Why did the Neanderthals disappear?

Originally posted by St Udio
and suppose the story was really telling about the two races of men,
the Neanderthals=Esau ... the Homo-Sapiens=Jacob

Nice idea, but the Neanderthals were never that organized and civilized, to have a non-nomadic culture center to live at, wearing garments and having communal events. Big hairy Yeti looking blacksmiths smart enough with their big arse stub fingers to make swords and spear tips??

Plus Esau = Edom = Edomites are the modern day remnant of Esau. They say Edomites will play an integral role in the End of Days.

The remnant of Esau is likely the Palestinian peoples, IMO.

This is an interesting topic. To discuss Neanderthal, and Cromagnum man I think its important to discuss pre-history. OR the time before recorded time, and the disregard for advanced technology prior to that. This being said, it is also important to talk about carbon dating, and the falacies of it. This being said:

1.) There has been tools, and artifacts found within coal. This being said, these items are either truly ANCIENT, or the dating that we use for them is incorrect. Here are the artifact that I am talking about.

www.world-mysteries.com...

www.abovetopsecret.com... as well as

www.genesispark.org...

2.) Here is the proof that carbon dating is innaccurate:

www.angelfire.com...

as well as

www.christiananswers.net...

as well as the kicker:

www.howstuffworks.com...

With Excerpt:
"Because the half-life of carbon-14 is 5,700 years, it is only reliable for dating objects up to about 60,000 years old. However, the principle of carbon-14 dating applies to other isotopes as well. Potassium-40 is another radioactive element naturally found in your body and has a half-life of 1.3 billion years. Other useful radioisotopes for radioactive dating include Uranium -235 (half-life = 704 million years), Uranium -238 (half-life = 4.5 billion years), Thorium-232 (half-life = 14 billion years) and Rubidium-87 (half-life = 49 billion years). "
This being said, you must assume that whatever dating method a scientist uses then is as such impacted by the local environment in which the fossil comes to reside in. This being said, if they do a K-40 test, and the area happens to be rich in K or other elements the elongates the 1/2 life of K then there testing is trully inaccurate.

This leads us to 3.

3.) If the dating of fossils is inaccurate, and evidence has been found of artifacts that predate our modern history, is it possible that there was a Pre-human advanced civilization that predated history?
This is where the ideas of Atlantis, homer's writings as well as ancient Indian writings come into play. This is listed here:

www.earth-history.com...

This link is enough as there is relavent points of history that show of ancient civilizations from almost every contininent on Earth, including Antartica.

4.) With all this being My theory is that There was infact an ancient civilisation, this civilisation had advanced knowledge including aircraft, as well as other knowledge. This being said, IF the civilisation had the ability to perform genetic modification, is it possible that they let some of there experiments out for testing, such Cro Magnon, Neanderthal, Almas, Australopithecus afarensis, Australopithecus afarensis, Homo floresiensis, Homo ergaster, Humans, or any of the other possible missing "links".
Obviously if you were a advanced civilisation, which lived on only 1 small contintinent, you wouldn't want these experiment to be done there, you would want them done where they could

a

good thread!
what gets me is that neanderthal man made it through thousands of years of ice age before becoming extinct. and on the same vien, it occured to me recently that we'r the only species on the planet that cant survive without taking another animals coat, making shelters and fires etc so we're not suited to this enviroment at all.....hmmmm

Jeez, go to work for 8 hours and look what happens.
Thanks for all the great reply's, looks like there is a lot of differing opinions.
I'll try to reply to everyones posts, if i dont it doesnt mean i havent read it or that i'm ignoring it, it just means that i dont have anything to add to what you've already posted or i think that i've covered it in a previous post.

originally posted by UK Wizard On a whole though I think I'd agree with the theory they were simply designed for a particular environment, they were fantastic at what they did but when change came they simply weren't able to adapt very well and thus homo-sapian's the far more adaptable species came to true prominence.

