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Neanderthals not so human-like after all
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08-12-2015 11:41pm#1http://www.scienceworldreport.com/articles/34167/20151208/neanderthals-look-different-study-sheds-light-difference.htm
I'm going to wait for Wibbs opinion on this as per usual.
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There's nothing new at all in this study from what I can see, though it's hard to gauge by a report like that. That Neandertals developed differently to us modern humans has been known for a very long time, as has the idea of us being the outlier among hominids. Hell a child if shown a Neandertal skull and a modern human one could spot the differences in a heartbeat. Five odd years back in here I likened it to us showing up to a dinner party of hominids from Erectus onwards and really not fitting in. "OK who brought the weirdoes as a plus one?" Basically we look more like juveniles as adults when compared to previous humans, including earlier versions of us Sapiens. The first Sapiens are much more like previous hominids, to the degree that for years quite a few reference web pages(inc Wikipedia) mistakenly had a European Neandertal skull as an example of an African early modern one. Understandably as we didn't show up fully formed modern humans. Even moderns with modern culture and art and such from 40,000 years back are more robust with larger teeth and skulls than people today.
The question is why was there this drift from robustness and towards neotony(retaining juvenile characteristics as adults). I personally believe that it's down to internal "domestication" of ourselves. One of the most obvious changes when animals are domesticated over time is that neotenous traits are strongly selected for, mainly in temperament, but physical changes come along for the ride. The domestic dog and the wolf being a really good example. If we look at a skull comparison between the two;
What is immediately obvious is that the dog face becomes flatter, the muzzle shortens, teeth get smaller and overall the skull becomes less robust. Remind us of anything? I'd bet the farm that similar bone growth stuff is going on there that this new study is noting for hominids. In very basic terms both physically and temperamentally the dog is a wolf that never grows up.
Temperament is another thing that interested me about this notion. I remember reading many years ago Neandertals being described as apex predators, specifically "wolves with knives". And a light bulb went off in my head. I've had an interest in both wolves and Neandertals since I was a kid and devoured any info I could get on them. The lightbulb moment was hang on let's take that comparison to extremes and see how much they're alike. And how alike to dogs are modern humans.
Culturally Neandertals appear to have been territorial and xenophobic, living in small family bands with defined territories. Just like wolves(they're both quite genetically narrow too). Where two such studied bands lived side by side(like in what is now the Channel islands), there is no evidence of contact between them. No locale specific items found in the opposite camp. Cultural transmission seems to have been extremely slow judging by the pace of technological change and design changes in items like bifaces/handaxes. I'd suspect what transmission occurred came from mating behaviour and it was likely Neandertal women coming into a new family/pack who were the bearers of it.
Then we get to us and dogs. Contrary to popular belief dogs that go feral don't form "packs" like wolves, quite the opposite actually(indeed male dogs in the wild take pretty much no interest in their pups, it's all down to the females, male wolves are very paws on fathers). Dogs form very flexible and larger groups of individuals and do so throughout life. On the other hand wolves are extremely suspicious, even deadly aggressive towards any wolf they don't know from birth(outside of mate selection). Dogs retain that puppy "new things are cool" throughout their lives. Dogs also continue to act like pups and play much more throughout life. When modern humans come along about the first thing we see is how much they interact with other groups and how much larger individual groups can become. This means cultural transmission speeds up incredibly with all this contact.
On the bad side when wild dogs show up in an area they can seriously negatively impact the local fauna. Wolves find a balance, dogs don't and just like us their population explodes. Again more comparisons there. Neandertals lived in Europe and Asia for 200,000 years plus and though it's almost never mentioned no extinction events occurred. Their populations stayed low and at a normal predator/prey ratio. They would have been a rare sight in the landscape. On the other hand without finding direct evidence one can almost track modern humans progress across the planet by how many large animals die off(and sometimes even environmental changes).
As for the big question of the how and why Neandertals went extinct? I think we can apply the same broad model again. When feral domestic dogs move into an area with wolves, the latter are on borrowed time(the Ethiopian wolf is a good case study). Even though a wolf is significantly more powerful than a dog they can't compete with them. Territorial fights occur, but they slowly retreat from the newcomers, some breed with them and dilute the DNA and the newcomers can often bring new diseases that the wolves have less or no immunity to. Again I'd bet if we looked at the mechanics how wolves get pushed out by dogs it would show marked similarities to how Neandertals went extinct.Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.
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Hello Wibbs,
Your comments about Neanderthals are really thought-provoking. I'm no expert on hominids or ancient Homo Sapiens of any variety; but what I've learned about Neanderthal Man may shed a bit of light upon his eventual disappearance (I wouldn't like to say total extinction; there must have been some cross-breeding between his kind and Homo Sapiens Sapiens; goodness, often on the bus or at the supermarket I come across beetle-browed types who might have stepped right out of a cavern!
All joking aside, now: although Neanderthal did have a wider and longer braincase than modern man, his intellectual-creative capacity would seem to have significantly been more limited. There is no definite evidence that Neanderthal ever produced works of art for art's sake, or even utilitarian art objects, whereas Cro-Magnon from the very start was manufacturing attractive jewelry, sculpting amazingly aesthetic figures from ivory and lavishly decorating the walls of caves. A certain part of Neanderthal's brain...the part which stimulates creative curiousity, imagination and production...seems to have been underdeveloped or altogether missing in Neanderthal. This would have hampered his cultural development, and have put him at a disadvantage compared with the effervescent Cro-Magnon who effectively established the first kind of human CIVILIZATION, as opposed to mere community life. What is more, many palaeontologists are of the opinion that Neanderthal's vocal chords were not adapted to uttering human speech. This would have resulted in a serious lack of sophisticated communication: another disadvantage for Neanderthal in his quest for survival.
Please let me know what you think.0 -
The question is why was there this drift from robustness and towards neotony(retaining juvenile characteristics as adults). I personally believe that it's down to internal "domestication" of ourselves.
