Neanderthal News

[Rokcet Scientist]

That sucks.

[Cognito]

The upshot is that while an HNS female rarely survived birthing a hybrid Cro Magon, which had a rounder skull with a larger cross section, the Cro Magnon female would have far less trouble with an HNS hybrid that had a smaller, but longer skull than her pelvis expected. Thus, out of all the thousands of HNS female lines, only one mtDNA line, from 50,000 BP stayed in the European Gene pool, and only 6 Cro Magnon lines made it.

DB, I will work on this one but please clarify: which of the seven lines was descended from HNS? Or is that a general statement without any particular preference? (ie check box "f" - any of the above). You realize that in order for HNS mtDNA to pass forward the hybrid must have been a Cro Magnon male with HNS female. Then, the hybrid female must have given an unbroken female descent line to present day. I apologize in advance for referring to Wikipedia but it seems most expediant:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Daughters_of_Eve

Instead of seven daughters there could be 10 to 12. Which one represents the HNS in the woodpile?

[Cognito]

An ancient bone flute segment, estimated at about 43,ooo up to 82,ooo years old, was found recently at a Neanderthal campsite by Dr. Ivan Turk, a paleontologist at the Slovenian Academy of Sciences in Ljubljana. It's the first flute ever to be associated with Neanderthals and its confirmed age makes it the oldest known musical instrument. The find is also important for its implications regarding the evolution of musical scales. It's to this latter issue my analysis in this article is addressed.

Beags, this is truly an interesting article. It must have taken some amount of time to figure out just where to put those holes. I'm sure it wasn't the only flute in their repertoire and handing down the musical technology from one generation to the next must have taken some amoutn of complex communication.

[daybrown]

DB, I will work on this one but please clarify: which of the seven lines was descended from HNS? Or is that a general statement without any particular preference? (ie check box "f" - any of the above). You realize that in order for HNS mtDNA to pass forward the hybrid must have been a Cro Magnon male with HNS female. Then, the hybrid female must have given an unbroken female descent line to present day.

I've not read Skykes' book. I did see him present his case on TV. I heard him say that the mtDNA existed in Europe 50,000 to 10,000 BP. Simple logic. As noted in this thread, Cro Magnon appeared in Europe 30-40k years ago. Ergo, the 50k mtDNA line was not Cro Magnon. HNS was the only other hominid line there.

Clouding this whole issue are the racist and politically correct sensibilities. I'm not a member of any group, and am free to think outside group think. I can see how one HNS female may have made it into Europe 50,000 or more years ago, but so far as we know, she would have only had Neanderthals to breed with.

We dont have a lotta ancient samples to go on, and no way of knowing whether that little which we have is representative. But even so, we now have the recent report of a hybrid child found in Portugal, and some skulls that look morphed from Central Europe. Given the small sample size, the chances that we would find a few freaks is remarkable. Then too, H. Floriensis challenged the conventional view.

Finally, if you nailed hides from all of today's hominid lines on the wall, one, and *only* one hide would stand out from among all the rest. There is also only one hominid line that has any significant numbers with red melanin.

And when we look at the skeletons, just one line has shorter digits and forelimbs, with bigger noses, & bushier beards, all of which look like HNS hybridization. How many trees does it take to make a forest? But I really dont care all that much. I'm not trying to sell a book or build an academic career. I offer this for your consideration; what you do with it is not my problem.

[Manystones]

Beagle,

I think it only fair to point out - to the casual reader at least - that the "famed Neanderthal flute" is not widely considered to be a flute. The jury* is pretty much agreed on this one. It does however raise the wider question of at what point do we attribute "cognition" to our ancestory, upon what evidence and why?

* I believe Min has another name for them.

regards

[Cognito]

I've not read Skykes' book. I did see him present his case on TV. I heard him say that the mtDNA existed in Europe 50,000 to 10,000 BP. Simple logic. As noted in this thread, Cro Magnon appeared in Europe 30-40k years ago. Ergo, the 50k mtDNA line was not Cro Magnon. HNS was the only other hominid line there.

