The Neanderthal--a comprehensive introduction to the fossil record

reply to post by ajay59


I like it ajay. This Jared Diamond scenario being played out on Neanderthal circa 50-35 kya, wherein Homo Sapiens not only conducts overt warfare and competition for resources and food, but also transfers his domestic animal mutated diseases to the inhabitants, much like smallpox to Native Americans, All this accompanied by a convenient Milankovitch climate change more suited to his morphology. It is quite a brilliant warfare strategy.

I wonder if Neanderthals kept dogs? Dogs help sustain a diet across terrian and chase smaller game. Perhaps Neanderthal could not expand a hunting range due to inability to catch small game?

Originally posted by WaterBottle
Bunnies implicated in the demise of Neanderthals

Rather than using spears, early humans probably surrounded a warren and flushed out rabbits with fire, smoke or dogs. But Bruce Hardy of Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, says Fa takes the interpretation too far. Humans may have eaten more rabbits than Neanderthals, but neither would have exclusively eaten meat, he says.

Well there you go WaterBottle! I come back from posting my thoughts and you have already responded and found the article. Thanks!!

edit on 4-3-2013 by TheEthicalSkeptic because: (no reason given)

reply to post by WaterBottle


yeah I saw that thread...lol Star for including it.

The one reason why I don't accept about that hypothesis that food supply led to their demise is that they had a very wide variety of food available and were probably as resourceful as any hunter gatherer.

They didn't JUST eat meat. They had everything any indigenous people resort to when hungry.

It is always offered as a possible reason for migration. That ancient people wandered after their food. While that may be true in part, if you look to any native people, they can do REALLY well to feed themselves with what ever is available.


No monkeys, no sweat, eat some edible tree husk you know about. No fish, no problem today we eat bird and this fruit. ect.

The average hunter gatherer was better fed than us. They had a more varied diets than us. We can feed more people, but at a cost of quality and diversity. They could only feed a certain amount, but were better fed as far as quality.

There is no reason to go crossing ice bridges chasing one type of prey or several, when you have everything else that is edible. If that was true ALL other life would have to be dead in Asia and Europe, forcing them to chase after the lone herds of wild game. WHY wouldn't they just fish more, or gather more instead of trekking over vast distances facing certain death?

As far as the bunnies....beezer did it. HE killed Neanderthal.....lol

but seriously if the bunnies were not catchable with their traps, they could just switch to birds, fish or fruits and vegetables or anything else we KNOW they ate as well. We know that Neanderthal was not limited to just meat, recent findings have confirmed this. The exclusively meat diet is yet another stereotype. Neanderthal did eat other things like any nomadic hunter gatherer.

Originally posted by tadaman
It is suspected that Neanderthal was able to share the same food as other hominids without conflict for most of its time on earth because they may have hunted at night or at the very least, had different methods for hunting the same prey. They may have also lived deep underground in cave systems other groups completely ignored.
[snip]
The occipital bun in the back of the skull is believed to house a larger part of the brain for processing what the eyes see. They may have had natural night vision. The large occipital bun, coupled with light colored eyes may have significantly amplified available light enough to hunt at night when most animals are not very active and alert.

I don't see any sources that suggest this -- do you have some links? The ones I find indicate that the difference in human and Neanderthal brain anatomy is mostly in the area of the frontal lobes and olfactory lobes. Adaptations for night vision would not be in the occipital lobes, but in the number of rods and cones in the retina.

And caves make very poor dwellings... really. Caves are an uncommon geologic feature, and are damp and cold and often inhabited by things like cave lions and cave bears (I'm not making that up, actually.) "Rock shelters" are the preferred human habitat (one of many source artcles for "hominids didn't live in caves).

Originally posted by Byrd
I don't see any sources that suggest this -- do you have some links? The ones I find indicate that the difference in human and Neanderthal brain anatomy is mostly in the area of the frontal lobes and olfactory lobes. Adaptations for night vision would not be in the occipital lobes, but in the number of rods and cones in the retina.

Here is my photo of the comparative from a recent visit to the Smithsonian. I took this oblique angle to look at the very features you adeptly cited here. I think morphologically you are correct Byrd; however, night vision is very much also related to the presence of a tapetum lucidum which I suppose would reside dormant interon in our genome given the common ancestor phyla in which it is extant, the shape of the eye (flat and wide with a large brow crown diameter as you see here), diameter of the optic nerve, diameter of the orbit and nerve passage, and most likely an incredibly dense set of rods, yes.

reply to post by Byrd


yeah . I will look for the other sources where the vision of neanderthal was better explained.