Would the onset of agriculture and sedentarism have something to do with this self-domestication? Or did it happen before that? Maybe they simply reached such numbers that they were safe from most predation by non-humans and so the genes of the smaller, weaker individuals started becoming more spread and eventually took over the big powerful types?Remind us of anything? I'd bet the farm that similar bone growth stuff is going on there that this new study is noting for hominids. In very basic terms both physically and temperamentally the dog is a wolf that never grows up.
Which makes me wonder, what do you think the temperament of Neanderthals would be like?Wolves find a balance, dogs don't and just like us their population explodes.
This is intriguing. Why? How do wolves know how to keep the balance? Is it culturally transmited? Instinctive?Even though a wolf is significantly more powerful than a dog they can't compete with them.
Why? Is it the fact that dogs can live on a greater variety of food than wolves? Are wolves- despite their adaptability- too specialized on the hunt of large wild animals when compared to dogs?
It seems weird however that wolves dominate and even supress coyotes, for example, but don´t fare well against dogs. Don´t wolves eat lots of dogs in rural Russia for example?
(Speaking of wolves and Russia and one predator displacing another... did you see the news about the reintroduced Siberian tigress who took to hunting wolves to the point where the whole pack basically evacuated the area?
Apparently, even tho tigers and wolves coexist in parts of India, in Russia the tiger would actively supress wolf populations, forcing them to seek different territories. People in former tiger country saw wolves as strange newcomers when the tiger became endangered, and now that it's being reintroduced, the tiger is re-gaining its former spot as top predator...)
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there must have been some cross-breeding between his kind and Homo Sapiens Sapiens; goodness, often on the bus or at the supermarket I come across beetle-browed types who might have stepped right out of a cavern! True. Though I believe if we ever met a real Neandertal they'd really stand apart as different. We did interbreed with them alright and that evidence is still in our genes(up to 4% of non African folks DNA comes from them). It seems we did so more than once and in a few places too. Asians have different Neandertal genes compared to Europeans for example. That 4% survives down to today it must have been a relatively common event over time(it's higher in older modern human DNA. Otzi the Iceman has something like 6%). .
Oh certainly. One corner of a Cro Magnon cave would likely contain more art than all of previous human history put together. However Neandertals did collect and refine pigments of different colours(reds, blacks and shiny sparkles) for some purpose. One group in Italy selected for and collected black feathers from bird species they didn't appear to eat as food. There is some evidence that they may have had other body ornament like pendants and jewellery. They had an eye for symmetry as some very carefully worked hand axes show. Most such tools are well made for purpose but some are much more refined. I've an example myself from France which judging by size and design looks about 150,000 years old where the maker appears to have specifically worked the flint to centralise a hollow part(which may have originally held a fossil as flint often does).All joking aside, now: although Neanderthal did have a wider and longer braincase than modern man, his intellectual-creative capacity would seem to have significantly been more limited. There is no definite evidence that Neanderthal ever produced works of art for art's sake, or even utilitarian art objects, whereas Cro-Magnon from the very start was manufacturing attractive jewelry, sculpting amazingly aesthetic figures from ivory and lavishly decorating the walls of caves.
He or she made many more hammer strikes and a lot more effort(and skill) on one side which is composed of much denser material compared to the other in what looks like an attempt to centralise the hollow. It's too shallow to work as a hafting/attachment point.
Personally I would believe that they weren't as culturally poor as has been believed in the past. However I would also believe that they weren't pretty much like us as some are suggesting in an attempt to make them more "human".* We definitely had something else. One type of art for which we'll probably never find evidence for(unless we find a frozen mummified Neandertal) is body art. Their pigments may have been for tattooing or body painting. Seems the most likely use. It may have been for reasons of camouflage, tribal association, status within the tribe. For territorial predators that might have started as a way to "mark their territory" like wolves scent marking and howling. That could have been the birthplace of art. It's not that big a leap to go from body art to "tattooing the skin" of a cave wall in your territory. The land is seen as a person/deity in many tribal and shamanistic religions. "Mother Earth" and all that. Quite a lot of the non figurative cave art of modern humans look like tribal tattoos.
In my opinion what hampered them far more was their relative isolation in the environment. A Neandertal Leonardo could have come along but a) may have been seen as odd because of their innate xenophobia and fear of the new, and/or b) even if they came up with great ideas only their small family tribe would know of them and once they died, all that would die with them.A certain part of Neanderthal's brain...the part which stimulates creative curiousity, imagination and production...seems to have been underdeveloped or altogether missing in Neanderthal. This would have hampered his cultural development, and have put him at a disadvantage compared with the effervescent Cro-Magnon who effectively established the first kind of human CIVILIZATION, as opposed to mere community life.
There are modern humans not unlike this on the Andaman Islands. They are culturally very xenophobic, have been isolated for a very long time and not fond of new ideas at all. To the degree that alone among modern humans they don't know how to make fire, only store it as embers. Their art is extremely limited too and their stone tools not a patch on most modern human stuff.
With modern humans our larger groups and wider trade would mean ideas would have an "escape route" and far more chance of survival and propagation. Take what we're doing here now. Home computers were around for well over a decade and mostly a toy, used for games, of interest to hobbyists and business. The internet comes along and connects them all up and WHAM! Massive technological and social change. I'd see the human brain like the home computer in this example. Neandertals were PC's with a LAN a small home network, Modern humans were like PC's with a WAN the internet. The network is what makes the difference.
This I don't believe. They had a different throat anatomy(shorter), but not by much and they had a hyoid bone(that the vocal chords attach to) indistinguishable from modern people. They also had the same Fox P2 gene for speech as us. Plus given we had children together and raised them to adulthood I would be extremely surprised to find they had no speech. IMH Speech of some form has been part of us since Homo Erectus.What is more, many palaeontologists are of the opinion that Neanderthal's vocal chords were not adapted to uttering human speech.
