Last-stand Neanderthals queried

Squeaky the Squirrel

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21330194

We may need to look again at the idea that a late Neanderthal population existed in southern Spain as recently as 35,000 years ago, a study suggests.


Scientists using a "more reliable" form of radiocarbon dating have re-assessed fossils from the region and found them to be far older than anyone thought.


The work appears in the journal PNAS.


Its results have implications for when and where we - modern humans - might have co-existed with our evolutionary "cousins", the Neanderthals.

Wibbs

Bit of a problem with that. Namely there are other sites that are younger than that. The Mousterian toolkit, which seems to be exclusively associated with neandertals is found in younger contexts dated from datable material at those sites. I personally don't believe southern Spain was their last holdout. I don't think they had one as such, merely interbreeding moderns until "pure" Neandertal faded out. Now problem with that so far in Europe is that there doesn't appear to have been interbreeding, or enough for European Neandertals to have left a mark in the modern population. Our Neandertal genes come from further back when we hung out in the Middle East. However we don't have late European Neandertal DNA, the time when we likely hung out in the same places and that could show mixing. I'll bet the farm now that it will if ever found and further that the earliest Cro magnon folks will have some Neandertal DNA in them too.

Adam Khor

Wibbs wrote: »

Bit of a problem with that. Namely there are other sites that are younger than that. The Mousterian toolkit, which seems to be exclusively associated with neandertals is found in younger contexts dated from datable material at those sites. I personally don't believe southern Spain was their last holdout. I don't think they had one as such, merely interbreeding moderns until "pure" Neandertal faded out. Now problem with that so far in Europe is that there doesn't appear to have been interbreeding, or enough for European Neandertals to have left a mark in the modern population. Our Neandertal genes come from further back when we hung out in the Middle East. However we don't have late European Neandertal DNA, the time when we likely hung out in the same places and that could show mixing. I'll bet the farm now that it will if ever found and further that the earliest Cro magnon folks will have some Neandertal DNA in them too.

You guys know I'm partial to unorthodox ideas, so I would say that if there was a "last holdout" for Neanderthals it may have been Eastern Europe, namely Romania and such, if only because that's where woodwose-like creatures are supossed to have been seen and sometimes captured in historical times... and I really like the idea of them being one and the same

But that's just me being crazeeh. :pac:

Wibbs

Funny enough they have found earliermousterian toolkits further north than previously imagined, about 1000 Km further north in fact. Vaguely in the eastern neck of the woods too, so you never know AK Personally I always thought that maybe, just maybe european legends of trolls were possibly a "race memory" of Neandertals. As per the wiki description they were generally thought of as beings who "dwell in isolated rocks, mountains, or caves, live together in small family units, and are rarely helpful to human beings". They're also described as being much stronger than humans. That's the earliest and most basic description, embellished as time goes on. It might describe in very vague terms the last of the "pure" Neandertals.

The woodwose creatures you mention might be another race memory. Wildmen of the forest are a very old legend woven through nearly every culture in Eurasia(Funny enough not so much in Africa, where we have been the longest and other great apes live. The cultures there don't really have much of the Yeti/bigfoot/wildman legends going on). They do seem to be more people of the forest over much of their range. If towards the end they wanted to avoid moderns the deep woods would be the way to do it. Their superior low light vision for a start. In European culture the deep woods are where the bad things live and we spent an awful long time clearing same. Maybe a holdover of past fears? Modern cultures that live in deep jungles don't have this fear. Quite the opposite, they find it comforting, a refuge. Maybe agriculture changed our views?

Adam Khor

Not so vague, really. What does this remind you of?

An early mention of the wildmen came as far back as the first century BC, when the Roman author Titus Lucretius Carus described in his De Rerum Natura a race of "woodland men" thusly:

[They were] built up on larger and more solid bones... fastened with strong sinews... not easily to be harmed by heat or cold or strange food or any taint of the body... dwelt in the woods and the caves of mountains and forests, and amid brushwood would hide their rough limbs... And like bristly boars these woodland men would lay their limbs naked on the ground..."

Or the cases of captured "wildmen":

Albertus Magnus mentioned in his De Animalibus the capture of two wild people in Saxony, a male and a female. He says that they resembled human beings, except for being hair-covered; the female soon died (from blood poisoning, brought about by dog bites) and the male lived on, learning the use of words but exhibiting rather licentious behavior (which Magnus concludes was evidence of its lack of reason).

around 1784, in the Carpathian Mountains near Kronstadt (now Brasov, Romania). This wild boy was of a very Neanderthal-ish aspect; records indicate that the boy (approximately 23) was of medium build, with deep-set eyes, ash-gray hair, heavy eyebrows, a mouth which protruded somewhat, yellow skin, and was very heavily muscled and quite hairy. He walked in an odd manner, could not speak, and preferred to be barefoot.