  One explanation is that they had different hunting strategies and therefore did not hunt the same prey at the same time, that the newcomers followed the herds, picking off the young, the old, and the ill, while the Neanderthals were ambush hunters, perhaps chasing large herbivores towards hidden hunters, who would suddenly raise massive spears, impaling the beasts. 6 Neanderthal spears, some with large and heavy stone points, would require thick, heavy wood, 7 but Neanderthals had strong bones and a heavily-muscled forearm 8 that gave them a powerful grip. (Balbirnie, 2005).
   
Another suggestion was made by Dr. W.W. Olson (by email), that Neanderthals may have been night hunters. Although most cold-adapted species, such as the East Asians, have smaller eyes that are less vulnerable to cold, Neanderthals, though they were well adapted to the cold, 9 had unusually large eyes. Also, one of the defining characteristics of Neanderthals is their occipital bun, the bulge at the back of their skull, where the brain processes visual information. (Figure 9-12).

Although their bones were thick and dense, they often show signs of fractures that forensic anthropologists have described as similar to those suffered by rodeo cowboys who ride bulls and wrestle steers

erectuswalksamongst.us...


this was just interesting about neanderthal cave painting.
www.guardian.co.uk...
digitaljournal.com...
www.google.es...

as far as living in caves, well Neanderthal skulls were first discovered in the Engis Cave system. Actually most finds are found in caves.

here is this from a study comparing the high percentage of red hair in autism and the neanderthal connection

Abstract

In the past there have been numerous theories for the cause(s) of autism, Asperger's syndrome, ADHD and Tourette syndrome. Most of these theories can at best explain small parts of these diverse syndromes. Many of them extend their findings in spectacular ways to be able to claim to explain larger parts of the autism spectrum with little success.

This theory approaches the problem from a new radical viewpoint. Instead of approaching autism as a disorder, brain defect or the result of poor socialization or parenting, it claims that autistics are fully functional.

All the areas that are central to autism are related to species-typical adaptations that vary widely between species. These include nonverbal signals, social organization, sensory acuteness, motor skills, general preferences, sexuality, physical traits and biological adaptations.

Recent genetic research have demonstrated that the Out-of-Africa (OoA) model with no interbreeding fails to explain nuclear DNA diversity in Eurasia. Several models of interbreeding that do explain this diversity exists today. It therefore is quite likely that Neanderthals contributed to the Caucasian genome. Aspie-quiz have demonstrated in a large survey in the US population that Afroamericans have only 1/6 of the autism prevalence of Caucasians. The same survey also indicates that Asians and American Indians have about 1/2 of the autism prevalence of Caucasians.

Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of Aspie-quiz yields axises that seems to be related to the first Eurasian Homo, the formation of modern humans in Africa or South Asia and the hybridization between modern humans and Neanderthals in Europe. These axises seems to be 1.8 million years, 150,000 years and 37,000 years, which fits pretty good with the archaeologic evidences available.

Differencies in vision

Squinting is highly correlated with autism. 229 and so is using peripheral vision. 230 Autistics tend to close one or both their eyes in strong sun-light

Differences in eye contact

Many primate species regard direct eye contact as a threat. The same thing seems to be happening in autistic children. 236 It seems like autistics both are acused of staring 136 and of lacking eye contact. 237

Caves

Most of the finds of Neanderthals are from caves. It's possible that Neanderthals spent a lot of time in caves, or maybe they hibernated there during winter. Autistics have a fascination for caves. 224 Many autistics are afraid of the sound of a motor-bike. 225 A motor-bike sounds similar to a bear. It is possible that the instintive reaction of autistics when they hear the sound of a motor-bike triggers an ancient fear for cave-bears.

Differences in pain sensitivity

Neanderthals often had "rodeo-type" injuries. This probably was caused by wrestling large (semi) domestic animals. Masochistic males get pleasure from being spanked by a female dominatrix. Autistic individuals frequently have unusual sensitivities for pain. 238 96 They are both more sensitive to touch, and less sensitive to pain. This might have it's origin in sexual selection, and in Neanderthal habits of wrestling large mammals. Possibly it served the function of better handling the pain afflicted on them in their handling of animals, and this formed a ritual where spanking were used to harden their bodies. The pain differences would separate common pain from wrestling from dangerous pain. This is what is manifested in the pain differences in autism.

www.rdos.net...