It seems to have been happening much earlier than farming. The weaker outbreeding the stronger must have been at play, some sort of sexual selection going on, but you'd wonder why. I mean we looked pretty much as we do now long before farming and larger settlements. Maybe being more juvenile as an adult increases your chances of raising children to adulthood and we selected more and more for that? Neandertals seemed to have had tragic levels of childhood mortality. The extension of play into adulthood by expanding the imagination also leads to innovation and again this would have been an advantage selected for. Over time these selected mental and cultural things would be reflected in the physical changes. EG heavy brow ridges that would come along with puberty would get smaller and smaller as women sexually selected for neotenous males with those mental traits?Would the onset of agriculture and sedentarism have something to do with this self-domestication? Or did it happen before that? Maybe they simply reached such numbers that they were safe from most predation by non-humans and so the genes of the smaller, weaker individuals started becoming more spread and eventually took over the big powerful types?
I'd suspect very full on people. Extremists of personality. Little quarter given on any emotion, good or bad. When aggressive, very aggressive, when affectionate, very affectionate(again not unlike wolves). Xenophobic, with a high degree of "not invented here" going on. Fear of novelty, strong traditionalists and pragmatists. Evidence for any of this? Their isolation in the landscape, their lack of obvious trade, pretty much every single adult male Neandertal so far found has suffered serious physical injury in life. Now some of this could be down to their hunting technique, but I suspect much of it was down to human on human action. On the other extreme we have examples of where injured individuals who would have been a drain on resources are cared for and looked after for years. The Old Man of Chapelle the perfect example. Barely a tooth in his head(rare back then, they usually have great teeth), riddled with arthritis, yet he was well nourished when he died and someone would have had to pre chew his food for him like a baby. Shanidar 1 from Iraq had lost part of his lower arm and had suffered a severe head injury, which likely left him blind in one eye with possible paralysis, both of which healed(though he would have been pretty disabled by them) and had been healed for at least a decade before he died. Another chap from the same cave shows evidence of a projectile wound that killed him. Because it was a projectile wound and Neandertals didn't use projectile weapons some have theorised one of us who were in the area at the time killed him. Though given the oldest throwing spears in the world are Neandertal and a couple of hundred thousand years before we showed up, who knows? I'm in two minds about if they buried their dead. I personally suspect if they did it was a one off rarity.Which makes me wonder, what do you think the temperament of Neanderthals would be like?
I think it's just down to practicalities limiting them. The environment can only sustain a certain number of wolves and since they don't usually grow into huge marauding packs that could take down more and more prey over a wider area this keeps their numbers down. As do the next door neighbour wolves. They just naturally level out in numbers. In areas where food is scarce their territories are enormous, where food is more plentiful these territories shrink. It seems to be a self levelling system and common with other predators. IIRC T Rex were rare in the landscape and would have required huge territories and lots of food to sustain them. Same kinda thing.This is intriguing. Why? How do wolves know how to keep the balance? Is it culturally transmited? Instinctive?
Funny enough wolves are quite adaptable food wise. They have to be as they're not actually great big game hunters. The majority of hunts end in no prey at the end. They eat a lot of rodents for example. Hares, rabbits and smaller prey. But yea dogs can eat more variety. They adapted to more human foods as leftovers for a start. A dog biscuit would likely give a wolf a bad stomach.Why? Is it the fact that dogs can live on a greater variety of food than wolves? Are wolves- despite their adaptability- too specialized on the hunt of large wild animals when compared to dogs?
Oh sure, but given time dogs will tend to win out. For a start they tend to be smaller and require less food and have a wider variety of foods they'll eat, they also and more importantly have more offspring more often. Wolves only come into season once per year.It seems weird however that wolves dominate and even supress coyotes, for example, but don´t fare well against dogs. Don´t wolves eat lots of dogs in rural Russia for example?
Interesting stuff AK. I hadn't heard of that. Makes sense mind you. Apex predators rarely get along in areas of high competition for resources. Maybe they get along in India because they're not selecting the same prey?(Speaking of wolves and Russia and one predator displacing another... did you see the news about the reintroduced Siberian tigress who took to hunting wolves to the point where the whole pack basically evacuated the area?
Apparently, even tho tigers and wolves coexist in parts of India, in Russia the tiger would actively supress wolf populations, forcing them to seek different territories. People in former tiger country saw wolves as strange newcomers when the tiger became endangered, and now that it's being reintroduced, the tiger is re-gaining its former spot as top predator...)
*Scientists in this area of early human study have a real tendency to only see what they want to see, to quite a surprising degree. Take stone tools. A couple of years ago in West Africa a site was found and excavated and the bold claim that this was the first known site where humans first made stone points and blades over 200,000 years ago(I think). This is now gospel. However if one looks at the actual study and drawings and photos of all the stone tools found, the so called "blades" and "points" make up a tiny fraction of the whole. Like hundreds of non blades with maybe twenty tools that look blade like. The Neandertal levalois technique of lithic production is another example. The gospel holds that this was a deliberate technique with an end point tool planned from the start. There are even different types described. Bit of a problem, as again the majority of both tools and the cores they come from show only the vaguest "plan". Indeed most cores are extremely random. IMHO the technique is simply the most efficient way to create many cutting edge tools from a lump of stone. Modern humans do come along and then we see a very definite "style" to tools, but outside of hand axes that's largely missing from previous humans. Cultural bias comes in too. EG early moderns in Africa are often found with cut marks on their bones. This is interpreted as "cultural" and maybe part of "ritual", yet when Neandertal bones are found with the same cut marks they're clearly cannibals...Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.