They survived through at least 2 ice ages and other cold phases, and flourished in the warmer phases in between, moving north when the ice retreated and then moving south again during cold snaps. Though it seems that after each ice age their population density decreased, so that could have played a part in their downfall.

originally posted by Cyber_Wasp Humans probably killed them off because they looked different and did not want them to compete for food and land.
This was the real first world war.

Thats part of the problem that arose from early descriptions of how Neandertals would have appeared as slouching, hairy, knuckle scraping apes. That is not the case. Yes they were shorter, broader built physically with the sloping brow but they were not all that dissimilar in appearance to Homo Sapiens at that time.

Washington State University

The painting at left illustrates popular prejudices and misconceptions about early humans given expression in the work of French paleontologist Marcellin Boule, who based his 1911 study of the Neanderthals on an individual who, as it turned out, was badly deformed by arthritis. Note the bent-kneed stance suggesting an imperfect or only partly erect posture, the head set forward on the spine much like that of a chimp or gorilla, and the clumsy, extremely hairy bodies.

originally posted by amitheone They can't interbreed with homo sapiens because they don't belong to the human race.

Some researchers believe they were able to interbreed. David Serre of the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology (EVA) says this

"when there had been a gene flow, then it was presumably small. We can by no means rule out, however, that Neanderthals contributed to the genotype of modern man."

originally posted by longbow I think it is possible that they were wiped out by disease. The contacts of races that lived in isolation for a long time - and modern humans came from Africa while neanderthals lived in Europe - historically often resulted in epidemies. For example the Indians in America - vast majority of them was not killed by whites directly, but by diseases to which they were not immune.

I hadn't really considered that, it makes sense, thanks. I'll 'dig' around (pun intended) to see if i can find any research on this.

originally posted by I wonder if the dna got thinned out over the generatons to the point now where you can't even find it, the neanderthal dna within a human.

There is some thought that DNA drift might account for there not being much evidence to prove this but i think that it is a good point.

originally posted by Byrd Yes to the first, no to the second.

Well i knew you'd pick me up on the second part. I was intimating that academia tends to at times cover up earlier errors in research. Not a shot at all academics by any means.
I do agree with your points regarding the first question posed. It, along with the mistaken view of Neanderthals from Marcellin Boule's study due to the use of a poor specimen engendered a prejudiced concept of what a Neanderthal was.

originally posted by pavil and hunting style and failure to adapt that hunting style to the new conditions on the ground that did the race in most probably.

I do agree with most of your post but i wouldn't discount their ability to adapt to different hunting styles, particularly if they did live in close contact with modern man, they would have learnt from us.

Neandertals Hunted as Well as Humans, Study Says

"These data are joining an increasing body of evidence that Neanderthal extinction was not due to any lack of ability to hunt," said John Shea, an archaeologist at Stony Brook University on Long Island, New York.
"There was no difference between what Neanderthals and modern humans could do [as hunters]," said Shea, who was not involved in the study. "Both of them were wolves with knives."

originally posted by RadekusBecause Homo Sapiens killed them all off, humans are to egoistic to realize their bloodthirstiness and try to find other reasons for the downfall of the Neanderthal man, but the truth shall set us free, won't it?

No offense but i think this is probably the least likely scenario. Most of the study's ive read the past few days suggest that Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens probably co existed without much conflict and may have in fact shared knowledge.

originally posted by XtrozeroUnless I missed reading it in other posts the reason for their extinction was that they were not nomadic as Homo Sapiens were. At one point in our history we almost became extinct too with fewer than 10,000 of us on the planet, but we migrated south with the herds from the encroaching ice age and they didn’t.

Actually they were hunters/gatherers and were nomadic when they needed to be. When the ice ages receded they moved north and then retreated south following game when it became cold again. Some information on this in some previous links i posted.

originally posted by runetang Nice idea, but the Neanderthals were never that organized and civilized, to have a non-nomadic culture center to live at, wearing garments and having communal events. Big hairy Yeti looking blacksmiths smart enough with their big arse stub fingers to make swords and spear tips??