Also worth mentioning it is a well known fact that red heads have a higher pain thresh hold. This fact is repeated across the board in many disciplines.

AND this-

Nocturnality and its functional constraints
Carnivorous predation imposes dietary restrictions which require carnivores to
expend significant resources on hunting. Because terrestrial prey are easier to capture at
night when they are sleeping or resting, most mammalian terrestrial predators are nocturnal.
It is likely then, that in addition to diurnal hunting, Neanderthals also adapted to nocturnal
hunting during their European sojourn. This hypothesis is testable because it predicts that 15
like other nocturnal hunters, Neanderthals acquired specialist morphological and behavioural
adaptations to enhance prey capture in low-light conditions, including increased olfactory,
auditory and nocturnal visual acuity. Several lines of evidence supporting the hypothesis are
here reviewed.

If Neanderthals were nocturnal hunters, then larger corneas and optical orbits (eye
sockets) would be a feature of their cranial morphology. While eyes do not fossilise, orbits
do, and even a cursory comparison between Neanderthal and human orbit size reveals
Neanderthals orbits were substantially larger. (Figure 4) To date, no explanation has been
suggested for this novelty.

Another adaptation common to most nocturnal animals is the multifocus lens that
utilises concentric zones of different focal lengths to improve focus in low light. However, as
Malmström and Kröger, (2006) recently demonstrated, multifocus optical systems cannot
function with round pupils.

They require slit pupils to facilitate the use of the full diameter of
the lens in low light. In considering whether Neanderthals evolved larger eyes with slit
pupils, it is noteworthy that the optical orbits of Neanderthals are larger (and rounder) than
humans, which is indicative of an adaptation to environmental conditions different from
humans. Moreover, if Neanderthals evolved acute nocturnal visual acuity in Europe, it would
additionally need to prevent retinal damage caused by sunlight reflected off snow, which was
a ubiquitous feature of the European landscape during their tenure

figure 13
Innate fear of the dark If Neanderthal raiding occurred primarily at night, Levantine humans may be
expected to have acquired an innate fear of the dark, plus an inhibition
against venturing from their encampments at night.

factory acuity
Mammalian predators typically rely on scent to locate and track prey - particularly at
night and in marginal conditions – so it may be expected that Neanderthals also acquired
enhanced olfactory functionality. Ergo, this would require additional olfactory neurons and
consequently, a larger nose. The prediction that Neanderthals evolved larger, more sensitive
noses than humans is circumstantially supported by comparative studies that reveal
Neanderthal had larger nasal apertures compared to humans.

themandus.org...

reply to post by tadaman

this was just interesting about neanderthal cave painting.
www.guardian.co.uk...

Yeah tadaman, thanks! A lot of debate around whether the ocre hand paintings are Human or Neanderthal. I have no idea, other than just to encourage us to hold off on forcing a conclusion before we have enough data on the matter. Both civilizations used red ocre, but my concern here is the specific morphology and lack of robustness in these famous hand negatives. Not conclusive.

Originally posted by tadaman
What neanderthal DNA we have in us is largely passed down from female neanderthal

Actually, the mitochondrial DNA (which would be passed along through the female lineage) is somewhat dissimilar and there are no sex-linked genes on which the Neanderthal genes appear.

The problem is that when neanderthal began to retreat into the Iberian peninsula he wasnt doing so chasing food. His numbers were shrinking exponentially as they progressed. He was being hunted into the Iberian peninsula and the Americas.

Europe was taken by force by cro-magnon

Erm... there's no such thing as "cro magnon" (that's just "homo sapiens from one area") and the closest the Neanderthals got to America was Britain. They didn't get that close to Asia (Turkey was the farthest extent... Asia did see homo erectus but not neanderthals. This map shows the known sites.)

It has been suggested that the bitterly shattered bones of neanderthal were due to their hunting habits of heading head on into prey. Their hunting techniques seem to imply at least that they stalked their prey and "merked them" in their sleep. They could not run after them and lacked projectile weapons.

Actually, they ran just as well as we do, and they had spears and hand axes and a lot of other tools. This article talks about the evidence for thrown weapons in Neanderthals.

Also the groups of neanderthal that we find huge red flags from genetically in the Americas CAN NOT be ignored. There is no logical reason for the Americas having MORE neanderthal DNA than Europe, the supposed mother continent of neanderthal....

Americans have the same amount of Neanderthal DNA as Europeans do. I don't see any articles that suggest Native Americans have more Neanderthal DNA than Europeans... could you link your reference source?