So DB, you are pointing to the following:

Haplogroup U5, age estimated at about 52,000 kya, is the oldest subclade of haplogroup U. Haplogroup U5 and its subclades are most common in Sami and Finns, but it is spread widely at lower levels throughout Europe. U5 is found also in small frequencies and at much lower diversity in near East suggesting back-migration of people from northern Europe to south. In his popular book The Seven Daughters of Eve, Bryan Sykes named the originator of haplogroup U5 Ursula.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup ... logroup_U5

Further "Artifactual evidence indicates that modern humans were in Europe by at least 40,000 and possibly as early as 46,000 years ago. Dating of the earliest modern human fossils in Asia is less secure, but it is likely that they were present there by around 60,000 years ago."
Source: http://anthro.palomar.edu/homo2/mod_homo_4.htm

That's cool. It's somewhat like the microcephalin D allele. It just pops up out of the blue in Europe at 37,000bp and spreads throughout the HS population from there.

[john]

All -

The intuitive concept of "the great mother" was perhaps the earliest of all, and bears an uncanny resemblance to the latter scientific tracking of mitochondrial dna.

As for cognition. I spent today learning more about "fishing the salt" - flyfishing that is - for searun cutthroat trout, salmon, and steelhead, near where I live on the Olympic Peninsula.

Which brings up an interesting topic. Seasonal nomadism.

In my opinion, mastery of seasonal nomadism is a major cognitive event, demanding knowledge of weather, seasons, tides, animals, fish, plants, and many other niche knowledge horizons, along with the tools to work the resource.

Add to that the needed collective and coordinated knowledge of a group of hominids to successfully survive the round of the seasons, year after year, to the end point of a couple hundred thousand years - let's just take the neandertal for example - and you have something fucking amazing.

Pardon the French.

These folks may have lacked symbolic thinking, in our terms, but they seem to have succeeded quite well in the anticipatory cognitive thinking related to hunting and gathering activities throughout the passage of not only one year's seasons, but larger climate cycles.

Of course, there is little formal evidence, other than the longevity of their success as a subspecies.

But that does not detract from the argument.

As for interbreeding, I personally think it was very unlikely, and was not germaine to the success/failure of the various homo subspecies.

Enough for now.

john

[Beagle]

Beagle,

I think it only fair to point out - to the casual reader at least - that the "famed Neanderthal flute" is not widely considered to be a flute. The jury* is pretty much agreed on this one. It does however raise the wider question of at what point do we attribute "cognition" to our ancestory, upon what evidence and why?

* I believe Min has another name for them.

regards

Hi Richard, yes, it's very fair to present both sides. I was only registering my opinion on the flute. The Club says that the holes might have been made by a bear gnawing on the bone. The "casual reader" should know that the bear femur had been hollowed out and had had holes perfectly drilled on one side in a straight line to make a flute. These holes do not match any bear dentition. Musical experts state that it was a flute.

It's also worth mentioning that when it was first found, the Club insisted that it had to have been made by HSS, but when that was not possible, they decided it must have been done by a bear. Smart bear. Anyway, my opinion is on record.

I'm not yet willing to give an opinion on the flower pollen on Shanidar 4. It was initially declared to be grave decoration. This was back when HN was classified as Homo Sapien Neanderthalensis. But then the bones of a rodent, known to collect flower and other seeds, were found in the cave. So the Club has decided that it was the work of a pack rat.

There is no explanation as to why the rodent was so discriminating in it's taste on this occassion, gathering decorative flowers and medicinal herbs only, or why he placed them around only the one grave. Smart rat.

Nevertheless, the bones are in the cave, and the Club won't recognize Shanidar 4 as a flower burial anymore..

I also think it's worthwhile for the casual reader to know that prior to the mDNA evidence, which stated that there had been no interbreeding, HN was categorized as a sub-species of modern man and was considered his equal for a long time. The predominant thought at that time was a multi-regional model of human evolution. That's what the fossil story dictated. Still does. Genetics seems to be on the verge of reversing that early finding but will probably say that successful interbreeding did not happen that often. We'll see what happens then.

[Forum Monk]

Maybe the bear made a flute and maybe other pack rats put the flowers on their rat buddy's grave.

There are always reasonable explanations, Beagle.

[Manystones]

The "casual reader" should know that the bear femur had been hollowed out and had had holes perfectly drilled on one side in a straight line to make a flute. These holes do not match any bear dentition. Musical experts state that it was a flute.

