Neanderthal News

[Forum Monk]

It seems some of you may basically agree with me. I think scavenging makes sense and tools fashioned for that purpose allowed tribes to eat and clothe themselves. It doesn't take a huge intellectual leap to progress from tools which cut dead meat to tools which cut live meat and we've already discussed in the past how pits and throwing weapons allowed them to make kills from a safe distance.

Once early man began eating meat, the progress to hunting was probably very rapid.

[Minimalist]

All predators will steal a meal if they can. I can't see where early man would have been any different

[Beagle]

H. Habilis, the first toolmaker, is thought to have made his living scavenging.

[Digit]

The idea of a spear, once you can produce a sharp edged stone, is probably easier than attaching the stone to a shaft Beag. If that is so then the spear, as a simple pointed stick, is probably a lot older then the evidence for it.

[Beagle]

Without a doubt. Nova has a program out now showing that Chimps can do that.

[Rokcet Scientist]

Without a doubt. Nova has a program out now showing that Chimps can do that.

Which, to me, means even Lucy already used pointy sticks to poke and throw. So tool use is much older than HH! It, in fact, predated all species of humanoids and it is clearly not a unique capability of humanoids.

[Roberto]

http://www.azer.com/aiweb/categories/ma ... hcave.html

Interesting story ... Cave Bear's and Neantherhal's

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22545579/

http://www.photobox.ru/gallery/pic44.47.91818.html

[Digit]

And once again we have someone who should know better confusing average life span/life expectancy etc.
At 18 she was young, for all we know she may well have lived with her grand parents!
There seems to be no evidence that HSN or early HSS could not have lived to the same age as ourselves.
What would our life expectancy be today if we lived under the same conditions?

[Minimalist]

Cave-tools chipped and carved out of stone were found dating back to the Paleolithic and Mesolithic periods which would make them between 1-1.5 million years old

Didn't National Geo do something on a similar find in Georgia? Dmanisi or something?

Had to be HE at that time frame. Of course....he's a long way from Africa.

[Cognito]

The jawbone, with one molar totally intact and another partially broken, is believed to have belonged to a female about 18 years old. (In those days, she would have been considered "old" as the average life span is believed to have been about 20-22 years).

Digit you are absolutely correct and the person who wrote the above was not thinking. I had the same argument with a history professor while in graduate school. He wrote in his book that the American frontier was settled by teenagers since the average family age was below 20 years. I knew better since I had done a fair amount of genealogical research dealing with that period of time. A 40 year old couple with 15 children ages 25 on down would give an average family age of 17 years (go ahead, check my math).

The ancients were no different. It was probably rare for most young men to live a long and healthy life, but there is nothing to prevent people from living into their 70s or 80s. The average age in Greece was 22 years when Socrates died by arsenic poisoning in 399bc and he, like most philosophers lived to an old age (he was 71 upon his death).

[Digit]

I hoped for something better from such a writer though Cog. I wonder how many people who read it will take it as gospel?
You only need a high infant mortality rate and according to the maths nobody lives long enough to breed!

[Cognito]

From the MSNBC article:

Our ancestors had lots of predators and competitors to worry about — saber-toothed cats, dire wolves and even giant man-eating birds of prey.

Nice try, the but Titanis walleri shown in the movie 10,000bc died out 2 million years ago. So much for accuracy.

http://evomech1.blogspot.com/2007/01/ti ... ed-in.html

Digit, unfortunately the authors of these articles spread myth as fact which perpetuates silliness for years to come. Anybody who has bagged a black bear will tell you that they are opportunistic carnivors -- why should big-ass paleolithic cave bears be any different? Must be a slow news day.

Roberto, thank you for providing these articles. They give me even more ammunition to prove that the IQ of some of these writers falls just south of a cucumber.

[Minimalist]

[Forum Monk]

I knew better since I had done a fair amount of genealogical research dealing with that period of time. A 40 year old couple with 15 children ages 25 on down would give an average family age of 17 years (go ahead, check my math).

I concur Cogs. I have always heard about our ancesters having greatly reduced lifespans, but my own research does not support this. Many lived well into their 70's. Death from natural causes was not much different than now. It was the diseases which took a toll on our ancestors.

Of course ancient forms of tuberculosis, dysentery, scarlet fever, malaria, etc. also, likely thrived.

[Beagle]

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/02/2 ... alism.html

Feb. 27, 2008 -- A Neanderthal-eat-Neanderthal world may have spread a mad cow-like disease that weakened and reduced populations of the large Eurasian human, thereby contributing to its extinction, according to a new theory based on cannibalism that took place in more recent history.

Aside from illustrating that consumption of one's own species isn't exactly a healthy way to eat, the new theoretical model could resolve the longstanding mystery as to what caused Neanderthals, which emerged around 250,000 years ago, to disappear off the face of the Earth about 30,000 years ago.

"The story of Neanderthal extinction is one of the most intriguing in all of human evolution," author Simon Underdown told Discovery News. "Why did a large-brained, intelligent hominid that shared so many traits with us disappear?"

To resolve that question, Underdown, a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at Oxford Brookes University, studied a well-documented tribal group, the Fore of Papua New Guinea, who practiced ritualistic cannibalism.

Gory evidence uncovered in a French cave in 1999 revealed Neanderthals likely practiced cannibalism. The 100,000-120,000 year-old bones discovered at the cave site of Moula-Guercy near the west bank of the Rhone river suggested a group of Neanderthals defleshed the bones of at least six other individuals and then broke the bones apart with a hammerstone and anvil to remove the marrow and brains.

Although it's not clear why Neanderthals may have eaten each other, research on the Fore determined that maternal kin of certain deceased Fore individuals used to dismember corpses and regarded some human flesh as a valuable food source.

Beginning in the early 1900's, anthropologists additionally began to take note of an affliction named Kuru among the Fore. By the 1960's, Kuru reached epidemic levels and killed over 1,100 people.

Just when I think I've seen the craziest Neanderthal extinction theories, we now have Mad Neanderthal Disease.