• Forums Software Updates

    The forums will be undergoing updates on Sunday 13th October 2024.
    Little to no downtime is expected.
  • We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Neanderthals: New Findings & Theories

when they inexplicably disappeared,
Hmmm, maybe they all went on cruises ...

Evidence suggests Neanderthals took to boats before modern humans
http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-03-evi ... umans.html
March 1st, 2012 in Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils


The Reconstruction of the Funeral of Homo neanderthalensis. Captured in the Hannover Zoo. (Via Wikipedia)

(PhysOrg.com) -- Neanderthals, considered either a sub-species of modern humans or a separate species altogether, lived from approximately 300,000 years ago to somewhere near 24,000 years ago, when they inexplicably disappeared, leaving behind traces of their DNA in some Middle Eastern people and artifacts strewn all across the southern part of Europe and extending into western Asia. Some of those artifacts, stone tools that are uniquely associated with them, have been found on islands in the Mediterranean Sea, suggesting, according to a paper published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, by George Ferentinos and colleagues, that Neanderthals had figured out how to travel by boat. And if they did, it appears they did so before modern humans.

The stone “mousterian” tools are unique to Neanderthals and have been found on the islands of Zakynthos, Lefkada and Kefalonia, which range from five to twelve kilometers from mainland Greece. Some, such as Paul Pettitt from the University of Sheffield, suggest they could have swum that far. But that doesn’t explain how similar tools found on the island of Crete got there. That would have meant swimming forty kilometers, which seems extremely unlikely, especially since such swimmers wouldn’t have known beforehand that Crete was there to find.

Ferentinos et al suggest the evidence shows that Neanderthals not only figured out how to build boats and sail but did so quite extensively well before modern humans ever got the idea. They say because the tools found on the islands are believed to date back 100,000 years (and the islands have been shown to have been islands back then as well) Neanderthal people were sailing around that long ago. Thus far, evidence for modern humans sailing dates back to just 50,000 years when they made their way to Australia. If true, that would mean Neanderthal people were sailing around in the Mediterranean for fifty thousand years before modern people built their first boat.

Others have suggested that hominids have been sailing for as long as a million years; stone tools found on the Indonesian island of Flores date back that far. It could be that both modern humans and Neanderthals were boating around for hundreds of thousands of years and we just don’t have any evidence of it because the boats back then would have been made of wood and evidence of their existence would have decayed to nothing long ago.

More information: Early seafaring activity in the southern Ionian Islands, Mediterranean Sea, Journal of Archaeological Science, In Press, Corrected Proof. http://dx.doi.org/ … .2012.01.032

Abstract

This paper summarises the current development in the southern Ionian Islands (Kefallinia and Zakynthos) prehistory and places it within the context of seafaring. Archaeological data from the southern Ionian Islands show human habitation since Middle Palaeolithic going back to 110 ka BP yet bathymetry, sea-level changes and the Late Quaternary geology, show that Kefallinia and Zakynthos were insular at that time. Hence, human presence in these islands indicates inter island-mainland seafaring. Seafaring most likely started some time between 110 and 35 ka BP and the seafarers were the Neanderthals. Seafaring was encouraged by the coastal configuration, which offered the right conditions for developing seafaring skills according to the “voyaging nurseries” and “autocatalysis” concepts.
[/i]
 
Neanderthals in Northern Spain Had Knowledge of Plants' Healing Qualities, Study Reveals
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 131348.htm

A researcher at work in El Sidrón Cave. (Credit: CSIC Comunicación)

ScienceDaily (July 17, 2012) — An international team of researchers, led by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the University of York, has provided the first molecular evidence that Neanderthals not only ate a range of cooked plant foods, but also understood its nutritional and medicinal qualities.

Until recently Neanderthals, who disappeared between 30,000 and 24,000 years ago, were thought to be predominantly meat-eaters. However, evidence of dietary breadth is growing as more sophisticated analyses are undertaken.

Researchers from Spain, the UK and Australia combined pyrolysis gas-chromatography-mass spectrometry with morphological analysis of plant microfossils to identify material trapped in dental calculus (calcified dental plaque) from five Neanderthals from the north Spanish site of El Sidrón.

Their results, published in Naturwissenschaften - The Science of Nature this week, provide another twist to the story -- the first molecular evidence for medicinal plants being used by a Neanderthal individual.

The researchers say the starch granules and carbohydrate markers in the samples, plus evidence for plant compounds such as azulenes and coumarins, as well as possible evidence for nuts, grasses and even green vegetables, argue for a broader use of ingested plants than is often suggested by stable isotope analysis.

Lead author Karen Hardy, a Catalan Institute of Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA) Research Professor at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and an Honorary Research Associate at the University of York, UK, said: "The varied use of plants we identified suggests that the Neanderthal occupants of El Sidrón had a sophisticated knowledge of their natural surroundings which included the ability to select and use certain plants for their nutritional value and for self-medication. While meat was clearly important, our research points to an even more complex diet than has previously been supposed."

Earlier research by members of this team had shown that the Neanderthals in El Sidrón had the bitter taste perception gene. Now trapped within dental calculus researchers found molecular evidence that one individual had eaten bitter tasting plants.

Dr Stephen Buckley, a Research Fellow at the University of York's BioArCh research facility, said: "The evidence indicating this individual was eating bitter-tasting plants such as yarrow and camomile with little nutritional value is surprising. We know that Neanderthals would find these plants bitter, so it is likely these plants must have been selected for reasons other than taste."

Ten samples of dental calculus from five Neanderthals were selected for this study. The researchers used thermal desorption and pyrolysis gas-chromatography-mass spectrometry to identify both free/unbound and bound/polymeric organic components in the dental calculus. By using this method in conjunction with the extraction and analysis of plant microfossils, they found chemical evidence consistent with wood-fire smoke, a range of cooked starchy foods, two plants known today for their medicinal qualities, and bitumen or oil shale trapped in the dental calculus.

