Neanderthals died out earlier than thought

Adam Khor

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/08/140820-neanderthal-dating-bones-archaeology-science/

Wibbs

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

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

Take a look at this animation of the process.


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

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

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

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

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

Kess73

Never leave this site Wibbs. I don't think there is any other poster on Boards that has me rushing to check out stuff as often as I do after reading your posts.


Top post yet again from you.

Wibbs

Wibbs

As a bit of a follow up to how these guys were inventive feckers within the levallois technique ascribed to them. Here's a "waste flake" that would have come about from building a prepared core.



Its profile couldn't be anymore Levallois if it tried.

It's back side looks like... well... not a lot really.



Waste flake ahoy(the residue you can make out at the bulb of percussion is actually the remains of epoxy resin cos a French farmer was using it as a stick to mix up glue and I liberated it from him. Loooong story )

The reverse side shows a little more.



Quite a bit of retouching along the bottom left edge, while leaving the top left edge sharp.

In the hand it becomes very clear and obvious, a Neandertal Stanley knife.



Still very ergonomic in the hand(left or right, but better in the left. In my collection of their gear it seems more seem to be for leftie weirdos. )

And this is a "waste flake" from the Levallois reduction method, that was supposed to have been aimed at a finalised end result? GTFO IMHO. These folks may not have been poncy artistes like us but they weren't wasteful gobshítes either. Given they had survived and thrived in various environments for way longer than we have been around, environments that didn't reward gobshítes, it shows they were a very resourceful people. Even moreso as they didn't have the support networks we had.






Joke is that above tool I have actually used. I used to bring it fishing with me to cut fishing line. *proper scientists are fainting en masse reading that* It's still sharp enough to be useful after at least 40,000 years later. I reckon the bloke or blokess who made it originally would be well chuffed it was still useful today.

Wibbs

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

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

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

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

Adam Khor

Wibbs wrote: »

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

Maybe even until more recently? :B I'm thinking of all those stories about wild men of the woods well into historical times (although, Australian aborigines keep talking about megafauna 30.000 years after its extinction, so...)

Adam Khor

Wibbs wrote: »

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

Maybe they were using nutgrass?

http://www.care2.com/greenliving/worlds-worst-weed-was-prehistoric-cavity-fighter.html

Wibbs

Research into modern hunter gatherers shows that their mouth biota is quite different to westerners. They have a much more diverse range of bacteria going on. Many of which seek out and kick the arse off the acid producing bacteria. Plus their diet is low in simple carbs so acid is less an issue anyway. Then you look at the toughness of their diet from childhood. They have to chew a lot more, far fewer soft foods, so their dental arches and mid faces develop better so crowding is not nearly such an issue. Still the odd Neandertal skull shows major dental decay. The "old man" of Chapelle aux Saints is a perfect example. He had barely a tooth in his head and his jaw had receded quite substantially so was like this for years. Then again I see this as evidence that he was an old man, rather than the 40 odd they give him. There are other Neandertal lads of 40 odd that have perfect choppers that a dentist would find little fault in, yet this particular guy was that much an outlier. He also had way more arthritis than others so far found. Ergo IMH he was more like a 60 odd year old than a 40 year old. A real rarity in them days and may explain why he might have been specially buried when he died.

I'd also agree with your race memory vibe AK. I do think the trolls and ghouls of the deep woods are a holdover memory from a time when we shared the earth with "others" that were us, but not. I think that was a huge part of our last journey out of Africa. The first folks ran along the coast and avoided the hinterlands, slightly later folks went more inland and encountered these others. Others that may have had enough of an dim view of the newbies to attack them more often than not and that leads to us storytelling as a defence across generations to avoid the deep woods, the unexplored country, cos if you go down to the woods today you're sure of a big surprise and it's ain't the Teddy bears picnic.

I'd also take your point about the timeframe involved. Native Americans have legends of wild men of the deep forest, bigfoot etc. In most cultures it's a spiritual being, not a real animal and for me that shows the antiquity of the race memory. Their Asian ancestors would have encountered "bigfoot" in Asia and they brought that innate fear with them across the Bering land bridge. Even though no evidence of any pre modern human or great ape has ever been found in the new world. Same goes for Australia as it happens. They have tales of the Yowie in the deep woods, another dangerous being who must be respected and avoided. And again zero evidence exists of any primate before us getting there. I suspect this innate fear is so innate and strong that it makes us imagine that fear and make it flesh in the deep forests.

recedite

Just out of interest, is there any way of knowing whether a flint flake was genuinely made during the stone age, as opposed to something made more recently using the same techniques?

Wibbs

There are a couple of ways R, none foolproof on their own, but taken together will generally spot fakes.

Style and technique used. If you look at ebay for example there are an awful lot of fakes* and they're really obvious if you know what types of tools were made by which humans in which period. Neandertal stuff can be particularly easy to spot as modern day flint knappers rarely practice the Levallois techniques they used and vanishingly few are as good at it(it's bloody difficult!). Flint knappers today tend to make arrowhead and handaxe type stuff so more care would be required there.

Correct raw material. Raw material was sometimes imported and this became much more common when modern humans came along, but mostly people used what was within easy reach, so you're not gonna find italian flint as a raw material in a French handaxe.

Patina. Over the long periods of time we're talking about here flint/chert builds up a particular patina through chemical action with the soil(and heating and cooling and sun exposure). A layer of this builds up on the surface of the flint and is hard to fake convincingly. Take that white coloured tool I posted above. If I snapped that in half the flint would be a dark grey on the inside. Most fakes on the market don't have that. They look too shiny and new. Now this isn't always the case, some really ancient stuff can look like it was made yesterday, but that's rare.





*there are three regular bay sellers that are near farcical with the fakes and one seller who seems to think every piece of frost cracked flint you can hold in the hand is a tool.

Adam Khor

Guess the only fool proof way of knowing is finding the thing deep in a cave where prehistoric remains were also found... :pac:

Wibbs

Or find them yourself on the ground. I found a few in France when I was a kid. Initially looking for fossils, but when I found my first flint lithic I was hooked and got my eye in quick enough. Being a kid was the important thing. It was vaguely dubious in law even back then(guillotine time now), but the French folks I met either ignored it, or gave a gallic shrug and thought "meh he's only a kid"(in French of course ).

recedite

So the french guy who was using your flint as a spatula to mix glue, did he have any idea where it came from originally? Or are they quite common over there, so people would think nothing of it?

Wibbs

recedite wrote: »

So the french guy who was using your flint as a spatula to mix glue, did he have any idea where it came from originally? Or are they quite common over there, so people would think nothing of it?

They're common enough R, at least in the part of France I was in at the time. Well if you had your eye in and had the stamina of walking, looking and obsession that comes with being 11. Keeping my eyes open and focused on the ground, one lithic of different ages and different types, from waste flakes to the finished article an hour kinda thing(maybe one finished article per day). It was a farming area so an annual turnover of the soil was going on. I suspect the wine growing regions would be equally good. That helped. Plus it was an area well known for riches of that nature. And bear in mind such things were being made for nigh on a half million years, so there would have been a lot produced. That was then... maybe now there are much less? Likely given how popular they were and became as collectibles. Put another way their popularity has been such that fakes were being made in the 19th century. On the other side of that unless a local found an obvious handaxe they likely wouldn't have been bothered. Again that's likely changed since the late 70's.