Neanderthal News

[Digit]

I accept that Monk, but if you are correct then HSN isn't HSN, cos he wasn't Homo, and the whole family tree must be reconstructed.
Granted the original classification was, and remains, based on morphological considerations, and taking them further I see this.
HSS varies in height by 20% in maturity, I know of no other species with such great variation. The easiest explanation is hybridization.
HSS is both blue eyed and brown, again I know of no other species with such a high frequency of this kind of difference. Again, hybridization is the obvious cause.
HSN is said to have been red haired, and red heads, along with blondes, are decreasing in percentage. Also the origins of red heads and blondes is the northern hemisphere, HSN country, again the logical answer is hybridization and dominent genes.
HSS varies in body form from tall and slim to short and stocky, hybridization answers that best as well.
If none of this correct then a new explanation is required that eliminates hybrids as the simplest solution.

[Rokcet Scientist]

I agree RS. The experts all seem to think an ocean or a mountain range is necessary. In my youth I met people who had never been more than 10 miles from their birth place.
I lived for some years in a tiny village with a group of children all about the same age and I was the only one who went out of the village for a partner.

What about people who lived in the border zones, for want of a better word?

At some point, they came together.

Absolutely. Even if oceans separated them they would/will, eventually. But the 'speed' (time) and 'pervasiveness' (depth/width), for want of better words, of merging/hybridization is of course a function of the relative isolation of the groups concerned.

Against that background:
do we consider the 10/15k years it 'took' for HN to disappear, or rather merge, as the case may be, a short period, or a long period?
If we consider it a short period it should follow that contact between the groups was pretty frequent and intense.
If we consider it a long period it should follow that contact between the groups was pretty INfrequent and 'rare'.

Whaddayathink?

[Digit]

Sticking with the current evidence RS I suspect the time scale was short.
In the two areas where hybrid offspring are supposed to have been found both would have been at the southern limit of the ice where population density may well have increased if people fled south.
Allowing for the fact that a species would normally disappear from the fossil record some time before the species became extinct, the 'extinction' of HSN in France /Spain/Portugal seems to have occurred at about the same time as the hybrid appeared and the sudden development of cave art.
A coincidence?

[Rokcet Scientist]

In the two areas where hybrid offspring are supposed to have been found both would have been at the southern limit of the ice

Afaik some of the supposed hybrids were found in Portugal, weren't they?
The max southern land ice edge (approx. 18k BP) was roughly across the south of England, The Netherlands, and the north of Germany and Poland.
That's two thousand kilometers from Portugal . . . ?

where population density may well have increased if people fled south.

That would have had to have been on a 'line' between, say, Paris, Munich, Carpathians.
Any particularly greater 'density' of remains of Pleistocene man found on that 'line'?

Allowing for the fact that a species would normally disappear from the fossil record some time before the species became extinct, the 'extinction' of HSN in France /Spain/Portugal seems to have occurred at about the same time as the hybrid appeared and the sudden development of cave art.
A coincidence?

As long as we don't have corroborating support it is indeed just that: coincidence. However remarkable, of course.

[Beagle]

Just looking at the timelines here. The explosion in cave art began to happen 20,000 yrs. after Cro-Magnon entered Europe. That's a good chunk of time. It was during this time that the "Classic" Neanderthal began to look like "transition"Neanderthal.

[Digit]

The physical limits of the ice RS would hardly have been the deciding factor of itself, more a case of how close to the ice could you follow a reasonable life style.
I very much doubt that many people lived within sight of ice wall. An extensive area of ice, such as at that time, would have resulted in a high pressure zone over the ice with a continuous freezing wind blowing south. This would have limited tree growth, for example, to a much lower latitude, and timber would have been as essential to survival as food.
And why live where you are freezing your butt off if you can move away?

[Minimalist]

Got to have done Min or there would be about 50000 different Homo species.

Unless there is only one all along? Could these different 'types' ( I want to avoid the word "species") have been capable of interbreeding all along? Might not the distinctions made by anthropologists be simply their pre-conceived notions of what early man looked like...much as the initial description of HNS was caused by looking at an old, crippled, specimen.

Why do we automatically assume that every skeleton found is a prime specimen, anyway?

[Beagle]

This might be fun, and even informative. Please take a look at these images (I'm not addressing anybody in particular). When you see an image that looks like a Homo Sapien, then check where the skull was found. This is what physical anthropologists have to deal with.

http://www.answers.com/topic/list-of-hominina-fossils

They've got a tough job imo.

[Rokcet Scientist]

The physical limits of the ice RS would hardly have been the deciding factor of itself, more a case of how close to the ice could you follow a reasonable life style.
I very much doubt that many people lived within sight of ice wall.

That's why I put that imaginary Paris-Munich-Carpathians line 500 kilometers south of the ice edge.

An extensive area of ice, such as at that time, would have resulted in a high pressure zone over the ice with a continuous freezing wind blowing south. This would have limited tree growth, for example, to a much lower latitude, and timber would have been as essential to survival as food.
And why live where you are freezing your butt off if you can move away?

Lots of reasons! Because "why live where you are freezing your butt off if you can move away" may sound so logical, but if it really were, nobody would live north of Paris or Kentucky today . . . !

[Digit]

I don't think Paris represents the limit of our comfort zone RS. South of that I find too damn hot!
And in any case that does not alter the fact that the Iberian peninsula may well have been the most densely populated area as the inhabitants were backed up against the sea.

[Beagle]

Assuming that you all are talking about the last ice age, Neanderthal was already effectively gone from the fossil record. Most of the time he spent in Europe it was chilly but tolerable. And there was a lot more land available to him that is now underwater.

[Digit]

Absolutely Min. There is a tendency for people who find an ancient skeleton to try and paint their name in history by naming their find even if the find looks like an undernourished HSS!

[Digit]

The last ice age ended about 12000 yrs ago Beag? In the Iberia HSN was probably still around at 25000 yrs ago.

[Beagle]

Right Dig. Actually it ended earlier but the point is that you seem to be dealing with how Neanderthal managed during the LGM. He wasn't around. If I'm misunderstanding it's because I've been buried in football all day, and my apologies.

[Digit]

Did your team win Beag?
The point I was making is that if HSS and HSN were forced to withdraw south then population density would have increased in the areas they moved into, increasing the chances of hybridization, and in those areas is where the alleged hybrids have been found.