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The Neanderthal Thread

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  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,173 Mod ✭✭✭✭Wibbs


    It's a good book that one W.
    I heard one of Stringers talks where he says they've found evidence they used body paint and jewellery which is pretty cool.
    There's still a fair bit of inference and imagination going on in the area too W. Always was. Now we're getting better, but I'd still be cautious myself.

    EG the idea that they deliberately buried their dead is still usually published as pretty established, yet the actual evidence is extremely weak to non existent. Now we can infer that they may have on occasion from other angles. EG we have more male skeletons that female, a pattern that we also see in the early days in modern human confirmed burials too(what happened to women who died, who knows, but it seems more men were buried. Maybe women were laid to rest in places that don't preserve so well? Men in caves, women in open ground sorta thing). We also have a fair number of Neandertal children in the record, from newborns to older kids and that almost requires deliberate burial as their bones are far more delicate, but were they buried as a spiritual/emotional thing or as a way to keep scavengers sniffing around the camp, or as a way to remove the emotional trauma from parents? Who knows.

    They did seem to collect pigment resources and some Spanish seashells have pigment preserved within them. One has been suggested as a pendant, but I'm not nearly so sure.
    18u6tulfzfrnqjpg.jpg
    This does preserve pigment in the inside surface, but the "suspension hole" they suggest doesn't look like one and shows no wear from any cord that would have been used to suspend it. Body paint seems more likely alright. Interestingly they seem to favour darker colours, even crushed mica for sparkles(like some modern makeup), which suggests they were lighter skinned. Darker skinned tribal folks today favour lighter pigments. The colour of your "canvas" makes some choices for you. On the other hand some of the pigments could have been used in things like fire starting, or they could have used the pigments for things like suncream, or a barrier against midges and other biting insects, or even camouflage.

    Personally I have long suspected they did use body paint and other ornament and one reason stands out for me: group affiliation and territorial marking. Territorial animals use various ways of marking their territory, usually scent. Humans including Neandertals have a much less acute sense of smell. They also appear to have been small groups with defined territories(we were more the wandering types). So it makes sense that one group might be the "Red painted people" another, the "black feather people". Which would also help explain the puzzle why evidence of body art is different in each group where it's been found. Copying another group would make no sense to them.

    Its also starting to be fairly clear they also had more external art. Stone circles in deep caves many tens of thousands of years before we come along and cave art in Spain also a few thousand years before we come along. The latter I'm still so so about. It could have been us. The current story is that modern humans showed up in Europe much later than in say Asia. Like tens of thousands of years later. I mean we made it all the way to Australia around 60,000 years ago, but we left Europe alone until 40,000 years ago? I'm not so sure. Though one thing is noticeable about the possible Neandertal art:

    Alongside blobs of colour and the occasional handprint it is stylistically different to our stuff
    panel-78-la-pasiega-cave-painting.jpg
    It's much more abstract. Like what the feck is the yoke on the right? :D
    dn21458-1_300.jpg
    Another thing that's just occurred; it's all one colour. As well as being more figurative we also use multiple pigments, certainly in our earliest art.

    Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.



  • Closed Accounts Posts: 3,417 ✭✭✭WinnyThePoo


    Wow awesome pictures. The whole different colours for different groups is really interesting.

    I suppose the fact they where apex predators would indicate smaller groups or communities unlike homo sapiens.

    I've read they might have also been affected population wise by severe weather conditions.


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,173 Mod ✭✭✭✭Wibbs


    Wow awesome pictures. The whole different colours for different groups is really interesting.

    Yeah W. When you compare them it kinda jumps out at ya. Here's one of our artworks, one of the earliest on the planet and the most complex, found in a cave in France called Chauvet and dated to 35-37,000 years ago. A time when there were still isolated pockets of our friends the Neandertals on the fringes.

    chauvet-cave-136.jpg?imgmax=1600

    Here's another panel from the same cave.

