Neanderthal News

Digit · Post by **Digit** » Fri Feb 29, 2008 3:50 am

Oh my Lord! Aren't we getting desperate now? With the distance between groups and the rarity of such diseases it might not be impossible but it damned unlikely.

Post by **Minimalist** » Fri Feb 29, 2008 8:28 am

Why not suggest that they were air crash survivors or the Donner Party?

Rokcet Scientist · Post by **Rokcet Scientist** » Fri Feb 29, 2008 6:07 pm

Dig, just because nobody ever thought of this scenario before doesn't mean it's impossible. It just means that: that this is one scenario, of many, we had not yet considered. We are the complicating factor here. Or rather, our psyche. Not the scenario. Sofar that scenario is not implausible as the Fore/Kuru example seems to show.

I'll keep it in the line-up of possibilities, for now.

Digit · Post by **Digit** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 3:22 am

Agreed RS. If you look I said that it wasn't impossible, just unlikely.

Beagle · Post by **Beagle** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 1:29 am

HNS roamed from the south of Spain, to Siberia, and to the entire middle East. It is conceivable that a group found itself in a "Donner party" situation and resorted to cannabalism, which in turn caused a spongiform illness and they all died. That's a stretch though.

Given the population density and the widespread range of Neanderthal, this seems to be an impossible scenario for extinction.

In the worst of winter, we now know that they ate reindeer, which were plentiful.

Flintz · Post by **Flintz** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 4:12 am

I agree, It's definitely stretching the credibility a bit, the way it's spun in the article. The authors' quote about there being many other factors in H.N extinction sounds like an acknowledgment of this being an unlikely scenario, I have some hope the actual paper concludes more along your lines, Beagle:
"It is conceivable that a group found itself in a "Donner party" situation and resorted to cannabalism, which in turn caused a spongiform illness and they all died."
It only seems a likely scenario only at the level of the family/band, not the species.

The assemblage from Moula-Guercy is more strong evidence for cannibalism in H.N. though, which I don't question - but given that there were several species in there and only the deer and humans had their skulls systematically smashed, Id like to know how they ruled out the use of brains for tanning hides, rather than as food? The Mousterian tools of H.N. - killing points, scrapers and handaxes for the most part - point to some kind of missing tanning process, imho.

Forum Monk · Post by **Forum Monk** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 7:22 am

If evidence of cannabalism has been discovered, it probably occurred after the victims were already dead.

Digit · Post by **Digit** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 7:35 am

The answer to that Flintz lies with the experts 'as shonw on TV'.
One programme I watched showed how HSN was 'supposed' to have lived, which included covering themselve with uncured pelts, which as one of the actors pointed out, soon began to smell, got very wet and flea infested.
Doesn't sound a very comfortable way of living to me so I do my usual trick and assume that HSN had overcome that dificulty before they moved towards areas of intense cold, after all, there is a considerable advantage to cured hides without even mentioning clothing.
If HSN sowed I think it reasonable to assume that they made use of it.
I used the term 'cured hides' in preference to tanned as there are of course other methods.
A reasonable scenario would be the act of suspending an uncured, and wet hide, over a fire to dry it, the smoke of course then helps to cure the hide. Once it was understood that hides could be treated doubtless other ideas were tried.

Post by **Minimalist** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 9:02 am

It's definitely stretching the credibility a bit, the way it's spun in the article.

Sensationalism is a way to get noticed. Always was...always will be.

Flintz · Post by **Flintz** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 11:46 am

Yeah, Min - Sadly, that's where the money is

I used the term 'cured hides' in preference to tanned as there are of course other methods.

Absolutely, I take your point - but I'm referring to one specific method here, the tanning (changing from flesh to leather, as opposed to curing, preserving flesh in an edible state) of skins using the raw, warm brain tissue of any one of several deer species. We just don't know (for very good reasons) if hominid brains do the same job. What if they do?

Doesn't sound a very comfortable way of living to me.

You've nailed it - It isn't. I've tried both in the relatively pleasant conditions of outdoors in the southern UK in spring. Leather for the win, hides for the bin, when it comes to a comfortable night. You're no colder, but you wake up covered in painful insect bites that inhibit your movement for a whole day ...then you've got to sleep under the same skins again

If HSN sowed I think it reasonable to assume that they made use of it.

The first needles extant in the archaeological record (that I've heard of) for Europe are Solutrean, about 19KBP. Well into H.S.S. time.

Of course, I await with hope the first Neanderthal needle out of the ground

Digit · Post by **Digit** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 12:23 pm

I wasn't talking about smoking hides to eat Flintz but as a method coverting the hide into something less perishable.
About needles. I said to Cog earlier that some of my ideas, good or bad, are based on the mental excercise of trtying to place my self within that type of community, and in doing so I came to the conclusion, again right or wrong, that sowing probably did not come about as a result of needle manufacture.
I would suggest that the sowing of hides preceeded needles, rather that the needle was developed to make sowing a simpler operation.

Cognito · Post by **Cognito** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 2:15 pm

With regard to the sewing of hides: needles do not show up in the record until about Solutrean times as mentioned by Flintz. However, drills were processed as part of the tool kit far, far earlier. If I am going to sew together my hides with thin leather strips, all I would need is a decent drill to accomplish the task by puncturing fine holes in the hide on its edges. Needles were likely a necessity for using very fine thread with cloth -- and cloth was being worn 20,000 years ago.

Digit · Post by **Digit** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 2:26 pm

And if I were faced with the problem Cog I think I would probably drill holes and lace the hide together with a very wide seam and a second row of lacing on the other seam edge.

Beagle · Post by **Beagle** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 2:45 pm

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

According to archaeologists and anthropologists, the earliest clothing probably consisted of fur, leather, leaves or grass, draped, wrapped or tied about the body for protection from the elements. Knowledge of such clothing remains inferential, since clothing materials deteriorate quickly compared to stone, bone, shell and metal artifacts. Archeologists have identified very early sewing needles of bone and ivory from about 30,000 BC, found near Kostenki, then the Soviet Union, in 1988.

At 30,000 yrs. this may have been HSS, but wiki has a nice pic of a Neanderthal.

Flintz · Post by **Flintz** » Tue Mar 04, 2008 2:09 pm

...nice find again, Beagle

- Looks like I have some solutrean-flavoured words to eat!

That site, Kostenki, looks really cool too:
http://archaeology.about.com/od/earlyma ... stenki.htm

At the moment, the assemblages in the lowest levels at Kostenki do not have a parallel--they are generically Upper Paleolithic but without close analogue--and researchers are convinced that Kostenki does in fact represent one of the earliest outposts by early modern humans outside of Africa.

Archaeologica.org

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