That same direction is considered to be an off shoot of one particular migration out of Africa from homo sapiens that failed going into Europe, tried to go back into Africa failed, and so instead ventured east. It is thought that this migration eventually itself broke off into the migration that went into the Americas after interbreeding with neanderthal in the middle east.

I'm not sure which maps you were looking at, but h. sapiens remained in Africa as expansion into other parts of the world occurred.

reply to post by Byrd


well the neanderthal heel was taller than homo-sapiens. They were better walkers while we were better runners.

New research has compared the performance of the heels of modern-day distance runners to the heels of Neandertals and ancient Homo sapiens. The results show the Neandertals' heels were taller than those of modern humans and Homo sapiens, and more adapted to walking than running over long distances, while those of Homo sapiens were more adapted to endurance running.

phys.org...


yes cro-magnon is supposed to be US, but they were much more robust and had larger skulls as well as having thicker bones and such. In other words everything we said made neanderthal SOO much different than us. Also their skulls have much different traits than us. We just want to be them because they had complex art and culture and that is cool to attribute to yourself when making an evolutionary scale of progress look nice and neat.

They had different teeth than us, and though everyone and their mother says they slowly evolved into us, I see them as separate. They interbred into us....the physical traits like protruding canines are not evolutionary adaptations. They are simply archaic left overs that were out bred.

Also the mental foreman (nerve passage way in the skull) in the jaw is more similar to us in neanderthal than in "cro-magnon". In cromagnon it looks like it wants to crawl back into the base of the skull or just emerged from it.....

that is my unproven theory so I will accept for now that cro-magnon is us....

anyhoot.


Genetically there is more DNA evidence for neanderthal in North america. In south america there is greater denisovan ancestry as well as in Australia. In south America denisovan alleles are found around Colombia.

Please look to this post where it is outlined and explained.

reply to post by tadaman




and

However, looking at the Denisovan genome allowed researchers to discern a greater amount of Neanderthal DNA in Asians and Native Americans than there is in Europeans. This suggests one of two things about how humans spread across the globe. First, it might mean that modern humans coming out of Africa formed families with Neanderthals in Europe, then their children slowly drifted to Asia. There, those mixed children formed families with other groups of Neanderthals in Asia, giving their children a higher percentage of Neanderthal DNA. Eventually, the offspring of these people traveled to the Americas, becoming the founder population for the peoples of North and South America.

io9.com...

Originally posted by TheEthicalSkeptic

Originally posted by Byrd
I don't see any sources that suggest this -- do you have some links? The ones I find indicate that the difference in human and Neanderthal brain anatomy is mostly in the area of the frontal lobes and olfactory lobes. Adaptations for night vision would not be in the occipital lobes, but in the number of rods and cones in the retina.

Here is my photo of the comparative from a recent visit to the Smithsonian. I took this oblique angle to look at the very features you adeptly cited here. I think morphologically you are correct Byrd; however, night vision is very much also related to the presence of a tapetum lucidum which I suppose would reside dormant interon in our genome given the common ancestor phyla in which it is extant, the shape of the eye (flat and wide with a large brow crown diameter as you see here), diameter of the optic nerve, diameter of the orbit and nerve passage, and most likely an incredibly dense set of rods, yes.

There are, to the best of my knowledge, no direct anatomical features in the bone which distinguish "good daylight vision" from "nocturnal vision." I don't recall any distinctive features about the oribital sockets themselves (other than the obvious brow ridges) which distinguish Neanderthals from Humans. (disclaimer: it's been a decade since I taught anatomy and I have NOT kept up with things. I always appreciate links to new material.)

(BTW, nice set of pictures! I didn't have enough time in the Smithsonian in November to really examine the human skeletal display (I admit I got totally sidetracked by the dinosaurs and fossil prep lab.))

also about cromagnon

The skull of Cro-Magnon 1 possesses a uniquely pitiful morphology. It almost appears as if the skull is crying. Perhaps he is crying because he lived his entire life under the threat of death at the hands of Neanderthal. Or maybe he was jealous that he couldn't reproduce the Neanderthal's mysterious technology.

