Neanderthal News

[Digit]

I also have been arguing for more years than I can recall Beag, but I never thought I'd live to be so resoundingly right.
Now of course we can expect either a deafening silence from the establishment, a massive removal and re-arranging of museum artifacts, and/or an attempt at rebuttal.
I don't see Min getting a chance of stake holding on this one. It's a great great day!!!!

[Minimalist]

I'll manage to survive financially, I guess.

[Minimalist]

Today's "Non Sequitur."

[Cognito]

It's time for everyone to scratch their heads and reassess. We now have a situation where moderns may not have impacted Europe in any meaningful way prior to the LGM (22,000bc to 16,000bc). So, who represents the Aurignacian and Périgordian cultures since they are pre-LGM?

[Beagle]

That is neat Cogs. And Geico has a good ad dept.

[Beagle]

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

"All men and women are Africans under their skin. It's as simple as that," says Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum, London, a founder of the Out of Africa theory.

Most scientists accept that humanity originally evolved in Africa. About 2m years ago, our predecessors Homo erectus - tall, tool-making, small-skulled apemen - emerged from the continent and began spreading around the Old World. But what came next is hotly disputed.

One group of scientists - known as the multi-regionalists, led by Milford Wolpoff from Michigan University - claim these ancient humans began to evolve in these new homelands and that the Chinese, aborigines from Australia, the Inuit and other races today are the direct descendants of these ancient emigres. An example is provided by the Neanderthals who dominated Europe from about 250,000 years ago until they disappeared around 35,000 years ago. In their place, a race of sophisticated craftsmen and hunters called the Cro-Magnons began to flourish. Multi-regionalists claim Neanderthals vanished for the simple reason they had evolved into Cro-Magnons, who then became the founding stock of Europeans today.

And still, the debate continues. Here's hoping Bednariks paper grows legs.

[Digit]

If you wield Occam's razor only multi regionalism can fit the time scales needed to produce the various races. Are these people blinded by their fear of race?

[Beagle]

I don't know Dig but there are plenty of reasons I think. Part of it is turf protection. Someone like Stringer, who fathered the OOA theory and has gottent a lot of recognition and status from it - is not going to give it up easily. (I did study up on him Richard )

[Cognito]

"All men and women are Africans under their skin. It's as simple as that"
-- Chris Stringer

I wish life was so simple that I could reduce it to absolutes such as Stringer did in his statement. However, life taught me otherwise. Tenure must have its benefits.

[Beagle]

One group of scientists - known as the multi-regionalists, led by Milford Wolpoff from Michigan University - claim these ancient humans began to evolve in these new homelands and that the Chinese, aborigines from Australia, the Inuit and other races today are the direct descendants of these ancient emigres. An example is provided by the Neanderthals who dominated Europe from about 250,000 years ago until they disappeared around 35,000 years ago. In their place, a race of sophisticated craftsmen and hunters called the Cro-Magnons began to flourish. Multi-regionalists claim Neanderthals vanished for the simple reason they had evolved into Cro-Magnons, who then became the founding stock of Europeans today.

Cogs, I think tenure has a great deal to do with it.

The above quote references Wolpoff. Yesterday I sent the PDF of "The Mythical Moderns" to John Hawks, and I think that soon he will blog on it. And if Hawks has it, then Wolpoff has probably already gotten it. Wolpoff was Hawks graduate faculty advisor for his PhD.

I don't think Bednarik and Wolpoff are very far apart. After all, what Bednarik is postulating still amounts to evolution. Bednarik is just being specific about what drove those evolutionary changes.

[Minimalist]

Are these people blinded by their fear of race?

I just got back from a doctor's office where I was reading about the Nubian Pharaohs of 8th century Egypt.

The author made the point that nowhere in antiquity was there any suggestion that dark-skinned people were inferior. But, in the "enlightened" 19th century scholars and missionaries determined that Piye and Shabaka and the others must have been Libyans who acheived dominance over Nubia because "blacks could never have built the society whose ruins they found at Kerma."

So, never underestimate the power of "race" in modern times.

[Digit]

Same with the ruins of Zimbabwe Min. Wilbur Smith even made a best seller out of it.

[Minimalist]

I was not aware of that, Roy. Same idea as the Aryan Invasion Theory I suppose.

[Digit]

The history of the early excavations at Zimbabwe Min are coloured by the determination of the excavators to 'prove' anybody bar the local people built the city.
In Smith's story, which is good read I found, the city was built by Hannibal's family none the less.

[Minimalist]

HNS meets Brussel Sprouts.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... -diet.html

Tiny bits of plant material found in the teeth of a Neandertal skeleton unearthed in Iraq provide the first direct evidence that the early human relatives ate vegetation, researchers say.

Little is known about diet of Neandertals (also spelled Neanderthals), although it's widely assumed that they ate more than just meat.