Neanderthal watch
They're back.... The current issue of National Geographic magazine cover features Neanderthals, the human-like race who inhabited the Near East and Europe until 25,000 to 30,000 years ago, when they were wiped out either by the elements or by lither Homo sapiens from Africa -- i.e., us. Neanderthals are almost as ubiquitous in the media as the GEICO cavemen, who are at least arguably Neanderthals. (They might be Cro-Magnons, but I have a feeling the ad men who invented them weren't interested in anthropological taxonomy.)
Alas, the NG article has only a brief reference to the question that excites most of the non-specialist interest in Neanderthals: Did they, um, do it with us? As I have mentioned before, this question is of more than prurient interest; one scientist has theorized that humans got their smarts from canoodling with our beetle-browed cousins.
For years, advocates of the interbreeding hypothesis have pointed to Neanderthal-like features in some modern-day people, like prominent brow ridges, weak chins and a fondness for sleeveless undershirts. But the NG article by Stephen S. Hall mentions the interbreeding hypothesis in the process of debunking it on the basis of DNA evidence.
Hall does include a rebuttal by Erik Trinkaus, a paleoanthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis. "There were very few people on the landscape, and you need to find a mate and reproduce," Trinkaus said. "Why not? Humans are not known to be choosy. Sex happens."
The NG article also suggests that Neanderthals possessed a gene associated with speech, which means that Neanderthal men had no excuse when their human girlfriends complained, "We never talk."
Photo: AP Photo/Frank Franklin II
The lithic industry found in Indiana over the past couple years may support Prof. Trinkaus. The stone tools found definitely do not resemble any of the known native American cultures from the Clovis or later periods but are dead ringers for the Mousterian tools found at Neanderthal sites elsewhere. Lavellois cores, points, blades, handaxes. choppers, cleavers, scrapers, burins, denticulates, along with pigments of red, black and yellow in association with bison and other remains suggests that a possible middle paleolithic group was butchering and producing tools in open air sites in the midwest. Unlike other alleged preclovis tools that are being found, this assemblage is large enough to clearly identify a specific tool industry that is unambiguous in the style. If the tools were displayed alongside Mousterian tools from europe, I personally don't think many could tell the difference other than the material that was used. The makers were obvious masters of the flint as the craftsmen utilized nearly every flake and waste was rare. The tools are in pristine condition and certainly worthy of further analysis. Why not an American Neanderthal ?
Posted by: rick doninger | October 13, 2008 at 05:27 PM
Given the dispertion of neanderthals and the climate of the world- how do you suggest neanderthals traveld to the americas, and that their style of making lithics would not change over the time it would take to travel that great distance?
Posted by: Liz | October 14, 2008 at 10:19 AM
When the first Neanderthal bones were found and brought to a german doctor for evaluation & ID, he proclaimed them to be those of a human who had suffered from ricketts and congenital syphilis. This nonsense about so-called "Cro-Magnon" Homo sapiens "humans got their smarts from canoodling with our beetle-browed cousins" is nothing more than ignorant, childish fantasy. The two groups were merely two facial & body types much as we still see them today, with so-called Neanderthals having additional problems that exaggerated certain differences. It is also conceivable that what appear to be a separate Neanderthal race or species may actually be outcasts due to their deformities -- not "Ugh" but "ugly." In any case, if the two could successfully interbreed, they had to be the same genus and species.
Posted by: C. Ed Wright | December 29, 2008 at 02:09 PM