    Chauvethorses.jpg

    Shading and colour. IIRC dating showed the horse on the bottom was painted last and with a good few centuries between paintings. In our modern world of time and the perception, or rather refinement of it, it's easy to forget that in those far of times and cultures, time had a very different flavour. They would have a sense of the past through ancestors and stories and the future would be expected to not change much except for the names of people. Technology wouldn't have changed within living memory, so the notion of "progress" and the future we have would be lost on them. When we think of the word "traditional", there's an element of "old, conservative, nostalgia" to it, to them it would be their lives. No real nostalgia for a past that was the same as their present and the future would be the same again. Annnnd I digress again. :s

    But yeah, the complexity goes way up and you have shading and different colours and majority black rather than red or ochre, and you even have something like "animation" of sorts in the multi images of the horns on the rhino.

    Now here's another possible Neandertal gallery:

    cave-art-neanderthal.jpg

    Again abstract. And using red. And while I'm at it digressing... Something else occurred to me re. colours. We showed up in an ice age, black is easy to find, the soot from your fires, ochres and other pigments might be harder to come by under snow and ice and permafrost ground, so they stuck with more black? Neandertals living in a warmer spell may have found ochre more easy to find and it was unusual more "special", unlike soot.
    In my own collection of Neandertal tools, I have a scraper made of a particular type of colourful jasper only found in one place in France called Fontmaure. Its not a great material for making stone tools, full of internal fractures and such. But I noticed on this particular tool in the red parts, which are more like clay than stone, faint scratch marks that look like they were removing the red clay. Not so easy to see in a pic sadly, but it's on the right:

    471376.jpg

    The red stuff looks like it originally filled that cleft of rock so they would have gotten a sugar lump size of material from it. I've other stone tools that show a selection for unusual spaces or marks in the material to keep them central. Including fossils. Here's one, a so called "handaxe" where the maker has deliberately selected around the really crappy material that would weaken the tool they would otherwise lop off, but this bit of really crappy material has a piece of fossil shell in it.

    471377.jpg

    Maybe fossils were an inspiration too. I mean if you see the image of a seashell, or a plant or a bone in the stone, that appears to be made of stone, stone that you see as the Mother Earth, it's a stone picture. You might be tempted to improve it, maybe by adding pigment to very nice fossils, and/or then copy them and then extend that to animals you see around you and put them "in" Mother Earth too?

    I've read they might have also been affected population wise by severe weather conditions.
    It could have been an element alright W, but they had lived through many previous climate changes including many more ice ages than we had experienced.

    Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,279 ✭✭✭Adam Khor


    Wibbs wrote: »
    panel-78-la-pasiega-cave-painting.jpg
    It's much more abstract. Like what the feck is the yoke on the right? :D
    dn21458-1_300.jpg
    .

    First thing that came to my mind was a hummingbird. Then I remembered they are only found in the New World. :B

    Maybe they used a lot of red because of some symbolism? Blood = life, death?


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,173 Mod ✭✭✭✭Wibbs


    Very good point AK. In our in many ways over coloured world we can forget that the colour of blood is one of the most vibrant in the natural world, the same through all seasons and climates, particularly for a predator species with extra curiosity going on, who would attach the symbolic to it as well.

    Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,279 ✭✭✭Adam Khor




  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,279 ✭✭✭Adam Khor


    https://www.sciencenews.org/article/fossil-teeth-push-human-neandertal-split-back-about-1-million-years-ago
    Moving back the date of an evolutionary split between Neandertals and H. sapiens appears reasonable based on the new data, says paleoanthropologist Aurélien Mounier of Musée de l’Homme in Paris. The timing of that split could still change, though, if further research modifies the Spanish fossils’ age, he says.

    Other Spanish hominid teeth dating to nearly 800,000 years ago display some Neandertal features, supporting the new study’s conclusions

    051419_bb-fossilized-teeth_feat-rev.jpg


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,279 ✭✭✭Adam Khor




  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,279 ✭✭✭Adam Khor


    Were Neanderthals right or left handed?

    https://www.sapiens.org/column/field-trips/handedness-neanderthals/

    ma-neandertal-p.jpg

    Interestingly, right handedness also appears dominant among chimpanzees, but to a lesser degree than in humans (60-70% as opposed to 90% in humans).


  • Registered Users Posts: 137 ✭✭HoteiMarkii


    One for Wibbs, perhaps?
    Not an Irish find, sadly! This was given to me by a former work colleague about eight years ago now. He knew I had a particular interest in prehistoric stone tools, and was curious if I could help him date it. I never got a chance to give it back to him before he left, so it's been with me ever since. Provenance is scant to be honest; he purchased it at a flea market while on holiday in the south of England, and the only thing he could recall is that it was from a collection of flint tools gathered by a gentleman who lived in Deal in Kent. We can't be certain if it was a British find either.

