Beagle wrote:
Assuming that you all are talking about the last ice age, Neanderthal was already effectively gone from the fossil record. Most of the time he spent in Europe it was chilly but tolerable.
The Riss ice age was from 180,000–130,000 years bp, the Würm ice age was from 70,000–10,000 years bp. Seems to me NH bore the brunt of those until his disappearance.
And there was a lot more land available to him that is now underwater.
90% of what is now the North Sea was fertile plains then, with large herds of mammoth and other megafauna to hunt.
Chilly Neanderthal paradise.
But no cliffs to chase the herds over . . .
Herds moved as seasons changed, so hunters would move with them. I doubt they had permanent settlements. Just summer hunting grounds and winter hunting grounds; and probably a 1000km apart.
Right RS. You've posted some very nice temperature/climate pics before. Although the "Ice Age" has been continuous, there have been interglacial periods when it was warmer. The mental image of HN living living in an ice bound environment is not all that accurate. There were pretty moderate summers. The winters were always very cold. They still are. The Gulf stream has a moderating effect as on gets more westerly in Europe. But HN lived out on the steppes, the near east, Ukraine, Georgia, etc. He followed his food. If the mammoth had no green grass, it went south. So did HN.
They'd still need timber for cooking Monk, no matter how mild the summer, so they are not likely to have strayed far beyond the timber line for any lenghthy period.
First people deny a thing, then they belittle it, then they say it was known all along! Von Humboldt
Forum Monk wrote:Herds moved as seasons changed, so hunters would move with them. I doubt they had permanent settlements. Just summer hunting grounds and winter hunting grounds; and probably a 1000km apart.
I agree with that. Just last spring though, evidence was found of a primitive trade network. There had to be contact between groups, or they wouldn't have been so successful for 220,000 yrs.
I was waiting for someone to bring that up Monk, it would seem to be true, but there has never been any evidence of a hearth being used for burning dung, only timber, and dung was logically easier to obtain than cutting timber.
Two brain cells and a bush fire would have demonstrated that timber burns, dung isn't quite so obvious.
First people deny a thing, then they belittle it, then they say it was known all along! Von Humboldt
Dung would work although I've never heard of any evidence of that being found. We know they used wood in their fires. And we know that every spring they burned their bedding, and got new stuff I guess. Sometime they burned their wooden huts - on purpose. Various theories about why they did that.
The main disadvantage of dung as I see it Beag is that it doesn't produce a great deal of heat without a special oven, now, I have cooked meat over wood embers but dung has less than half the calorific value of wood.
It's also dangerous in a closed camp site for example and is a primary cause of lung disease in rural India.
First people deny a thing, then they belittle it, then they say it was known all along! Von Humboldt
Digit wrote:True RS, and it seems that Doggerland was quite heavily populated. The so called Stone Age was in reality more of a Wood Age.
The world's largest collection of wooly mammoth bones and tusks, and other megafauna, at The Naturalis museum, contains thousands of specimens (http://www.naturalis.nl/asp/page.asp?al ... Fhome.html). The vast majority snagged in fishermans' nets in the North Sea. As they still do, dozens of times, each year.
Yet no human remains, either HN or HSS, from the same epochs have yet been 'fished up' in the same "mammoth rich" areas!
Strange.
Digit wrote:The chances of fossilization has been calculated, (don't ask me how), at one in a 100 Million! Not so strange on that basis RS.
But shouldn't those odds then also apply to the mammoth fossils?
With thousands of specimens in the Naturalis collection alone they obviously do not.
Same age! Same conditions!
Can't have it both ways.
Last edited by Rokcet Scientist on Sun Sep 16, 2007 4:59 pm, edited 3 times in total.
