Neanderthals' demise caused by modern human invasion

dlofnep

Neanderthals died out in Western Europe after a surge of modern humans arrived from Africa and made them a minority in their own land, researchers claim.

The swarm of homo sapiens onto the continent more than 40,000 years ago left the Neanderthals, who had thrived in the frigid conditions for 300 millennia, outnumbered by a massive 10 to one.

The invasion of so many modern humans overturned the Neanderthals' domination of the land and forced them into fierce competition for food, fuel and other crucial resources.

Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/jul/28/neanderthals-demise-modern-human-invasion

Rubecula

I have heard this argument before. To be honest, in my own mind, the jury is still out on this one.

PS there was an article shown in a documentary a few years ago that small groups of Neanderthals existed until comparitively recent times in isolated pockets around Europe. I think the last ones were thought to be living in caves on the coast of Portugal (or somewhere similar)

I can't remember the program so I am afraid I can't even find a link to it.

Wibbs

Gibraltar and and southern Spain is their last known hangout. I'm with Rubecula on this one. Don't quite buy it. I'm sure population growth was a factor, or was a result of something else. It could simply be that you see less Neandertals because they were already dying out, not necessarily because Sapiens was pushing them out. IE after the KT boundary dinosaurs go extinct and then you have huge amounts of mammals. It doesn't mean the mammals outcompeted the dinos.

one researcher says ""Faced with this kind of competition, the Neanderthals seem to have retreated initially into more marginal and less attractive regions of the continent and eventually, within a space of at most a hundred thousand years, for their populations to have declined to extinction – perhaps accelerated further by sudden climatic deterioration across the continent around 40,000 years ago.". Couple of points there. Oh look climactic change around 40,000 years ago. Funny enough the same date for the earliest evidence of moderns showing up. Second point, he had a brain fart when he says "within a space of at most a hundred thousand years". We only shared the land in Europe for 10,000 years(on current evidence. We also shared the land in the middle east at an earlier date(60,000 BP) and yet no huge population diffs show up at that stage).

As for this"The arrival of modern humans coincided with the appearance of elaborate cave paintings, decorative stones and beads, and imported shells, suggesting H. sapiens had a more complex society than the Neanderthals.", recent discoveries in Spain seem to show Neandertals had shell pendants and the like before they met Sapiens. They also mined and concentrated pigments likely for body adornment. One of the researchers posits that maybe Sapiens may have been influenced by them intially. Beads and pigment use does show up in Sapiens in one site in southern Africa at 90,000, but then seems to stop, or at least doesn't spread to the point where it's all over the place. Sapiens hits Europe and Bang! cultural explosion in very short order. Now it could be just down to a larger population keeping and transmitting the novel ideas and that does make sense. That said handaxes as a cultural item evolves, transmits and lasts for over a million years in much earlier humans and across most of the world they lived in. Something else seems to happen in Europe. IMHO it's influence and competition from the Neandertals. Or at least that has been overlooked.

Their hunting toolkit was sophisticated enough to allow them to survive successive ice ages and interglacials for the guts of 200,000 years plus. Now climate change and their large prey species moving or dying out had an impact. One theory holds that they weren't as omnivorous as us. We'd eat any goddamn thing. They were picky eaters and needed more calories. So they starved. Problem with that is sites in Italy and Spain show that they ate all sorts of things, including seals and shellfish. Recent discoveries found between the teeth of Neandertals (from Iran IIRC) show they also cooked and ate grains, so this doesn' seem to fit as an explanation.

For me I reckon it's a combination of all three. This combination may not have been that big a pressure, it could be as simple as moderns had just one more kid per small family group. Over the course of 10,000 years that would make a huge diff.

ASIDE I see they changed the pic that dlofnep quoted in the article. For my money though it's an earlier hominid I reckon its a lot closer to how a Neandertal looked like compared to the cleanshaven hippie types that look back at us from recent reconstructions.

Yitzhak Rabin

Wibbs wrote: »

ASIDE I see they changed the pic that dlofnep quoted in the article. For my money though it's an earlier hominid I reckon its a lot closer to how a Neandertal looked like compared to the cleanshaven hippie types that look back at us from recent reconstructions.

Thats one thing that gets me too. I don't know whether its the scientists or the artists that are the culprits, but us humans are so species-centrist.

Whats that? Neandertals were quite clever? Better make them look exactly like us so, there's no way a hairy ape-looking fella could also be smart.

How did we go from this:



to this



Granted, the first one is probably a bit too primitive, but the second one is equally as silly in my opinion.

I'd say the neandertals were very hairy. Why would we have:

hairy elephants


hairy rhinos


hairy....whatever you'd call these fellas



hairy pigs


But for some reason now that we know that Neandertals are smart, all of a sudden they're the exception to the rule, and even though they evolved to be adapted to the cold, they somehow didn't have the most obvious adaption, and nice warm coat of hair.

Instead, they look exactly like us freaks that evolved down in the african savvanah.



I don't buy it.



EDIT:

Here's a good example to illustrate my point.

This is a recent 'reconstruction' of a neanderthal male:



and these are two famous sportspeople



The reconstruction looks more 'saipien' than actual humans!

Hannibal

Wasn't there some type of DNA analysis done that suggested they had hair of a reddish colour?
I'd imagine they were hairy as they lived in a colder Europe so they would have needed some type of winter coat to survive.

Below is an article from Sciencemag.org

"Neandertals, the closest evolutionary relatives of present-day humans, lived in large parts of Europe and western Asia before disappearing 25,000 years ago. We present a draft sequence of the Neandertal genome composed of more than 4 billion nucleotides from three individuals. Comparisons of the Neandertal genome to the genomes of five present-day humans from different parts of the world identify a number of genomic regions that may have been affected by positive selection in ancestral modern humans, including genes involved in metabolism and in cognitive and skeletal development. We show that Neandertals shared more genetic variants with present-day humans in Eurasia than with present-day humans in sub-Saharan Africa, suggesting that gene flow from Neandertals into the ancestors of non-Africans occurred before the divergence of Eurasian groups from each other."

Hannibal

yekahS wrote: »

and these are two famous sportspeople



The reconstruction looks more 'saipien' than actual humans!

Wibbs

yekahS wrote: »

Thats one thing that gets me too. I don't know whether its the scientists or the artists that are the culprits, but us humans are so species-centrist.

And prone to fashion.

Whats that? Neandertals were quite clever? Better make them look exactly like us so, there's no way a hairy ape-looking fella could also be smart.

Bingo! Exactly. There's some deep need for us not to be alone, but at the same time the idea of something very like us in culture, but looks very different doesn't sit at all well. On the cultural front, yes we had a massive explosion in culture around 40,000 years ago, but go back to say 100,000 years ago and try play spot the difference between what cultural remains we leave and what Neandertals left. It's not easy at all.

I'd say the neandertals were very hairy. Why would we have:


But for some reason now that we know that Neandertals are smart, all of a sudden they're the exception to the rule, and even though they evolved to be adapted to the cold, they somehow didn't have the most obvious adaption, and nice warm coat of hair.

+1000. Exactly. Animals that in their African tropical and sub tropical versions are largely hairless, adapt to the colder climes of Europe by growing hair, yet another animal that in their African tropical and sub tropical versions are largely hairless stay that way when they migrate to the same environment? Makes no sense. Sure they had animal hides for protection and I suspect could tailor clothes better than we currently think, but IMHO they would be a lot hairier than modern humans. We see this today with modern populations. Europeans are the hairiest of all modern humans. Now it's possible that Neandertals adapted like Asians in a similar temperate climate and had more subcutaneous fat as a protection, but I'd be going with hairy myself

Here's a good example to illustrate my point.


and these are two famous sportspeople
I'll give you a closer one to your last example;

They might be brothers. Funny thing about brow ridges in moderns and you see this even more in native Australians. Our brow ridges if we have them are biggest nearer the nose, whereas previous hominids they're bigger closer to the edge of the face. I wonder do immature neandertal kids start brow ridge development like moderns only getting the full effect as they age and mature? It's long being a theory of mine that brow ridges in early humans was a male secondary sexual characteristic. We lost them as we became more neotonous. Even so in modern humans the males still have bigger ones.

Dotsey wrote: »

Wasn't there some type of DNA analysis done that suggested they had hair of a reddish colour?

Some it appears did have that alright, but it's a slightly different genetic mutation in modern humans IIRC.

