Get a load of this guy? Scary to say the least. The Neanderthal seemed like quite an adversary for our ancient human cousins, and they certainly don’t look like the cuddly Geico Commercial cavemen we see all the time. Can you imagine this guy hunting and eating you, or kidnapping the women in your tribe and raping them–and probably eating them afterwards? This is the kind of stuff of horror movies if you ask me.
What I picked up on though, was how the humans were reduced to a few survivors, and these survivors happen to be the smart ones who got organized and turned around the fight. I really liked the concept of breeding to get more diverse genetics within a tribe, hence further enhancing our mental capability to fight and defend self and others. This was a fearsome enemy, and humans definitely evolved into the better ‘man’. But it took building snowmobiles and out thinking this adversary, and you see hints of that throughout this book. I think Boyd would have enjoyed reading this, because this is really the first war that we can truly learn from, as far as human behavior and why we do what we do on the battlefield and in society.
For the record, I have not been able to read this book, and have only been able to read bits and pieces that are available online. It is on my list though, and I figured I would put this out there for the readership to consider. Interesting stuff. –Matt
—————————————————————-
70,000-year war with Neanderthals created modern humans
Neanderthals were a race of super-predators that hunted early humans to the edge of extinction in the Middle East until, at one stage, there were only about 50 of our ancestors left. These resilient survivors evolved into modern humans and staged a fight-back that led to the extinction of the Neanderthals.
These are just some of the claims of a new theory of human evolution to be published next week by Australian author, Danny Vendramini. In his book Them and Us: how Neanderthal predation created modern humans, Vendramini suggests the protracted inter-species conflict that raged between Neanderthals and humans for over 70,000 years was responsible for transforming archaic humans into fully modern humans.
The author has spent five years researching the 50,000 year period that Neanderthal and early humans both occupied the Levant and says the evidence is overwhelming that Neanderthals were not docile hominids. “These forest-dwelling creatures were the most lethal of all the prehistoric predators. They hunted the largest and fiercest prey, including lions, mammoths, rhinos, cave bears – and humans…
*****
Neanderthals hunted, raped and ate humans
Neanderthals were not the gentle, almost-human creatures portrayed in the media over the last 150 years. New Australian research reveals they were aggressive, powerful and terrifying carnivores—ruthless and efficient apex predators, who hunted, raped and ate early humans for over 50,000 years. The Neanderthal’s daily diet of nearly 2 kg of meat—the equivalent of 16 Quarter Pounders—included human flesh.
Based on the research, Australian independent scholar Danny Vendramini has developed “Neanderthal predation theory”, which argues that the evolution of modern humans— including our unique physiology, sexuality and human nature—is the result of a reaction to this systematic long-term sexual predation and cannibalism by Eurasian Neanderthals.
Read more at author’s website here.
—————————————————————–
Neanderthals Were Few and Poised for Extinction
Thursday , July 16, 2009
Neanderthals are of course extinct. But there never were very many of them, new research concludes.
In fact, new genetic evidence from the remains of six Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) suggests the population hovered at an average of 1,500 females of reproductive age in Europe between 38,000 and 70,000 years ago, with the maximum estimate of 3,500 such female Neanderthals.
“It seems they never really took off in Eurasia in the way modern humans did later,” said study researcher Adrian Briggs of the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany.
The research, which will be published in the July 17 issue of the journal Science, suggests the small population size of our ancestral cousins may have been a factor in their demise.
“Because there never really were millions of them, they probably were more susceptible to some event that made them go extinct, which to me, suspiciously coincides with the emergence of modern humans,” Briggs told LiveScience.
Ian Tattersall, curator of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, who was not involved in the current research, said the study “does support notions that toward the end of last ice age, the Neanderthal population was declining as a result of harsh circumstances.” He added, “I don’t believe Neanderthals would’ve gone extinct if it wasn’t for this new element, the Homo sapiens competing for the same resources.”
Savvy Neanderthals
The Neanderthals inhabited the plains of Europe and parts of Asia as far back as 230,000 years ago. They disappeared from the fossil record more than 20,000 years ago, a few thousand years after modern humans appeared on the scene.
Figuring out why Neanderthals died out and what they were like when alive have kept plenty of scientists busy.
Rather than the dumb cavemen characters starring in Geico car insurance ads, accumulating archaeological and genetic evidence shows Neanderthals were pretty sophisticated. They apparently hunted with blades and spear tips rivaling those of modern humans, ate marine mammals like seals and dolphins and sported brains that grew like ours. Their bodies likely looked similar to ours, and some Neanderthals showed off red locks on their heads.
Sparse population
Now, Briggs and his colleagues have used a new method that targets the genetic material of interest, analyzing so-called mitochondrial DNA from the fossils of six Neanderthals, who lived between 38,000 and 70,000 years ago. That genetic material comes from females and so can be used to trace maternal lineages.
To get a sense of the genetic diversity, and ultimately population size, the team compared the Neanderthal sequences with one another. Then, the researchers looked at such genetic information from 50 living humans from around the world, asking, “how different are their genes from one another?”
(Diversity of genes can provide indirect evidence for the number of breeding individuals, because with more people mating more genes are thrown into the mix, and vice versa.)
The Neanderthals had about three times less genetic diversity than the modern humans. Briggs suggests the entire population could be roughly estimated by doubling the number of females, which they set at no higher than 3,500.
In addition, the sequenced genetic material from the Neanderthals did not support any interbreeding among Neanderthals and modern humans. However, with such a small Neanderthal population, even if interbreeding occurred, the few Neanderthal genes thrown into the mix could’ve been sort of diluted out over time, Briggs said.
The entire Neanderthal genome is expected to be reported later this year and could shed more light on the interbreeding question, he added.
Story here.