The last refuge of the Neanderthals

[n2doc]

Neanderthals' 'last rock refuge'
By Paul Rincon
Science reporter, BBC News, Gibraltar



Our evolutionary cousin the Neanderthal may have survived in Europe much longer than previously thought.A study in Nature magazine suggests the species may have lived in Gorham's Cave on Gibraltar up to 24,000 years ago.The Neanderthal people were believed to have died out about 35,000 years ago, at a time when modern humans were advancing across the continent.The new evidence suggests they held on in Europe's deep south long after the arrival of Homo sapiens.The research team believes the Gibraltar Neanderthals may even have been the very last of their kind."It shows conclusively that Gorham's Cave today was the last place on the planet where we know Neanderthals lived," said lead author Professor Clive Finlayson, director of heritage at the Gibraltar Museum.

Tool technology

Though once thought to have been our ancestors, the Neanderthals are now considered an evolutionary dead end.They appear in the fossil record around 230,000 years ago and, at their peak, these squat, physically powerful hunters dominated a wide range, spanning Britain and Iberia in the west to Israel in the south and Uzbekistan in the east. Our own species, Homo sapiens, evolved in Africa, and displaced the Neanderthals after entering Europe about 40,000 years ago.


The cave has given up a range of Neanderthal artefacts (Image: Gibraltar Museum)


Researchers from Britain, Gibraltar, Spain and Japan obtained radiocarbon dates on charcoal from ancient hearths unearthed deep inside Gorham's Cave on Gibraltar, a mountainous peninsula on the southern tip of Iberia. The charcoal comes from ground layers in the cave where archaeologists previously dug up stone tools of a type made exclusively by Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis). The earliest samples of charcoal date to 33,000 years ago, while the youngest date to 24,000 years ago - much more recent than anyone could have imagined. But evidence for a presence 24,000 years ago is limited, so the researchers can only say with confidence that Neanderthals were in the cave until 28,000 years ago.

more:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5343266.stm

(Top) Gibraltar today with a series of caves at its base. Gorham's is second from the left. (Bottom) A reconstruction of late Neanderthal times. The sea is down by 80-120m. Exposed is a marshland, plains environment, rich in food resources that the Neanderthals exploited. (© Gibraltar Museum)

[LiberalEsto]

1. I thought there were still some at the Pentagon

and the White House

[sui generis]

2. ya beat me to it

[sui generis]

3. interesting concept, that we "displaced" them.

It would seem like we likely interbred with them, and darwin just selected for the smarter among our offspring.

Is there anything in the genetic record that says that didn't or couldn't have happened?

[rodeodance]

4. they live on-----as neocons!

[xchrom]

5. i think there was interbreeding too.

if there is one thing humans will do -- it's fuck.

[Wilber_Stool]

17. You would really have to like ugly woman to fuck a

Neandertal woman. No, I think we ran them off and if they didn't run we killed them. Humans do that too.

edit: I think fuck only has one "f".

[Odin2005]

6. The genetic evidence says there was little interbreeding.

Modern humans have no Neandertal mitochondrial DNA.

[sui generis]

7. so that means our ancestral males didn't go for neanderthal females

what about the other way around?

Actually just playing devil's advocate. I think that much of our in-built tendency to "xenophobia" is exactly a result of an unconscious effort of trying to keep gene lines pure and what we think is an advantage, subjectively. I don't imagine it's a recent cultural artifact, and also that the "very little" is an indication that even if there was indeed lots of coupling their offspring weren't well selected for in just a few generations from that genetic/cultural boundary.

[Igel]

8. The Y chromosomes also point back to

Africa c. 50k ago. There are numerous mutations in some genes, with some of the oldest only found in Africa. More recent ones are found in NE Africa and spread east across the ME to S. Asia.

All of this while the Neandertals were well established in Europe and parts of the ME.

I agree with you. We're tribal, pretty much by nature. It takes a lot of work and effort to stop being overtly tribal.

[Crunchy Frog]

18. That only means that there is no unbroken female line

descended from a Neanderthal female. There could still have been a fair amount of interbreeding, even if there wasn't an unbroken female line. Most ancestors of all humans living today did not leave behind any mtDNA

[maxsolomon]

9. we killed them

killed & killed & killed.

and we probably ate them, too.

homo sapiens = cockroach of the great apes.

[sui generis]

10. "and we probably ate them too"

bush meat, yummm. Tastes like chikkin.

:rofl:

Would be funnier if we weren't actually still doing it.

[SteppingRazor]

11. I'd say we were just better than them

Smarter, faster, more adaptable. The fact that they're gone and we're here isn't a knock on our species, it's a good thing -- and it's also the very basis of evolution.

[maxsolomon]

12. why did they die out if we didn't take an active part?

the sabre toothed tigers didn't do it.

[SteppingRazor]

13. How do you know, eh?

I blame the saber-toothed tigers. I think their hand in this is pretty obvious.

Kidding aside, I more than agree that homo sapiens likely killed off a good amount of the Neanderthals, both directly (war and whatnot) and indirectly (e.g. competition for limited resources)

[maxsolomon]

14. it wasn't the giant tree sloths

but the wooly mammoths never liked the neandertals.

poor little neandertals.

[bananas]

16. I blame the obelisk.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_%28film%29

[Lydia Leftcoast]

15. I'm fascinated by the Neanderthals

Would they have seemed like fellow humans, or would they have seemed more like large chimpanzees?

Could homo sapiens and Neanderthals have produced hybrid offspring, and if so, would those offspring have been sterile, as mules (hybrid of horse and donkey) are.?

Another thing I've wondered is what the Neanderthals looked like. Note that most humans worldwide have tan to nearly black skin, black hair, and brown or black eyes. The only exceptions are Europe and the Middle East, where pink skin, blue eyes, and blonde hair are found and are most common in the places farthest from Africa.

The usual theory is that homo sapiens moved into Europe, encountered cold weather and dark winters, so that mutants with light coloring survived better, being better able to absorb Vitamin D from the sparse sunlight, and were fruitful and multiplied.

Well would that not also be true of the Neanderthals who lived in Europe for 200,000 years?

Since blue eyes are a recessive trait and skin color is partially dominant (so that the child of a person with only light-skinned ancestors and a person with only dark-skinned ancestors ends up with coloring between that of the two parents), it would be difficult for a single mutant to establish a large population of light-skinned people in the 50,000 or so years that homo sapiens have been in Europe unless there was a lot of incest going on.

It would be easier to imagine a light-skinned population growing up over 200,000 years and interbreeding with or being enslaved and sexually exploited by the newly arrived homo sapiens. There would then be a lot of potential "founders" for the population of light-skinned people that predominates in Europe today. (People whose parents are both of mixed ancestry can turn out with a wide variety of skin colors, so that siblings may have very different coloring.)

I know that the conventional theory is that Neanderthals contributed nothing to the modern human line, but as I understand it, most Neanderthal remains are fossilized, which makes it difficult to get good DNA samples.