My idea of how a Neanderthal would look like is this;

From an old drawing of one. I did a bit of photoshoppery on it to fit my idea. First I increased the eye size by a third. They had huge eye sockets. Much bigger than moderns. Another local adaptation you see today. Europeans have the biggest eye sockets in moderns. The further one goes away from the tropics the bigger the eyes get. Lower light in upper lattitudes the likely reason. Neandertals really ran with this. One of the reasons their heads and brains are so big(even bigger than ours) is to house a bigger area for processing vision at the back of the skull.
You can see it in this comparison


They were likely serious sight hunters. IMHO the current theory favours this ability was about general visual accuity, but what about f it was because maybe they were low light even nocturnal hunters? This would make more sense to me for a close in ambush attack hunting style which they defo favoured. Like the way lions may hunt more at night. If you can see better you have a serious advantage. You can get right up close. You don't need long range weapons the way moderns had them. It would explain why they never appeared to invent them. A throwing dart is kinda useless in the ranges encountered by a nocturnal predator.

They're also just bigger overall. Much bigger. And contrary to popular weren't that much shorter than moderns and about the same as moderns back then. 5 foot 5 kinda area. That said one Iranian lad was 5 11 - 6 ft.

I also decreased the size of the ears and lips. Two areas very prone to frostbite, so makes no sense to have big ones.

Adam Khor

yekahS wrote: »

Thats one thing that gets me too. I don't know whether its the scientists or the artists that are the culprits, but us humans are so species-centrist.

Whats that? Neandertals were quite clever? Better make them look exactly like us so, there's no way a hairy ape-looking fella could also be smart.

How did we go from this:



to this



Granted, the first one is probably a bit too primitive, but the second one is equally as silly in my opinion.

I'd say the neandertals were very hairy. Why would we have:

hairy elephants


hairy rhinos


hairy....whatever you'd call these fellas

It's a Chalicothere... but not from Neanderthal times. It did coexist with australopithecines in Africa, though...

Wibbs wrote: »

And prone to fashion.

Bingo! Exactly. There's some deep need for us not to be alone, but at the same time the idea of something very like us in culture, but looks very different doesn't sit at all well. On the cultural front, yes we had a massive explosion in culture around 40,000 years ago, but go back to say 100,000 years ago and try play spot the difference between what cultural remains we leave and what Neandertals left. It's not easy at all.
+1000. Exactly. Animals that in their African tropical and sub tropical versions are largely hairless, adapt to the colder climes of Europe by growing hair, yet another animal that in their African tropical and sub tropical versions are largely hairless stay that way when they migrate to the same environment? Makes no sense. Sure they had animal hides for protection and I suspect could tailor clothes better than we currently think, but IMHO they would be a lot hairier than modern humans. We see this today with modern populations. Europeans are the hairiest of all modern humans. Now it's possible that Neandertals adapted like Asians in a similar temperate climate and had more subcutaneous fat as a protection, but I'd be going with hairy myself


They might be brothers. Funny thing about brow ridges in moderns and you see this even more in native Australians. Our brow ridges if we have them are biggest nearer the nose, whereas previous hominids they're bigger closer to the edge of the face. I wonder do immature neandertal kids start brow ridge development like moderns only getting the full effect as they age and mature? It's long being a theory of mine that brow ridges in early humans was a male secondary sexual characteristic. We lost them as we became more neotonous. Even so in modern humans the males still have bigger ones.


Some it appears did have that alright, but it's a slightly different genetic mutation in modern humans IIRC.

My idea of how a Neanderthal would look like is this;

From an old drawing of one. I did a bit of photoshoppery on it to fit my idea. First I increased the eye size by a third. They had huge eye sockets. Much bigger than moderns. Another local adaptation you see today. Europeans have the biggest eye sockets in moderns. The further one goes away from the tropics the bigger the eyes get. Lower light in upper lattitudes the likely reason. Neandertals really ran with this. One of the reasons their heads and brains are so big(even bigger than ours) is to house a bigger area for processing vision at the back of the skull.
You can see it in this comparison


They were likely serious sight hunters. IMHO the current theory favours this ability was about general visual accuity, but what about f it was because maybe they were low light even nocturnal hunters? This would make more sense to me for a close in ambush attack hunting style which they defo favoured. Like the way lions may hunt more at night. If you can see better you have a serious advantage. You can get right up close. You don't need long range weapons the way moderns had them. It would explain why they never appeared to invent them. A throwing dart is kinda useless in the ranges encountered by a nocturnal predator.

They're also just bigger overall. Much bigger. And contrary to popular weren't that much shorter than moderns and about the same as moderns back then. 5 foot 5 kinda area. That said one Iranian lad was 5 11 - 6 ft.

I also decreased the size of the ears and lips. Two areas very prone to frostbite, so makes no sense to have big ones.

This is super interesting stuff. Nocturnal Neanderthal... that is something I never imagined, partly because I assumed the threat of cave lions, sabertooths and giant hyenas would be to great for any kind of hominid, no matter how strong, to wander at night... but then again, having night vision (if it indeed had it) would help the Neanderthal detect predators and deal with them better than we could ever do...
Plus, it was obviously much stronger and more resistant than humans (I think there was fossil evidence for Neanderthals surviving injury that would've killed any Homo sapiens)...

This gets me thinking once again of the so called Wild Men of European folklore. They are always described as being very hairy, except for their hands and feet, and also, in some accounts, as having very large, red eyes and large teeth. They were said to live in the deepest, wildest, most remote parts of the European forests. Maybe the very last surviving Neanderthals?
The most interesting part is that in some stories, the Wild Men (even though being "savage" according to most accounts) were smart enough to speak and use tools.

Wibbs

Adam Khor wrote: »

This is super interesting stuff. Nocturnal Neanderthal... that is something I never imagined, partly because I assumed the threat of cave lions, sabertooths and giant hyenas would be to great for any kind of hominid, no matter how strong, to wander at night... but then again, having night vision (if it indeed had it) would help the Neanderthal detect predators and deal with them better than we could ever do...
Plus, it was obviously much stronger and more resistant than humans (I think there was fossil evidence for Neanderthals surviving injury that would've killed any Homo sapiens)...

Pretty much. They were very robust by comparison. The nocturnal idea just seems quite fitting when you look at various things. Their hunting strategy. Close in ambush predators. Some stuff I've read claims that Neandertals used stabbing spears because they never invented the idea of throwing and/or their shoulders weren't suitable for throwing compared to ours. OK enough theory, but Homo Heidelbergensis, the previous folks in Europe and highly likely the progenitors of Neandertals did have projectile weapons. The oldest found in fact. They have same of similar shoulders. So why did Neandertals not bother? Couple of guesses. 1) Hunting terrain. Projectile weapons work at a distance(duh ) so are very good for open areas, grassland and the like. Not so hot for deep forest. You're as likely to hit a tree or brush as hit the prey. For African Sapiens traipsing around in grassland developing long range was the way to go. Ambush was a lot harder. Neandertals may just have stopped bothering with the long range stuff 2)my take, time of day favoured for hunting. Forests, even tropical ones are low light environments. Maybe the forests grew at some point between heidelbergensis and Neandertals evolving? More and more hunting was done in low light and low range conditions. Their eyes adapted for the low light of the forests and got bigger as did their brain centres processing the visual info. Maybe at some point the adaptation got big enough to allow dusk and dawn hunting when animals were more vulnerable(I wonder has anyone looked at the hearing centre of the brain to see if it's bigger too)? This selected for the trait even more. Then maybe, just maybe they started to deliberately hunt at dusk, early morning and night (especially moonlit nights). This would give them all sorts of advantages. Diurnal prey have less defences at night. Easier to lay in wait and ambush them whn they're at their most vulnerable. Now this wouldn't mean they couldn't or did't hunt in full daylight either, but maybe the dark hunting was more favoured for the big prey? As for large predators? Most large predators are mostly diurnal hunters anyway. In any event a group of Neandertal adult males each one with around 6 times the strength of a strong modern human and armed to the teeth would provide a worrying target even for a big cat. These guys were capable of felling large prey, much larger than themselves in close in combat.

This might also partially explain their demise. The climate changed and forests gave way to more grassland. Their cover was blown, even in the dark. At first they were probably OK since the two peoples would have had different hunting strategies(in my take anyway). They probably crossed paths face to face rarely enough because of same. This may explain the genetic heritage. Neanderthal DNA seems to come from a few events* in the Levant area. A more open area and where we co existed for many thosands of years cheek by jowl. My mad notion would only apply to the "classic" European neandertals of the colder north regions. IMHO I'd expect the two populations probably differed in a few small but significant way.

This gets me thinking once again of the so called Wild Men of European folklore. They are always described as being very hairy, except for their hands and feet, and also, in some accounts, as having very large, red eyes and large teeth. They were said to live in the deepest, wildest, most remote parts of the European forests. Maybe the very last surviving Neanderthals?
The most interesting part is that in some stories, the Wild Men (even though being "savage" according to most accounts) were smart enough to speak and use tools.

