"Prehistoric Autopsy" on BBC tonight

Owryan

Hope its ok to post this here, "Prehistoric Autopsy" on BBC 2 tonight @9. Cant link as on phone


First in a 3 part series. A team of experts are re constructing a neanderthal apparently. Thats all my sky box ll tellme but sounds interesting

Wibbs

They have John Hawks as a guest. Cool! *sits down, pours beer*

Adam Khor

Wibbs wrote: »

They have John Hawks as a guest. Cool! *sits down, pours beer*

Let's see how similar it is to the one you've described to us

Wibbs

Great programme, but still I dunno, looks too "just got back from Glastonbury" for me anyway. Where are the huge brow ridges, the lack of chin, the truly massive skull?

Adam Khor

Wibbs wrote: »

Great programme, but still I dunno, looks too "just got back from Glastonbury" for me anyway. Where are the huge brow ridges, the lack of chin, the truly massive skull?

The huge eyes, the hair, was there any reference to that?

im invisible

its... Chuck Norris!

Wibbs

Adam Khor wrote: »

The huge eyes, the hair, was there any reference to that?

Not really. Great programme though. Alice Roberts with her easy manner and expertise is always a good presenter of thes things and John Hawks being there sealed the deal for me. I'd love to see a Horizon programme on him. His blog is a great read and he comes across as a real enthusiast for his field. Plus he seems like a lovely bloke with it.

Interesting stuff about the diffs in their arm bone development. It seems it's not because of stabbing prey, but from working hides for clothing. You do see a lot of stone scrapers in Neandertal contexts. Plus it ties in with the wear on their front teeth from using them as a third hand when likely working hides. Funny enough they've yet to find neandertal needles so close fitting tailored clothing seems to be out.

Thinking more on the hair front... Maybe they weren't so hairy? At least on the body. I suspect they were hairier of face than us. The exposed areas. The reason I'm less sure about their bodies, are the discoveries in Spain and elsewhere of them refining pigments. They found high concentrations of pigments in little clumps. As if these pigments were once in a leather "purse" that since decayed. The pigments themselves are interesting. They seem to favour dark colours. Blacks and dark earthy colours(with mica mixed in for sparkles. Very modern ). Interestingly the discovery of them hunting birds for their feathers backs this up as the species involved are black in colour. This would tell me two things; one if they're using thes pgments as body covering, this would suggest in those areas they were relatively hairless and two, that they had pale skin. Native Australian folks use body art, but they naturally select bright whites and yellows and reds to contrast with their very dark skin. A Neandertal makeup kit would be lost on dark skin. Unless the Aussie chap was going for the stealth look

THis gets me thinking on why they were using and attracted to such pigments. Ceremonial and tribal allegiance stuff is an obvious one, but another might be for hunting. Camouflage. Big eyed, low light ambush hunter, using the half light of dawn and dusk for cover, exploding from cover when a large animal walks by, stabbing the animal causing massive trauma and bloodloss, then retreating to wait for it to weaken. While the image of them wrestling large prey to the ground is a cool one, I suspect they weren't usually that foolhardy and plain daft. This method would also plug into the researcher in England who has been examining an ancient hunting ground. She found animal bones, including mammoth(mad bastards to even think of hunting mammoths:eek:) with traumatic injuries. Some of whom(I got the impression quite a number) had healed when the animal survived. This would suggest to me anyway, that these were animals where the initial ambush attack didn't cause enough damage and the animal made it back to the safety of the herd.

Anyhooo... The black pigments would have helped them stay hidden until the last minute as otherwise their pale skin would alert the animals. This usefulness of dark colours might make them more culturally attractive to them, whereas modern humans tended to like the bright colours because we were more daylight hunters? Neandertals, the first Goths. With sparkles Another possibility is that they used the pigments in tattooing, though that's a long shot.

Humbert Humbert

Adam Khor

Wibbs wrote: »

Not really. Great programme though. Alice Roberts with her easy manner and expertise is always a good presenter of thes things and John Hawks being there sealed the deal for me. I'd love to see a Horizon programme on him. His blog is a great read and he comes across as a real enthusiast for his field. Plus he seems like a lovely bloke with it.