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We definitely had something else. One type of art for which we'll probably never find evidence for(unless we find a frozen mummified Neandertal) is body art. Their pigments may have been for tattooing or body painting. Seems the most likely use. It may have been for reasons of camouflage, tribal association, status within the tribe. For territorial predators that might have started as a way to "mark their territory" like wolves scent marking and howling. That could have been the birthplace of art. It's not that big a leap to go from body art to "tattooing the skin" of a cave wall in your territory. The land is seen as a person/deity in many tribal and shamanistic religions. "Mother Earth" and all that. Quite a lot of the non figurative cave art of modern humans look like tribal tattoos.
This however would require their bodies to be as hairless as ours, wouldn´t it? I tried to paint on my dog once and it was difficult as hell :B Wasn´t there some evidence that they were much hairier than we are? What about the finger bone thing they share with chimps, which allows the babies to hold on to their mother's fur?unless we find a frozen mummified Neandertal
Cross your fingers... the current prediction is that Siberian and Alaskan permafrost will practically dissappear in the near future. We already found frozen cave lions, it's only a matter of time...Shanidar 1 from Iraq had lost part of his lower arm and had suffered a severe head injury, which likely left him blind in one eye with possible paralysis, both of which healed(though he would have been pretty disabled by them)
I remember this guy... any ideas of how he got his injuries? Has there been studies about it?Because it was a projectile wound and Neandertals didn't use projectile weapons some have theorised one of us who were in the area at the time killed him.
Baboons and chimpanzees can throw rocks with incredible accuracy. I would be surprised if Neanderthals didn´t throw weapons once in a while, even if it wasn´t their usual MO.Interesting stuff AK. I hadn't heard of that. Makes sense mind you. Apex predators rarely get along in areas of high competition for resources. Maybe they get along in India because they're not selecting the same prey?
Probably. Indian wolves are quite a bit smaller and they coexist with leopards and bears besides tigers, so they are usually restricted to smaller prey and exist in smaller numbers. In Russia, wolves are huge and numerous; tigers would see them as direct competitors.
Usually wolves stay away from tigers (understandably) but recently someone captured what I think are the first photographs of an Indian wolf and a Bengal tiger interacting. It was non-violent; wolf followed tiger for a while, probably just escorting it out of its territory (maybe there was a wolf den nearby?). Eventually the tiger turns around, probably irritated by being followed, and the wolf immediately retreats.
The size difference is incredible.
I've often wondered is our suspicion and fear of the deep woods and of "wild men" a race memory of them? Ditto for trolls, who in the original tales are a very powerful if a bit stupid people who live in caves and among rocks in the forests, not particularly dangerous but often unfriendly.
I know we've talked about this before but the more I read about the subject the more I'm convinced there's something to it. Also, I recently heard that there's stories of beastly, giant wild men from Sumatra, I believe. As the (supossedly very large) "Meganthropus" was found in Java, and both islands were part of the same continent back in the Pleistocene, I can´t stop but wonder...
This is a modern day depiction of said wild man, called Orang Badang:
Admittedly, there's still orangutans in Sumatra which may have partially inspired these stories, but apparently the original Orang Badang (different name, too, meaning large man or giant man) was a biped and much bigger than an orangutan...nother thing could be that over time through interbreeding they simply bred out? So that after a while there are no "pure" Neandertals left in both body and culture, just humans with tendencies to each depending. I'm sure there was a point where the last pure Neandertal looked out from his or her shelter for the last time, but that the hybrids were around for much longer. It would be hard to tell from stone tools and the like as the new techniques would be appropriated by the hybrids
I think current events may actually support this idea. And it's all about wolves again... in North America, as forests become more fragmented, wolves are mating with coyotes and to a smaller extent with dogs, and by now there's about one million hybrids or "coywolves" as they've been nicknamed- they're bigger than coyotes, able to hunt large prey in packs, but much more adaptable when it comes to food and environment than wolves. So taking the wolf-Neanderthal analogy further, they may actually be saving their species by sacrificing their genetic purity, mating with close relatives with better chances to adapt to a changing world.
This may actually be a new species evolving right before our eyes.
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Not that I know of AK. TBH I've gone back and forth over their hairiness or not. At the moment I'm on the side of not particularly hairy. Though European folks are about the hairiest feckers on the planet so maybe…This however would require their bodies to be as hairless as ours, wouldn´t it? I tried to paint on my dog once and it was difficult as hell :B Wasn´t there some evidence that they were much hairier than we are?
I'd suspect they were pretty bald over the body. Enough that body art was possible anyway. Plus they might have shaved some areas. A newly sprung flint blade will shave you closer than any razor and an obsidian blade is far sharper than the keenest surgical steel scalpel. I mean modern human males shave their faces which is well odd, as facial hair is a very strong secondary sexual characteristic. At any sort of distance it's a very clear indication of fully adult male, rather than juvenile or woman. In art and culture facial hair is applied to gods and kings and wise men, even in populations who would be less hirsute in general.
Ohh I'd never heard of that AK. Cool.What about the finger bone thing they share with chimps, which allows the babies to hold on to their mother's fur? Any links.
At this point I'm crossing complete strangers fingers.Cross your fingers... the current prediction is that Siberian and Alaskan permafrost will practically dissappear in the near future. We already found frozen cave lions, it's only a matter of time...
Mostly medical studies concerning the injuries and healing from that point of view. Everything else tends to head towards conjecture from what I've read. All that seems clear is the chap sustained injuries and those injuries were treated and healed and he survived for nearly two decades with these disabilities. Which is interesting in another way. The Old Man of Chapelle was already no spring chicken when his arthritis flared up and his teeth fell out, so him having deep experience would be useful to keep around, but the Shanidar lad was young, early 20's when he was disabled. He'd have been a liability on the surface. Maybe he was clever, funny, a talented shaman/medic/shrink? Or became one of those soon after his injuries?I remember this guy... any ideas of how he got his injuries? Has there been studies about it?
Exactly. Nail on the head(no punBaboons and chimpanzees can throw rocks with incredible accuracy. I would be surprised if Neanderthals didn´t throw weapons once in a while, even if it wasn´t their usual MO.)