With that said, not all of the "Cro-Magnon" were brachycephalic, but those who were not, such as Predmosti 3 and Sungir 1, were clearly Neanderthaloid hybrids.(15)(16) Apparently, those dolichocephalic Neanderthaloid hybrids were the "alpha" males within the Cro-Magnon tribes. Sungir 1's clothing and burial site were extraordinarily adorned with the best and the largest paleolithic jewelry found in all of Russia.(17)

It's important to note that we use the term "modern" only out of convenience when describing non-Neanderthals. That's because Neanderthals really were the truly "modern" sapiens long before the so-called "anatomically modern homo sapiens." Behaviorally, we know they were "wise" (sapient) because, among other things, their lithic technology required far more intelligence to produce and they had somehow figured out how to create birch tar without the use of pottery, which is something that "modern" humans could never do, and, indeed, modern scientists still cannot figure out how Neanderthals produced Birch tar for glue in the middle paleolithic.(18)

Anatomically, the Neanderthal skulls were more modern than those of the original "anatomically modern homo sapiens." Amud 1, described as a "transitional" Neanderthal by anthropologists, possessed the largest cranial capacity of any hominid fossil ever found, stood at approximately 5'10" tall, had a chin and a projecting mid-face, and consequently a lack of the monkey-like alveolar prognathism associated with modern humans, including Whites. The fact of the matter is that the scientific community knows this reality, but refuses to openly dwell on it, because, as it was stated at the 49th Annual Meeting of the Hugo Obermaier Society in Trento:

"It must be admitted that a Neandertal with a body length of 180 cm and with a brain volume of 1740 cm3 (the largest brain of all known hominins up to now) somehow unsettles us: Homo sapiens sapiens, the self-appointed “crown of creation.”(19)

[15] Montagu stated in the late 1960s that the Predmosti 3 skull was Neanderthaloid and placed it in the same category as the Skhul 5 cranial remains.

[16] It is common knowledge that Sungir 1 was classified as "oriental Cro-Magnon," or Neanderthaloid.

[17] Pettitt, 2010.

[18] British Archaeology, 1997.

[19] Preistoria Alpina, 44 (2009): 9-15

and about the conquest implied by male only genetic exchange. Let me find the sources implying that neanderthal suffered such. This argues the opposite but agrees that male only exchanges are usually a product of violence.

125,000-120,000 years ago anatomically "modern" homo sapiens made an exodus out of north-eastern Africa and in to the Levant(1), which was already occupied by homo sapiens Neanderthalensis(2). This exodus was unsuccessful(3), and by 80,000 B.C.E. anatomically "modern" homo sapiens had retreated back to Africa. Interbreeding between anatomically "modern" homo sapiens and homo sapiens Neanderthalensis took place at this time(4). The interbreeding that took place was an exclusively male Neanderthal-female "modern" exchange(5)(6). The archaeological record reveals that by 100,000 B.C.E. anatomically "modern" humans were already Neanderthal hybrids.(7)Therefore, there was a master-slave relationship between Neanderthals and "modern" sapiens, with Neanderthals as master, and the "modern" hybrid Cro-Magnon as slave. Leading genetic and archaeological experts agree that male-exclusive interbreeding is usually the result of violence.(8)(9)


[1] Oppenheimer. 2003

[2] Grun et al. 2003

[3] Oppenheimer. 2003

[4] Pääbo. 2010

[5] Pääbo. 2010

[6] Waddell. 2011

[7] Coon. 1939

[8] According to John Hawks exclusively male Neanderthal interbreeding likely caused by warring between species. Thus, Neanderthals were the victors.

[9] Coon. 1939.

s1.zetaboards.com...

More.

Watched a documentary just a few months ago. Traced Neanderthal DNA to a point where it first showed up in modern humans. The first few occurrences were in Russia and then spread out from there.
In the end they stated that modern Humans and Neanderthal cross bred and neanderthals were assimilated into our gene pool or visa vesra.

Read another finding a while back where anthropologists started observing these severe injuries to neanderthal bones.

Supposedly according to them they had these massive injuries were patched up and then they kept on going.

According to these researchers, they found enough evidence to show that Neanderthals went pretty much went head to head with some of the Giant mega fauna species of large animals on the ground, spears and whatnot.

From the way it read they made it sound like a sporting event.

Both interesting.

Originally posted by Byrd
There are, to the best of my knowledge, no direct anatomical features in the bone which distinguish "good daylight vision" from "nocturnal vision." I don't recall any distinctive features about the oribital sockets themselves (other than the obvious brow ridges) which distinguish Neanderthals from Humans. (disclaimer: it's been a decade since I taught anatomy and I have NOT kept up with things. I always appreciate links to new material.)