    It measures approximately 120mm. long and is approximately 80mm. at its widest. It is a patinated brown flint. It predates the Mesolithic, I know, but wouldn't have a clue how old this hand axe is likely to be.

    48389971512_325a593a75_b.jpg

    48389836351_af33fd1c6b_b.jpg

    48389986407_86ccdb45eb_b.jpg

    48389982252_0cac3e7c2e_b.jpg

    48389978492_4c6e571ae4_b.jpg

    I just found a similar looking hand axe on the UK's Portable Antiquities Scheme website, and curiously enough, it would appear to have been found in Kent:

    https://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/record/id/871664


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  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,173 Mod ✭✭✭✭Wibbs


    Very nice bit of kit HM! :) I'd definitely place it as Palaeolithic. Neandertal/Mousterian in nature. around 200,000 years, but it could have been made anywhere from 400,000 years to 100,000, without an exact location it's difficult to pin it down as there wasn't so much by way of innovation for many thousands of years and there were local flavours too. There was a more recent Neandertal presence in England, but the tools I've seen from that period seem to mostly to be flakes and points from the levallois technique of knapping, rather than larger biface material like this.

    Funny before you mentioned the English connection I'd have put a bet down that it was French. Mind you that would have just been my hunch based on "style" and the flint.

    I dunno about you HM, but I find something like this fascinating and sobering to hold in the hand. They still fit as our hands haven't changed much and there's that visceral connection to another human being from so so far in the past. Someone who would look a bit different to you and me, but was still human where it mattered.

    Pity it wasn't labelled :( I've always been careful to label my stuff, both personal finds when I was a kid and stuff I've acquired since. It was drummed into me by a chap working in the Natural History museum who I brought a few fossils to when I was 11. Still, Kent narrows it down to some degree.

    Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.



  • Registered Users Posts: 137 ✭✭HoteiMarkii


    Wibbs wrote: »
    Very nice bit of kit HM! :) I'd definitely place it as Palaeolithic. Neandertal/Mousterian in nature. around 200,000 years, but it could have been made anywhere from 400,000 years to 100,000, without an exact location it's difficult to pin it down as there wasn't so much by way of innovation for many thousands of years and there were local flavours too. There was a more recent Neandertal presence in England, but the tools I've seen from that period seem to mostly to be flakes and points from the levallois technique of knapping, rather than larger biface material like this.

    Funny before you mentioned the English connection I'd have put a bet down that it was French. Mind you that would have just been my hunch based on "style" and the flint.

    I dunno about you HM, but I find something like this fascinating and sobering to hold in the hand. They still fit as our hands haven't changed much and there's that visceral connection to another human being from so so far in the past. Someone who would look a bit different to you and me, but was still human where it mattered.

    Pity it wasn't labelled :( I've always been careful to label my stuff, both personal finds when I was a kid and stuff I've acquired since. It was drummed into me by a chap working in the Natural History museum who I brought a few fossils to when I was 11. Still, Kent narrows it down to some degree.

    Thanks a million, Wibbs!
    Extraordinary to think that something I'm holding was made by another human species well over a hundred thousand years ago - that blows my mind!


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,279 ✭✭✭Adam Khor


    Footprints of Neanderthal children discovered in France!

    11482690-3x2-large.jpg?v=3

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-09-10/fossil-footprints-made-by-neanderthal-children-in-france/11485942
    The footprints were made on a sand dune a couple of kilometres from the sea around 35,000 years before our species — Homo sapiens — is thought to have arrived in this part of Europe.

    Although no skeletal remains have been found at the Le Rozel site, Dr Duveau said the shape of the footprints was consistent with what we know about the anatomy of Neanderthals, gleaned from remains found at other sites.

    "They are relatively broader, especially in the midfoot, than the footprints made by Homo sapiens, which corresponds to a more robust foot and a less pronounced arch," he said.

    The footprints were also found alongside many flaked stone tools crafted using the distinctive Mousterian style that has been associated with Neanderthals.