With regard to being hollowed out - it really isn't this straightforward.

Nowell stated in an interview that "at Turk's invitation, [Nowell] and Chase went to Slovenia last year... They came away even more skeptical that the bear bone had ever emitted music. For one thing, both ends had clearly been gnawed away by something, perhaps a wolf, seeking greasy marrow. The holes could have simply been perforated in the process by pointed canine or carnassial teeth, and their roundness could be due to natural damage after the bone was abandoned. The presence of marrow suggests that no one had bothered to hollow out the bone as if to create an end-blown flute. Says Nowell, '[Turk's] willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, whereas we're not.' "

The opinion of musical experts is I believe a moot point in this instance. Further as far as I am aware there is no microscopic analysis showing that the holes were as you put it "perfectly drilled". Once again, for the record, here is the link to the Wiki article, which I am surprised you didn't provide in the interest of balance. The specific quote provided is from d'Errico et al 2003.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divje_Babe

"A well-known example of a controversial musical instrument is that of the so-called Neandertal flute from Divje Babe Cave in Slovenia, found in the Middle Paleolithic layers of the cave and described by the finders as possibly the oldest musical instrument in the world (Fink, 1996; Turk, 1997; Turk et al., 1995). It has been demonstrated (d'Errico et al., 1998a,b) that holes of the same size, shape, and number as those present on the Divje Babe femur occur on cave bear limb bones from cave bear bone accumulations with no human occupation, and that a number of features described as human-made by the discoverers should more likely be interpreted as the result of carnivore damage (Chase and Nowell, 1998).
"A further study (d'Errico, 1998b, 2000) involved detailed analysis of the putative flute and of 77 other perforated bones from different levels of Divje Babe and from four other Slovenian cave bear sites. Among these sites, Krizna Jama is of particular interest as it contains a natural cave bear bone assemblage with no traces of human occupation. A number of variables were recorded. The flute and several others bones were submitted to microscopic analysis. The new study confirms the interpretation of the holes as the result of carnivore damage. In 70% of the cases, the holes on perforated bones are associated with damage characteristic of carnivore action, such as pitting and scoring, and in 20% of the cases, bones show counterbite marks in the form of opposing perforations, or perforations opposite to impressions produced by tooth pressure. Seventy-three percent of the perforated bones belong to young bears, as is the case for the putative flute.
"Holes occur in almost all bones, but they are particularly abundant on limb bones and among them, on femora, the bone on which the purported flute was carved. The presence of two or possibly three perforations on the suggested flute cannot therefore be considered as evidence of human manufacture, as this is a common feature in the studied sample. In the same way, the relatively large size of the holes does not indicate anthropic carving. In fact, the maximum and minimum diameters of the holes on the putative flute are close to the mean value of those of the comparative faunal sample. Moreover, the correlation between the maximum and minimum diameter in this sample indicates a clear tendency towards slightly elongated holes, the same pattern that we observe when measuring the two complete holes of the suggested flute. In the Slovenian sample, 28% of the holes occur in compact bone. The majority of these have only one hole, but bones with two or more holes are also present.
"Another femur of a young cave bear from the same site shows two holes very similar in size and shape to those on the supposed flute, recorded on the same face and in the same anatomical position. Nonetheless, this object could never have been 'playable,' as its epiphyses were not completely opened. Microscopic analysis of the putative flute itself confirms the natural origin of the holes. Many traces typical of carnivore action, such as scoring and pitting, were found near the holes and the ends of the bone (Fig. 9). Clear tooth impressions are also present on the face opposite the holes. The distribution of different types of carnivore damage on the bone surface is consistent with the interpretation of the two holes as resulting from carnivore action. A large deep impression found on the anterior face near the proximal end, indicating strong pressure exerted by carnivore teeth, can reasonably be interpreted as the counterbite of the anterior hole.
"The presence of pitting near the two holes suggests that carnivore teeth touched this area repeatedly. The presence of scoring and pitting at both ends, associated with other traces produced by carnivores, confirms that the bone was heavily damaged by carnivores. In sum, all the evidence suggests that the perforations on the so called Divje Babe 'flute,' like other damage on the same bone, were produced by nonhuman agents. The most probable agent would appear to be the cave bears themselves; the frequency distribution of the hole diameters recorded in the Slovenian sample is very similar to that observed on sites where cave bear is the only species represented, and we have tangible proof that a cave bear could produce large holes in bones with its teeth.
"Of course, this does not mean that Neandertals were unable to manufacture and play musical instruments. It simply means that we cannot use this object to support that hypothesis and that a taphonomic analysis of putative ancient musical instruments is an essential prerequisite to any discussion of their significance for the origin of musical tradition and the evolution of human cognitive abilities."