Professor Matthew Collins, who heads the BioArCh research facility at York, said: "Using mass spectrometry, we were able to identify the building blocks of carbohydrates in the calculus of two adults, one individual in particular having apparently eaten several different carbohydrate-rich foods. Combined with the microscopic analysis it also demonstrates how dental calculus can provide a rich source of information."

The researchers say evidence for cooked carbohydrates is confirmed by both the cracked/roasted starch granules observed microscopically and the molecular evidence for cooking and exposure to wood smoke or smoked food in the form of a range of chemical markers including methyl esters, phenols, and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons found in dental calculus.

Professor Les Copeland from the Faculty of Agriculture and Environment, University of Sydney, Australia, said: "Our research confirms the varied and selective use of plants by Neanderthals."

The study also provides evidence that the starch granules reported from El Sidrón represent the oldest granules ever to be confirmed using a biochemical test, while ancient bacteria found embedded in the calculus offers the potential for future studies in oral health.

The archaeological cave site of El Sidrón, located in the Asturias region of northern Spain, contains the best collection of Neanderthal remains found in the Iberian Peninsula and one of the most important active sites in the world. Discovered in 1994, it contains around 2,000 skeletal remains of at least 13 individuals dating back around 47,300 to 50,600 years.

Antonio Rosas, of the Museum of Natural History in Madrid -- CSIC (Spanish National Research Council), said: "El Sidrón has allowed us to banish many of the preconceptions we had of Neanderthals. Thanks to previous studies, we know that they looked after the sick, buried their dead and decorated their bodies. Now another dimension has been added relating to their diet and self-medication."

Fieldwork at El Sidrón, conducted by researchers from the University of Oviedo, is funded by the Department of Culture, Principality of Asturias. The dental calculus samples used in this study were provided by the laboratory leading the study of the human remains discovered in El Sidrón, which is located at the Museum of Natural History in Madrid -- CSIC.

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of York.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Journal Reference:

Karen Hardy, Stephen Buckley, Matthew J. Collins, Almudena Estalrrich, Don Brothwell, Les Copeland, Antonio García-Tabernero, Samuel García-Vargas, Marco Rasilla, Carles Lalueza-Fox, Rosa Huguet, Markus Bastir, David Santamaría, Marco Madella, Julie Wilson, Ángel Fernández Cortés, Antonio Rosas. Neanderthal medics? Evidence for food, cooking, and medicinal plants entrapped in dental calculus. Naturwissenschaften, 2012; DOI: 10.1007/s00114-012-0942-0
 
I prefer the old spear thrusting explanation.

Unique Neandertal Arm Morphology Due to Scraping, Not Spearing
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 192007.htm

ScienceDaily (July 18, 2012) — Unique arm morphology in Neandertals was likely caused by scraping activities such as hide preparation, not spear thrusting as previously theorized, according to research published July 18 in the open access journal PLoS ONE.

The researchers, led by Colin Shaw of the University of Cambridge, took muscle measurements of modern men performing three different spear thrusting tasks and four different scraping tasks. They found that muscle activity was significantly higher on the left side of the body for spear thrusting tasks relative to the right side of the body. This does not explain the observed Neandertal morphology, though, which shows dominant strength on the right side, casting doubt on the hypothesis that spear thrusting was responsible for the observed asymmetry.

When the study participants performed scraping tasks, however, the activity was much higher on their right side compared to their left, suggesting that scraping behavior may be the actual source of the arm morphology asymmetry and offering interesting insight into Neandertal behavior.

Shaw explains, "The skeletal remains of Neandertals suggests that they were doing something intense or repetitive, or both, that significantly impacted their lives. While hunting was important to Neandertals, our research suggests that much of their time was spent performing other tasks, such as preparing the skins of large animals. If we are right, it changes our picture of the daily activities of Neandertals."

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Public Library of Science.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Journal Reference:

Shaw CN, Hofmann CL, Petraglia MD, Stock JT, Gottschall JS. Neandertal Humeri May Reflect Adaptation to Scraping Tasks, but Not Spear Thrusting. PLoS ONE, 2012; 7 (7): e40349 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0040349
 
So, the smoking volcano didn't off the Neandertals. Theres nio smoking gun but it still looks as if sapiens were the guilty party.

Neandertals Didn't Bite the Volcanic Dust
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2 ... tml?ref=hp
by Michael Balter on 23 July 2012, 3:05 PM | 2 Comments

Microscopic markers. Tiny glass fragments from a 40,000-year-old volcanic eruption suggest Neandertals were wiped out by competition with modern humans and not by climate change.
Credit: Suzanne MacLachlan/BOSCORF/National Oceanography Centre, U.K.

About 40,000 years ago, a huge volcanic eruption west of what is now Naples, Italy, showered ash over much of central and Eastern Europe. Some researchers have suggested that this super-eruption, combined with a sharp cold spell that hit the Northern Hemisphere at the same time, created a "volcanic winter" that did in the Neandertals. But a new study of microscopic particles of volcanic glass left behind by the explosion concludes that the eruption happened after the Neandertals were already mostly gone, putting the blame for their extinction on competition with modern humans.

Why the Neandertals disappeared is one of archaeology's longest-running debates. Over the years, opinions have shifted back and forth between climate change, competition with modern humans, and combinations of the two. Earlier this year, the climate change contingent got a boost when a European team determined that the Italian eruption, known as the Campanian Ignimbrite (CI), was two to three times larger than previous estimates. The researchers calculated that ash and chemical aerosols released into the atmosphere by the eruption cooled the Northern Hemisphere by as much as 2°C for up to 3 years.