Aye, Indian wolves are pretty scrawny and weak when compared to other sub species. Funnily enough though and unusual among wolves, considering the fairy tales, Indian wolves are one of the few wolf subspecies that can be maneaters. Our own extinct Irish wolves were known for that too. The early medieval annals mention people being killed by wolves quite a lot(and mention that they were very popular pets and had Brehon legislation with regard to their keeping as pets.. After herons of all things. Herons were the pet of choice for monks for some reason).Probably. Indian wolves are quite a bit smaller and they coexist with leopards and bears besides tigers, so they are usually restricted to smaller prey and exist in smaller numbers. In Russia, wolves are huge and numerous; tigers would see them as direct competitors.
:eek: Great pics AK.Usually wolves stay away from tigers (understandably) but recently someone captured what I think are the first photographs of an Indian wolf and a Bengal tiger interacting. It was non-violent; wolf followed tiger for a while, probably just escorting it out of its territory (maybe there was a wolf den nearby?). Eventually the tiger turns around, probably irritated by being followed, and the wolf immediately retreats.
Yes it is. Though I remember watching a BBC wildlife programme about Eskimo folks who still lived in the old way and one very old dude noted something about wolves. He said that his sled dogs would become concerned if they smelled bears or crossed their tracks, but would become extremely agitated if they encountered wolf sign. The difference being that a pack of dogs has a chance against one bear, but one wolf means other wolves. Strength in numbers. Humans and wolves are very similar that way. On our own we're pretty weak, but in a pack? Be afraid, be very afraid. Humans and wolves are among the very few predators that can take down prey larger, sometimes much larger than themselves. Humans have hunted elephants and wolves will go after buffalo and we both are quite happy to take out other predators too. No wonder humans and wolves thought "hmmm maybe I can work with these dudes" and gave rise to dogs. Our basic family structure is far more alike than compared to our closest relatives like chimps. What surprises me is that dogs came so relatively late to our story. Oh and that's another problem for Neandertals. They didn't have dogs(as far as we know). A Homo Sapiens and a Canis Lupus working together is a very dangerous combination for anything else around. Two apex predators with complimentary skills hooking up? Game over. Actually on that point. KindaThe size difference is incredible.
. I mentioned the Andaman islanders earlier and how they were extremely isolated and had been for a very long time and had no dogs. A few reports noted their first encounters with domesticated dogs, pets of traders and explorers and the like. Well these folks were not scared of them at all. In fact went out of their way to go straight over to pet and hang out with them. It seemed to be something innate in them and us.
Oh I reckon there's a lot to it AK. It's easy to forget that today we're "alone". The only humans on the planet. For most of our history this was not the case. The "Hobbits" lasted at least up to 12000 years ago and I'd bet the farm well into historical times. I'd also bet that "other" peoples lived right up to at least the agricultural revolution. interestingly for me, African cultures have far fewer legends of "wild men". Which would make sense as modern humans kicked off their first and likely spread through that continent first and more completely. That continent's history tends to be glossed over far too much. Or at least simplified. Basically "modern humans evolve, leave Africa and conquer the world". Yea, but what about the earlier humans in Africa when moderns show up? That bit is missed.I know we've talked about this before but the more I read about the subject the more I'm convinced there's something to it. Also, I recently heard that there's stories of beastly, giant wild men from Sumatra, I believe. As the (supossedly very large) "Meganthropus" was found in Java, and both islands were part of the same continent back in the Pleistocene, I can´t stop but wonder...
This is a modern day depiction of said wild man, called Orang Badang:
Admittedly, there's still orangutans in Sumatra which may have partially inspired these stories, but apparently the original Orang Badang (different name, too, meaning large man or giant man) was a biped and much bigger than an orangutan...
There is something very interesting going on there alright. And is even more comparative to us and Neandertals and other humans than at first glance. Namely that it seems us having kids with them was OK in the first generation, but our genetic distance meant that fertility would decline with further inward breeding. Just like Coyotes and Wolves. A few people have tried to cross dogs with coyotes and again it works OK with the first generation, but with each generation the genetic issues and fertility decline gets more obvious. With wolf and dog crosses this isn't an issue. The two are basically the same species.I think current events may actually support this idea. And it's all about wolves again... in North America, as forests become more fragmented, wolves are mating with coyotes and to a smaller extent with dogs, and by now there's about one million hybrids or "coywolves" as they've been nicknamed- they're bigger than coyotes, able to hunt large prey in packs, but much more adaptable when it comes to food and environment than wolves. So taking the wolf-Neanderthal analogy further, they may actually be saving their species by sacrificing their genetic purity, mating with close relatives with better chances to adapt to a changing world.
This may actually be a new species evolving right before our eyes.
As another aside, they're lovely looking animals. With the stripes on their legs very like Iberian wolves. The latter I've been lucky enough to interact with. Extremely friendly guys and gals. To a fault. They'd nearly lick your face off and wag their own tails off too. American Gray wolves are much more standoffish by comparison. Maybe because the Spanish guys have been around humans for much longer. Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.
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Ohh I'd never heard of that AK. Cool. Any links.
Been trying to find a source... this is the pertinent excerpt from a book which was been quoted online:We don’t yet know for sure, but it seems likely that, as part of their adaptation to cold, Neanderthals were furry. Chimpanzees have ridges on their finger bones that stem from the way that they clutch their mother’s fur as infants. Modern humans don’t have these ridges, but Neanderthals do. Moreover, we know that humans can become furry with very simple genetic changes.
I think the original research may be in this article but you have to pay to read it apparently:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v233/n5321/abs/233538a0.htmlThe early medieval annals mention people being killed by wolves quite a lot(and mention that they were very popular pets and had Brehon legislation with regard to their keeping as pets.. After herons of all things. Herons were the pet of choice for monks for some reason).
