USA and earn a gazillion dollars an hour, or go to some backward nations to help them, thus earn something like $2 per day? :)

But, seriously, I wish you all the best of luck.

Baron Max

I see you don't know much about the pay scales of scientists! :)

And Thanks.

I see you don't know much about the pay scales of scientists! :)

Sam, I don't know much about anything!

And it's strange, but the longer I live, the more I realize how little I know ....even though when I was young, I knew everything and knew it lots better than the older folks!! ...LOL!

I'm guessing, of course, but if I live much longer, I'm not going to know anything about anything! I once knew that fat people got fat because they ate to much, now I'm reading that people are fat because they're stressed or hyper-tense or they're too susceptible to advertising or MacDonald's makes the food taste too good or ......well, anything EXCEPT that fat people eat too much! See?

Baron Max

Sam, I don't know much about anything!

And it's strange, but the longer I live, the more I realize how little I know ....even though when I was young, I knew everything and knew it lots better than the older folks!! ...LOL!

Are you a fan of Mark Twain?

"When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."
-- Mark Twain


I'm guessing, of course, but if I live much longer, I'm not going to know anything about anything! I once knew that fat people got fat because they ate to much, now I'm reading that people are fat because they're stressed or hyper-tense or they're too susceptible to advertising or MacDonald's makes the food taste too good or ......well, anything EXCEPT that fat people eat too much! See?

Baron Max


Ask me, I'm still (relatively) young, so I'm pretty sure I know almost everything. :p

People get fat because genes take longer to adapt than bad habits to get fixed. We're wired to eat to live so all our signals say "Eat!". And they are much more powerful than the signals that say "Stop Eating, you're full!". Only we've figured out how to concentrate the energy in food (sugar, fats) while decreasing the effort required to obtain it. So we are fat.

Now we got to figure out how to fool our genes, so we eat only enough.

That's my area of research- energy metabolism. :)

Sam:

Did you read the "We are 5% Neanderthal" in the Biology/Genetics section of the Science section? It covers this a lot too.

The fact that Neanderthals lived for some 250,000 years until circa 25,000 years ago, which was contemporaneous with the rise of the Homo sapiens (us) in Africa, and subsequent spread to the rest of the globe, and that the Homo sapiens that later invaded the Euoropean region of Neanderthals and lived side by side with them for at least some thousands of years (likely tens of thousands) raises lots of interesting social questions.

Were Neanderthals light skinned, dark skinned, brown skinned, or all of these? I suspect that they likely had as many 'races' as do modern peoples, though we cannot tell by their skeletons alone. Were they 'good looking', only slightly different shape (squatter, more 'low-brow'), or were they quite different facially than us (sapiens), in which each race has distinct facial differences, but all are relatively 'good looking' (or, at least, to my subjective view).

If they were 'good looking', I would suspect that there might have been a lot of mixing with the sapiens, which is the basis of the "We are 5% Neanderthal" thread. Your views?

Sam:

Did you read the "We are 5% Neanderthal" in the Biology/Genetics section of the Science section? It covers this a lot too.

The fact that Neanderthals lived for some 250,000 years until circa 25,000 years ago, which was contemporaneous with the rise of the Homo sapiens (us) in Africa, and subsequent spread to the rest of the globe, and that the Homo sapiens that later invaded the Euoropean region of Neanderthals and lived side by side with them for at least some thousands of years (likely tens of thousands) raises lots of interesting social questions.

Were Neanderthals light skinned, dark skinned, brown skinned, or all of these? I suspect that they likely had as many 'races' as do modern peoples, though we cannot tell by their skeletons alone. Were they 'good looking', only slightly different shape (squatter, more 'low-brow'), or were they quite different facially than us (sapiens), in which each race has distinct facial differences, but all are relatively 'good looking' (or, at least, to my subjective view).

If they were 'good looking', I would suspect that there might have been a lot of mixing with the sapiens, which is the basis of the "We are 5% Neanderthal" thread. Your views?