Interesting stuff about the diffs in their arm bone development. It seems it's not because of stabbing prey, but from working hides for clothing. You do see a lot of stone scrapers in Neandertal contexts. Plus it ties in with the wear on their front teeth from using them as a third hand when likely working hides. Funny enough they've yet to find neandertal needles so close fitting tailored clothing seems to be out.

Thinking more on the hair front... Maybe they weren't so hairy? At least on the body. I suspect they were hairier of face than us. The exposed areas. The reason I'm less sure about their bodies, are the discoveries in Spain and elsewhere of them refining pigments. They found high concentrations of pigments in little clumps. As if these pigments were once in a leather "purse" that since decayed. The pigments themselves are interesting. They seem to favour dark colours. Blacks and dark earthy colours(with mica mixed in for sparkles. Very modern ). Interestingly the discovery of them hunting birds for their feathers backs this up as the species involved are black in colour. This would tell me two things; one if they're using thes pgments as body covering, this would suggest in those areas they were relatively hairless and two, that they had pale skin. Native Australian folks use body art, but they naturally select bright whites and yellows and reds to contrast with their very dark skin. A Neandertal makeup kit would be lost on dark skin. Unless the Aussie chap was going for the stealth look

THis gets me thinking on why they were using and attracted to such pigments. Ceremonial and tribal allegiance stuff is an obvious one, but another might be for hunting. Camouflage. Big eyed, low light ambush hunter, using the half light of dawn and dusk for cover, exploding from cover when a large animal walks by, stabbing the animal causing massive trauma and bloodloss, then retreating to wait for it to weaken. While the image of them wrestling large prey to the ground is a cool one, I suspect they weren't usually that foolhardy and plain daft. This method would also plug into the researcher in England who has been examining an ancient hunting ground. She found animal bones, including mammoth(mad bastards to even think of hunting mammoths:eek:) with traumatic injuries. Some of whom(I got the impression quite a number) had healed when the animal survived. This would suggest to me anyway, that these were animals where the initial ambush attack didn't cause enough damage and the animal made it back to the safety of the herd.

Anyhooo... The black pigments would have helped them stay hidden until the last minute as otherwise their pale skin would alert the animals. This usefulness of dark colours might make them more culturally attractive to them, whereas modern humans tended to like the bright colours because we were more daylight hunters? Neandertals, the first Goths. With sparkles Another possibility is that they used the pigments in tattooing, though that's a long shot.

Camo Neanderthals... your posts are imagination fuel. :cool:
Maybe they were dressing up like giant chicken to get close to the mammoths without alarming them...

Wibbs

Watched the "Lucy" reconstruction last night. Another good one. Amazing how tiny she was. That really came across. Sadly missed the Homo Erectus one, but he looked good. Again small. Looking again at the Neandertal lad he did have the huge head thing going on so fair play. Might have been interesting if they'd reconstructed the Neandertal from the Amud site in Galilee, Amud 1. He was near a six footer in height. The folks on the programme were around average height, so he would have been taller and bigger than them. Largest brain capacity of any human so far found too IIRC. Maybe he was a very rare outlier, a giant of his people, maybe he wasn't that unusual.

Adam Khor

Wibbs wrote: »

Watched the "Lucy" reconstruction last night. Another good one. Amazing how tiny she was. That really came across. Sadly missed the Homo Erectus one, but he looked good. Again small. Looking again at the Neandertal lad he did have the huge head thing going on so fair play. Might have been interesting if they'd reconstructed the Neandertal from the Amud site in Galilee, Amud 1. He was near a six footer in height. The folks on the programme were around average height, so he would have been taller and bigger than them. Largest brain capacity of any human so far found too IIRC. Maybe he was a very rare outlier, a giant of his people, maybe he wasn't that unusual.

I'm guessing they don´t plan on reconstructing Meganthropus for the time being, tho, rite? U-U

BTW, which ones were those hominins with large fang-like canines?

Rubecula

Embarrassingly I fell asleep right at the start.