Modern humans entered Europe from Africa and possibly the Middle East around the time of the eruption and Neandertals' demise, give or take several thousand years. The timing is critical. If Neandertals began disappearing before the eruption, it could not be responsible for their extinction; if their demise began at the same time or shortly afterward, the correlation with climate might still hold.

With these issues in mind, a team of more than 40 researchers from across Europe, led by geographer John Lowe of Royal Holloway, University of London in Egham, U.K., used a new technique for detecting volcanic ash across a much larger area than previously possible. The new method relies on deposits of cryptotephra, tiny particles of volcanic glass that are invisible to the naked eye. Unlike visible ash deposits, which are found over a more limited range, the much lighter cryptotephra can penetrate and be recovered from far-flung archaeological sites as well as marine, lake, and marsh environments. Moreover, by analyzing the chemical composition of the microscopic particles, researchers can trace them back to specific volcanic eruptions, in this case the CI.

A Weekly Chat on the Hottest Topics in Science Thursdays 3 p.m. EDT
The team collected samples containing CI cryptotephra from four central European caves where stone tools and other artifacts typical of Neandertals and modern humans have been found. They also gathered the particles from a modern human site in Libya and from marshland and marine sites in Greece and the Aegean Sea. The results, the team argues in a paper published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are incompatible with the hypothesis that the CI was responsible for Neandertal extinction, at least in central Europe. The CI cryptotephra lie above, and so postdate, the transition from Neandertal to modern human stone tool types at all four central European sites, indicating that modern humans had replaced Neandertals before the catastrophic events of 40,000 years ago.

Moreover, analysis of tree pollen and other climatic indicators from the marsh and marine sediments confirmed that the CI was contemporaneous with a sharp cold spell called a Heinrich event, which is also often cited as a contributor to Neandertal extinction. So the data suggest that the eruption and the cold snap happened after the Neandertals had already vanished from central Europe.

"Climate was probably not directly responsible for Neandertal extinction, and catastrophic events most certainly were not," says co-author William Davies, an archaeologist at the University of Southampton, Avenue Campus, in the United Kingdom. That leaves competition with modern humans as the most likely culprit, the team contends.

Nevertheless, the authors concede that their results are only directly applicable to central and probably Eastern Europe, and not to Western Europe, where some researchers have claimed that Neandertals hung on until at least 35,000 years ago in Portugal and Spain. Because the team has not been able to find cryptotephra that far west, "we cannot rule out the survival of Neandertals post-CI and post Heinrich … in refugia like the Iberian Peninsula," says co-author Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London. "But it must have been a very limited survival at best, as they headed to physical extinction."

The team's techniques offer new clues to the eruption, says Clive Finlayson, director of the heritage division at the Gibraltar Museum and head of the excavations at Gibraltar's caves, at the southern tip of Spain, where Neandertals may have survived until as late as 30,000 years ago. But Finlayson, an advocate of climate change as the key factor in Neandertal extinction, says the researchers have not proven their case. "We can only conclude from this that the eruption and subsequent climatic changes had no effect on Neandertals that were already extinct. To pretend that these results speak to other factors that may have generated the Neandertal extinction, which was a protracted process, is utter nonsense."
 
Neanderthal breeding idea doubted
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19250778
By Jonathan Ball
BBC News

Neanderthals were close evolutionary cousins of our own species - Homo sapiens
Continue reading the main story
Related Stories

New clue to Neanderthal wipe-out
Neanderthal sex boost to immunity
Ancient humans interbred with us

Similarities between the DNA of modern people and Neanderthals are more likely to have arisen from shared ancestry than interbreeding, a study reports.

That is according to research carried out at the University of Cambridge and published this week in PNAS journal.

Previously, it had been suggested that shared parts of the genomes of these two populations were the result of interbreeding.

However, the newly published research proposes a different explanation.

The origin of modern humans is a hotly debated topic; four main theories have arisen to describe the evolution of Homo sapiens.

All argue for an African origin, but an important distinction in these competing theories is whether or not interbreeding - or "hybridisation" - between modern and ancient humans has occurred.

In the current study, Cambridge evolutionary biologists Dr Anders Eriksson and Dr Andrea Manica used computer simulations to reassess the strength of evidence supporting hybridisation events.

They argue that the amount of DNA shared between modern Eurasian humans and Neanderthals - estimated at between 1-4% - can be explained if both arose from a geographically isolated population, most likely in North Africa, which shared a common ancestor around 300-350 thousand years ago.

When modern humans expanded out of Africa, around 60-70,000 years ago, they took that genetic similarity with them.

By contrast, previous ancient DNA studies of Neanderthal remains have shown that their genomes harbour genetic signatures - polymorphisms - that are also seen in the genomes of modern Europeans, East Asians and Oceanians (from Papua New Guinea) but not in modern African populations.

The findings challenged previously held views - based on several lines of evidence - that modern humans had replaced the Neanderthals with little or no gene flow occurring between the two groups.


Professor Julian Parkhill visits the Wellcome Collection to unravel the science behind the genome
The observations from the Neanderthal genome led some evolutionary biologists to argue that this genetic similarity had arisen through hybridisation between Neanderthals - already resident in Europe and western Asia - and the ancestors of present-day non-Africans.

Prof David Reich, from Harvard University in Cambridge, US - an exponent of the hybridisation theory - is not convinced that the data represents a powerful argument against interbreeding.

By using methods that are able to differentiate between genetic similarity caused by gene flow via hybridisation vs shared ancestry, he argues that "the patterns observed [in our analyses] are exactly what one would expect from recent gene flow" - a view shared by his collaborator Professor Svante Paabo from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

Prof Reich went on to say that their data shows that Neanderthals and non-Africans last exchanged genetic material 47-65,000 years ago.
 