They were organized enough to live in communal groups, care for sick and injured members, made clothing by sewing, made jewellery, statues and masks, and used rituals in the burying of their dead. And were making tools long before Homo Sapiens.

originally posted by ByrdAlso remember that at the time, Sapiens was not the only human species other than Neanderthal. We also had Heidelbergensis and Eregaster (and Floresiensis), both of which overlap some or all of the Neanderthal timeline.

Wasn't heidelbergensis the precursor Neandertal in Europe?

Link

"The Neanderthal is the European further develop- ment of Homo erectus, who wandered out of Africa for the first time around two million years ago. The second wave occurred 800,000 years ago. The Neanderthal developed from this in Europe by way of Homo heidelbergensis.

Once again thanks for all the reply's if i didn't specifically answer your post it's because i had nothing relevant to add or i felt myself or other posters had already answered.

Cheers mojo.

Originally posted by runetang

Originally posted by St Udio
and suppose the story was really telling about the two races of men,
the Neanderthals=Esau ... the Homo-Sapiens=Jacob

Nice idea, but the Neanderthals were never that organized and civilized, to have a non-nomadic culture center to live at, wearing garments and having communal events. Big hairy Yeti looking blacksmiths smart enough with their big arse stub fingers to make swords and spear tips??

Plus Esau = Edom = Edomites are the modern day remnant of Esau. They say Edomites will play an integral role in the End of Days.

The remnant of Esau is likely the Palestinian peoples, IMO.

By far the most clueless, malformed, and poorly comprised excuse for a post I've read since I've been a member. Absolutely ridiculous.

Firstly, you cannot tie religion into any scientific forum, especially Christianity because the entire book is in opposition of scientific fact and common understanding of "the way things work."

Another mistake was your reference to the beautiful people of Palestine. You really have no idea what you're talking about what so ever. If you've never been or at least experience people from this region, you should bite your (forked?)tongue this very instance. They are good people who are not of any dissimilar genetic make up as you and I, or the rest of the world as suggested by articles such as this. Your bible has failed the world since it's inception. I don't see how a poor attempt at integrating it into scientific theory and giving some wildly lame speculation on a people you know nothing about is going to change that.


Religious psycho babble out. Level-headed, scientific, thought provoking information in. Deal?

A couple reasons.

We know that the Neanderthals died out at the end of the last ice age, even though they - like the mammoths, megaceros, european lions, etc - had all persisted through several previous ice ages, some much fiercer than the last one. Neanderthals existed in pockets along Southern Europe at the height of the ice age - Spain and Portugal, Italy, southern France, etc. These populations would have been rather fragile, both in terms of population and genetics by the time the ice pulled back and they were able to travel north.

At the time, the climate was going haywire, habitats were completely restructuring in terms of decades or even years, and without a doubt, things were starving and migrating and doing all sorts of things that made survival difficult for the neanderthals - again, just like all the previous ice ages. The difference this time, was the addition of homo sapiens.

What happened is that a new predator was added to a still-recovering ecosystem. Better-built for long travel, these humans went back and forth in search of game - like neanderthals, they would have been primarily carnivores. This puts greater strain on the game of the time, and increases hunger in both human species, as they are in direct competition.

So why did the sapiens trump out the neanderthals? Disease, obviously. The neanderthals were likely already suffering disease that had been isolated in each pocket community up until the glaciers receded, and along come things like measles from the near east on the backs of these new humans. This gave modern humans the edge needed to dominate the ecological niche.

A combination of hunger and disease would be tragic for a population that was already so small. It's significant that the latest known population of Neanderthals existed on an island - they would have been able to subsist on seafood and avoid disease from inland longer than their relatives could.

I would also wonder if the northward migration of asiatic elephants at the end of the ice age had something to do with the decline of the mammoths - are there any "elephant diseases"?