The Neanderthals might have been good looking to one another, but when it came to beauty, any self respecting Cro-magnon of that day would probably have dated his little sister before bringing flowers to a so-called Neanderthal wench, unless she (ugly or not) was the only opportunity around. Regardless of the hairdo, when you got a sloping forehead, 18 inch biceps and a body covered with gorilla hair and a set of teeth that could crack a coconut, you might want to take your time before developing a serious long-term relationship with her.:D

We have no idea what the standards of beauty were for Mesolithic Homo sapiens. Their lives were "nasty, brutal and short," to misappropriate a quotation, so the strength and durability of the Neanderthal body may have been appealing. A family with one sapiens for intellect and one Neanderthal for bone-busting power might have been able to triumph over challenges that would defeat a pair of either species.

To this day we say that opposites attract. Perhaps they always have.

Imagine how we must have looked to them! Frail, poorly protected from the elements, deformed heads.

We have no idea what the standards of beauty were for Mesolithic Homo sapiens. Their lives were "nasty, brutal and short," to misappropriate a quotation, so the strength and durability of the Neanderthal body may have been appealing. A family with one sapiens for intellect and one Neanderthal for bone-busting power might have been able to triumph over challenges that would defeat a pair of either species.

To this day we say that opposites attract. Perhaps they always have.

Imagine how we must have looked to them! Frail, poorly protected from the elements, deformed heads.

Well dude, if you spot a real Neanderthal beauty out there someday as I described in my previous post, go for it......... :D

Neanderthals and humans lived side by side
They still do, according to my dance partners.

They still do, according to my dance partners.

I've danced with a few knuckle scrapers myself. :p

I've danced with a few knuckle scrapers myself. :p
The Earth must be made truly round!

The Earth must be made truly round!

I think its Maya.

We delude ourselves into seeing ourselves as we think we are, and everyone else becomes unreal.

I think its Maya.

We delude ourselves into seeing ourselves as we think we are, and everyone else becomes unreal.
Sore toes is a tell-tale. :P

It was the early shamans of the human tribes who would spend days in the bowels of those caves staring at the cave drawings coming up with solutions to herd animals making it easier to hunt. They would create rituals of arm waving and moans to get the group to follow along with their ideas. Once the neanderthals came along, they would bring them down into these caves and get them to join the group in these rituals.

The beginnings of religion, and the beginning of the end of neanderthals.

It was the early shamans of the human tribes who would spend days in the bowels of those caves staring at the cave drawings coming up with solutions to herd animals making it easier to hunt. They would create rituals of arm waving and moans to get the group to follow along with their ideas. Once the neanderthals came along, they would bring them down into these caves and get them to join the group in these rituals.

The beginnings of religion, and the beginning of the end of neanderthals.


I don't know about shamans, but the earliest cave paintings, found in france are over 30,000 years old and are reportedly gorgeous, showing that man was a skilled artist even then.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1575000/images/_1577421_cave300.jpg

A new dating of spectacular prehistoric cave paintings reveals them to be much older than previously thought.
Carbon isotope analysis of charcoal used in pictures of horses at Chauvet, south-central France, show that they are 30,000 years old, a discovery that should prompt a rethink about the development of art.

The remarkable Chauvet drawings were discovered in 1994 when potholers stumbled upon a narrow entrance to several underground chambers in a rocky escarpment in the Ardeche region.

"Prehistorians, who have traditionally interpreted the evolution of prehistoric art as a steady progression from simple to more complex representations, may have to reconsider existing theories of the origins of art," she says.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1575000/images/_1577421_cavemap150.jpg

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1577421.stm

I don't know about shamans, but the earliest cave paintings, found in france are over 30,000 years old and are reportedly gorgeous, showing that man was a skilled artist even then.

A skilled artist in many ways. Too bad for the Neanderthals.

A skilled artist in many ways. Too bad for the Neanderthals.

Surely a lesson in there for those who care to learn.

Surely a lesson in there for those who care to learn.

Except for those who are the result of shamans.

Except for those who are the result of shamans.

Then you must be a Neanderthal :rolleyes:

Then you must be a Neanderthal :rolleyes:

And you a shaman.

And you a shaman.
*************
M*W: I heard an interesting conversation by two middle-aged black men on a city bus. It surprised me as to their reasoning, but it was worth listening to.

One man says to the other, "white people didn't evolve from the earth." "Black folks did." "That's why Black folks own the world. It's ours, not whitey's." "White men came to earth from the stars and they inbred with the Neanderthals, that's us." "Then whitey tried to take over." "But whitey is not from the earth but from the stars. We are the natural Earthly humans." "Whitey don't belong here."