Interesting finding, I now have visions of Neandertals led by a chhief in a war bonnet attacking Cros'.

Neanderthals used feathers as 'personal ornaments'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19623929
By Paul Rincon
Science editor, BBC News website

Ravens are among the birds whose remains are found at Neanderthal sites

Related Stories

Why humans have evolved so fast
Neanderthal breeding idea doubted
New clue to Neanderthal wipe-out

Our evolutionary cousins the Neanderthals were harvesting feathers from birds in order to use them as personal ornaments, a study suggests.

The authors say the result provides yet more evidence that Neanderthal thinking ability was similar to our own.

The analysis even suggests they had a preference for dark feathers, which they selected from birds of prey and corvids - such as ravens and rooks.

Details of the research appear in Plos One journal.

Our views of Neanderthals have come a long way since this representation was painted in 1909

Numerous tribal peoples from history have also adorned themselves with feathers, and the authors stress that they are not suggesting we learned the practice from Neanderthals.

Feather ornamentation could in fact go back even further, to a common ancestor of modern humans and Neanderthals.

Clive Finlayson and Kimberly Brown from the Gibraltar Museum, along with colleagues from Spain, Canada and Belgium, examined a database of 1,699 ancient sites across Eurasia, comparing data on birds at locations used by humans with those that were not.

They found a clear association between raptor and corvid remains and sites that had been occupied by humans.

Continue reading the main story

Start Quote

I think this is the tip of the iceberg... It is showing that Neanderthals simply expressed themselves in media other than cave walls”

Clive Finlayson
Director, Gibraltar Museum
They then looked more closely at bird bones found at Neanderthal sites in Gibraltar, including Gorham's and Vanguard cave, near the base of the rock: "The Neanderthals had cut through and marked the bones. But what were they cutting? We realised a lot of it was wing bones, particularly those holding large primary feathers," Prof Finlayson told BBC News.

Co-author Jordi Rosell, from Rovira i Virgili University in Tarragona, Spain, said: "We saw the cut-marks on bird bones at one cave, and then started seeing them in others. I think it's a common aspect to the caves in this rock."

Juan Jose Negro, director of the Donana Biological Station in Seville, Spain, who is another co-author, said: "The wings make up less than 20% of the weight of the body of those birds," adding, "there is no meat in the wings - they were not consuming these animals.

"The only explanation left is the use of those long feathers."

Not only this, but the ancient humans appeared to have a preference for birds with dark or black plumage. Species represented at the sites include ravens, crows, rooks, magpies, jackdaws, various types of eagle and vulture, red and black kites, kestrels and falcons.

Image correction
Speaking to me at this year's Calpe conference in Gibraltar, Prof Finlayson explained: "What all this suggests to us is that Neanderthals had the cognitive abilities to think in symbolic terms. The feathers were almost certainly being used for ornamental purposes, and this is a quite unbelievable thing to find."


Historic peoples have also used feathers to signal status and power
For much of the last century, Neanderthals were portrayed as knuckle-dragging brutes, whose extinction some 30,000 years ago was the natural outcome of competing against a more intelligent, creative and resourceful human species - Homo sapiens.

In recent years, the Neanderthals - who lived across Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia in Pleistocene times - have come to be rehabilitated amid mounting evidence that their abilities had been underestimated.

"I think this is the tip of the iceberg," said Prof Finlayson: "It is showing that Neanderthals simply expressed themselves in media other than cave walls. The last bastion of defence in favour of our superiority was cognition."

Neanderthals, he said, may have been "different", but "their processes of thinking were obviously very similar".

Dr Negro cautioned that there was no way to tell how the feathers were put to use. But he observed: "Current uses of feathers typically involve the same species. If you think of the Plains Indians in North America, they put those feathers in headdresses and they are signalling. They are signalling power and status. Perhaps the Neanderthals were using feathers in the same way."

Asked how the ancient humans might have caught the birds, Clive Finlayson speculated: "It's possible that these birds were nesting near the caves. Some may have fallen, but there's too much of it to be a random collection of dead animals.

"It's possible the Neanderthals were climbing up the cliffs and collecting birds from nests. But a large proportion of these birds are scavengers.

"An intelligent hominid, aware of this - and who may have used vultures as an indication of food sources - could easily have found ways of ambushing vultures and eagles when they came down to carcasses."

Other evidence of symbolic behaviour in Neanderthals includes the discovery of ochre - used to paint their bodies - at archaeological sites in Europe and the Levant. Earlier this year, another team published evidence of the possible symbolic use of eagle claws by Neanderthals, although they might also have been using the items as tools.

[email protected].
 
Prof Church was misunderstood...

Neanderthal cloning chatter highlights scientific illiteracy
http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/bre90n ... l-cloning/
By Scott MalonePosted 2013/01/24 at 12:13 am EST

BOSTON, Jan. 24, 2013 (Reuters) — After spending the weekend reading blog posts claiming that he was seeking an "extremely adventurous female human" to bear a cloned Neanderthal baby - which was news to him - Harvard geneticist George Church said it may be time for society to give some thought to scientific literacy.

Harvard geneticist George Church speaks to Reuters reporters about cloning during an interview in Boston, Massachusetts January 23, 2013. REUTERS/Jessica Rinaldi

Church became the subject of dozens of posts and tabloid newspaper articles calling him a "mad scientist" after giving an interview to the German magazine Der Spiegel.

In the interview, Church discussed the technical challenges scientists would face if they tried to clone a Neanderthal, though neither he nor the Der Spiegel article, which was presented as a question and answer exchange, said he intended to do so.

"Harvard professor seeks mother for cloned cave baby," read one headline, on the website of London's Daily Mail.