Originally posted by j_kalin
I think the answer to what became of the Neandertals is obvious. H Sapiens will kill groups within his own species for such silly things as skin color, tribal affiliation, religion, etc...Just imagine when we encountered a species that was clearly not human!

A slight correction, if I may...

h. sapiens only evolved at the END of the time of the Neanderthals -- and at a time when there were several other human species. So I don't think they went around picking on the Neanderthals.

What did we do with them? We hunted them and ate them since they were good sources of meat in a cold climate and we had killed off most of the other large animals living there such as the mammoth. As we all know, cannibalism is a common tradition among the indigineous humans; it was certainly the rule 100,000 years ago. Pass the BBQ sauce

Cannibalism is a fairly uncommon practice. It's usually done as a ritualistic practice on an occasional basis (eating the heart/flesh of a warrior to gain his power) rather than on a "farming them like reindeer" basis. There are very few examples where Neanderthal bones show traces of possible cannibalism.

Originally posted by TheWalkingFox
At the time, the climate was going haywire, habitats were completely restructuring in terms of decades or even years, and without a doubt, things were starving and migrating and doing all sorts of things that made survival difficult for the neanderthals - again, just like all the previous ice ages. The difference this time, was the addition of homo sapiens.

What happened is that a new predator was added to a still-recovering ecosystem. Better-built for long travel, these humans went back and forth in search of game - like neanderthals, they would have been primarily carnivores. This puts greater strain on the game of the time, and increases hunger in both human species, as they are in direct competition.
...
A combination of hunger and disease would be tragic for a population that was already so small. It's significant that the latest known population of Neanderthals existed on an island - they would have been able to subsist on seafood and avoid disease from inland longer than their relatives could.

You make some wonderful points, Walking Fox. We don't have enough evidence right now to really tell one way or another, but your scenario seems pretty likely. Disease and a sequence of climactic changes such as droughts could have spelled the end.

I would also wonder if the northward migration of asiatic elephants at the end of the ice age had something to do with the decline of the mammoths - are there any "elephant diseases"?

Excllent question. Yes, there are... but I don't know anything about them other than they exist.

reply to post by TheWalkingFox


I agree that disease may have played a part in the demise of the Neandertals but i dont believe it was the major cause. Syphillis has been shown to have existed during that time but there does not seem to be a lot of supporting evidence that disease was the major cause of their extinction.
It is still hotly debated by paleoanthropologists and everything i've read so far has differing opinions,
It appears that the disease cause is an argument used mostly by creationists attempting to explain the Neandertals were actually Homo Sapiens deformed or disfigured by disease, so i dont have much faith in that view.
But as a part of multiple factors leading to their demise i think it is reasonable to assume that disease in combination with competition, climate change and interbreeding could have been a reason for their disappearance. Along with a large dose of bad luck.
Another theory that i'm reading which suggests that being the super predator at the time may also have helped to bring about their downfall. More on that later once ive finished reading the article.

Good post, thanks TheWalkingFox,

mojo.


[edit on 28/10/07 by mojo4sale]

nobody like my idea on a neander baby? If we have there DNA, why can't we use it in experiments. I'm sure theres a scientist out there that wants to cross neander with chimp, or orangatan, or human. Whats the baby look like? what would its learning abilities be? If you made 1 male and 1 female from 2 different distinct neanderthal bodies, we could make the new Adam and Eve, for neanderthal anyway. Theres all kinds of science experiments that can be done with them.

Just my 2 cents.

Camain

Biologically, whenever you have two species competing for the same resource, either they differentiate to occupy different niches and thereby obtain different parts of that resource, or one species does a more efficient job monopolizing it and kills the other species.

It's inevitable.

Just like when profit becomes the sole motive of commerce. Whosoever does the best job at making the most profit, eventually owns everything. Compound interest, usury, profit, whatever you want to call it... as long as such a system is allowed to exist, there is only one mathematically predictable outcome: someone will own everything.

