Elaine Meinel Supkis
Once again, the dispute about the Neanderthals and humans comes to the fore with the discovery of another 40,000 year old skull found in Romania. The mystery of why humans don't have the broad genetic species range most other animals have is the key to our deepest natures and points to our future difficulties. The importance of learned language and culture both interacting with self-run breeding programs (marriage and kinship relations) is the greatest force in the human community and this sets us off from all other mammalian species.
Modern humans continued to evolve after they reached Europe 40,000 years ago and may have interbred with Neandertals, according to new research.The findings are based on an analysis of the oldest modern human skull yet found in Europe.
This past fall a genetic study suggested that the two species split 400,000 years ago. But days later a bone study suggested that they mated much more recently than that.
The newly analyzed skull, reported online this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, adds to the heated discussion.
The skull was discovered in a cave in southwestern Romania and is at least 29,000 years old. A jawbone found nearby with similar morphological traits is dated to 40,500 years ago. The researchers conclude both specimens are about 40,000 years old.
Comparisons to other skulls suggest the Romanian skull clearly belongs to a modern human, said paper co-author Erik Trinkaus, an anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
The Neanderthals lived along the edge of the great ice sheets for over 130,000 years which is a very long time, this is almost the same length of time that our own species came into being. It pays to pretend we are in the past when thinking about these things. What was the landscape like? Did anything happen back then to suddenly change things?
75,000 years ago, a volcano in Sumatra, Toba, blew up. This was the biggest eruption event in nearly 3 million years. All over the earth, humanoid species had already spread. Adapting to the reality of periodical Ice Age climate changes, succeeding generations of humanoids evolved large brains quite rapidly. All over Eurasia and Africa, these primates milled around. They all used rocks as tools. They all hunted other animals and most importantly, each other. We already know that chimpanzees and gorillas, our last remaining cousins, hunt each other.
We also know they kill neighboring females. A tendency to kill strangers is pretty strongly embedded within the genetic make-up of primates in general. I would guess, there were many families and even clans of humanoids scattered all over. Because of this distrust of strangers, they probably kept mostly to themselves, the various groups roaming about, marking their territory and sowing distrust, using language as their tool to tell if a stranger were a member of the extended family group or a stranger. Nearly immediately, language became complicated. This complication was a major tool in preventing near-by genetic groups from pretending to be 'family' and fooling them into allowing the invasion of strangers.
The Neanderthals moved out of Africa and into the Middle East and Europe, hunting the great herds of bison, horses and rinos and mastadons. They had a rich culture. They hunted as a family and defended their clan territory with vigor. They used fire and language. They were similar to their cousins who spread to China. These outposts of the African primate population dominated other primates. The Orangatang, for example, had to retreat to the deepest forests just like its distant cousins, the gorillas and chimpanzees of Africa.
The Neanderthals flourished in Europe until the terrible day Mt. Toba blew up.
Homosapiens, that is, we, were directly across the sea from that mighty blast. We know blasts like the one that destroyed this massive mountain can be heard around the world quite loudly. Probably, our ancestors, picking fruits and nuts up in the hills heard this tremendous roar like a thousand lions and looking across the the ocean to the dark horizon, the sun turned to blood. Pointing and talking excitedly, they watched a black line on the horizon rapidly approaching, a line of black clouds, roiling madly.
A great wind hit. Crouching down, clutching for children, calling out in the sudden darkness, they then saw with horror, the ocean rise and rush inland. All the clan down on the shore, engulfed and gone. Then there was lightning. Wailing with fear, the survivors ran inland.
All the humanoids living in and around Sumatra were killed. Orangatangs sheltered on the backside of mountains to the west of Sumatra barely survived. Most homosapiens didn't survive. According to genetic studies, fewer than 3,000 of our distant ancestors survived. And it was a very grim business, surviving the sudden winter, the total upending of the environment.
The hapless Neanderthals probably suffered the same wrenching destruction. If there were 100,000 of them before the volcano erupted, there certainly were less than 5,000 after a thousand years. A really brutal ice age started instantly. The fine dust of the eruption covered the stratosphere. This cut down on the warmth of the sun which, even on the equator, shone with a brazen light, the sunsets and sunrises were as red as a dying mastadon's pool of blood. The fine dust formed ice crystals and this fell as snow which, because the oceans were warmer than the suddenly cooler atmosphere, this temperature difference created gigantic, powerful storms.
The poor humanoid races couldn't take this, they had long ago lost their furry hides and the violent storms killed their babies and small children. The survivors had to be able to swim, to run fast, to organize safe havens. For 300 years, the earth's storms raged until most of the excess moisture, well over 10% of the ocean's waters, was finally locked in place by great ice sheets.
Then the rains and violent storms stopped and a new equilibrium began. The surviving Neanderthals tried to pull themselves together again. If Africa was separated by a wide ocean, they might have rebuilt their population for the hunting was good.
But they didn't have enough time. The Cro-magnon survivors in Africa had a slightly easier time, they were right on the equator so even when the initial explosion hit them hard, the climate collapse was less violent, less extreme so they had 200 years headstart on the Neanderthals.