    11491730-3x4-medium.jpg?v=2
    To work out who was in the group, the researchers measured the best-preserved footprints and worked out a size-to-height ratio, as well as measuring the depth of the imprints.

    They compared the footprints to 3D models of ancient and modern human footprints from other sites, as well as those from an experiment with local people of different ages walking barefoot on sand.

    Most of the Neanderthal group was less than 130 centimetres tall, but at 175cm one individual stood head and shoulders above the rest.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,279 ✭✭✭Adam Khor


    Neanderthals used Imperial eagle talons for symbolic purposes:

    https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/11/eaax1984

    (I remember reading something of the sort before?)

    F2.large.jpg?width=800&height=600&carousel=1


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,173 Mod ✭✭✭✭Wibbs


    Adam Khor wrote: »
    (I remember reading something of the sort before?)
    We did AK(and of course you did :) ), from an Italian site IIRC. At time various reconstructions came along:

    o-NEANDERTAL-FEATHERS-facebook.jpg
    His nose isn't nearly big enough, his brow ridges are too small, and he has photogenic cheekbones. :D

    180824-bling-4.jpg?fit=clip&w=835
    That's much closer I reckon, though with a touch too much more Native American for my tastes.

    One slight issue I have with this new Spanish site is that it's described as Chatelperronian. Now the Chatelperronian is a contentious period in of itself, with some researchers regarding it as a short interim period where Neanderthals copied or were influenced by us newbs in the neighbourhood, others consider it a misinterpreted, even a later, short lived Modern Human site and culture. The original "signature" site in France is tiny too. The other issue is the sample size of one. To be fair that's common in human origin stuff and a goodly few samples of one have proved to be groundbreaking. Another influence may be the current Spanish intellectual view that Neandertals were just as cultural as us. However, while I may have some wait and see questions, I very much welcome this newly uncovered research.

    Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,279 ✭✭✭Adam Khor


    Inbreeding, Allee effects and stochasticity might be sufficient to account for Neanderthal extinction:

    https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0225117

    Anterior tooth use in early humans and Neanderthals:

    https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0224573


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,279 ✭✭✭Adam Khor


    Further evidence that Neanderthals actively targeted large raptors to get their feathers and talons, with a special preference for the golden eagle:

    https://www.audubon.org/news/did-neanderthals-catch-and-kill-golden-eagles-their-feathers-and-talons

    strikingimage3.jpg
    when the Finlaysons reviewed the bird remains from some 154 Neanderthal sites, they found large-bodied raptors—largely Golden Eagles— at 75 (or nearly half) of those sites.

    The proportion of large raptors far exceeded what’s natural in the wild, given that apex predators tend to be among the rarest animals in a given environment. This prevalence of eagles was particularly notable to Eugene Morin, an anthropologist at the University of Trent who was not involved in the study. “We don't have evidence that they're using waterfowl or things like ducks or geese or swans,” he says. “They’re systematically using large raptors such as vultures and eagles and large falcons.”

    The Finlaysons argue that not only were Neanderthals targeting raptors, but that they particularly valued Golden Eagles, given their prevalence in the deposits. The eagle remains largely constituted wing bones and talons, which are far from the most appetizing parts of the bird. The wings showed signs of being scraped, perhaps to dislodge big primary feathers for decoration. And then there were the eagle talons, which had been carefully detached from the toe bones—evidence of intentional butchery and polishing. This is likely an early step in a long-continuing human tradition, Finlayson says: catching eagles and carrying their parts as a token of the bird’s strength.

    By the time modern humans arrived in Europe 45,000 years ago, and before raptor remains begin turning up in their sites, Neanderthals had been capturing eagles and other large raptors for at least 85,000 years, Finlayson says. It’s possible that our ancestors watched them hunt and harvest eagle feathers and talons—and learned.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,279 ✭✭✭Adam Khor




  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,279 ✭✭✭Adam Khor


    Neanderthals gathered sea food in great amounts, cave find shows.

    https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/mar/26/cave-find-shows-neanderthals-collected-seafood-scientists-say

    3325.jpg?width=620&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&
    The findings chime with recent evidence that Neanderthals had “surfers’ ear” and may have dived to collect shells for use as tools. Previous finds in Spain have shown they decorated seashells and were producing rock art 65,000 years ago.