How many cases of monks being stabbed through the eyes? Large herons are a lot more dangerous than they seem. 0 -
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I'm really impressed by the research you've done on ancient Homo Sapiens. You and Adam have lots more information on this theme than I do.
Wibbs is the expert here. I find the subject as fascinating as any, but as you know I gravitate more towards dinosaurs and other big toothy things.I have studied nothing about the Denisovans, Hobbits or Red Deer people. Were they remnants of earlier hominid populations, "missing links", or members of Homo Sapiens? Where did they prevail, and in what time period?
They are relatively recent discoveries. Denisovans apparently coexisted with modern humans and Neanderthals but their fossil remains are extremely scant, consisting mostly of some teeth, a finger bone (which was destroyed to analyze the DNA) and apparently a toe bone. The teeth were described as being "as big as a bear's" and their finger bones were incredibly robust, even despite the fact that the bone came from a female. If they were anything like other hominids- with strong sexual dimorphism, the males must have been formidable individuals. The fossils were found in a Siberian cave where humans and Neanderthals had also lived, about 40.000 years ago (Pleistocene).
Unfortunately we don´t know what they looked like as the fossils are so fragmentary, but their DNA has been found in both modern humans (especially Melanesians and Australian aborigines) and fossils from Neanderthals, meaning the species must have been widespread and interbred with its close relatives.
Here's a (highly speculative) picture of a Denisovan restored as a larger, more hairy Neanderthal-like hominid. (Painting is by American artist Mike Keesey):
The so called Hobbits are scientifically known as Homo floresiensis, and were only discovered in 2003 in a cave in the island of Flores, Indonesia (today best known for its Komodo dragons).
H. floresiensis is notorious for its small size- being barely over a meter tall as an adult-, which is believed to be a case of island dwarfism (the island was also home to dwarfed elephants, as well as gigantic rats and storks and the aforementioned dragons). They were nicknamed "hobbits" because they're about the same height as the hobbits of J.R.R. Tolkien's fiction. They apparently lived until 13.000 years ago, so they did coexist with modern humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans, although they were geographically isolated and probably only encountered modern humans towards the end of their existence. Interestingly, the mythology of Flores natives speaks of the ebu gogo, a race of small humanoids, which were said to inhabit caves and were said to be hairy and capable of both their own language and mimicking that of humans.
Some of these myths plainly state that the ebu gogo were actively exterminated by modern humans (burning their caves, etc). This may very well have basis in fact.
The Red Deer Cave people are almost as mysterious as the Denisovan, and they're not assigned to a species yet as far as I know, although it's been suggested they may be the result of mating between humans and another species of Homo (maybe the Denisovans themselves). Maybe Wibbs knows more about them. They lived 14.000-11.000 years ago, so they too shared the world with modern humans for a while. I think these guys were actually first found in the 60s or 70s but only now are they being considered a potential new species.
In short, these were probably all members of genus Homo and thus closely related to us, but they were not the same species. They wouldn´t be "missing links" as usually understood, either; they were not our ancestors but rather shared a common ancestor with us.Yet we find very little material evidence of religious beliefs among the Neanderthals. The bird feathers and pigments you mentioned were probably employed in magical rites. Ochre was apparently smeared over corpses, I think as a kind of magical defense against the corpse rising again as a malignant zombie. Neanderthal, the first to bury the dead, probably did so not because of any belief in the afterlife, but from horror that the cadavers might return to haunt him.
This is just speculation on my part but, I suspect they may have had more practical reasons. Neanderthals coexisted with seriously formidable predators like cave bears and cave hyenas which surely fed readily on carrion and would've been attracted by the smell of a rotting corpse. Maybe disposing of a body was not so much fear of the dead, but of those who would feed on them...0 -
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Possible, but unlikely. That particular illustrator tends to let his imagination run wild, which is OK, but…Well, if the illustration resembles the reality,
Yes it is L. They were a very odd looking people alright and lasted until around 10,000 years ago. They have extremely flattened faces, smaller brains on average and those cheek bones are crazy. Looks like Darth Vader from Star Wars.The skull of the Red Deer "people" is really weird, too. Some are suggesting they're the last of the Denisovans, others that they're Denisovan/Modern human mixes, some are convinced they're within the range of modern humans(Don't agree with that at all). I can't find anything about their toolkit as that would really help place them. If it's more primitive it says something, if it's more modern it says something else. I have found that kinda thing frustrating. It was the same with the Hobbits and these new guys they found recently in a cave South Africa.
Asia is somewhere where more humans are going to be dug up. Africa similarly. The science around hominid study was almost exclusively European based and biased at first. That's where the scientists were. Then some fossils showed up in Asia that were the most primitive so far found(Homo Erectus) and East Asia was seen as the "cradle of humanity" for a long while. Africa was largely ignored. Even though long before Darwin had suggested Africa as the likely birthplace of hominids for the simple reason it was the continent with our closest living relatives in the great apes. The chaps like Raymond Dart in South Africa were beating the drum for Africa as the cradle it wasn't really until the Leakeys started to find so much evidence back in the 60's and 70's that the focus went to Africa.
Even so, these days the story very basically goes that Erectus evolved in Africa, left there and went into Europe and Asia giving eventual rise to Neandertals in Eurasia. Before the Denisovans were found I was banging my own drum about Asia having "their" Neandertals and maybe more species of people. It made sense. In Europe we got Erectus Mark 2.0 in Neandertals, so over the same near million years we were supposed to believe that evolution in Asia with its huge variation in climate and landscape stood still? Africa came up with Erectus Mark 2.0 of its own; Us. Then we spread out and crossed with other peoples and continued to evolve to where I consider modern humans/Sapiens as Erectus Mark 2.1*. There's quite the gap in Africa between Erectus and early us. Much more to be found there I reckon(though the climate can be an issue for preservation).
