| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"johac" |
| Date: |
15 Jun 2007 01:38:32 AM |
| Object: |
Neanderthals bid for human status |
I thought they were human. This shows that they may have been a little
more human than previously thought.
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Neanderthals bid for human status
* 13 June 2007
* NewScientist.com news service
* Rowan Hooper
NEANDERTHALS as innovators? That the concept seems amusing goes to show
how our sister species has become the butt of our jokes. Yet in the
Middle Palaeolithic, some 300,000 years ago, innovation is what the
Neanderthals were up to.
This period is usually regarded as undramatic in cultural and
evolutionary terms, with little in the way of technological or cognitive
development. Palaeoanthropologists get more excited about the changes in
tools found later, as the Middle Palaeolithic gave way to the Upper, and
as modern humans replaced Neanderthals, some 40,000 years ago.
Terry Hopkinson of the University of Leicester, UK, has now challenged
this view, showing that Neanderthals were far from behaviourally static.
They incorporated different forms of tool construction into a single
technique, and learned to cope with the ecological challenges posed by
habitats in eastern Europe.
"There has been a consensus that the modern human mind turned on like a
light switch about 50,000 years ago, only in Africa," says Hopkinson.
But the putatively modern traits accompanying the change, such as
abstract art, the use of grindstones and elongated stone blades, and big
game hunting began to accumulate in Africa from 300,000 years ago, he
says. "It was the same in Europe with Neanderthals, there was a gradual
accumulation of technology." If Homo sapiens developed human traits
gradually, then why not Neanderthals?
Archaeological finds from across Europe show that the Neanderthals fused
two forms of toolmaking, the façonnage and the débitage techniques. In
the former a stone core is shaped by chipping off flakes of flint, the
latter involves producing sharp-edged flakes from a core. In the Lower
Palaeolithic, more than 300,000 years ago, the two techniques were
practised separately, but Hopkinson argues that during the Middle
Palaeolithic they were fused into a single method, the Levallois
reduction technique (Antiquity, vol 81, p 294).
At the same time as this was occurring, excavations show that
Neanderthals spread into central and eastern Europe, regions where they
and their forebears, Homo heidelbergensis, had hitherto been unable to
settle. In western Europe, the influence of the Atlantic ameliorates the
extreme seasonality of the continent, but away from this, the
environment was too harsh for them to cope. "The eastern expansion shows
that the Neanderthals became capable of managing their lives and their
landscapes in strongly seasonal environments," says Hopkinson.
This period is commonly thought to be characterised by long periods of
little change in technological and perhaps also cognitive development,
says Katerina Harvati of the department of human evolution at the Max
Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
"This analysis highlights important aspects of Neanderthal cultural and
cognitive evolution which are not always emphasised," she says.
Neanderthals have typically been thought of as incapable of innovation,
as it was assumed to be something unique to Homo sapiens, says
Hopkinson. "With this evidence of innovation it becomes difficult to
exclude Neanderthals from the concept of humanity."
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http://tinyurl.com/2x937t
--
John #1782
"We should always be disposed to believe that which appears to us to be
white is really black, if the hierarchy of the church so decides."
- Saint Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556) Founder of the Jesuit Order.
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| User: "Nosterill" |
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| Title: Re: Neanderthals bid for human status |
15 Jun 2007 03:41:13 AM |
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On Jun 15, 7:38 am, johac <jhachm...@remove.sbcglobal.net> wrote:
I thought they were human. This shows that they may have been a little
more human than previously thought.
---
Neanderthals bid for human status
Next they'll be wanting the council to house them, pay them a pension
etc. Coming over here, taking our jobs.............. :-)
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| User: "johac" |
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| Title: Re: Neanderthals bid for human status |
15 Jun 2007 06:23:51 PM |
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In article <1181896873.802035.80480@p77g2000hsh.googlegroups.com>,
Nosterill <fladgate@hotmail.com> wrote:
On Jun 15, 7:38 am, johac <jhachm...@remove.sbcglobal.net> wrote:
I thought they were human. This shows that they may have been a little
more human than previously thought.
---
Neanderthals bid for human status
Next they'll be wanting the council to house them, pay them a pension
etc. Coming over here, taking our jobs.............. :-)
I'm sure that they expressed the same sentiments when the moderns
migrated over from Africa. "Damned illegals!"
--
John #1782
"We should always be disposed to believe that which appears to us to be
white is really black, if the hierarchy of the church so decides."
- Saint Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556) Founder of the Jesuit Order.
.
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