Originally posted by TheWalkingFox
At the time, the climate was going haywire, habitats were completely restructuring in terms of decades or even years, and without a doubt, things were starving and migrating and doing all sorts of things that made survival difficult for the neanderthals - again, just like all the previous ice ages. The difference this time, was the addition of homo sapiens.

What happened is that a new predator was added to a still-recovering ecosystem. Better-built for long travel, these humans went back and forth in search of game - like neanderthals, they would have been primarily carnivores. This puts greater strain on the game of the time, and increases hunger in both human species, as they are in direct competition.

like i said before, such a competition would lead to two possibilities in order for either species to survive: they yould either fight, the winner being the one alive; or they could assimilate, therefore combining into a single species hybrid. There was, like i said again, a discovery in Portugal where archaeologists found what appeared to be a hybrid child of both a Neanderthal and a Sapien. now, due to evolution and the warming of the climate i would assume that evolution would cause these hybrids to resemble the Sapien species, due to their adaptation to temperate climates rather than that of an ice age. regardless, we would still technically have Neanderthal DNA.

they were a dying species which were no longer suited to the current climate so you could say that they did die out, simply because they were an outdated species.

besides, could it not be possible that the early Neanderthals, or pre-Neanderthals, assimilated the previous species who occupied Europe in the same fashion?

I am interested in this topic since a long time. As a child I remember to be thought that the Neanderthals were stupid brutes that would howl like wolves, unable to talk, armed with sticks.

Back then this assumption made no sense to me, and I am glad that science has disproved most of those "assumptions" by now.

As someone said befor, those "guys" have been here longer and have definitly adapted to more hardship then the end of the last ice age.

I can hardly imagine that those humans should not have been able to adapt to new hunting techniques because some animals they used to hunt started to extincted. Who cares, enough deers, rabits, humans around

The climate change shouldn't affect them either. They didn't have a fur, at least non we know of!

Diseases could be a killer, if I recall right the native americans were mostly affected by diseases brought from europe. Some of the tribes probably never ever saw the white men, but their bacterias and virurses they fell prey to. But then homo sapiens sapiens and neanderthalensis lived side by side allready for thousands of years, their immune system would have been synced allready.

What's left then? Humans had the tendency to enslave or kill each other in the past right? Skin color, religion, tribal identity (and a lot more) was allways a reason to wage war.

If the sapiens sapiens, had better weapons, if he was more agressive (As someone said) - and I assume we are super agressive even toward each other, was better organized, he certainly invaded their land, killed or enslaved them, and drove them ruthlessly to extinction.

Written history shows us how agressive sapiens sapiens is, and how much power he has put into creating new tools to destroy his own race. Our whole technical evolution is based on the creation of better tools to get rid of each other. Beside building mindless architectures we liked to make weapons, and sadly test them asap.

Recent studies suggest that there might have been the possiblity of cross breeding, so probably some things of the neanderthals is still alive in us.

I'd personally like to know how many of you believe that ETs had something to do with the Neanderthals dissapearance/change?

I know it goes right against what most scientific or even religious people would believe, but in my opinion I reckon that ETs genetically-modified, cross-bred, what have you, the Neanderthals into more sentient beings for whatever number of reasons they may have had for it.

The idea makes plenty of sense to me, of course it probably wont to others.

Is it possible that in the long distant past, an interstellar spacecraft landed here, either stranded, or on a long term mission. The visitors, not dissimilar fom the Neanderthals, may have, just like sailors in foreign parts, consorted with the females.
The Bible does mention something similar, but if you think about the most fundamental ways of our species, a man will consider having sex with whatever female is available to him, especially when on 'holiday'.
Females, behave in a similarly reciprocal manner, in that whilst they play hard to get among their own people, will often go for 'the new boy in town' or a strange man wilst on holiday,[no kiss and tell here']
Furthermore, young men cannot resist 'showing off' to females and foolishly impressing them with their percieved wealth, OK?
And young women will usually marry for money[security]as opposed to a man who likes to marry a woman who appeals to him.[these Neanderthal women may not have been so beautiful but possibly considered to be'any old port in a storm'] [sorry ladies,just trying to explain a possibility].
Over time, a small hybrid race may have developed, with just the women[Neaderthal] being attracted to the visitors in the early years, partly because of their perceived wealth and 'new kid in town status.