It might certainly be a race memory alright. I'd say classic descriptions of trolls might fit too. Living in caves and deep forests, hugely strong, shaggy hair, big noses, not very clever etc. It would be my hunch they went extinct more recently than 25,000 years ago. In forest like you mention. We have the "last" ones from southern Spain in coastal caves, because that preserves evidence. I'd not be that shocked to discover they died out closer to say 10,000 years BP. Wooly mammoths made it to 11,000 years ago in an isolated dwarfed population on a Siberian island.



*though I suspect there were far more events, just that over the ages these events bred out/were diluted. Plus the full Neandertal nuclear DNA hasn't been fully extracted yet AFAIK. There may be more bits and pieces in Eurasians yet to be found.

Adam Khor

I just found a super-interesting article on this alternate view of the Neanderthal and what it SHOULD look like...
The creature is so creepy, so not human and yet, it WAS a human species... this is awesome stuff. I think I'm replacing the classic Neanderthals in my mind with these scarier types.

The author goes as far as to saying that Neanderthals had vertical pupils, like cats, and that they probably hunted the first waves of Homo sapiens to reach Europe to extinction- he also quotes another guy who called Neanderthals "wolves with knives".

http://www.themandus.org/ebook_chapter_8.PDF

Wibbs

Interesting angle alright.. Might stump up the couple of quid for the ebook. That said, on first glance?

While I would be first to agree that the current fashion for a bloke who just needs a shave, I have a couple of problems with his reconstruction. Numero Uno; The "apelike" face. Flat nose, jutting lower face, black skinned. The nose the most obvious and provable one. For all his well thought out theory(and it is) he made one big mistake, or loves his theory so much sought to tweak the results. The skull he picked for the reconstruction is missing the nose bone. In reality they have the dubious distinction of having the biggest conks of any human species so far discovered. We're talking Cyrano de Bergerac here. You can see this in the pic I link above comparing our two species. They had huge projecting noses. Not even remotely like the great apes. Jutting lower face? It's how you angle the skull. Bit of sleight of hand here. Again to fit his theory IMHO. If you took a modern flat of face human and angled the head back the jaws would stick out. If you show them at the proper angle no such jutting is shown. The linked pic above shows this and here's another;

Yes they still have more of a muzzle than us and the receding chin which exaggerates this, but not nearly to the degree shown in his reconstruction.

His contention that the eye level is radically different? Same again. Squeezing the evidence to back up his theory.
Look what happens when you put them eye level to eye level;

Doesn't look so radically different now. Again the skull he picked(La Ferrassie 1 Here's his actual skull http://www.modernhumanorigins.net/laferrassie1.html) as well as missing the nose bone was a bit of a narrow lantern faced lad. The Sarah Jessica Parker of his gang. The rest so far found aren't. Plus even here he's hyped up a bit. His forehead wasn't that low. Here's an "average" Neandertal lad compared to a modern human;

Check out the hooter on the lad on the left(the lad on the right could sue me if I get too descriptive of his own roman nose )

Then we get to black skin. Nope again. The Ku Klux Klan would have welcomed them with open arms. As well as being red haired every so often, they were also white skinned. This is shown in the genes. They have the same adaptation as white Europeans. Indeed I'd have the notion that this is where those of us reading who are palefaces may have gotten this adaptation so rapidly. Why? The climate arguments don't quite work for me. Tasmanians who lived at similar (southern) latitudes and who were in those latitudes for nigh on 40,000 years never lost their African colouring under similar selection pressures. So white skin happening in Europe seems odd. Asian folks lost the dark skin but in a different way.

The rest of the body? Ok yes they were significantly more muscled and robust, but so were we at the time. Not up to their standards but higher than today. He exaggerates the lack of waist. I'm sure if Neandertal lad fell in with the wrong gym crowd and took up chugging anabolics he might look like that, but naturally? I seriously doubt it. The calf attachments alone show someone with little knowledge of human anatomy. Here's a comparison with a modern(though for me the height disparity is a little too much)

Yes they have a bigger rib cage, but don't walk like John Wayne, nor is their head tipped that far forward. It's more forward than ours, but not to that degree. The vertical pupils? No. No way IMH. No other great ape has this adaptation. I can't even think of a monkey that does. I seriously doubt it. Outside the film of the book anyway, for cinematic effect.

I would go along with the wolves with knives description though.

Adam Khor

I'm learning tons here. Prehistoric humans were never my speciality, even tho they are a quite interesting subject...

You know, recently they published a study which said that all of us non-black humans are part Neanderthal. I didn´t read the full article and certainly didn´t read the paper but it got me thinking...

If we, pale-skinned humans, are part Neanderthal, is it possible then that we inherited said skin from Neanderthals themselves? I mean there's genetic evidence, as you point out, that Neanderthals were white, right? And the Homo sapiens who left Africa were, I would assume, black skinned. Today, the study says, black people are the only ones without Neanderthal genes... so, maybe we are white because we are part Neanderthal? Same with red hair...

Just a thought. Like I said I know jack about prehistoric humans and I know to you guys the question is probably stupid but hey, better ask and look stupid for a minute, than not asking and being stupid for life, right?

Wibbs

Kinda. White skin AFAIR is not just one gene, it's not like switch this on, black, switch this off white. There are a few involved. In the DNA they've so far extracted they've found a mutation in Neanderthals that gave them red hair, but it's a slightly different mutation to modern humans. It's in the same area that leads to white skin so they reckon they were also white.

All modern humans who left Africa were black alright. You can see evidence for that without going near the DNA. Along the south coast of Asia there are small populations of dark skinned folks, so called "Negritos" that appear to be African and theire genes back this up. They've a very old heritage. They're like fossil footprints of us leaving Africa and spreading out along the coasts. Andaman Islanders a good example living on islands off the east coast of India;


Black folks a loooong way from Africa.

Now the explanation that Europeans became white because of climate adaptation while seeming logical and self explanatory always seemed to me too neat. Plus like I mentioned the peoples of Tasmania in a similar climate to Europe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Tasmania kept their African skin and remained very dark. They were in Tasmania for about the same length of time as moderns were in Europe. Now the other explanation is a genetic bottleneck in Eurpe and a smaller gene pool caused local mutations to spread more rapidly. Again I find that somewhat dubious as again Tasmanians were even more isolated. Europe and the near east is like a feckin busy crossroads of people moving back and forth by comparison. Now it could simply be that a once off freak genetic event spread through the population because of a conferred advantage and the same freak event never happened anywhere else. That's possible, maybe that's what happened but just doesn't feel right to me anyway.

It would be my take that Europeans got this advantage from the local relict population. IE Neandertals. I'd suspect Asian folks may have gotten some of their characteristics from the local relicts they encountered. People like the Andamans and others didn't because maybe they hugged the coasts as the first people to leave Africa. They didn't bump into the relict populations that lived more in the interior. Or they moved fast, always moving ever onwards. Maybe avoiding the locals out of fear? We forget that we didn't move into unsettled areas. There were people there already. Populations would be low compared to today of course, but if you were to be one of those first moderns moving through the world it would be clear enough ye weren't alone. Maybe those first peoples only stopped when they found places like islands(or even continents like Australia) that were uninhabited by the older humans. The moderns who followed them moved further afield and inland to the interior. Maybe they stayed in places longer. Maybe they were more aggressive or had better long range weapons that gave them a tactical advantage over the locals? They might have been more willing to actively engaged with the existing peoples. Not always aggressively, but enough to stand their ground. Ditto in Africa. It seems that we evolved as fully modern in north east Africa, but we didn't just leave Africa, we would have moved through that continent too. I'm sure there would have been relict humans in other parts of Africa and we encountered them too. There are modern humans in the southern tip of that continent by 100,000 years ago.

All conjecture of course, but it would explain and tie up the loose ends between the out of Africa/multiregional debate. Genetics seemed to close the door on that, when they found all moderns were African in origin. That became the mantra. "We're all Africans you know". Very neat, but at the same time dig deeper and it asked as many questions as it answered. Now with confirmed DNA of relict humans in moderns, Neandertal in Europeans and west Asians and Denisovian genes(from one finger bone!:eek:) in south east Asians, that "pure" African model is a little less true. I'm quite sure there are far more of these stories of all our heritages to be found. If just one finger bone can do it, what lays out there ready to be found? I'd predict the next one they'll find is in Africans. Their African "neandertal"/Erectus 2.0.

