http://www.physorg.com/news101477918.html
I was hoping for something more substantial in this article. It seems to me that too many variables could by chance create evidence for this type of "innovation". At best they seem to build a case from them going from severely low creative intelligence to very low creative intelligence. Perhaps is our searching for absolute differentiators about what it is to be an intelligent homo sapien i.e. the debunked "only humans use tools" - is just too black and white to be useful and we need more flexible criteria...
How tiresome having to begin the piece with the claim that neandertals were not so dumb. Perhaps 50 years ago this would have been a reasonalbe lead but not today. Most of the biological anthropology community do not believe that neandertals were dumb, afterall their mean cranial capacities are greater than moderns. It is a genuine mystery why they disappeared but it is also clear that anatomically modern humans also almost disappeared around a 100,000 years as reseach on the bottleneck effect clearly demonstrates.
I'd be pretty convinced the human population dropped due to the ice age and changing climate. Neanderthal if I'm not mistaken were limited in range to around the Mediterranean where they could easily be subject to various natural disasters that occurred back then.
Of course it's speculation, it just seems to fit well with what we've found and what we know of both species. One of the strengths of modern homo sapian is the ability to draw on experience from the past, which can also be a weakness. Sudden changes in a strongly repeating pattern like the seasons could very well wipe out a primitive society.
As for Neanderthal, give them anywhere near our intelligence and add in a tight geographic habitat. They stick around when the weather changes, expecting to last it out and go back to normal. And of course end up dead or starving when it turns out to be an actual climate change or natural disaster. It really depends on how much they depend on their own memory to make future decisions.
Of course it's speculation, it just seems to fit well with what we've found and what we know of both species. One of the strengths of modern homo sapian is the ability to draw on experience from the past, which can also be a weakness. Sudden changes in a strongly repeating pattern like the seasons could very well wipe out a primitive society.
As for Neanderthal, give them anywhere near our intelligence and add in a tight geographic habitat. They stick around when the weather changes, expecting to last it out and go back to normal. And of course end up dead or starving when it turns out to be an actual climate change or natural disaster. It really depends on how much they depend on their own memory to make future decisions.
Neanderthals were just dumb beasts...talk about ethnocentric. These people existed for hundreds of thousands of years in areas that underwent incredible changes and catastrophes.
That means events that we can't even conceive of, that would kill most any modern human and lay waste to our best technology.
The geologic record hints at massive upheavals of a scale beyond anything we've seen in our short memory, and the Last Glacial Maximum seems to have finally done the job, and not only to Neanderthal, but to the early Cro-Magnon culture, as well.
I find it amusing that our scientists think they have any definitive knowledge at all, considering the limited data.
What we do know is that the Earth, as we know it today, did not exist. The lands that we inhabit today were a wilderness apart from the truly habitable lands that are now under hundreds of feet of ocean. We are trying to base a general hypothesis on examples that come from the extreme, not the norm.
Until we can get a handle on the fact that the earth we know today did not exist, and start looking at the world that did exist, we are unlikely to have any real knowledge of the past
That means events that we can't even conceive of, that would kill most any modern human and lay waste to our best technology.
The geologic record hints at massive upheavals of a scale beyond anything we've seen in our short memory, and the Last Glacial Maximum seems to have finally done the job, and not only to Neanderthal, but to the early Cro-Magnon culture, as well.
I find it amusing that our scientists think they have any definitive knowledge at all, considering the limited data.
What we do know is that the Earth, as we know it today, did not exist. The lands that we inhabit today were a wilderness apart from the truly habitable lands that are now under hundreds of feet of ocean. We are trying to base a general hypothesis on examples that come from the extreme, not the norm.
Until we can get a handle on the fact that the earth we know today did not exist, and start looking at the world that did exist, we are unlikely to have any real knowledge of the past
None sense - Bush is the last known NeanderthalsMust fight must free world must dig in snow for oil make fire ugh ...