Neanderthals died out earlier than thought

IMHO they do have wonderfully shaped jawbones, usually great teeth too.

I dunno about this research. For a start assigning the type of stone tools used in butchery is very much down to individual researchers analysis. If I used a Neandertal levallois/mousterian type blade and a sapiens type blade and asked researchers to tell the difference I'll bet the farm that they couldn't. Oh and I'll take that bet any day of the week, if anyone is up for it. For a start what tool types are we looking at? The description of "blade" itself is a minefield. Some say Neandertals didn't use them, or didn't deliberately set out to make them, but I would personally disagree. IMH much of the so called levallois technique of tool production isn't exclusively by reduction aimed at a single "finished product" while discarding the "waste" flakes.

Take a look at this animation of the process.


Big lump of quality flint and they're apparently chucking away the bulk of it? Wasteful as fcuk. I really don't think these guys were that stupid, indeed I think they were anything but and were very practical. I think we suffer from looking at this through our eyes. Modern humans would be more likely to waste material to "release" a final "perfect" "beautiful" form(and ironically that's why we won out in the end). Researchers have drawn up a list of different "types" of levallois reduction that gives rise to different final results. All are pretty and follow a pattern. Problem is the vast majority of levallois tools and cores don't fit these pretty descriptions. I don't think Neandertals thought along such lines. Look again at the above animation, all those lovely sharp as fcuk "blades" - which require serious skill to release - thrown away? GTFO I say. To add to that take I look at my own collection of their tools. Some pieces are fantastically made end results of the technique, but when I look at the levallois cores, the end points or works in progress, none show this perfect end idea that seems to be a given. They look like a very efficient way of making loads of sharp edges from damn near every flake they strike off and I have a few of those debitage/waste flakes that show use wear. And one in particular is damned impressive for a "waste" flake of the process.

Secondly it's hard to be definitive about ascribing a particular technique to particular humans at this crossover point. The Levallois technique ascribed to Neandertals was also used by modern humans across North Africa. We may in some areas of Europe kept this production method going. Who knows? On the other hand Neandertals may have picked up our techniques too. So unless you have human remains with the stone tools in situ it's drifting into conjecture. IIRC in Russia they found levallois tools that were closer to 20,000 years old and in a more northerly latitude than expected. Us or them? Again who knows.

Thirdly what might "extinct" mean? We might have encountered each other and mated into one new "species", so that "pure" new European and old European ceased to be different things. Genetic evidence for this? Well genetics can throw a curve ball. We know as an historical fact that Saxons invaded England in significant numbers, yet just a thousand years later, only a teeny percentage of modern English folks show Saxon DNA and only in the male lines, the female lines are completely absent. And like I say we know they were there. Take Otzi the iceman, his genetics show a much higher Neandertal component than modern folks(6% IIRC?). He was closer to the event as it were, so fair enough. However he's "only" three thousand years old. If Neandertals had gone extinct 40,000 years ago, you might expect him to have a lower amount left. For fun it might be interesting to take his percentage and ours and any other modern European ancient DNA we have and graph the percentage by age and use that as a "genetic clock" to see how recently we broke out the Barry White records and the vino. I'd reckon it'll show it to be more recent than this research posits.

Fourthly, the big problem is the dearth of widespread evidence. Sure our Neandertal brothers and sisters make up the largest quantity of remains of all archaic humans, but it's still a fecking tiny number. We don't even have a full Neandertal skeleton. All such reconstructions are based on a mosaic of different remains from different times. And they're male. The female Neandertal is even less represented. Though for pathos we do have lots of remains of infants who died very young. And they do seem to have been deliberately buried, or the possibility is higher. And unlike some adult Neandertal bones, none show any evidence of cannibalism. They seem to have been a very close knit family based(even xenophobic) people, the loss of a child must have been a terrible thing.

Annnnyway.... I'll make a prediction. I'll bet that we will discover that Neandertals or genetically and culturally mostly Neandertals survived in small pockets in Eurasia up to around 15,000 years ago. Sounds mad I grant you, but that's my bet.

Looks like these dudes were even more like us that we thought. 40,000 year old rock art/engravings and were using red ochre as a pigment up to 250,000 years ago. Which given how seemingly isolated and xenophobic they may have been is even more impressive.

I would posit that this stuff was passed along by the women. Isolated groups need to stay viable by bringing in new blood and in many hunter gatherer societies it's the women who are the ones who are the more mobile in this way. It's one theory why women are generally better than men at acquiring new languages. The selective pressure in the past was higher for them to do so.

Though interestingly the gene mix between them and us that survives down to today was exclusively male to female. IE Neandertal Blokes to Sapien lassies. Though again I would suspect the reverse route has gone missing in the interim, much like the Saxon female genetic lins have died out in England and that only took a thousand years.

Though maybe not. Neandertal women may have been less desirable to Sapiens men. They were lacking the hip waist ratio, that "hourglass" of modern women that is a near constant attractant across cultures and time, but Neandertal men may have been more attractive to Sapiens women because of their superior strength and robustness. I mean if you're a lass surrounded by tall, skinny African dudes and a bloke shows up that is only slightly shorter but can wrestle a bull oryx to the ground with his bare hands he may have a bit of "oooh baby" to him. Hell he might do well enough these days.