A good while ago here I predicted we'd find Neandertal DNA in Europeans and they did. When they did I reckoned they'd find similar in Asians and they did. My reasoning being this: The story went Erectus evolves and spreads through the world. Then you get local evolution of Erectus. In Europe they became Neandertals. In Africa they became us. So far so god. That left a big gap for me. Asia. It didn't seem right to me that Erectus stayed the same in that huge area for over a million years in a very diverse environment with different selection pressures and didn't change locally they way they did in Europe and Africa? Didn't make sense. Still doesn't. So I thought of Erectus 1, then Erectus 2.0(Neandertals/us/Asian?). If you look at some of the fossils coming out of China they seem to show Erectus 2.0, or what you would expect them to look like. Bigger brained Erectus. Local Asian "neandertals" basically Around the 120,000 years mark. http://news.discovery.com/history/neanderthal-human-mating.html It's fascinating stuff.




*I found a great page on Asian hominids around the 150,000-200,000 year mark and while they have some erectus features they're more evolved ones. Sadly I can't find the link. I'll dig deeper.

Galvasean

Can't say I'm a fan of these unhairy restorations of neandertals either. Look how hairy 'normal' people get!


It only makes sense that people evolved specifically to live in lands of ice and snow would be even hairier!

Adam Khor

Galvasean wrote: »

Can't say I'm a fan of these unhairy restorations of neandertals either. Look how hairy 'normal' people get!


It only makes sense that people evolved specifically to live in lands of ice and snow would be even hairier!

MINDRAPE!!

But I agree with you

Now, on a slightly different topic, do you guys think Homo erectus/Homo georgicus/Homo floresiensis were (relatively) hairless like us, or very hairy like Neanderthals?

Wibbs

I'd reckon most archaics were hairy or hairier than us anyway. Erectus the first we know of to leave Africa traveled throughout the world. Into pretty diverse climates, some pretty cold and much colder than where they came from. They didn't have clothing as far as we know to alleviate the temperature diffs they encountered. Hairy seems logical. That said us in our climate controled lives aren't a good judge. EG Fuegians from the southern tip of south America walked about the place in very little clothing in a damn cold climate. They seemed immune to the cold, well cold that would have the rest of us crying for our mammies. Ditto for the Tasmanians going by reports. The only clothing they had was a drape, most often used as a rug. They did smear their skin with fat though as others do, which gives some protection, but still hardy lads and lasses aint in it. Maybe Erectus wasn't that hairy. European level. 1-2 Sellecks Maybe they did the same with fat from the animals they hunted?

The again maybe smooth skin evolved in Africa with proto us? Why? Specific climate needs and we end up hairless today because we're all majority Africans and those same people invented tailoring so didn't need to get hairy when we went walkabout. Europeans(Eurasians really) are the hairiest folks today. Maybe because of the Neandertal? Black blokes are much less hairy and Asian blokes are even less hirsute. Ditto for facial hair. European lads are all ZZ top, Africans are less beardy again and Asians are lucky if they can grow that "Fu Manchu" style tache. Obviously I'm seriously simplifying the populations here. EG Some Japanese men can grow big beards.

Adam Khor

Wibbs wrote: »

The again maybe smooth skin evolved in Africa with proto us?

But why?

And why is it that, out of all non-giant, non-burrowing African savannah mammals, there is only ONE that is relatively hairless (compared to its relatives anyways)?
I'm talking about the warthog:



Very little hair if you compare it to say, the River Hog:



Or the Giant Forest Hog:



If you think about it, there are some interesting similarities between hominids and warthogs... they are both omnivores that left the jungle for the savannah. Maybe there's an advantage that caused them to lose their fur, some sort of adaptation to this new environment? But then... why aren´t there more hairless African mammals (leaving the giants like elephants and rhinos aside).

I'm imagining a bunch of freaky-looking, relatively hairless Australopithecines right now. I blame you guys for twisting my view of hominids completely

Wibbs

One big difference though AK, upright walking. Maybe that's the diff?

Adam Khor

Wibbs wrote: »

One big difference though AK, upright walking. Maybe that's the diff?

Probably... there's only one large biped in the African savannah, the ostrich, and it does have huge patches of featherless skin under its wings...
But then again ostriches are very large and their bald patches are supossed to get rid of excess heat... so I still wonder, why would being bald be an advantage for hominids?

Galvasean

Less stuff to get yanked on during a fight?
[/semi-serious]

Adam Khor

Galvasean wrote: »

Less stuff to get yanked on during a fight?
[/semi-serious]

Too bad we kept the nipples :P

rccaulfield

From Wibbs- "Now it could simply be that a once off freak genetic event spread through the population because of a conferred advantage and the same freak event never happened anywhere else. That's possible, maybe that's what happened but just doesn't feel right to me anyway."

Sherlock Holmes springs to mind-'when you eliminate the impossible whatever remains no matter how unlikely must be the truth'
Great thread here-Food for thought!

slowburner

Wibbs wrote: »

Here's a comparison with a modern(though for me the height disparity is a little too much)

Yes they have a bigger rib cage, but don't walk like John Wayne, nor is their head tipped that far forward. It's more forward than ours, but not to that degree. The vertical pupils? No. No way IMH. No other great ape has this adaptation. I can't even think of a monkey that does. I seriously doubt it. Outside the film of the book anyway, for cinematic effect.

I would go along with the wolves with knives description though.

Sorry to butt in and backtrack but the comparison above is well distorted to make modern man as different as possible from NM. Have a look at the modern man's left hand .
And look at his knock knees. The other night I watched an excavation of Nelson's hospital - all the mariners' leg bones were much more like NM's. Does the picture come from the wecannotbeneanderthal.org by any chance?

Scarinae

Adam Khor wrote: »

And why is it that, out of all non-giant, non-burrowing African savannah mammals, there is only ONE that is relatively hairless (compared to its relatives anyways)?
I'm talking about the warthog

Warthogs burrow, I've seen them do it.

This is a really interesting thread, but I don't have a lot to add to it, as it's not an area I've ever studied. Has anyone read William Golding's book The Inheritors? It's probably really dated as it was written in the 50s I think, but I liked it although it was immensely depressing.

Wibbs

I think there's some element of that. Any reconstruction, especially a mosaic type one is going to carry some conjecture, though this recent one is pretty damned impressive. I think to get a better idea a comparison with a cro magnon or earlier modern human might give a better idea of the state of play when these two humans met. EG the would be shorter on average. Though you get Neandertals taller than the average, just like moderns. One guy was nigh on 6 feet. Like us they varied individually and over time.

Even modern peoples vary. IE African populations tend to be narrower in the hip than Europeans and narrower again than Asians. Europeans have the biggest eye sockets, Africans the smallest and Asians in the middle. Eye socket shape is distinctive as well. Modern human populations have local differences in the skeleton. Ask any pathologist who will be able to spot an average Asian, African or European from looking at the skeleton. http://www.redwoods.edu/Instruct/AGarwin/anth_6_ancestry.htm We vary quite distinctly, though subtly along general ancestry. So who do you compare to Neandertals? If you picked a gracile African skeleton for example, the difference would be larger than if you picked a robust Eurasian.

That said Neandertals do show very distinctive features that mark them out compared to us, especially in the skull, but also in the hip width and ribcage and shoulder to name a few. As an average we differed from each other as you would expect sub species to do. Even if you averaged out all the humans alive today you'd still see a disparity on certain points with Neandertals.

But some archaic european moderns show Neandertal features. They're more robust, shorter on average, higher bone densities compared to us today etc. Some rare ones also show much more archaic features in the skull that aren't around today(hence why a couple of scientists were convinced of us gettin busy long before the DNA proved this). Though that said how many people have they looked at in the current population? It's always going to be down to sample size. There may well be small numbers of modern Europeans walking around bold as brass who have subtle clues to their forebears, never mind folks elsewhere.

But I would agree, the differences are siezed upon or not depending on the observers subjectivity to some degree. Even the reconstruction which is fantastic I have some little niggles about. 1) for the skull they chose a little bit of an outlier as he was very long face(Ferassie 1 IIRC). The reconstructed skull is also a litte odd as it shows a modern feature in the teeth/jaw/ Namely a gap between the last molar and the upright bit of the jaw thingy(dentists and doctors cringing as they read. :D).


Neandertals differ from moderns in having no such gap or very little of one. Id est
AFAIR even Ferrasie 1 doesnt have such a gap(but is in need of some orthodontics:)), so why the gap?