My highlighting.

As you are probably aware Beagle I tend toward a multi-regional model myself. For the moment I wouldn't be prepared to stick my neck out so far as to state that this bone was a flute, IMHO the case for hasn't survived falsification too well.

[Beagle]

By now we should all be used to the kind of picture that is created in the mind by these papers that we post. The flute (seen here) is hollowed out, the holes are symmetrical and in a straight line.

In every case that we discuss regarding Neanderthal, there will be plenty of papers written opposing the original, and predominant, conclusions by other scientists. That is all well and good. But it should not keep people like us, in an internet forum, from expressing our opinion.

I disagree Richard that the musicologists do not have a say in whether or not this is a flute. After reading the scientific papers, which have been out for a long time, I chose music experts expressly for their added opinion on one side or the other. They state without reservation that it is a flute and that the odds of one being accidently made by animals is nearly impossible. I'll post another.

Richard, I've seen some of your lithics, and read your conclusions, which are not accepted by the scientific community. You weren't timid about rendering your opinion anyway. So I'm a little surprised that you advise me not to stick my neck out. The Club can't touch us here.

[Beagle]

http://cogweb.ucla.edu/ep/FluteDebate.html

This claim is harder to believe when it is calculated that chances for holes to be arranged, by chance, in a pattern that matches the spacings of 4 notes of a diatonic flute, are only one in hundreds to occur .
The analysis I made on the Internet (http://www.webster.sk.ca/greenwich/fl-compl.htm) regarding the bone being capable of matching 4 notes of the do, re, mi (diatonic) scale included the possibility that the bone was extended with another bone "mouthpiece" sufficiently long to make the notes sound fairly in tune. While Nowell says "it's a big leap of faith to conclude that this was an intentionally constructed flute," it's a bigger leap of faith to accept the immense coincidence that animals blindly created a hole-spacing pattern with holes all in line (in what clearly looks like so many other known bone flutes which are made to play notes in a step-wise scale) and blindly create a pattern that also could play a known acoustic scale if the bone was extended. That's too much coincidence for me to accept. It is more likely that it is an intentionally made flute, although admittedly with only the barest of clues regarding its original condition.

[Cognito]

I've not read Skykes' book. I did see him present his case on TV. I heard him say that the mtDNA existed in Europe 50,000 to 10,000 BP. Simple logic. As noted in this thread, Cro Magnon appeared in Europe 30-40k years ago. Ergo, the 50k mtDNA line was not Cro Magnon. HNS was the only other hominid line there.

DB, haplogroups mtDNA U and K are evidently related with U being slightly older than K. Here are the projected travel routes into Europe.



That's a nice distribution map, but there are certain problems with its presentation. The route into Europe through the Caucasus chain is virtually impassable by land through the mountains. More likely, entry was made across Turkey and Greece (by the way, the Bosporus sill was probably not cut until 14,400bp at earliest). Since some geneticists place the origin of mtDNA U in Romania, a more direct route is reasonable.

The other problem with the map as you stated earlier in your hypothesis: mtDNA U arises at 55,000 years ago according to the map (estimated at 52,000 elsewhere), but there is no evidence of HS in Europe prior to 46,000 years ago. Why the difference?

The convenient answer to the above that I have read is that mtDNA U originated in the Near East and traveled to Europe. That's a little too convenient since that haplotype is not represented in any meaningful way in that locale. I will set your observation to a couple of people as a question. They may have a reasonable answer to your observation.

[Manystones]

Beagle,

I didn't advise as implied above, I merely stated that I personally couldn't reach that conclusion based on the arguments from both sides. The way in which this was originally presented on this forum was that it was a flute - no two ways about it. This is clearly some way from the truth and what compelled me to respond.

