...relationships. When the hunters brought the kill back to their tribes, all shared in the feast and none were left hungary according the anthropological studies. My own feeling is that republicans represent the yet unevolved aggressive and war-like early homo sapien from 30,000 years ago
<snip>
CHANGING TIMES, CHANGING FACES: The Extinction of Homo neanderthalensis
William Baker
It is fascinating to consider that once there were different species of humans living together on our planet, beings that walked and breathed like us, but whose descendants failed to survive into the present. Perhaps the most interesting of these variants is Homo neanderthalensis, a group of hunter-gatherers who lived in Europe and western Asia during the Pleistocene epoch. Despite the pejorative use of the term “Neanderthal” in the modern vernacular, Homo neanderthalensis was “the closest relative we have in the entire known human fossil record” and a highly successful species whose adaptations and close social structure allowed them to exist successfully for some 150,000 to 170,000 years (Tattersall 1995: 10). However, even with their remarkable resilience and adaptive abilities, the Neanderthals (alternately called “Neandertals” in some scientific circles, based on the original German designation) were not immune to changes in the world around them: about 30,000 years ago they all but vanished from the archaeological scene, replaced in fossil evidence by the “fully modern human,” or Homo sapiens sapien.
What could have led to such sudden, drastic, and disastrous changes in circumstances as to push a once-prevalent species like the Neanderthal into quick extinction? Were these ancient humans simply unable to deal with the shifting conditions of their environment, the unlucky losers in the vast and complex evolutionary game of natural selection? Or was the fate of Homo neanderthalensis directly linked to the rise of our own species, the outcome of a clash between similar but distinct human lineages that resulted in the fall of one and the rise of the other? Ultimately, the study of the end of the Neanderthals remains largely speculative, and no one set of satisfactory answers explains their extinction; the result, then, is an intriguing puzzle of archaeological evidence, biological observations, and behavioral theory. More fundamentally, analyzing the extinction of Homo neanderthalensis forces us as human beings to examine the reasons behind the growth and eventual dominance our own species, a development that may have been the result of brutal conquest rather than some kind of fated or evolutionary preeminence.
Before discussing the demise of the Neanderthals, however, let us delve deeper into the material and social characteristics of these remarkable individuals. In the most basic physical sense Homo neanderthalensis was quite different from Homo sapiens sapien, and these distinctions have led most researchers to categorize the two groups as wholly different species. (Such a view is by no means universal, though, and there are plenty of paleoanthropologists who classify the former group as a subspecies, Homo sapiens neanderthalensis
.) Many of the more striking contrasts with the modern human lie in the face and cranium of the Neanderthal. Brow ridges (“bony ridges above the eyes”), forward teeth in the lower jaw, a “receding forehead,” the absence of prominent chin, and a “distinctive shelf or protrusion at the back of the skull” known as an “occipital bun” are all frequently noted characteristics of the species (Price and Feinman 2001: 109, Wong 2000: 100, Tattersall 1995: 13). Taken together, these attributes generally give the face of Homo neanderthalensis an “elongated” or “protruding” appearance and may have been related to increased chewing ability (Price and Feinman 2001: 109, Tattersall 1995: 12). The teeth, interestingly enough, have been one of the most important features in gaining greater insight into the behavior and lifestyles of Neanderthals. Among recovered Neanderthals of all ages the teeth are “often heavily worn,” leading to the inference that the mouth was often utilized in “grasping or heavy chewing” (Price and Feinman 2001: 109). Furthermore, diagonal scratches across the front teeth suggest that meat was often held “in the teeth and a stone knife was used to cut off a bite-size piece at the lips,” with the knife slipping occasionally and creating the unique markings (Price and Feinman 2001: 109).
<more>
http://prizedwriting.ucdavis.edu/past/2001-2002/baker2.html
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