Neither does this Chapelle-Aux Saints chap;

The reconstructed teeth seem odd too. Actual Neandertal front teeth seem more narrow, more pole like compared to moderns. They're molars were bigger too and again the reconstruction seem to have smaller ones. They also show distinctive wear patterns to their front teeth which I can't see in the reconstruction. Basically with the best will in the world the skull reconstruction is largely based on one long faced guy who may have been a slight outlier. Still it was and is a fantastic piece of paleoanthropolgical detective work. You can even buy one if you have 7 to 10 grand to dispose of. http://www.boneclones.com/sc-019.htm He also sports much more of a distinct and modern chin than I would have expected? Man I'd love one of them in my hallway. Hell in my bedroom(with a full scale dalek in the other corner )

Adam Khor

Fishie wrote: »

Warthogs burrow, I've seen them do it.

This is a really interesting thread, but I don't have a lot to add to it, as it's not an area I've ever studied. Has anyone read William Golding's book The Inheritors? It's probably really dated as it was written in the 50s I think, but I liked it although it was immensely depressing.

Yeah, well, they do burrow but they are not like, specialized burrowing animals living underground, like the naked mole rat I was thinking about when I wrote "non-burrowing"...

Never heard of that book, is it fiction?

Yitzhak Rabin

I love reading about the stuff we can infer from fossil hominid finds, and the article Adam Khor posted which depicted neanderthals as upright and scary gorillas, shows how the same fossil can lead people to assume completely different things.

I often wonder, if in 200,000 years if people dug up the remains of a hard living, strong robust, black South African miner, and the remains of a dainty, gracile, Hong Kong businessman, would they conclude they were different species? Would they point to the stronger bones of the african, the more pronouced brow-ridge? The flatter face of the Hong Kong fossil, the thinner and more fragile bones?

I often wonder if the various 'species' that we have classified aren't all just different individuals on a species spectrum? I'm talking about Homo cepranensis, Homo antecessor, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo rhodesiensis etc.

Adam Khor

yekahS wrote: »

I love reading about the stuff we can infer from fossil hominid finds, and the article Adam Khor posted which depicted neanderthals as upright and scary gorillas, shows how the same fossil can lead people to assume completely different things.

I often wonder, if in 200,000 years if people dug up the remains of a hard living, strong robust, black South African miner, and the remains of a dainty, gracile, Hong Kong businessman, would they conclude they were different species? Would they point to the stronger bones of the african, the more pronouced brow-ridge? The flatter face of the Hong Kong fossil, the thinner and more fragile bones?

I often wonder if the various 'species' that we have classified aren't all just different individuals on a species spectrum? I'm talking about Homo cepranensis, Homo antecessor, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo rhodesiensis etc.

Haha I can see scientists erecting a new species from my fossil remains, based on my narrow jaw, slender hips, and strangely twisted middle finger in the right manus

Yitzhak Rabin

Adam Khor wrote: »

Haha I can see scientists erecting a new species from by fossil remains, based on my narrow jaw, slender hips, and strangely twisted middle finger in the right manus

They'd obviously point to my far more developed right arm and conclude that I used it for spear-throwing :P

Adam Khor

yekahS wrote: »

They'd obviously point to my far more developed right arm and conclude that I used it for spear-throwing :P

Same here...

Rubecula

Adam Khor wrote: »

Probably... there's only one large biped in the African savannah, the ostrich, and it does have huge patches of featherless skin under its wings...
But then again ostriches are very large and their bald patches are supossed to get rid of excess heat... so I still wonder, why would being bald be an advantage for hominids?

We lose excess heat by sweating. And we do this all over our skin. Hair would not make evapouration of sweat easy. It is a pretty good cooling system we have evolved. Not sure how many other savanna animals have such a good system. So if they don't actually lose heat in this way, no need to lose the hair/fur.

Wibbs

yekahS wrote: »

I love reading about the stuff we can infer from fossil hominid finds, and the article Adam Khor posted which depicted neanderthals as upright and scary gorillas, shows how the same fossil can lead people to assume completely different things.

Oh very true. And this is with humans which we're kinda familiar with. The chopping and changing in how dinos may have looked is even more driven by perceptions, evidence at the time and indeed fashion. That said while I reckon the link AK posted poses some very interesting questions I do think his reconstruction goes too far and in the case of the facial makeup completely wrong, or as wrong as you can be with the bones in front of you. The lack of nose the biggest and most provable error.

I often wonder, if in 200,000 years if people dug up the remains of a hard living, strong robust, black South African miner, and the remains of a dainty, gracile, Hong Kong businessman, would they conclude they were different species? Would they point to the stronger bones of the african, the more pronouced brow-ridge? The flatter face of the Hong Kong fossil, the thinner and more fragile bones?

I'm pretty sure they would. Depending on what theory they were trying to prove. At the very least without genetic evidence they'd suggest subspecies. I'd somewhat agree with that too, though would say sub sub species of each other within the range of Homo Sapiens Sapiens. You can infer geographical and population origins from the skeleton of modern humans. Certainly between the broad strokes of African, European and Asian. Folks like Native Australians are very distinctive.

They'd still not conflate them with say Neandertals though. They're well outside the range of any moderns. They'd be more distant sub species. Kinda like the canids as a group. All moderns would be like all wolves, Vary slightly throughout the world but clearly the same species. Neandertals and Erectus would be like members of the coyote family. Quite different in size and other unique features(and about the same genetic/time distance apart) yet capable of mating and producing viable young. Then again definition of species has flummoxed some of the greatest minds in biology. It's a very grey area. Look again at dogs, domestic ones. A great dane and a pekinese are the same species. Or an Irish wolfhound and a terrier(apparently quite close in breed), yet mating in the wild is gonna be impossible and even if you artificially implant you could only go one way.

I often wonder if the various 'species' that we have classified aren't all just different individuals on a species spectrum? I'm talking about Homo cepranensis, Homo antecessor, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo rhodesiensis etc.

So do I. More than wonder indeed. There can be an element of bias going on. Because of the dearth of archaic human fossils out there, individuals in a species may gain more attention than the species as a whole and lead people astray. This gets even moreso the further back you get and the less material you have to work with. Add in different scientists and groups looking for recognition and desperate to find a new species with their name/theory attached and it's almost guaranteed. Neandertals themselves are a very good example. The image most have of a shambling bent legged caveman is because the first skeleton that was even vaguely complete was of an old man, with severe arthritis and other pathology. He became the species type and eminent brains were pretty sure of this, yet a clued in medical student of the time would likely have spotted the problem with that reconstruction. The scientists were expecting a primitive so they made him a primitive. Today we know more and are discovering they were much more like us and lo and behold the reconstruction pendulum swings the other way, because that's what they're expecting.

Go back further? Some species are down to a bit of a jawbone and a few teeth with maybe a few skull bones with large chunks of imaginative filler making up the gaps. Some researchers have fired out papers based on just a tooth. Take Erectus. Before Turkana boy we had feck all below the neck and even with Turkana boy there may be some pathology masquerading as species character(eg his narrow spinal cavity). Look at some of the Erectus fossils coming out of Georgia. Some are very robust. One jawbone is massive, yet some are much more gracile. All from the same layers and time and apparently population. If you just found the robust guy you'd figure "all Georgian Erectus were robust". Cue theories of why "as they moved out of Africa they got robust because of environment" etc. Some are reckoning the differences are gender based and Erectus may have had a high sexual dimorphism. More like some apes, where the males are much bigger. That brings another question. Gender. You pick up a skull, even a fairly complete one, but without the pelvis all bets are off as to gender. Even in moderns women are much less robust on average than men, so that could give you a species title with nothing else to go on. It's possible some species tags out there are either outliers in the group or examples of male/female.

slowburner

What's the current state of thought on interbreeding between modern man and Neanderthal? I am certain that I have way more than your 3% Wibbs

Wibbs

Up to 4% I gather so far found. Maybe there's more left in the DNA yet to be discovered though. IIRC(and I could be way off here) previous attempts to find links were aimed at the X and/or Y chromosome and they found none. It was only when they sequenced enough of the nuclear DNA that they found the links.

Adam Khor

Hey guys, just finished reading Danny Vendramini's book, Them and Us- that's where the pictures I posted earlier came from (it was no article XD). All I can say it's, if you haven´t read it, you totally should. Regardless of what you think or what your conclusions are, it is a fascinating read- I think it's the most interesting thing I've read since Parasite Rex. Much of what he says makes perfect sense, too, at least from my point of view- which of course, won´t convince those who have read about prehistoric hominids and human evolution more than I have (my field so to speak is with dinosaurs and other non-human critters XD).

