Cannibal Humans Ate Neanderthals Into Extinction

Originally posted by mr-lizard
OR...The ancient human could have found a neanderthal jawbone and whiled away the long boring days chipping at it with a piece of stone?

You might like to check out the science on the subject...

Cutmarked human remains bearing Neandertal features and modern human remains associated with the Aurignacian at Les Rois www.isita-org.com...

If this is true, it proves humans a depraved and dangerous species...something which needs little proof...

There is evidence that cannibalism and incest were widespread within early humanity as well as between us and the Neandertals...google around, this distasteful information is out there, altough hotly contested.

Our saving grace,perhaps, is the fact that we are able to reflect on these ugly aspects of ourselves and feel disgust at them.

Originally posted by JohnnyCanuck

Originally posted by mr-lizard
OR...The ancient human could have found a neanderthal jawbone and whiled away the long boring days chipping at it with a piece of stone?

You might like to check out the science on the subject...

Cutmarked human remains bearing Neandertal features and modern human remains associated with the Aurignacian at Les Rois www.isita-org.com...

Thanks for this. Here is the Summary from paper:

The view that Aurignacian technologies and their associated symbolic manifestations represent the archaeological proxy for the spread of Anatomically Modern Humans into Europe, is supported by few diagnostic human remains, including those from the Aurignacian site of Les Rois in south-western France.

Here we reassess the taxonomic attribution of the human remains, their cultural affiliation, and provide five new radiocarbon dates for the site. Patterns of tooth growth along with the morphological and morphometric analysis of the human remains indicate that a juvenile mandible showing cutmarks presents some Neandertal features, whereas another mandible is attributed to Anatomically Modern Humans.

Reappraisal of the archaeological sequence demonstrates that human remains derive from two layers dated to 28–30 kyr BP attributed to the Aurignacian, the only cultural tradition detected at the site.

Three possible explanations may account for this unexpected evidence. The first one is that the Aurignacian was exclusively produced by AMH and that the child mandible from unit A2 represents evidence for consumption or, more likely, symbolic use of a Neandertal child by Aurignacian AMH.

The second possible explanation is that Aurignacian technologies were produced at Les Rois by human groups bearing both AMH and Neandertal features. Human remains from Les Rois would be in this case the first evidence of a biological contact between the two human groups.

The third possibility is that all human remains from Les Rois represent an AMH population with conserved plesiomorphic characters suggesting a larger variation in modern humans from the Upper Palaeolithic.

Note at the end the explanations offered. As I tried to point out earlier in this thread, the commonly held view of Neanderthal man was separate and distinct from modern man has been breaking down.

At least through parts of Europe there is evidence of a hybridization rether than outright extinction of one over the other.

British psychologist anthropologist Stan Gooch first wrote about this in the late 70s in his book "Total Man" "The Neanderthal Question" and other works.

This view, considered highly speculative at one time, is now filtering into current understandings of human evolution.


Mike

Originally posted by mmiichael
...the commonly held view of Neanderthal man was separate and distinct from modern man has been breaking down.
At least through parts of Europe there is evidence of a hybridization rether than outright extinction of one over the other.
This view, considered highly speculative at one time, is now filtering into current understandings of human evolution.

Very true and the debate continues. That Neanderthal and early modern humans shared the world for a considerable amount of time, is, in and of itself, a fairly recent acknowledgment . But this is another example of Academe accepting new paradigms when supported by a vigorous examination of emerging facts...a lesson to those who regard the scientific process as suspect.

The jury is still out, though. on whether or not it's Homo neanderthalensis or Homo sapiens neanderthalensis...

Originally posted by JohnnyCanuck
That Neanderthal and early modern humans shared the world for a considerable amount of time, is, in and of itself, a fairly recent acknowledgment . But this is another example of Academe accepting new paradigms when supported by a vigorous examination of emerging facts...a lesson to those who regard the scientific process as suspect.

The jury is still out, though. on whether or not it's Homo neanderthalensis or Homo sapiens neanderthalensis...

Yes indeed, it is interesting how a lot of our notions of human evolution are breaking down in the light of new discoveries. As I said earlier in this thread, the earlier classical Neanderthal Man has been lumped in with appears to be a more modern looking variant that may have around as late as 25,000 years ago. And hybridization of two strains of homo sapiens cannot be ruled out in the light of recent discoveries in Europe.


Mike