Perplexed yet amazed, I couldn't help but learn something about racism, slavery and ownership, from a little eavesdropping, and that was:

1) blacks may be the descendants of the Neanderthals and whites are not;

2) blacks are the creators and beholders of racism, not whites;

3) if what they say is true, whites evolved from a more intelligent species that was placed on Planet Earth, but blacks were not;

4) whites may be hybrids and blacks are nothing but Neanderthal;

5) there's definitely a difference between blacks and whites. Is it genetic?

6) where does that leave us?

Then you must be a Neanderthal :rolleyes:
300 Million years ago, Nature selected for divergent maleness as the savior of what would afterwards become femaleness.

The message of the brutish stepped-on toe is to remind the stepee that there's more to success in life than just dancing with oneself.

;)

1) blacks may be the descendants of the Neanderthals and whites are not;


There is no possible way black and white dna could be as similar with different anscestral species - no way.
This idea is koo-koo.

4) whites may be hybrids and blacks are nothing but Neanderthal;

5) there's definitely a difference between blacks and whites. Is it genetic?

6) where does that leave us?

It may be as simple as the development of the brains, perhaps Neanderthals had no pineal gland, and no ability to produce melatonin. Once they started mixing with humans, it would only be a matter to time.

It may be as simple as the development of the brains, perhaps Neanderthals had no pineal gland, and no ability to produce melatonin. Once they started mixing with humans, it would only be a matter to time.

Considering melatonin is found in all living creatures (from algae to humans), isn't that rather a stretch?

Melatonin has many actions in vertebrates, with some considered hormonal. But are some melatonin actions more ancient than others? A survey of the tissues which synthesizemelatonin demonstrates that some are more recent vertebrate characters compared to others, indicating that melatonin action in these tissues also is more recent. The lateral eyes and pineal organs appear to be very ancient sources of melatonin and any action this molecule has within these tissues should be considered primordial.

http://icb.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/26/4/985

Considering melatonin is found in all living creatures (from algae to humans), isn't that rather a stretch?

Of course it's a stretch, so we can find more reason to think shamanism was the key factor.

Of course it's a stretch, so we can find more reason to think shamanism was the key factor.

One point of view...

http://www.economist.com/images/20050409/D1505ST4.jpg

Here is another:

...according to Dr Shogren's paper in a forthcoming edition of the Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organisation, it was neither cave paintings nor better spear points that led to Homo sapiens's dominance. It was a better economic system.

One thing Homo sapiens does that Homo neanderthalensis shows no sign of having done is trade. The evidence suggests that such trade was going on even 40,000 years ago. Stone tools made of non-local materials, and sea-shell jewellery found far from the coast, are witnesses to long-distance exchanges. That Homo sapiens also practised division of labour and specialisation is suggested not only by the skilled nature of his craft work, but also by the fact that his dwellings had spaces apparently set aside for different uses.

To see if trade might be enough to account for the dominance of Homo sapiens, Dr Shogren and his colleagues created a computer model of population growth that attempts to capture the relevant variables for each species. These include fertility, mortality rates, hunting efficiency and the number of skilled and unskilled hunters in each group, as well as levels of skill in making objects such as weapons, and the ability to specialise and trade.

According to the model, this arrangement resulted in everyone getting more meat, which drove up fertility and thus increased the population. Since the supply of meat was finite, that left less for Neanderthals, and their population declined.

http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3839749

I have a non standard theory of perception which explains many things the standard theory can not. Amoung the dozens of facts that can only be explained by my theory a couple relate to this thread. I quote from my earlier post of the entire theory:

"The primary task of living organisms is to stay alive, at least long enough to reproduce. Neural computations require time. The world we would experience, if our experiences were the “emergent results” of many successive stages of neural transformations would be delayed by a significant fraction of a second. During our evolutionary history nothing truly discontinuous ever happened in our visual environment. (The discontinuous changes in movie and TV scenes did not exist.) None the less, it was essential for our ancestors to have a real-time understanding of their surroundings despite nature’s temporal continuity and our neural delays. - Try ducking a rock thrown towards your head if your only visual experience of it is a display projected into the eyes (electronic goggles) that delay the image by 0.1 seconds! A real-time simulation of the environment can be achieved in a neural simulation by slightly projecting ahead the sensory information to compensate for neural processing delays.