But Church explained on Wednesday that he was simply theorizing.

Still, the readiness of bloggers, journalists and readers to believe he was preparing an attempt to clone a Neanderthal, a species closely related to modern humans that went extinct some 30,000 years ago, led Church to ponder scientific literacy.

"The public should be able to detect cases where things seem implausible," Church said in an interview at his office at Harvard Medical School in Boston. "Everybody's fib detector should have been going off. They should have said, ‘What? Who would believe this?' ... This really indicates that we should have scientific literacy."

Despite the spate of articles comparing him to the character in the book and movie "Jurassic Park" who attempts to open a theme park filled with living dinosaurs, Church said he plans to continue speaking publicly about his research, which focuses on using genes to treat and prevent disease.

Given the number of policy debates driven by science - from how to address climate change, to space exploration, to public health concerns - scientists should not back away from talking to the media, Church said.

"We really should get the public of the entire world to be able to detect the difference between a fact and a complete fantasy that has been created by the Internet," he said.

In the Der Spiegel article, which Church said reported his words accurately, and his recent book "Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves," Church theorized that studying cloned Neanderthals could help scientists better understand how the human mind works. Scientists have already extracted DNA from Neanderthal bones.

But such experiments would pose a host of ethical concerns - including how many Neanderthals would be created and whether they would be treated as mere study subjects or as beings with their own rights, Church said.

"I do want to connect the public to science because there are so many decisions to be made if the way they learn it, if they learn it faster by talking about Neanderthals than they did by getting rote learning in high school, that's great," he said.

(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)
 
He has a point, everyone thought "Those crazy scientists at it again!" and not "That crazy media at it again!" or even "That gullible public at it again!" It's the sort of story which could come back to haunt him through little fault of his own.
 
Last-stand Neanderthals queried
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21330194
By Jonathan Amos
Science correspondent, BBC News

DNA studies confirm there was some mixing between Neanderthals and modern humans

We may need to look again at the idea that a late Neanderthal population existed in southern Spain as recently as 35,000 years ago, a study suggests.

Scientists using a "more reliable" form of radiocarbon dating have re-assessed fossils from the region and found them to be far older than anyone thought.

The work appears in the journal PNAS.

Its results have implications for when and where we - modern humans - might have co-existed with our evolutionary "cousins", the Neanderthals.

"The picture emerging is of an overlapping period [in Europe] that could be of the order of perhaps 3,000-4,000 years - a period over which we have a mosaic of modern humans being present and then Neanderthals slowly ebbing away, and finally becoming extinct," explained co-author Prof Thomas Higham from the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit at the University of Oxford, UK.

"What our research contributes is that in southern Spain, Neanderthals don't hang on for another 4,000 years compared with the rest of Europe. And the hunch must be that they go extinct in the south of Spain at the same time as everywhere else," he told BBC News.

But one proponent of the recent survival idea said the work could not resolve whether the region acted as a refuge for the last populations.

Rock refuge
The length of time modern humans (Homo sapiens) and Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) overlapped in Europe has been a keenly debated topic in recent times.

A long overlap raises important questions about the extent to which we might have interbred with them, and possibly even contributed to their eventual demise.


Successful re-dating was conducted on specimens from the Jarama VI cave site
Research published in 2011 indicated modern humans were living in the lands now known as Italy and the UK as far back as 41,000-45,000 years ago.

This may have put them in contact with European Neanderthals who, according to previous dating studies, persisted on the continent for many millennia after these dates.

On the Rock of Gibraltar, for example, it has been suggested that Neanderthals could possibly have hung around until as recently as 28,000 years ago before finally dying out.

But the new Oxford study finds such a timeline, and especially the notion of an Iberian refugium, to be problematic.

The research team screened more than 200 fossil bones from 11 Iberian Palaeolithic sites, looking for traces of collagen.

This major structural protein in bone is the most suitable target for radiocarbon dating, but the PNAS authors could only identify 27 specimens out of the haul that met the necessary standard. And of these, only six would yield a useable date.

Sample 'cleaning'
A technique known "ultrafiltration" was deployed in the analysis. This is a method for "washing out" modern carbon contaminants in specimens prior to the dating process.

"Ultrafiltration removes smaller degraded fragments of proteins and other molecules such as amino acids, allowing us to date the large collagen strands that are nice and intact," said study leader Dr Rachel Wood, currently affiliated to the Australian National University, Canberra.

"It gives us more confidence that the dates are accurate."


A Neanderthal jaw from Zafarraya: Most specimens produced no useable collagen for testing
The six successful measurements did not involve Neanderthal bone but rather animal remains found in sediment layers associated with Neanderthals.

The two sites were Jarama VI, a rock shelter not far from Madrid in central Spain, and Zafarraya, another cave, near Malaga on the southern Spanish coast.

Neanderthal occupations at both these locations had previously been dated to about 35,000 old. However, the new Oxford assessment found them to be closer to 50,000 years old.

But Clive Finlayson, director of the Gibraltar Museum, who was not involved with the latest study, said: "Radiocarbon methodology on bone will not resolve the question of the last Neanderthals.

"What they have done is look at two sites in Iberia where - using my own models - I would never have predicted a late Neanderthal extinction. One is up in the high Meseta of central Spain, at 1,000m or more, with a very harsh climate and the other is in the mountains of Granada - again in a very harsh environment.

"These climates are so cold and dry, that is where the collagen in the bone has preserved and they have been able to get dates... What I think the method is giving us is a skew, a bias, towards older dates by the very nature of the preservation."

Gene evidence
Though once thought to have been our ancestors, the Neanderthals are now considered an evolutionary dead end.

They first appear in the fossil record hundreds of thousand of years ago and, at their peak, 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 somewhere around the 45,000-year mark.

