Neandertal/Neanderthal

[Beagle]

http://apnews.excite.com/article/200609 ... 6CA09.html

Min, I hope you don't mind if I go ahead and give HN his own place in the forum. The news on Neandertal is not going to stop for years, so let's give him a place for all articles on him.

And this is a good one. Thanks Min.

[Beagle]

http://www.gib.gi/museum/gorham's%20cave.htm

And yet another from linked from Mins' article above.

[Beagle]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story ... rss&feed=1

From a foothold north of the Mediterranean, Homo heidelbergensis steadily evolved into the neanderthals, while in Africa, the same species embarked on a different evolutionary path, one that ultimately gave rise to modern-day Homo sapiens. Remains of neanderthals dating back as far as 400,000 years suggest a reasonably sophisticated species which crafted handtools and weapons and buried its dead

Well, only time will tell on that. Another article on the same site, brought to my attention by Starflower.

Actually, very little is known about HN, and that is why I enjoy authors who employ a "common sense" approach along with acquired evidence.

[Starflower]

That second link was great and led to a bunch of other interesting articles. My favorite was this one:
http://www.gib.gi/museum/caves%20project%202003.8.htm

While I was appropriately impressed with the fossilized coprolite I was also interested in the cleaver.

Not only is this the first Acheulian tool to be found in Gibraltar, but its form and type of material it is made out of is very similar to cleavers found by members of the Gorham's team in the Sahara, as the picture on the left shows. This find strengthens the view that has been proposed by members of the team that there was contact across the Strait of Gibraltar as far back as half a million years ago, and that this may have involved a sea crossing of the Strait by North African Homo heidelbergensis.

Has anyone heard anything more about this?(Hope it hasn't been discussed before)

[Beagle]

Yes, we have Starflower, but not in any depth. Mainly we have never discussed at any length H. Heidelburgensis. He is a pretty interesting fellow. Maybe we should open a thread and get it done.

[Beagle]

http://www.livescience.com/othernews/06 ... s_odd.html

Neanderthals are often thought of as the stray branch in the human family tree, but research now suggests the modern human is likely the odd man out.

"What people tend to do is draw a line from our ancestors straight to ourselves, and any group that doesn't seem to fit on that line is divergent, distinct, unusual, strange," researcher Erik Trinkaus, an anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis, told LiveScience today. "But in terms of evolution of our family tree, the genus Homo, we're the outliers and the Neanderthals are more toward the core."

I've followed Trinkaus for quite a few years. He is very much a Neandertal protaganist.

[Guest]

here is one of my problems with this whole creation of the neanderthal mystic and myth:

The bones of over 400 Neanderthals have been found since.

plus this:

The type specimen, dubbed Neanderthal 1, consisted of a skull cap, two femora, three bones from the right arm, two from the left arm, part of the left ilium, fragments of a scapula, and ribs. The workers who recovered this material originally thought it to be the remains of a bear

there isn't enough evidence to build the concept as they have depicted it. these are all partials which is done constantly in science:

a place full of fossilized bones. Zdansky began his own excavation and eventually found bones that resembled human molars

this:

Discovered by Eugene Dubois in 1891 near Trinil in Java. Its age is uncertain, but thought to be about 700,000 years. This find consisted of a flat, very thick skullcap, a few teeth, and a thigh bone found about 12 meters away (Theunissen, 1989).

and:

Within moments, he spotted a right proximal ulna (forearm bone) and quickly identified it as a hominid. Shortly thereafter, he saw an occipital (skull) bone, then a femur, some ribs, a pelvis, and the lower jaw. Two weeks later, after many hours of excavation, screening, and sorting, several hundred fragments of bone had been recovered, representing 40% of a single hominid skeleton.

science and scientists are famous for building moutnains out of mole hills then presenting it in a fashion that they have more evidence and skeletons than they really do have.

when closely scrutinized it is evident that those who adhere to this theory do so with the minutest of evidence and corroborration. citing c-14 and then declaring (as the article in the original post does) that the specimens were free of contaminents, does not help nor verify the find.

that is like asking the fox to do a head count of the chickens after he has exited it. it is unrealistic to expect people to believe that lying in a damp cave, or the open ground for thousands of years, sans protective coatings that an artifact is free of corruption.

that expectation defies credibility. then when you throw in the lack of artifacts, the lack of written records {sorry, saying that this was pre-written history only makes it sound like an excuse for producing squat} for corroboration it is no wonder you are equated with the 1900's snake oil salesmen.

there is no real proof that the neanderthal ever existed, they remain a figment of the imagination of the scientists' and artists' who have concocted this alternative race. they have no idea what the skeletons really looked like, if they were actually human plus they have no idea what their lives were like.

carbon dating charcoal in a cave does not open the door to the past, for all we know someone used the cave for camping or to get out of the rain. the fanciful tales that are spun by these researchers rival tolkien and aesop's fairy tales.

of course i have my own theory as to who these skeletons (or pieces thereof) belong to but i am not opening myself to the charge of hijacking this thread. i just want an explanation as to how you can swallow these tales hook, line and sinker without critically examining the evidence and the artifacts.

[bandit]

Something must be wrong with my comp..all I get is a purple screen when I try to pull up the last link posted by beagle... here's one I think refers to the same thing.

[Guest]

So true, archae, the "Neanderthal Man," who played musical instruments, created works of art, could speak (same anatomy), and who ritually buried there dead, were obviously humans, but Darwinists need those "missing links," however, ironically, most Darwinists now say that we did not evolve from "Neanderthal," so it was just a wasted excercise on their part, to trump up this "different" being.

[Essan]

Explain to me again why neanderthal bone structure is so different from modern man's

All neanderthal skulls display the same raised eyebrow ridges - a feature not found in modern man. Were they all suffering form the same gentic disease, one which no longer affects us?

I'm surprised actually that YECs don't pounce on Neanderthal as an explanation for why in Genesis God created man twice - surely these were his first attempt, with Adam (modern man) being a slightly improved model made a couple of days later?

That would also explain why dna shows that we're not directly related to neanderthal, thus showing their distinction as a seperate sub-species of homo sapien.

[Guest]

Thickened brow-ridges does not make a monkey-man, haven't you seen people running around with thickened brow-ridges?

[Guest]

By the way Essan, if there is such a significant genetic variation between "Neanderthal" and "Modern" humans, then why are conventional scientists now saying that they "interbred?"

[Essan]

Thickened brow-ridges does not make a monkey-man, haven't you seen people running around with thickened brow-ridges?

No. Not as per neanderthal skulls.

Besides, who calls them 'monkey-man' ? They were no more monkeys than you or I.

And whilst I undertand some scientists have suggested interbreeding may have occurred, dna studies show conclusively that the results of such breeding - assuming the offspring was fertile itself - had no effect in the gene pool.

Not that it really matters either way to me.

[Guest]

So you admit (or don't care) that they were "interbreeding," good.

[Barracuda]

Gen, my understanding is that based on DNA evidence, most scholars do NOT believe that Neanderthals and modern humans interbred, or did not produce fertile offspring.

I am not so certain myself, but I think that is the prevalent belief.

I think this may support my own theory that modern humans exposed Neanderthals to new diseases to which they had no resistance.