    The discovery appears to throws cold water on the idea that the marine-rich diet of modern humans, high in fatty acids, helped them to outcompete Neanderthals as a result of better cognition.


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  • Moderators, Social & Fun Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 30,917 Mod ✭✭✭✭Insect Overlord


    "Throws cold water" :D

    I love puns. :o


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,279 ✭✭✭Adam Khor


    Neanderthals invaded Siberia in two distinct waves (and were fond of shiny stuff), study suggests:

    https://siberiantimes.com/science/casestudy/features/neanderthals-made-two-epic-invasions-of-siberia-says-new-study/

    inside_cave_gv.jpg


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,173 Mod ✭✭✭✭Wibbs


    This is called the Neanderthal thread so appropriately... :DA tiny piece of string/yarn has been found in France, the oldest known woven material, and it's from our fave beetle browed folks Neandertals. The previous record was about 10,000 years old.

    extra_large-1586383869-cover-image.jpg

    Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,279 ✭✭✭Adam Khor


    Wibbs wrote: »
    This is called the Neanderthal thread so appropriately... :DA tiny piece of string/yarn has been found in France, the oldest known woven material, and it's from our fave beetle browed folks Neandertals. The previous record was about 10,000 years old.

    extra_large-1586383869-cover-image.jpg

    So they may have made clothes after all D:


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,173 Mod ✭✭✭✭Wibbs


    Adam Khor wrote: »
    So they may have made clothes after all D:
    The thought had defo occurred AK :) Now the current view is we had needles and they didn't. Thing is, ours are made of bone, antler that sort of thing. Which preserves well enough. Theirs may have been made from slivers of wood, thorns that sorta thing, which doesn't nearly so well. We know they carved wooden items, of which only the smallest hints remain, we know they prepared a lot of animal skins, they even had the lissoir a leather working tool before us. Some have even suggested their arm musculature was influenced by the work involved in leather making. So what were they using all that leather for?

    Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,279 ✭✭✭Adam Khor


    Do we really want to know? :pac:


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,279 ✭✭✭Adam Khor


    Further evidence from an Italian cave that Neanderthals were not afraid to go into the water and exploit marine food sources:

    NINTCHDBPICT000513531978.jpg

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6961883/
    Excavated in 1949, Grotta dei Moscerini, dated MIS 5 to early MIS 4, is one of two Italian Neandertal sites with a large assemblage of retouched shells (n = 171) from 21 layers. The other occurrence is from the broadly contemporaneous layer L of Grotta del Cavallo in southern Italy (n = 126). Eight other Mousterian sites in Italy and one in Greece also have shell tools but in a very small number. The shell tools are made on valves of the smooth clam Callista chione. The general idea that the valves of Callista chione were collected by Neandertals on the beach after the death of the mollusk is incomplete. At Moscerini 23.9% of the specimens were gathered directly from the sea floor as live animals by skin diving Neandertals. Archaeological data from sites in Italy, France and Spain confirm that shell fishing and fresh water fishing was a common activity of Neandertals, as indicated by anatomical studies recently published by E. Trinkaus. Lithic analysis provides data to show the relation between stone tools and shell tools. Several layers contain pumices derived from volcanic eruptions in the Ischia Island or the Campi Flegrei (prior to the Campanian Ignimbrite mega-eruption). Their rounded edges indicate that they were transported by sea currents to the beach at the base of the Moscerini sequence. Their presence in the occupation layers above the beach is discussed. The most plausible hypothesis is that they were collected by Neandertals. Incontrovertible evidence that Neandertals collected pumices is provided by a cave in Liguria. Use of pumices as abraders is well documented in the Upper Paleolithic. We prove that the exploitation of submerged aquatic resources and the collection of pumices common in the Upper Paleolithic were part of Neandertal behavior well before the arrival of modern humans in Western Europe.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,279 ✭✭✭Adam Khor




  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,279 ✭✭✭Adam Khor


    More on the Le Rozel Neanderthal track site, which shows the handprints and footprints of several Neanderthals, most of them young.

    I myself am intrigued by the animal track- the figure would suggest it's a wolf? It would be cool to know what their interactions were like...

    https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/09/80000-year-old-footprints-reveal-neanderthal-social-life/

    prints-800x464.png


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