No-one can say for sure what, if any, active role modern humans had in the decline of Europe's Neanderthals.

What is clear though is that some mixing must have occurred somewhere at some point. This is evident from DNA studies that prove Neanderthals made a small but significant contribution to the genetics of many modern humans.

However, scientists think this interbreeding could have occurred outside Europe, in the eastern Mediterranean or Middle East region (the area archaeologists call the "Levant"), and quite probably even deeper in time - some 80,000-90,000 years or so ago.

[email protected]. and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos
 
All the better to...

Neanderthals' large eyes 'caused their demise'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21759233
By Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent, BBC News

Neanderthals are a closely related species of human that lived in Europe from around 250,000 years ago.

A study of Neanderthal skulls suggests that they became extinct because they had larger eyes than our species.

As a result, more of their brains were devoted to seeing in the long, dark nights in Europe, at the expense of high-level processing.

By contrast, the larger frontal brain regions of Homo sapiens led to the fashioning of warmer clothes and the development larger social networks.

The study is published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Neanderthals are a closely related species of human that lived in Europe from around 250,000 years ago. They coexisted and interacted briefly with our species until they went extinct about 28,000 years ago, in part due to an ice age.

The research team explored the idea that the ancestor of Neanderthals left Africa and had to adapt to the longer, darker nights and murkier days of Europe. The result was that Neanderthals evolved larger eyes and a much larger visual processing area at the backs of their brains.

The humans that stayed in Africa, on the other hand, continued to enjoy bright and beautiful days and so had no need for such an adaption. Instead, these people, our ancestors, evolved their frontal lobes, associated with higher-level thinking, before they spread across the globe.

Eiluned Pearce of Oxford University decided to check this theory. She compared the skulls of 32 Homo sapiens and 13 Neanderthals.

Social networks
Ms Pearce found that Neanderthals had significantly larger eye sockets - by an average of 6mm from top to bottom.

Continue reading the main story

Start Quote

They were very, very smart, but not quite in the same league as Homo Sapiens. That difference might have been enough to tip the balance when things were beginning to get tough at the end of the last ice age”

Prof Robin Dunbar
Oxford University
Although this seems like a small amount, she said that it was enough for Neanderthals to use significantly more of their brains to process visual information.

"Since Neanderthals evolved at higher latitudes, more of the Neanderthal brain would have been dedicated to vision and body control, leaving less brain to deal with other functions like social networking," she told BBC News.

This is a view backed by Prof Chris Stringer, who was also involved in the research and is an expert in human origins at the Natural History Museum in London.

"We infer that Neanderthals had a smaller cognitive part of the brain and this would have limited them, including their ability to form larger groups. If you live in a larger group, you need a larger brain in order to process all those extra relationships," he explained.

The Neanderthals' more visually-focused brain structure might also have affected their ability to innovate and to adapt to the ice age that was thought to have contributed to their demise.

Neanderthal wraps
There is archaeological evidence, for example, that the Homo sapiens that coexisted with Neanderthals had needles that they used to make tailored clothing. This would have kept them much warmer than the wraps thought to have been worn by Neanderthals.

Prof Stringer said that all these factors together might have given our species a crucial advantage that enabled us to survive.

"Even if you had a small percent better ability to react quickly, to rely on your neighbours to help you survive and to pass on information - all these things together gave the edge to Homo sapiens over Neanderthals, and that may have made a difference to survival."


Neanderthals were close evolutionary cousins of our own species, Homo sapiens
The finding runs counter to the idea that Neanderthals were not the stupid, brutish creatures portrayed in Hollywood films; they may well have been as intelligent as our species.

Oxford University's Prof Robin Dunbar, who supervised the study, said that the team wanted to avoid restoring the stereotypical image of Neanderthals.

"They were very, very smart, but not quite in the same league as Homo sapiens," he told BBC News.

"That difference might have been enough to tip the balance when things were beginning to get tough at the end of the last ice age," he said.

Up until now, researchers' knowledge of Neanderthals' brains has been based on casts of skulls. This has given an indication of brain size and structure, but has not given any real indication of how the Neanderthal brain functioned differently from ours. The latest study is an imaginative approach in trying to address this issue.

Previous research by Ms Pearce has shown that modern humans living at higher latitudes evolved bigger vision areas in the brain to cope with lower light levels. There is no suggestion though that their higher cognitive abilities suffered as a consequence.

Studies on primates have shown that eye size is proportional to the amount of brain space devoted to visual processing. So the researchers made the assumption that this would be true of Neanderthals.
 
What big eyes you have. Could the wolf have been a neandertal? Funny the way these folk-tales filter down.
 
How Long Did Neandertals Breastfeed?
by Michael Balter on 22 May 2013, 2:00 PM | 5 Comments
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2 ... tml?ref=hp

Growing up fast? Barium levels in the teeth of this Neandertal child suggest that it was partly weaned at 227 days after birth and entirely weaned at 435 days.
Credit: Austin et al. Nature (2013)

Most child health experts agree that a minimum of 6 months of breastfeeding is essential for the welfare of growing babies, although how well such recommendations are carried out widely varies across the globe. Less is known about the breastfeeding habits of other primates—and much less still about those of prehistoric humans. A research team now reports a new technique for accurately detecting when babies were weaned, using chemical signatures in their teeth. The method was successfully applied to the tooth of a Neandertal child, raising the possibility that researchers could decipher the life histories of our evolutionary cousins and even gain insights into why they went extinct.

Fossils of prehistoric humans and other primates are relatively rare because bone does not last well in most environments. Teeth, on the other hand, are hard and strong enough to survive through the ages, and they are often found at paleontological and archaeological sites. Researchers have worked diligently to extract information from ancient teeth. Paleontologists recently reported finding the teeth of the earliest apes, and archaeologists have used chemical isotopes in the teeth of early farmers to track their movements across the landscape.