There are a couple mistakes I could find (for example the footnote to a photograph of a Papio baboon labels it incorrectly as a gelada, and Vendramini lists rhesus monkeys among nocturnal primates- I assume by mistake or perhaps mixing it up with some other creature). There's also a still from Van Helsing labeled as I am Legend, but this of course is irrelevant XD
Surely prehistoric hominid experts will find other mistakes... but even so, I highly recommend the book, it's a great read. In any case, the image he paints of Neanderthals is way cooler (and much scarier) than the increasingly sapiens-like picture of the media and Nat Geo magazine.;) My fiction writer head wheels are spinning like crazy right now.

Galvasean

I dunno, if he overlooked something as glaringly obvious as neandertals having noses I would be highly skeptical of what else was amiss. To me that's a bit like viewing an Allosaurus skeleton and concluding that it was not a meat eater.

Wibbs

I downloaded it too and while he makes interesting points he really tries to fit the evidence to his theory. His notion that modern humans in the levant looked more apelike is daft beyond belief. They looked like we do. No ifs buts or maybes.

On Neandertals, like G says the nose alone debunks the entire reconstruction enterprise and makes his theory look much more like a work of fiction and indeed I'd not be surprised to find he's well ahead of you AK in writing such a work.

Like you say Rhesus monkeys are not nocturnal and its not a mistake on his part IMHO. just another dropped in "fact" to confuse the uninformed and to add to his theory. The only nocturnal primates I can think of are bush babies and night monkeys and their rellies. None of which have cat like eyes. Neandertal may well have been a dusk/low light hunter and I would very much buy into that, but eyes like cats? I'll have whatever he's smoking Ted.

Uninformed readers will think this very plausible a reconstruction, but the evidence simply does not fit. At all. His wider notions on how the two species interacted are interesting and I'm sure there may well be something to it, but in a much smaller way than he suggests IMHO.

Adam Khor

Wibbs wrote: »

Like you say Rhesus monkeys are not nocturnal and its not a mistake on his part IMHO. just another dropped in "fact" to confuse the uninformed and to add to his theory. The only nocturnal primates I can think of are bush babies and night monkeys and their rellies. None of which have cat like eyes.

Don´t forget tarsiers!

allibastor

Hi Guys,

Just reading through this thread, very interesting. a few good points in here which would make you really think.

i was reading up on Neanderthals recently. the most obvious reason for them dying out that i could find was that due to thier being more robust on average, coupled with shorter legs and wider splayed hips bones, it would have taken more energy for them to track and chase prey.
the main advantage that sapiens had here was that they could chase prey for longer periods, couple this with the shoulder sockets advantage being able to throw better, made for easier hunting. neandethal would simply have not been able to compete for food when modern man could have out paced them when the food ran!

i agree with wibbs that neandethal man would have been a better night hunter, the shape of the skull coupled with the jaw bone angles would suggets that they had a chin which stuck out a bit more than ours, leaving to a slumping kind of look. more bent over if you will, just like a lion who is about to pounce. this would give creedance to the thought that they would have ambushed prey over short periods, maybe better surprise hunters. i doubt you see a lion chase prey over miles!!!

also it has been shown that we have about 4% of shared DNA, a fact which is not present in African sapiens, so this would lend itself to our white skin more than we adapted our skin through evolution, the white skin was better for reflecting the sun, but overall temps would still have been low, so the need for hair would have been a given.

others have pointed to the fact that neanderthal man may have had a longer parenting period with children and that children were born a lot less, thus limiting the population versus sapiens. again as wibbs has said if sapiens would even produce 1 more child every 5 years lets say, that would have a dramaitic effect on the natural balance.

all in all i would say it was not a competition over neanderthals that led to them dying out, but interbreeding with a species that was genetically better, leading to the best traits of both being kept to some degree. less hair due to clothes, taller legs to run after prey, smaller, but more compact brains.

Adam Khor

allibastor wrote: »

Hi Guys,

i was reading up on Neanderthals recently. the most obvious reason for them dying out that i could find was that due to thier being more robust on average, coupled with shorter legs and wider splayed hips bones, it would have taken more energy for them to track and chase prey.
the main advantage that sapiens had here was that they could chase prey for longer periods, couple this with the shoulder sockets advantage being able to throw better, made for easier hunting. neandethal would simply have not been able to compete for food when modern man could have out paced them when the food ran!


all in all i would say it was not a competition over neanderthals that led to them dying out, but interbreeding with a species that was genetically better, leading to the best traits of both being kept to some degree. less hair due to clothes, taller legs to run after prey, smaller, but more compact brains.

I don´t think this is the case. No species is "better" than the other, there's simply many degrees of specialization. Neanderthals seem to have been very well adapted, both to their hunting lifestyle and the cold climate they lived in. They were very specialized. And when you are specialized and your environment suddenly starts to change, you have to adapt again, or go extinct. To animals that go very specialized, complete with physical adaptations and all, this is very difficult.

I suspect this is what happened to Neanderthals- they couldn´t adapt quickly enough. Its not that we humans were "better", we were simply less specialized and when the world started to change around us, Neanderthals, who had evolved for a cold, forested world as ambush hunters that wrestled large prey, had less young and were never too abundant to begin with, went extinct.
It is possible that we humans were also an endangered species at the time- but we didn´t need to stay in prey-depleted forests, we didn´t need thick vegetation or rocky places to ambush prey- we had better stamina and could follow the last migrating herds of giant beasts. We had clothes so we could follow said herds to very cold places where Neanderthals couldn´t follow. We had dogs to keep larger, fiercer predators- like lions, hyenas and wolves- away from us, or at least to warn us about their presence, whereas Neanderthals to my knowledge never domesticated any animals. This means that even small surviving populations of Homo sapiens could travel further, and had better chances of survival than the more sedentary, supossedly forest-dwelling Neanderthals.
Like I said it's not that we were "genetically better". It's just that we were moldable, and Neanderthals, so perfectly adapted to their own particular lifestyle, weren´t anymore.

Of course, Danny Vendramini would say that we actively exterminated Neanderthals

slowburner

I just happened to be talking with someone, this evening about this subject.
I have to try put it carefully because it could easily be misinterpreted.

If there is a difference in the amount of Neandertal DNA between African moderns and Eurasian moderns, then might this manifest itself in differences in physical skills?

If you think of Olympic disciplines for example, there are those which are well dominated by people of African descent - (e.g. running, boxing). But then there are disciplines which are dominated by Eurasians - (e.g. cycling, weight lifting). I have no evidence to support this - it is just an impression. I have heard mention of a difference in the type of musculature between the two groups.
If it is a true impression, I wonder could it indicate the survival or absence of traits passed down from Neandertals*.








*Is it Neanderthal or Neandertal?

Adam Khor

slowburner wrote: »

I just happened to be talking with someone, this evening about this subject.
I have to try put it carefully because it could easily be misinterpreted.

If there is a difference in the amount of Neandertal DNA between African moderns and Eurasian moderns, then might this manifest itself in differences in physical skills?

If you think of Olympic disciplines for example, there are those which are well dominated by people of African descent - (e.g. running, boxing). But then there are disciplines which are dominated by Eurasians - (e.g. cycling, weight lifting). I have no evidence to support this - it is just an impression. I have heard mention of a difference in the type of musculature between the two groups.
If it is a true impression, I wonder could it indicate the survival or absence of traits passed down from Neandertals*.








*Is it Neanderthal or Neandertal?

Yes, I have noticed this... black people seem to be better runners, with better stamina.
I wonder if this may be because they (out of all humans) are the only ones without any Neanderthal DNA and thus, (plz don´t take offense XD) the only "pure" Homo sapiens, whereas the rest of us are "contaminated" with another species' DNA XD
It may be a simplistic way to see it but, maybe we are fair-skinned, hairier than black people, AND not so good at running and etc because of our Neanderthal heritage? Or is the Neanderthal DNA we have too insignificant to be "blamed" for all this? XD

Im not an expert so, I'm as eager to know as the next man.

PS- Any spelling, Neanderthal or Neandertal, is correct. In America most ppl uses Neanderthal whereas Neandertal is more common in Europe. The word comes from German Neanderthal (Neander's Valley, with "Thal" meaning valley) after the place where the fossils were first found I think.
Later, the spelling of the word Thal was changed to Tal, hence the confusion.

allibastor

Adam Khor wrote: »

I don´t think this is the case. No species is "better" than the other, there's simply many degrees of specialization. Neanderthals seem to have been very well adapted, both to their hunting lifestyle and the cold climate they lived in. They were very specialized. And when you are specialized and your environment suddenly starts to change, you have to adapt again, or go extinct. To animals that go very specialized, complete with physical adaptations and all, this is very difficult.

