Neanderthal News

[Beagle]

Nice link. And we still don't have a Neanderthal needle, and probably never will.

[Digit]

With the effort and skill that must have gone into making the hole in one end Beag I should think they were well looked after.

[Beagle]

Yes. I would like to see what they wore in the winter. They may have looked a lot like an eskimo.

Regarding the earlier post about spongiform illness as an extinction theory, here is a blog about that.

http://averyremoteperiodindeed.blogspot ... sease.html

[Digit]

I think that pretty well kills that idea don't you think Beag?

[Beagle]

I think that pretty well kills that idea don't you think Beag?

I think it was dead on arrival.

[Digit]

[Cognito]

That hypothesis was not well thought out. The population of Neanderthals in Europe when HSS arrived has been estimated at about 30,000. They were so widely dispersed it would have been virtually impossible to spread such a disease to the point of extinction.

[Digit]

Quite Cog, it makes me wonder on occasion about common sense. It seems to be non-existant some times.

[john]

All -

Loincloths, ponchos and/or shawls, leggings, and head scarves do not necessarily require needle sewing. They are cut to shape and bound to the body with lashings, i.e. belts or straps. As for footgear, I can think of many early examples of plaited/woven sandals made of vegetable fiber. An additional abrasion resistant covering of hide simply lashed around the ankle is not a long jump.

Therefore, a relatively complete Hn wardrobe could - and in my opinion, probably did - exist without the necessity of needles and either sinew or vegetable fiber thread.


john

[Cognito]

John, you obviously haven't reviewed the artists' renderings of Neanderthals, have you? They were walking around during the Pleistocene half naked, no sandals or clothing. That is obviously because they were too stupid to communicate with anything other than an "Ugh" and didn't know how to keep warm in a snowstorm. Sheesh.

[Digit]

That sounds rather like some of our tourists!

[Cognito]

It is a natural tendency to dehumanize those who are different and Neanderthals are no exception. We really don't know what they were like or how intelligent they were so scientists assume the worst since HN didn't have the conveniences that HSS did. Does that make them dumber? Not necessarily.

We call ourselves Homo sapien, the human who "knows himself". What -- a Neanderthal had no concept of self? They were incapable of an original thought? It's really a struggle for me to believe the constant bias towards Neanderthal stupidity. Just because they went extinct doesn't mean they were dumber than HSS. Less adaptable maybe, but dumber maybe not.

[Digit]

If being dumb resulted in extinction there should be a lot less of us than there currently is Cog.

[Beagle]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/ho ... 93678.html

Some of the world's best preserved prehistoric landscapes survive in pristine condition at the bottom of the North Sea, archaeologists claimed yesterday.


Academic interest in what are being described as drowned Stone Age hunting grounds is likely to increase dramatically after the discovery of 28 Neanderthal flint axes on the sea bed off the East Anglian coast.

Dating from at least 50,000-60,000 years ago, they were found with other flint artefacts, a large number of mammoth bones, teeth and tusk fragments, and pieces of deer antler. The sea bed location was probably a Neanderthal hunters' kill site or temporary camp site.

This is pretty neat.

[Beagle]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/ ... ed=science

The 28 finely worked hand axes are believed to be more than 100,000 years old - possibly far older - and were described yesterday by archaeologist Phil Harding as "the single most important find of ice age material from below the North Sea".

If the dating is correct - and it may be established by the fragments of bone and tooth found in the same load of gravel - the people who worked them by chipping away flakes of stone to leave a blade as sharp as a modern kitchen knife were probably Neanderthal, not Homo sapiens

This article is an addition to the one I just posted. I sure hope they publish a picture of some of those hand axes. The North Sea could be a phenomenal marine archaeology site.