A team led by Manish Arora, an environmental health dentist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, hypothesized that it might be possible to detect when a child was weaned from the amount of barium in its growing teeth. Barium is an element similar to calcium and is present in water sources and many types of soils, explains co-author Christine Austin, a dental researcher at Westmead Hospital in near Sydney, Australia. Barium makes its way into both teeth and bone in small amounts. As a tooth grows, both dentine, which makes up the center of a tooth, and enamel, which forms its hard surface, are laid down in daily layers, which are clearly visible under a microscope. The teeth begin growing before birth, but while a child is still in the womb the placenta blocks most barium—but not calcium—from reaching their dentine and enamel. After birth, barium in breast milk can more easily reach the teeth; and when a human baby is switched to infant formula, even more barium enters the teeth, because both cow- and soy-based formulas contain higher levels of the element than breast milk. Then, when the child switches from formula to solid food, the barium level goes back down.

The team, which reports its findings online today in Nature, started off by looking at the ratios of barium and calcium in the teeth of human children, using an instrument that scans the teeth with a laser and detects the elements found within the dentine and enamel layers. The researchers analyzed 25 baby teeth donated by mothers in Monterey County, California, who had kept careful records of their breastfeeding and infant formula habits as part of a child health program. Most of the teeth, a total of 22, revealed markedly higher barium levels right after birth; and in nine of 13 children who had first been breastfed and then given infant formula, the team could see a transition between the lower barium levels from breast milk and the higher barium levels of the formula. (The team could also distinguish children who went straight from breastfeeding to solid food without being given formula—their barium levels went down at the transition point.)

The researchers then looked at the molars of four young macaque monkeys at the California National Primate Research Center at the University of California, Davis, and correlated the barium signatures of the dentine and enamel of these teeth with data previously collected on the breastfeeding habits of the mother and infant monkeys. Again, the barium levels closely followed the course of breastfeeding and weaning among these animals, rising after birth and then falling to lower concentrations after weaning.


Finally, the researchers focused the technique on the molar of a 100,000-year-old Neandertal child earlier found at Scladina Cave in Belgium. Laser scanning of the tooth revealed that barium levels started off high right after birth and continued to be elevated for 7 months, apparently due to exclusive breastfeeding; they then fell to intermediate levels for another 7 months, suggesting that the mother's milk was supplemented by other food sources. But after 1.2 years, the child—who died at about 8 years of age—was abruptly weaned from breastfeeding, and barium fell to very low levels. (See photos.)

The researchers caution that it's impossible to draw broad conclusions about Neandertal life histories from this one sample, such as whether Neandertals weaned their children earlier or later than modern humans who lived at the same time, or whether Neandertal children grew up faster, as some earlier studies have suggested—questions that could heavily bear on why Neandertals could not keep up with modern humans in the survival sweepstakes. But the new technique could eventually provide some answers, says co-author Tanya Smith, an anthropologist at Harvard University. "Now that we've established an accurate and precise approach, we hope to examine additional fossils to determine at what age Neandertals actually weaned their infants."

Anthropologist Shara Bailey, an expert in ancient human teeth at New York University in New York City, says that "the barium method is novel and appears to be even more powerful" than previous approaches, adding that despite small sample sizes, "the authors present a strong argument for the utility of this method for extrapolating weaning history." Julia Lee-Thorp, an archaeologist at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, agrees that the work with children and monkeys represents a "very solid validation" of the method, although she cautions that the amount of barium that children absorb through their guts and into their teeth could decrease as they get older and this could skew the results.

But Lee-Thorp, Bailey, and other researchers caution against reading too much into the findings from one Neandertal tooth, particularly any conclusions that Neandertals weaned their children early. "We have to keep in mind that the Scladina individual died quite early, and this might present a bias in our interpretations," Bailey says. She adds that future data from adult Neandertals might "lend more credence to any hypotheses about what Neandertals were doing on a regular basis."

Louise Humphrey, an anthropologist and tooth expert at the Natural History Museum in London, agrees, although she says that the early weaning of the Scladina child is "intriguing" because it is more than a year earlier than the nearly 30 months typical of modern human nonindustrial societies. If early weaning was typical of Neandertals, Humphrey says, it would be consistent with other evidence for a "faster pace of development" and raise the possibility that Neandertal mothers had shorter intervals between births and thus more kids on their hands at any given time.
 
Why did the Neanderthals die out?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/ ... ls-die-out
A major conference in London this week will reveal the results of five years' research on why Homo sapiens emerged triumphant in the survival battle of the humans

Robin McKie science editor
The Observer, Sunday 2 June 2013
Jump to comments (380)

New research has revealed that Neanderthals died out within a few thousand years of the appearance of Homo sapiens. Photograph: BBC
The puzzle is one of the greatest surrounding our species. On a planet that bristled with different types of human being, including Neanderthals and the Hobbit-like folk of Flores, only one is left today: Homo sapiens.

Our current solo status on Earth is therefore an evolutionary oddity – though it is not clear when our species became Earth's only masters, nor is it clear why we survived when all other versions of humanity died out. Did we kill off our competitors, or were the others just poorly adapted and unable to react to the extreme climatic fluctuations that then beset the planet?

These key issues are to be tackled this week at a major conference at the British Museum, in London, called When Europe was covered by ice and ash. At the meeting scientists will reveal results from a five-year research programme using modern dating techniques to answer these puzzles.

In particular, researchers have focused on the Neanderthals, a species very close in physique and brain size to modern humans. They once dominated Europe, but disappeared after modern humans emerged from our African homeland around 60,000 years ago. The question is: why?