I believe there is a difference between presenting selective evidence to support a stance and presenting previously unseen evidence to support a hypothesis.

The last link you provided was a little more balanced and it was only a shame that you chose to quote the part in favour of the flute conclusion omitting the arguments against. I note that there are several immediately obvious flaws in the concluding precis (1-6). Of specific note is no.3 where Turk and Bastiani state that there is an absence of dents, scratches and other signs of gnawing and counter-bites on the artifact which is in direct contrast to the conclusion of d'Errico that "A large deep impression found on the anterior face near the proximal end, indicating strong pressure exerted by carnivore teeth, can reasonably be interpreted as the counterbite of the anterior hole".

With regard to musicians again I think it is fair to state that Judd supports the alternate view, so there isn't agreement here either.

Incidentally I have also looked at statistical probablity in respect of one of my items, but it is difficult to relate this to the real world and account for the fact that occasionally coincidences do occur. It is well to remember that the statistics inthemselves are not proof of anything. It is like saying that bitten holes are usually at the ends of bones... this may well often be the case but it does not mean that they always are.

With regard to predominant conclusions, opinions, etc, I am just playing Devils advocate, please do not take it personally.

In respect of my conclusions not being accepted by the scientific community this is not entirely true. I have had various items confirmed to be knapped so like always opinion is split. The issue of iconography is clearly controversial and the relevance and similarity of arguments to the material I am working on is partly why this case interests me.

To clarify my position, specific microscopic analysis demonstrating that the holes were the result of human agency are desperately lacking. One would expect to find evidence of drilling in the form of striations corresponding to a drilling action.

[Beagle]

Thank you, Richard. It's always a pleasure to have your input. That's very good news about your lithics, I didn't know that some had been accepted.

I'm going to be posting some of these HNS popular notions and giving my opinion on some of them. There we be other views, of course, but my reason for this kind of presentation is to stimulate some critical thinking from the readers, instead of reading without questioning.

Moving on:

http://arstechnica.com/journals/science ... hal-genome

The new analysis was triggered by differences in the methods and results in the two papers that were published on the topic. A paper in Science described cloning Neanderthal DNA in bacteria, and then sequencing it. The one in Nature sequenced amplified DNA directly. Although there was substantial agreement between the two, the Nature paper suggested that modern humans and Neanderthals shared a common ancestor more recently, and may have interbred after their separation.

The authors of the PLoS paper obtained the original sequence data from both papers, and performed a new analysis of it. They discovered that the data in the Nature paper contains sequence differences that appear to have arisen recently within the human lineage, which suggested something was wrong. Performing an estimation of the human-Neanderthal split date using the Nature data produced a value of 35,000 years, which is completely incompatible with the fossil record. Finally, using a date of 350,000 years for the split (obtained using the data from the Science paper), they found that the Nature data indicated extremely high levels of interbreeding between humans and Neanderthals; the Science data continued to suggest there was none.

All of these results point to one conclusion: the Neanderthal sequence in the Nature paper looks far more like that of modern humans than any other data would suggest is possible. Of course, there's a simple and obvious explanation for that discrepancy: the sequence is from modern humans.

The new paper explores this via the following reasoning: ancient DNA is more likely to be damaged and fragmented, and so contamination is more likely to appear in longer, less damaged fragments. They divided the Nature sequence data according to the length into short, medium, and long pools. The short fragments give an age estimate for the Neanderthal-human split that's essentially identical to the one obtained with the Science data. But, as the fragments get longer, the age shrinks. When fragments greater than 100 bases long are examined, they give an age estimate for the split that is younger than some splits within modern human populations. Thus, the longer fragments are very likely to be contamination from modern humans.

The authors recognize that more work needs to be done to sort out some remaining discrepancies, but the new analysis strongly suggests that a large portion of the original data was the result of contamination. We know less about the Neanderthals than we thought we did. Still, the analysis suggests that there is real Neanderthal sequence among the contaminants, and suggests a fairly simple analysis may help us extract it. It's a great example of how science can self-correct.

John Hawks addressed this problem of contamination a few weeks ago, in an article I posted. It's his opinion that the sample (a Neanderthal humerus) might be from an already admixtured human. If true, the father would be HSS as the bone was identified as HNS through mDNA testing. This will take a while to unravel.