A real-time simulation would have great survival value. Perhaps the Neanderthals still experienced slightly delayed “emerging transforms” of retinal data when our smaller brained and weaker ancestors perfected a real-time simulation of their environment. (Ecological pressure from the larger and stronger Neanderthals would have accelerated the rate of evolution in our ancestors.) Likewise, the “Out of Africa” mystery, (Why one branch of hominoids, expanded and dominated all others beginning approximately 50,000 years ago.), which is often assumed to be related to the acquisition of “autonomous language” (no gestures required - hands free and education facilitated), might better be explained by the development of the real-time simulation of the environment...."

One point of view...

Here is another:

From an economist, whose press release of his article made it's impact on exactly the type of person who would use it, eh sam? Here's an armchair paleoanthropologist's review of that article:

"On the News Release:
It may seem strange in a review of a very technical paper to discuss the press release that announced it. But it is exactly here that many a popular misconception of science and other scholarly work has its origin - the press release. The attempt to make a very detailed and interesting scholarly paper "relevant" or at least to get it popular attention all too often results in the use of phrases like "free trade" or someother modern sounding phrase. In my marketing days, we called these hooks. The result is, the public starts with a false impression of what the scholars are doing. "

http://www.telecomtally.com/blog/2005/03/the_economics_o.html

Australia also has aboriginal relics dating back 40,000 years.... there seems to be the blind spot around 6000 b.c. to 3000 b.c. where civilisation spontaneously became argicultural based and started learning written language, mathematics and astronomy etc. Did we just hunt and gather from 100,000 B.C. to 3100 B.C??

From an economist, whose press release of his article made it's impact on exactly the type of person who would use it, eh sam? Here's an armchair paleoanthropologist's review of that article:

"On the News Release:
It may seem strange in a review of a very technical paper to discuss the press release that announced it. But it is exactly here that many a popular misconception of science and other scholarly work has its origin - the press release. The attempt to make a very detailed and interesting scholarly paper "relevant" or at least to get it popular attention all too often results in the use of phrases like "free trade" or someother modern sounding phrase. In my marketing days, we called these hooks. The result is, the public starts with a false impression of what the scholars are doing. "

http://www.telecomtally.com/blog/2005/03/the_economics_o.html

So you disagree that economics could be a reason?

Here is another theory :

30 scientists have come together to publish the most definitive answer yet to this enigma. They say Neanderthals simply did not have the technological know-how to survive the increasingly harsh winters. And intriguingly, rather than being Neanderthal killers, the original human settlers of Europe almost suffered the same fate.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18124311.600-big-chill-killed-off-the-neanderthals.html

Australia also has aboriginal relics dating back 40,000 years.... there seems to be the blind spot around 6000 b.c. to 3000 b.c. where civilisation spontaneously became argicultural based and started learning written language, mathematics and astronomy etc. Did we just hunt and gather from 100,000 B.C. to 3100 B.C??No, you've missed quite a lot of history there. The technology we call agriculture was invented around 9,500BCE. (Sorry, it's known down to the century but I haven't got the date written down.) The earliest cultivated crops of which we have archeological evidence date from then. They were discovered so recently that the announcement was made this year and to everyone's surprise they were figs.

Agriculture both enabled and required people to settle in one location year-round. So they stopped being nomadic hunter-gatherers and developed the technology to build increasingly sturdy permanent villages. Figs don't contain much protein so people still had to hunt animals and gather nuts and seeds, but at least farming provided the major part of their diet--sheer calories--making hunting and gathering just one occupation among the villagers rather than everyone's main occupation.

After about a thousand years of farming, the nutritional value of cooked grains and legumes was discovered and they were no longer dependent on meat and nuts for protein. At more or less the same time (I'm being really sloppy with the chronology here but the general sequence is what matters) the other half of agricultural technology was invented: animal husbandry. (Notice that the word "technology" simply means "invented techniques" and is not limited to physical objects like tools or scientific wonders like electricity. Besides, the discovery of how animal reproduction works was a real scientific wonder in its era. :)) People now had a steady supply of meat and dairy products without needing to hunt except for sport or a little extra pizazz in their diet.