(BTW, nice set of pictures! I didn't have enough time in the Smithsonian in November to really examine the human skeletal display (I admit I got totally sidetracked by the dinosaurs and fossil prep lab.))

LOL! I travel extensively and they usually have to throw me out of the local museums at closing, especially in the middle east. But the anthropology section was under refit when I went - yeah so not nearly enough time. The association of morphology and nocturnal vision, a one or two step leap of plurality at worst, but I have no idea if it has been studied in depth. Good point.

reply to post by allbab


That's an interesting comment.

But, I'm interested - what do you mean by eugenics? Why would the further discoveries of neanderthals and their relevance have any impact on eugenics, racism and what you mention?

Originally posted by tadaman
reply to post by Byrd

 

yeah . I will look for the other sources where the vision of neanderthal was better explained.

Another suggestion was made by Dr. W.W. Olson (by email), that Neanderthals may have been night hunters. Although most cold-adapted species, such as the East Asians, have smaller eyes that are less vulnerable to cold, Neanderthals, though they were well adapted to the cold, had unusually large eyes. Also, one of the defining characteristics of Neanderthals is their occipital bun, the bulge at the back of their skull, where the brain processes visual information.

erectuswalksamongst.us...

Richard Fuerle, I'm afraid, is not a very good source (which is why he had to self-publish his book -- no pubisher would touch it beause of the many errors and the (frankly) outright racism in the book. The claim that Neanderthals had unusually large eyes is not correct (as you can see for yourself by simply looking at skulls and comparing them.)

as far as living in caves, well Neanderthal skulls were first discovered in the Engis Cave system. Actually most finds are found in caves.

That's where the bones are most protected -- caves and rock shelters. However, things that are often called "caves" really are little more than rock shelters.

here is this from a study comparing the high percentage of red hair in autism and the neanderthal connection

Oh dear. Uhmmm...

Rather than my going into a very scholarly rebuttal of that (which would take quite a number of posts and get very unreadable unless you Really Like Behavioral Science and Genetics), let me just say that the theory is not supported by the evidence and let me link to a very nice blog post by someone who's studying evolutionary anthropology that goes over all the problems with that theory.

I can elaborate on any of the specifics of these rebuttals but I'd rather not tie up this thread with a dozen posts full of jargon.

reply to post by tadaman


I'm interested - is it not true that only some Europeans and Eurasians and whatnot have Neanderthal DNA - so not all?

Also, in apposition to that, whilst some scientists have concluded that Sub-Saharan Africans have no Neanderthal DNA, others say that what percentage of Neanderthal DNA that they actually do have is very small - 1% or less. Regardless, what exactly does this mean?

Originally posted by NarcolepticBuddha

Originally posted by allbab
Maybe some people are volontary hiding the truth about nehandertals in order to avoid eugenic related racism. Which is a good thing seeing how seperated by predjudices we already all are.

Very interesting take! I applaud you for thinking outside the box here. You would be surprised at how many racist-supremacist websites I came across just googling some basic search terms for Neandertals and other searches related to physical anthro.

Call me a cynic, but I really do find it hard to believe that anybody would hide said knowledge to avoid a case of eugenics or genocide. Physical anthro does have a bit of a dark past when it comes to eugenics etc. And usually people with eugenic-oriented ideologies (even anthropologists) are just going to use the info to push their beliefs and agendas.

Do you think the AAA (American Anthropological Association) could be selectively revealing and hiding info? It's an interesting notion, but I think it could be way too far-fetched considering what we already know about the whole human-Neandertal debate. I don't think any info is being suppressed.

Forbidden archaeology is definitely a fun ATS subject though.

edit on 4-3-2013 by NarcolepticBuddha because: (no reason given)

I don't understand - how can this new knowledge be used by someone with an agenda of eugenics or genocide? You mean in screening out those with Neanderthal DNA?

reply to post by pavil


What of those with little to no Neanderthal DNA?

reply to post by Byrd


OK fair enough. I only included the autism Neanderthal link because it was an interesting perspective based off behavioral science. It is entirely impossible to prove without genetic studies and maybe not even then since we only know 60% of the Neanderthal genome.

What about the them and us paper which broke down the Neanderthal traits and argued as I that they were built for nocturnal hunting. Especially the part about Neanderthal eye sockets since you mentioned that before?

reply to post by Lostmymarbles


Regarding your part about tongue-clicking language - but those guys in the video can clearly speak English and probably other spoken non-tongue-clicking languages. Are you suggesting that Neanderthals could speak languages with words or what?