The Neanderthals were not close relatives of modern humans and represent a single species quite distinct from our own, scientists say.3D comparisons of Neanderthal, modern human and other primate skulls confirm theories that the ancient people were a breed apart, the researchers report.
*snip*
This view is at odds with the single origin, or Out of Africa 2, theory, which postulates that all living humans expanded from a single, small population that evolved in Africa more than 150,000 years ago.
As modern humans left their African homeland, they replaced "archaic" humans living in other parts of the world.
Neanderthals appeared in Europe around 190,000 years ago, characterised by a stocky physique ideal for conserving heat in an Ice Age climate.
Shortly after modern humans arrived in Europe 35,000 years ago, Neanderthals disappear from the fossil record.
Studies of mitochondrial DNA from Neanderthal bones also suggest they had little affinity to modern populations.
From the point of view of the surviving Neanderthals, once the weather became predictible again, they probably thought they would simply begin to have babies again and hunt and sing and do all the things they were accustomed to do. And eventually, there would be more of them again. The sense of loss from those terrible dark years of unending storms was fading and hope sprang ever eternal.
If one takes the skulls of all the primates and lines them up, what stands out is how all the eye orbs of the other primates are virtually round but this last group, ourselves, the skulls have an evil cast to the eyes which are not round but look to have a continuous glower. As an artist, it is quite noticable when drawing humans. I suspect even the Neanderthals didn't have the perpetual showing of the white of the eyes. All humans show their whites of their eyes at all times, this is, I think, unique in the mammalian world.
When animals show the whites of their eyes, they are either sick or very frightened. When monkeys or apes are scared, upset or aggressive, they make their eyes big and show their whites. I wonder if, during the vast storms following the destruction of Mt. Toba and the death of most primates, if the survivors evolved this condition very rapidly as a survival tool, namely, anyone who could spook or terrorize others by showing the whites of the eyes effortlessly had more childern survive? This is a subtle thing, hard to prove or examine.
But if Neanderthals didn't have this genetic tic, then they were doomed. For the violent Cro-magnon survivors of this great catastrophe were relentless killers. They were so determined, they moved rapidly out of Africa and into the Middle East where they immediately fanned out to hunt and kill. The social contract of 'do not make contact' was so strong, they moved away from each other with tremendous speed. No clan could bear living within hailing distance of any other clan! This conflict rushed forwards the technology of making stone tools. The ability to memorize stories and pass them on to the children while showing them how to make tools combined with sheer genius, the survivors having stupendous wits, these people proved to be very restless and relentless.
This new-found power combined with a strong new culture that wasn't diluted by generalized procreation, the enforced isolation of cannibalism: what I suggest is, the survivors ate other survivors. And they had the intelligence, unlike the chimpanzees today, for example, to NOT eat family or clan members. They creatd many taboos designed to protect genetic relatives. This caution is easily lost if a culture collapses. We see many a father or mother or other close relatives, killing the children or each other.
The desire to kill (and eat) relatives is surprisingly strong in humans. Despite taboos and tales of warning, it still happens. So when the hostile Cro-Magnons poured into Europe, in nearly no time at all, they spotted the Neanderthal residents and began to hunt them down, ruthlessly. Not because there wasn't enough to eat.
For the sheer JOY of killing them!
Despite the obvious fact that humans love to fight and we are overjoyed when we can kill a weaker opponent, the 'support the troops!' and 'We're number one!' and all the other obvious signs that humans feel energized, happy and proud when they kill others, anthropologists have to pretend we are not so bloody hellish. It is left unstated that the 'competition' the Neanderthals lost wasn't them getting one mastodon less each month, it was like football or any sport: humans spotted the Neanderthal's fires from afar, they would rush down upon them and kill them.
It didn't take long and the Neanderthals were probably very disorganized due to the great die-off after Mt. Toba blew up.
After wiping out the Neanderthals, the race to gain an upper hand turned back onto fellow humans. For example, genetic studies now show humans that went into the central plains of Asia suddenly turned around and re-invaded the Middle East and the Sahara/Nile area which was grazing land 25,000 years ago.
&hearts Click here for a really good National Geographic geneology data base.
Genetic studies show decisively that all dogs descened from just a few wolf-like animals in central Asia. They worked with the tribes that tamed them and protected them and this enabled these same tribes to turn around and go backwards. Namely, they didn't fear entering the territory of other clans because their dogs protected them. The other clans were so impressed by these dogs, they lured away pups or bargained for pups so they could have easy food and protection (Lewis and Clark noted that the Plains Indians used dogs to haul stuff, guard the camps and for dinner if no other hunting game was successful!).
So it really shouldn't be such a mystery as to why Neanderthals were totally eradicated. To this day, even with humans dominating the planet, we itch to annihilate each other. It is quite strong! Almost unendurable! Just look at people in traffic jams, all of them wishing all the others would vanish! Families can barely tolerate each other. It is a testament to the brilliance of our distant ancestors that they created stories and cautions and taboos that protect us from our own dark lusts to kill everyone and everything.
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