I suspect this is what happened to Neanderthals- they couldn´t adapt quickly enough. Its not that we humans were "better", we were simply less specialized and when the world started to change around us, Neanderthals, who had evolved for a cold, forested world as ambush hunters that wrestled large prey, had less young and were never too abundant to begin with, went extinct.
It is possible that we humans were also an endangered species at the time- but we didn´t need to stay in prey-depleted forests, we didn´t need thick vegetation or rocky places to ambush prey- we had better stamina and could follow the last migrating herds of giant beasts. We had clothes so we could follow said herds to very cold places where Neanderthals couldn´t follow. We had dogs to keep larger, fiercer predators- like lions, hyenas and wolves- away from us, or at least to warn us about their presence, whereas Neanderthals to my knowledge never domesticated any animals. This means that even small surviving populations of Homo sapiens could travel further, and had better chances of survival than the more sedentary, supossedly forest-dwelling Neanderthals.
Like I said it's not that we were "genetically better". It's just that we were moldable, and Neanderthals, so perfectly adapted to their own particular lifestyle, weren´t anymore.

Of course, Danny Vendramini would say that we actively exterminated Neanderthals

Hi Adam.

No i wasnt talking Genetically better in the Nazi sense of the word, but as you have pointed out, better at adapting. in Genetics the better genes will always win out, well in most cases. our better genes for our adaptablility to the changing environment.

this would mean that as the climate changed or the food supply changed we would have had a genetic advantage over neandethal man in terms of our running ability , some researchers also beleive we were able to live in bigger social groups which could have contributed to better survivial. its not a degrogatory term, just means we were eqipped with better genes to survive in changing envrionment. looking at the skeletal profile of Neandethal man he would have been better at hunting on hilly or rocky areas, where speed was not the main advantage, but ability to keep low to the ground and strenght to drag prey to the ground.

Sapians were better suited to long range plain hunting where prey could have moved and we could have followed. as can be seen from the weapons of the time, we were always longer range hunters, our shoulder sockets were even better suited to throwing!!

allibastor

Adam Khor wrote: »

Yes, I have noticed this... black people seem to be better runners, with better stamina.
I wonder if this may be because they (out of all humans) are the only ones without any Neanderthal DNA and thus, (plz don´t take offense XD) the only "pure" Homo sapiens, whereas the rest of us are "contaminated" with another species' DNA XD
It may be a simplistic way to see it but, maybe we are fair-skinned, hairier than black people, AND not so good at running and etc because of our Neanderthal heritage? Or is the Neanderthal DNA we have too insignificant to be "blamed" for all this? XD

Im not an expert so, I'm as eager to know as the next man.

PS- Any spelling, Neanderthal or Neandertal, is correct. In America most ppl uses Neanderthal whereas Neandertal is more common in Europe. The word comes from German Neanderthal (Neander's Valley, with "Thal" meaning valley) after the place where the fossils were first found I think.
Later, the spelling of the word Thal was changed to Tal, hence the confusion.

Ha, i have noticed this also. pardon the use of terms here, but black people tend to always excel at sports of speed and stamina, white people tend to do well in strenght related events, also swimming for some reason. black people who get muscular tend to be leaner, with more power going to the legs, that is people who get muscles naturally, not like ronnie colman. whereas white people who get muscles tend to be a bit more top heavy, with arms and shoulders being a bit more developed.

IMO i do beleive this is down to our genome, a small DNA difference can be seen very clearly if we are all from the same base genome. look at the chip. he has 98.4% of our DNA, 1 extra Chromasone and look how different he looks from us. if the europeans have 3-4% neanderthal DNA, surely that would make us a bit different from our Un-diluted sapien relative, and again look at the asian populous. they are smaller frame again, but better at agility related tasks. again looking at some pre-historic finds in asia, people were smaller but more wirey than other sapiens. maybe the spaiens that moved there mated and adpated with the local, smaller more agile peoples there and the result can be seen now.

Wibbs

Adam Khor wrote: »

Yes, I have noticed this... black people seem to be better runners, with better stamina.
I wonder if this may be because they (out of all humans) are the only ones without any Neanderthal DNA and thus, (plz don´t take offense XD) the only "pure" Homo sapiens, whereas the rest of us are "contaminated" with another species' DNA XD

I doubt they're any purer than we are. I'd put money they have archaic DNA from other African hominids(erectus). If we evolved in east Africa and moved out from there we would have bumped into previous hominids in Africa too. There would have been various strands of Erectus in sub Saharan Africa for a start. Modern Africans have the biggest genetic diversity of people on the planet so they've been getting jiggy with each other for a long time. Another reason to be careful applying traits to "black" people. At the extremes Pygmies, Masaai, Ethiopians are all quite different. Even the slowest heaviest built European would outrun a pygmy. These better "black" runners tend to be either Kenyans with a very local high altitude adaptation or part of the west African diaspora in the US and elsewhere(the latter would have had serious selection pressures during slavery).

this would mean that as the climate changed or the food supply changed we would have had a genetic advantage over neandethal man in terms of our running ability

True though the problem with that is Neadertals lived for over 200,000 years in a Europe with constantly changing climates and environments and survived and thrived. They were capable of living in a range of environments from a warm mediterranean type climate all the way to tundra at the other end. If you consder Homo heidelbergensis the protoNeandertal they were doing this for even longer.

some researchers also beleive we were able to live in bigger social groups which could have contributed to better survivial.

This I think is a very big part of it.

we were always longer range hunters, our shoulder sockets were even better suited to throwing!!

IMHO the shoulder joint thing is overcooked. Who made the first long range throwing spears? Sapiens? Nope. Heidelbergensis, maybe even late Erectus. http://www.sciencenews.org/pages/sn_arc97/3_1_97/fob2.htm (ignore the guy who posits early sapiens. Never gonna happen at 350-400,000 years ago. I supect he's doing the usual "but they couldn't have made them" or smoking some moroccan woodbines.). They had the same sockets supposedly unadapted for throwing. The problem is wood very very rarely survives from that great age, so how do know that as well as stabbing spears they didn't have long range throwing spears. The tech was clearly well established 400,000 years ago in Europe.

Ha, i have noticed this also. pardon the use of terms here, but black people tend to always excel at sports of speed and stamina, white people tend to do well in strenght related events, also swimming for some reason.

Much can be cultural too. More whites have access to swimming pools and swimming training. More whites cycle etc. Funny enough on the stamina front, the really long range endurance stuff whites excel. Overall lower muscle mass may explain that.

IMO i do beleive this is down to our genome, a small DNA difference can be seen very clearly if we are all from the same base genome. look at the chip. he has 98.4% of our DNA, 1 extra Chromasone and look how different he looks from us. if the europeans have 3-4% neanderthal DNA, surely that would make us a bit different from our Un-diluted sapien relative, and again look at the asian populous. they are smaller frame again, but better at agility related tasks.

It depends if the gene's are coding for anything. This info I can't find anywhere. IE what are these genes. Are they non active "junk" DNA or DNA actually doing something, or DNA doing the same as other populations but in a different way? EH Neandertals had red hair, but their gene for red hair is a slightly different mutation to moderns. Different gene, both gingers. So the 4% might be the same. I'd be interested to know if in that 4% are they genes doing different things on the macro level?

again looking at some pre-historic finds in asia, people were smaller but more wirey than other sapiens. maybe the spaiens that moved there mated and adpated with the local, smaller more agile peoples there and the result can be seen now.

Oh I'm sure they did. The Denisovians are added to the mix in Asian populations and I'd put money so are Asian Erectus.

allibastor

hi Wibbs,

Jesus long post, good points though.

i am sure african sapiens would have mixed with other homids also, its just the being devoid of neanderthal DNA would seem to make a difference. i agree with you in the cultural statement, but i doubt we can ever fully know if it fully true. its just as a general observation that african sapiens, and as you said, those from higher elevations, tend to be better at speed and stamina events. i think the long distance thing is very much a trained aspect, but again IMO i feel that that is being pushed to the un-natural element, nothing is meant to run for 26.2 miles.


i agree that neanderthal lived for 200000 plus years and that heidelbergensis was there before, but the point i was trying to make is that they didnt really have competiton before. modern sapiens were just better equiped for the long tracking of food, we also had a social set up where men would hunt and women would stay at the camp. this would allow for gathering of more diverse foods and better protection for children.

and about the shoulder joint thing. while it may not be a huge item, it just goes to prove that sapiens had adapted a bit more towards long range hunting. the whole skeletal profile of neanderthal/ heidelbergensis was geared towards hunting prey in ambush method. they had lower ground clearance with more bent frames, more robust, maybe 30-40% stronger than we are. it just highlights that they were adapted for short range hunting with ambush tatics. sapiens had the advanatge here as they were able to move further away from a base camp to track food.