Females, behave in a similarly reciprocal manner, in that whilst they play hard to get among their own people, will often go for 'the new boy in town' or a strange man wilst on holiday,[no kiss and tell here']

again the idea of making the strongest species possible. in times of olde, the women would find a mate from another clan/tribe/group as to firstly reduce the effects of inbreeding, therefore making the gene pool stronger (as seen with dogs and cats for example, a mongrel is far more resilient to such things as arthritis in old age compared to say an German Sheppard); and to expand relationships with other peoples. For instance the daughter of the clan leader may mate with a prominent male figure in another highly respected clan, therefore a neutral link can be established between them.

such ideology leads me to further believe that cross breeding was a possibility in the late years of the Neanderthals (~26K years ago). the species would be dying out, and the Sapiens, who may have only been in limited numbers (please correct if necessary) may have mated with the Neanderthals as an instinctive action.

[edit on 29-10-2007 by funny_pom]

reply to [DeadFlagBlues,

your welcome to inform yourself with this link as a start;

archaeology.about.com...

search: "neanderthal sites in Israel"




BTW;
~...in those days there will be scoffers.....~

[edit on 29-10-2007 by St Udio]

Again - for the people who think neanderthals and humans were crossbreeding - if this was the case, we would have to find the evidence of them LIVING TOGETHER in the same group. Basically in such case there would have to be significant amount of neanderthal skeletons mixed with cromagnon ones. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think such mixed group of skeletons was found. I think the opposite is true - they lived completely segregated.

Originally posted by longbow
Again - for the people who think neanderthals and humans were crossbreeding - if this was the case, we would have to find the evidence of them LIVING TOGETHER in the same group. Basically in such case there would have to be significant amount of neanderthal skeletons mixed with cromagnon ones. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think such mixed group of skeletons was found. I think the opposite is true - they lived completely segregated.

Actually there is evidence of them co habitating or at least sharing the same space at various times. From memory there is a cave system (france or spain i think) where bones of both Neanderthal and Homo saps have been found in the same layers.
Im at work so you'll have to wait til i can get home to find a link for you, but i definately remember reading it over the past few days.

While we will never know exactly what did in the Neanderthal, we are fairly sure that they were replaced by Homo Sapians rather fast. It is interesting that there was so little "gap" between the dominance of the first and the latter.

Because one must consider that Modern Humans pushed out the older species, be it for whatever reason, the real focus for the demise of Neanderthal must take a hard look at the Cro Magnon period.

How did these people burst onto the scene so fast? How did they acquire such skill in so short of a period? What was so radically different about their minds that they could surpass Neanderthal, the older and just as intelligent, species?

An earlier poster speculated on an extraterrestial connection, but there is no evidence what-so-ever for this. Yet there must be a reason. Was it a viable mutation? If it had been just a "better" branch from an earlier common ancestor, then 800,000 years seems too long before this new, sudden, explosion of abilities.

Since the time of Cro Magnon, humans have gone from hunter/gatherers to the edge of star flight. In an evolutionary timescale this is far too rapid. Yet, according to the theory that Neanderthals branched off first and then Homo Sapians next, we are left with an even bigger question of why humans lagged for 800,000 years without any steady progress due to their "better" abilities.

What accounts for these two branches moving along at about the same evolutionary speed, in the same environment, and yet the newer branch all at once accelerating in such a way? The passing of the Neanderthal seems to be tied to this "outburst" of Modern Man, but the question is how? To answer one, we need to answer the other.