The problem is that the evidence for Neandertals burying their dead in the first place is extremely thin and not at all sure. Every so called "burial" can be explained by natural processes and most Neandertals show zero evidence of burial, some, quite a few show strong evidence of cannibalism(well if food is short and it may have been ritualistic too). There was no use of ochre or grave goods. Two possible exceptions might be a female who was found in a cave under stones with a leopard paw and a scatter of stone tools with a male in an Iraqi site. Nothing like the funerary practices of the first moderns. We're very clear, with clearly defined pits, lots of grave goods and careful infilling of the site. Again when some Neandertals were found that appeared to be buried we assumed "ahh just like us". Big mistake. Even among modern people today funerary practices vary a lot, from burial in the ground to "sky burial" where corpses are left outside to the elements and scavengers, to burial and then exhumation, to cremation, even cannibalism.What you say about decomposing corpses may be true; but I think it would have been easier for the Neanderthals to just dump the cadavers far outside the limits of their camp, than to go to the trouble of formally burying them…
Take the first so called "burial" found and dsicribed, that of the "Old man of La Chapelle". He was found in a tiny cave in a foetal position with knees drawn up in what looked like a shallow pit that was later covered rapidly because he wasn't disturbed by scavengers. No grave goods. Looks like a burial alright, but… He was an old man. Maybe in the middle of a winter storm he crawled into this tiny cave( I've seen this cave for myself. It is teeny tiny. A cavelet, a baby cave. ), tried to get low in the natural depression and then died from the cold(his death position is common among climbers who die from hypothermia). Because it was winter and the entrance of the cave is maybe a metre from where he lay, snow drifts could have covered him. This would have stopped his scent from being picked up by animals and come the spring and the melt water the cave ceiling may have given way and he was buried(it was almost full of material when first discovered).
Actually I still hold out the tiniest maybe that this guy might be a deliberate burial and for an odd reason I've not read elsewhere. The lack of grave goods. Yep. If he was an old hunter out on his own he would have the tools of his trade with him. OK a wooden spear would have long decayed, but flint blades? Unlikely. That's why I think the Iraqi "grave goods" aren't. The guy died in a cave in with his toolkit about his person. We might see grave goods as valuables in the afterlife, they may not have had an idea of an afterlife(some modern tribes today don't) and burying useful tools would have been seen as a waste of resources. This might explain the cannibalism too. Another explanation for the Old Man might be that he died in that cave in winter, was discovered by his people later on, his tools and the like taken and him buried rather than eaten out of some respect(and the meat may have gone off). Mad theory yea, but it's got just as much if not more evidence than deliberate ritual burial.
It seems not. Neandertals didn't have needles. They had borers and awls but needles no. Interestingly they didn't utilise worked bone as a tool material, which is odd as it would seem an obvious choice of material. Worked bone comes very late to the human table. Something that really puzzles me. I mean they had the bones of animals they ate and they used the skins as leather, they may have used the bones as a primitive building material for teepees and lean to's, but didn't think a splintered bone was useable?As for Palaeolithic clothing: I think that both Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon must have known how to manufacture basic needles and to utilise plant fibres as thread.
I mean, one of the first tools the first hominids made was to break bones to get at the marrow, but it took two million years to see the sharp bones left over as useful? They did have string, sinew being the obvious one as it is much stronger than most plant fibre and tightens as it dries and they had lots of it. Neandertals even had a complex compound "superglue" that took incredible skill and knowledge to produce, but needles nope.
That's the thing, as I said before the picture of Neandertals living in polar conditions like caveman Eskimo is not an accurate one. Neandertals stayed well below the snow line, at worst tundra conditions and mostly northern European temperate conditions of today. Indeed what is notable about Cro Magnon folks is they have more northerly ranges because of needles and fitted clothing, even though they were a thinner more warm adapted species.They lived in severe Ice Age temperatures where the only real warmth would have been provided by heavy fur garments, covering all parts of the body including the head. In order to attach hoods, sleeves, pants legs etc., some kind of sewing is necessary.
*IMHO the "Hobbits" may not be dwarf Homo Erectus, but an even more primitive species, like an evolved Australopithecus (Lucy) and that erectus weren't the first to migrate from Africa. Pigeons, insert cat. ;-DRejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.
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Dear Wibbs,
Thank you for your reply. I see that you have done vast research on ancient man. Really, you should write books on this subject, if you haven't already.
I would like to learn more about Neanderthal's presence in Asia. The settlements in Palestine (Carmel, Skhul Cave) are especially interesting. They prove that Neanderthal reached the Near East. Who knows, he might have gone as far afield as inner Asia.
Please send details about Neanderthal man in Asia. Did his lifestyle on that continent differ greatly from the way he lived in Europe? It must have, considering climatic and environmental diversity...
Did you read the article I sent you about Neanderthal's cross-breeding in Africa? It's fascinating.
As for Neanderthal's use of ochre for burial and ritual purposes, modern research has indicated evidence of this. Numerous articles and studies on this subject have been published. Please take a look at these, for example:
www.pnas.org/content/109/61889.full
semiramis-speaks.com/neandertal-burial-practices/
I know that you will probably disagree with what is written in these articles. There are so many conflicting theories and notions about Neanderthal. It's not easy to get to know the real person, after so many millenia. Lord knows, even today there is a persisting vulgar concept of a brutish slouching caveman, clobbering his unfortunate spouse over the head with his mace!
Images such as this have been widely popularized by films, cartoons, infantile literature etc. Unfortunately they have remained in the mind of the masses. So it's up to folks like us to discover, or rediscover, the captivating facts, secrets and mysteries which make good old Neanderthal such a fascinating personage. 0 -
Yes it is L. They were a very odd looking people alright and lasted until around 10,000 years ago. They have extremely flattened faces, smaller brains on average and those cheek bones are crazy. Looks like Darth Vader from Star Wars.
Wibbs, would you say this reconstruction is close to the real thing at all? As in, what the face would look like and all that...