Wibbs

allibastor wrote: »

i am sure african sapiens would have mixed with other homids also, its just the being devoid of neanderthal DNA would seem to make a difference.

What difference though? Even if you can show that the Neandertal DNA is active the differences if any are very slight.

i agree with you in the cultural statement, but i doubt we can ever fully know if it fully true.

Well you can have a fair idea in a lot of areas. Self perception and culture have a pretty big part to play. Look at athletics where these diffs are apparently so strong. Now in many areas people of African origin seem to dominate, but it wasn't always the case. Middle distance running being a good example. The majority of mile records were held by Europeans, even when Africans started to dominate in other events. The "mile" was thought of more as a European event culturally. Guys Like Coe and Ovett and Cram in the 80's were utterly destroying African/African ancestry runners on a weekly basis.

its just as a general observation that african sapiens, and as you said, those from higher elevations, tend to be better at speed and stamina events.

I'd disagree, or at least look wider. The Africans who dominate these events are more outside Africa Africans. Selective pressures in those populations may have mad the difference compared to their African ancestors.

i think the long distance thing is very much a trained aspect, but again IMO i feel that that is being pushed to the un-natural element, nothing is meant to run for 26.2 miles.

Funny enough not so much. San Bushmen regularly run those kind of distances in their hunting strategy. Native Americans would run down wild horses to catch them. hour after hour wearing them down. Like my posts :D

i agree that neanderthal lived for 200000 plus years and that heidelbergensis was there before, but the point i was trying to make is that they didnt really have competiton before.

Well maybe, maybe not. They would have had Erectus in the early days and they had enough competition from each other and the environment to change over that time.

modern sapiens were just better equiped for the long tracking of food, we also had a social set up where men would hunt and women would stay at the camp. this would allow for gathering of more diverse foods and better protection for children.

Again they don't know that for sure. It's conjecture this gender split in food gathering. The more and more evidence comes to light the more and more they start to act more like us in so many ways. Only in the last few months it's been found that neandertals processed grains and apparently did so before we did and they had to gather them. It was thought that cultural notions like body adornment and jewelry was a sapiens thing and Neandertals if and when they had these things copied it from us. Discoveries in Spain are putting paid to that notion. They had many different pigments and had pierced shells and the like 20,000 years before we even show up. While there is a brief and small burst of this(that dies out almost as quickly as it starts) in African sapiens, it's possible that the cultural explosion in us may have kicked off or was selected for because of us meeting them.

and about the shoulder joint thing. while it may not be a huge item, it just goes to prove that sapiens had adapted a bit more towards long range hunting.

Thats my point it kinda doesn't or its not nearly that simple. The earliest evidence for long range hunting isn't in sapiens but in heidelbergensis. Nearly 200,000 years before we evolved and 300,000 years before we left Africa.

the whole skeletal profile of neanderthal/ heidelbergensis was geared towards hunting prey in ambush method. they had lower ground clearance with more bent frames, more robust, maybe 30-40% stronger than we are. it just highlights that they were adapted for short range hunting with ambush tatics

Maybe. Though a couple of things. Compared to a Sapiens of today Neandertals look different, but compared to a us back then, a little less so. Heightwise they were around the same. Indeed one of the Shanidar Neandertal lads is a 6 footer. They were more robust, but so were we at the time. A cro magnon is a lot more solidly built than a modern human. Bigger and thicker skulls teeth and bones. Neandertals were certainly bruisers and maybe even stronger than 40% compared to us now, but again Cro Magnons were solidly built muscle wise too. A neandertal would seriously fcuk up a modern cage fighter but if he tag teamed off to one of his Cro magnon buddies the cage fighter would not be getting off easy. Neandertals frames weren't particularly bent either.

Their adaptations to close in ambush predation were certainly there, but to what degree did this affect them? Cold adaptation would show many of the same adaptations. It's not so clear cut basically. I certainly don't believe a Neandertal couldn't run and run well enough. I suspect he'd be a very good explosive sprinter. Look at the average lineup in a 100metres race. those lads are built like brick shíthouses. The diffs are slight enough, though even the slighest diffs can make huge diffs down the line.

My personal opinion on why they lost out? Its a simple one. Body size. They simply needed more food to survive as individuals. This meant they overwhelmingly tended to predate big animals and had to do so more often(though contrary to popular they also ate a wider range of food). This in turn made them more robust which in turn meant they required more food again. An internal evolutionary arms race. This would mean that they would have smaller families. An extra kid would be a bigger mouth to feed compared to a sapiens. If a Neadertal joined a band of Sapiens* he'd be a great asset in one way but his calorie requirements would be a draw on the group in lean times. This kept them local and small in number. Not by much. It didn't have to be by much. Remember we cohabited Europe with them for the guts of 10,000 years. We were nothing like the overnight success some imagine. If our hunting strategies were so much better you'd expect a much faster replacement which simply didn't happen.






*I'd put money this happened more than once and vice versa

Adam Khor

Wibbs wrote: »

IMHO the shoulder joint thing is overcooked. Who made the first long range throwing spears? Sapiens? Nope. Heidelbergensis, maybe even late Erectus. http://www.sciencenews.org/pages/sn_arc97/3_1_97/fob2.htm (ignore the guy who posits early sapiens. Never gonna happen at 350-400,000 years ago. I supect he's doing the usual "but they couldn't have made them" or smoking some moroccan woodbines.). They had the same sockets supposedly unadapted for throwing. The problem is wood very very rarely survives from that great age, so how do know that as well as stabbing spears they didn't have long range throwing spears. The tech was clearly well established 400,000 years ago in Europe.

I agree with you; I'm pretty sure Neanderthals did throw spears/weapons. I mean, chimpanzees and baboons (which are nowhere near as "well designed" to throw stuff as we are) have been known to attack enemies by throwing rocks, with surprisingly good aim. I'm sure Neanderthals were intelligent enough to invent throwing spears and I would be surprised if they hadn´t done so during their long history. Whether they used them often, though, is another story. If they were indeed forest-dwellers, throwing spears wouldn´t be as useful or practical as if they were open field hunters. But this doesn´t mean they were unable to do so.

slowburner

Wibbs wrote: »

Neandertals were certainly bruisers and maybe even stronger than 40% compared to us now, but again Cro Magnons were solidly built muscle wise too. A neandertal would seriously fcuk up a modern cage fighter but if he tag teamed off to one of his Cro magnon buddies the cage fighter would not be getting off easy. Neandertals frames weren't particularly bent either.

.......seconds away, round 1:D:D:D

This strength thing is bugging me - are Africans well represented in weight lifting? I always seem to remember that the eastern Europeans had a monopoly in this particular event, followed by Asians and then Westerners.

allibastor

Hi Lads,

no, there has been good evidence that neanderthal man did use spears and the like. they have found small evidence of spears with stone heads on them also, so i would strongly say that they used spears and other throwing devices. i am just saying that sapiens were better equiped for it is all. we were more long range hunters suited for flatter areas, like grass land or the like. as i said above just My opinion, but from the look of the skeletal frame of neandethal man v sapiens of that time, it looks like the frame would have been more suited to areas like hills, or forests, where strenght would have been more advantageous than speed or stamina.

on the strenght item, yes i agree that older sapiens were more robust than us now, we are weak by comparison, but i am just looking at previous evidence of the frame of both, neanderthal man would have been a bit stronger, and if combined with an ambush approach to hunting would have made them very effective at this. that would be funny however, neanderthal versus cage figher like brock lesnar!!!! though it would be hard to spot the dsifference.

steddyeddy

In my opinion you cant classify some of the higher order primates as strictly nocturnal or diurnal. Neandethal and many other hominids may have reduced competition with other higher order primates by hunting at night. This doesnt require biology adaptations for a clever animal. Just look at humans and look up the term hunters moon, native americans like many other tribes hunted by moonlight. This is not out of the question for a hominid. The other options are matuinal (hunting pre dawn) or vespertine (hunting at dusk).

Regarding the look of the neanderthals I really dont think they looked like a particularly well built rugby player. I think they would have looked like a far more athletic powerlifter with a huge chest, arms and a tapered waist built on short but stocky legs their size would have been close to ape like in my opinion. Another thing to look at is the chance that neanderthals had an epicanthic fold as seen in many asian and inuit populations. The reason I say this is the epicanthic cold according to some the epicanthic fold developed in response to tribes traveling through snowing areas and the extra skin fold was thought to reflect some of the light. Neanderthals themselves were a cold adapted species so maybe this is possible?