Villages kept getting larger and trading with each other and the more perceptive inhabitants noticed that this resulted in a division of labor, so people gravitated into jobs that they were really good at, and in economy of scale, so that producing large quantities of stuff is more efficient than small quantities. The combined result of these two principles was a surplus: the excess of production over need. Some people got to have the jobs of producing comfortable furniture, art objects, music, being teachers and explorers, etc.

Around 8000BCE several tribes who got along well decided to try combining their villages in one location to make division of labor and economy of scale even more efficient and to create an even larger surplus so life would be sweeter. This was Jericho, the world's first city, surrounded by farmland.

The first cities were made of wood and thatch and other materials that don't preserve well so their ruins are pretty sketchy and only an archeologist can read them. But soon the technology of stonemasonry was invented. If I'm not mistaken we have the ruins of stone cities going back considerably further than your date of the dawn of "civilization"--the building of cities. (Plenty of Egyptian relics are older than your date.) And it actually goes further back than that because the wooden cities were still civilization.

So there was a long period between the loss of our dependence on hunting and gathering and the building of the first civilization in the Middle East. The first cities were built when agriculture was a well established technology.

BTW, as I have noted in several other threads, humans are a pack-social species and we function well in villages, where everybody knows everybody else and they're all related. Our instincts keep us from hurting or cheating each other. The transition to cities meant learning to live in harmony with strangers, which is a challenge to our pack-social instincts.

We are still struggling with this challenge but it is a successful struggle. Most people have no problem feeling kinship with 20,000 "pack-mates" in a large town. That's an evolution of more than two orders of magnitude over the size of the packs of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Our biology hasn't adapted that quickly, our instincts have not changed. We've done it all with our ability to reason and learn.

http://www.rdos.net/eng/asperger.htm

Originally Posted by samcdkey
Neanderthals and humans lived side by side

They still do!

Wether they are 'throwbacks' or not, they are still here, i've seen them.
I know a person who's skull shape will stop you in your tracks.
And you can have a normal conversation with them.

Now, would it be ethical to remove one from their humble lives, study them and show them to the world as a living fossil?

http://www.rdos.net/eng/asperger.htmFascinating. A lot of interesting anthropological, sociological, and medical stuff in there, regardless of whether the theory is true.

The scholarship seems sound. The drawing of some of the conclusions is a little flimsy, but most of the time conditional words are thrown in to acknowledge that.

Why isn't the author's name listed, or did I just miss it?

I'm concerned about how thoroughly this paper has been peer reviewed. It reads like a translation, most likely from German judging from the syntax errors. Or it could just be written by a native speaker of German, but in that case I can't believe that it could have been originally published like this in English without a better edit. No academic community would let it go through this way.

In any case I'd like to know how well and at what level this work has been scrutinized and how widely accepted the theory is.

The handful of things of which I have some knowledge, such as the joining of human and dog packs and the domestication of livestock, contradict what I have learned, and the author admits it.

I can't wade through his arguments that are based on genetics, which makes me unqualified to judge. I'd like to know how many experts in the field have reviewed this research and judged it.

I can't imagine what it would be like running into another species of Human. How bizarre. I think I would scream.

I can't imagine what it would be like running into another species of Human. How bizarre. I think I would scream.
Considering how running into other tribes of our same specie induces in us screams of cognitive apoplexy, I think you're right.

Considering how running into other tribes of our same specie induces in us screams of cognitive apoplexy, I think you're right.Good point! We manage to kill and starve eachother quite well as ONE species. We are not advanced enough to deal with another kind of human wandering onto our Rock. I suspect there are humanoids we have never seen before, out there in the big, black sky, but let's hope we advance alot more before they arrive & show their faces.

I think the homo sapiens developed baseball, and then were able to practice their clubbing and rock throwing all the time. The children, of course, would spend most of the day playing rock-baseball developing many skills that would be good for hunting later - quick sprints, aim, club strength, etc.
This was also the beginning of the concept of rules and laws, which were used to organize societies. The neanderthals didn't want to play because they wanted to start rock bands (pun intended) instead.

This is obvioiusly what happened.

I can't imagine what it would be like running into another species of Human. How bizarre. I think I would scream.

Is that before or after they beat you up with a club?:D