It seems not. Neandertals didn't have needles. They had borers and awls but needles no. Interestingly they didn't utilise worked bone as a tool material, which is odd as it would seem an obvious choice of material. Worked bone comes very late to the human table. Something that really puzzles me. I mean they had the bones of animals they ate and they used the skins as leather, they may have used the bones as a primitive building material for teepees and lean to's, but didn't think a splintered bone was useable? I mean, one of the first tools the first hominids made was to break bones to get at the marrow, but it took two million years to see the sharp bones left over as useful? They did have string, sinew being the obvious one as it is much stronger than most plant fibre and tightens as it dries and they had lots of it. Neandertals even had a complex compound "superglue" that took incredible skill and knowledge to produce, but needles nope.
This may sound dumb but, is it possible that their fingers were so thick and the tips so wide that handling something as delicate as a needle would've been dificult/impractical for them, to the point that if the concept ever occured to them, they simply forgot about it after a few frustrating tries?*IMHO the "Hobbits" may not be dwarf Homo Erectus, but an even more primitive species, like an evolved Australopithecus (Lucy) and that erectus weren't the first to migrate from Africa. Pigeons, insert cat. ;-D
I'm not sure if I've asked you before, but, going to the other end of the size chart, what do you think about Meganthropus? It too has been compared to more primitive, australopithecine types...0 -
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I tried L, but the link didn't work for me for some reason?Did you read the article I sent you about Neanderthal's cross-breeding in Africa? It's fascinating.
TBH It would greatly surprise me, as no Neandertals were in Africa.
I would L, mainly because those articles are just repeating previous "research" that I would see as mistakes, sometimes unbelievably silly mistakes. "Facts" all too often become real because of repetition and that would be the case here IMH. Yes pigments have been found at Neandertal sites, but not a single example in context with a body. The Old man of Chapelle's "burial" was an excavation ruined from the start because the scientists were out to prove something. Pretty much everything in the accepted literature today is based on very bad science. They mention how good his preservation was. It wasn't. Just over 50% of the skeleton is missing and his skeleton wasn't articulated as often described and the skull was separate from the jaw by a metre. Makes little sense for a burial.As for Neanderthal's use of ochre for burial and ritual purposes, modern research has indicated evidence of this. Numerous articles and studies on this subject have been published. Please take a look at these, for example:
www.pnas.org/content/109/61889.full
semiramis-speaks.com/neandertal-burial-practices/
I know that you will probably disagree with what is written in these articles.
The Regourdou site is even more fanciful. There is still talk of a stone "tomb" and deliberate burial and grave goods consisting of specifically chosen cave bear bones. I have to say, I am truly shocked that this is still seen as anything approaching science. The site is a collapsed cave, the geology is a near perfect example of a collapsed cave. As are the remains of animals, including the Neandertal "burial". The excavation was initially an amateur one by the landowner farmer, but again IMH, the so called professional excavation was more amateur. Again it looked nothing like a burial. Again well over half of the body was missing and the bear bones distribution was what you would expect to see in any similar cave layout with no human involvement. It was the human involvement that made them think "ritual" and "burial" where the evidence was zero for it. "Oh we've found cave bear bones, it must have been ritual". Ehhhh… the clue is in the name; Cave bear. They're found all over Europe in caves, sometimes metres deep in bones. Some deposits were so large, they were used as industrial phosphate sources in the early 20th century. There is nada in that site that suggests deliberate burial. What it does look like is a cave system where different animals walked in or fell in and then died and then the roof collapsed. If a Neandertal hadn't been present, that's exactly what scientists would have said about it.
Very true L.There are so many conflicting theories and notions about Neanderthal. It's not easy to get to know the real person, after so many millenia.
True again L and mostly based on that "Old man" of Chapelle. He did slouch, a man bent over in arthritis and he became the archetype. The funny thing about Neandertals is that they're the only ancient people whose name is known by all and used as an insult. If someone acts brutish or stupid nobody calls them an "Erectus". The sad thing for me, is that we'll never know what they called themselves.Lord knows, even today there is a persisting vulgar concept of a brutish slouching caveman, clobbering his unfortunate spouse over the head with his mace! Images such as this have been widely popularized by films, cartoons, infantile literature etc. Unfortunately they have remained in the mind of the masses.
Looks pretty good AK. Better than most reconstructions. The small details can so be hard to pin down. They might have been more pale, more modern Asian looking, with narrower eyes and even flatter faces. DNA mapping over time should help us there. A very different and fascinating people nonetheless.Wibbs, would you say this reconstruction is close to the real thing at all? As in, what the face would look like and all that...
Maybe AK, but some of their stone tools are tiny and they could manipulate them, never mind make them in the first place.This may sound dumb but, is it possible that their fingers were so thick and the tips so wide that handling something as delicate as a needle would've been dificult/impractical for them, to the point that if the concept ever occured to them, they simply forgot about it after a few frustrating tries?
I'd be more on the latter scale than the Erectus TBH. The problem is the lack of material to work with and until more of their physiology is found we;re really in the dark. But yea, looking on what we have of Meganthropus, I'd be thinking "opposite Hobbits", a much more robust version of the Australopithecines, of which there were some candidates in Africa. Could still be a more robust Erectus and as the Georgian finds have shown they had quite the diversity. Maybe this is another? The Hobbits make things a little easier, in that we have much more of their bones and in those bones there are details, like the ankles and knees, that look more primitive than Erectus. That might well be down to isolated genetic drift and they are still Erectus, but… For me the most fascinating aspect of them is they made it to the island in the first place. They must have had some seafaring ability. Or crazy luck. Their tools are just ahead of Erectus too(but well below moderns, so sick modern humans is out as a theory). Fascinating stuff all around and an area of research that's going to keep springing up major and minor surprises I reckon. Great!I'm not sure if I've asked you before, but, going to the other end of the size chart, what do you think about Meganthropus? It too has been compared to more primitive, australopithecine types... Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.
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