"A major problem in understanding what happened when modern humans appeared in Europe has concerned the dates for our arrival," said Professor Chris Stringer, of the Natural History Museum, London. "It was once thought we appeared in Europe around 35,000 years ago and that we coexisted with Neanderthals for thousands of years after that. They may have hung on in pockets – including caves in Gibraltar – until 28,000 years ago, it was believed."

In other words, there was a long, gradual takeover by modern humans – an idea that is likely to be demolished at this week's conference, Stringer said. Results from the five-year research programme, Reset (Response of humans to abrupt environmental transitions), will show that modern humans arrived much earlier than previously estimated and that Neanderthals expired earlier than we thought. Careful dating of finds across Europe suggest Homo sapiens could have reached Europe 45,000 years ago. Five thousand years later, Neanderthals had largely disappeared.

"Previous research on Neanderthal sites which suggested that they were more recent than 40,000 years old appears to be wrong," said Stringer. "That is a key finding that will be discussed at the conference."

Using radiocarbon technology to date remains that are 40,000 years old has always been tricky. Radioactive carbon decays relatively quickly and after 40,000 years there will only be a tiny amount left in a sample to measure. The tiniest piece of contaminant can then ruin dating efforts.

However, scientists have set out to get round these problems. At Oxford University, scientists led by Tom Higham have developed new methods to remove contamination and have been able to make much more precise radiocarbon dating for this period. In addition, Reset researchers have used evidence of a devastating eruption of the Campi Flegrei volcano west of Naples 39,000 years ago.

Recent studies have shown this eruption was much more destructive than previously recognised. More than 60 cubic miles of ash were blasted into the atmosphere and covered a vast area of eastern Europe, North Africa and western Asia. This layer gives scientists a precise means of dating for this period and, combined with the new radiocarbon dating, shows there seem to be no Neanderthal sites anywhere in Europe 39,000 years ago, a date 10,000 years earlier than previous estimates. It is a significant shift in our thinking about our nearest evolutionary cousins.

Some researchers have even suggested that Campi Flegrei – the biggest volcanic eruption in Europe for more than 200,000 years – would have had a catastrophic impact. Vast plumes of ash would have blotted out the sun for months, or possibly years, and caused temperatures to plummet. Sulphur dioxide, fluoride and chloride emissions would have generated intense falls of acid rain. Neanderthals may simply have shivered and choked to death.

The Campi Flegrei eruption not only gives us a date for the Neanderthals' disappearance, it may provide us with the cause of their extinction, though Stringer sounds a note of caution.

"Some researchers believe there is a link between the eruption and the Neanderthals' disappearance. But I doubt it," he said. "From the new radiocarbon dating and the work carried out by Reset scientists, it looks as if the Neanderthals had probably already vanished. A few may still have been hanging around, of course, and Campi Flegrei may have delivered the coup de grace. But it would be wrong to think the eruption was the main cause of the Neanderthals' demise."

So what did kill off the Neanderthals? Given the speed at which they seem to have disappeared from the planet after modern humans spread out of Africa, it is likely that Homo sapiens played a critical role in their demise. That does not mean we chased them down and killed them – an unlikely scenario given their muscular physiques. However, we may have been more successful at competing for resources, as recent research has suggested.

Eiluned Pearce and Robin Dunbar of Oxford University recently worked with Stringer and compared the skulls of 32 Homo sapiens and 13 Neanderthals, finding the latter had eye sockets that were significantly larger. These larger eyes were an adaptation to the long, dark nights and winters of Europe, they concluded, and would have required much larger visual processing areas in Neanderthal skulls.

By contrast, modern humans, from sunny Africa, had no need for this adaptation and instead they evolved frontal lobes, which are associated with high-level processing. "More of the Neanderthal brain appears to have been dedicated to vision and body control, leaving less brain to deal with other functions like social networking," Pearce told BBC News.

This point is stressed by Stringer. He said: "Neanderthal brains were as big as modern humans' but the former had bigger bodies. More of their brain cells would have been needed to control these larger bodies, on top of the added bits of cortex needed for their enhanced vision. That means they had less brain power available to them compared with modern humans."

Thus our ancestors possessed a fair bit of enhanced cerebral prowess, even though their brains were no bigger than Neanderthals'. How they used that extra brain power is a little trickier to assess, though most scientists believe it maintained complex, extended social networks. Developing an ability to speak complex language would have been a direct outcome, for example.

Having extended networks of clans would have been a considerable advantage in Europe, which was then descending into another ice age. When times got hard for one group, help could be sought from another. Neanderthals would have less backup. This point is supported by studies of the flints used for Neanderthal tools. These are rarely found more than 30 miles from their source. By contrast, modern humans were setting up operations that saw implements transported 200 miles.

Cultural life became increasingly important for humans. Research by Tanya Smith of Harvard University recently revealed that modern human childhoods became longer than those of Neanderthals. By studying the teeth of Neanderthal children, she found they grew much more quickly than modern human children. The growth of teeth is linked to overall development and shows Neanderthals must have had a much reduced opportunity to learn from their parents and clan members.

"We moved from a primitive 'live fast and die young' strategy to a 'live slow and grow old' strategy and that has helped make humans one of the most successful organisms on the planet," said Smith. Thus Neanderthals – who already lived in sparse, small populations across Europe – were fundamentally ill-equipped to deal with the newcomers who had arrived from Africa.

"There may not have been a single cause of Neanderthal extinction," said Stringer. "They may have disappeared in different regions for different reasons, but the background cause is clear. They didn't have the numbers."

THE TWO FACES OF MAN

Neanderthals and modern humans are believed to have evolved from a common ancestor, Homo heidelbergensis, about 400,000 years ago. Homo heidelbergensis then existed in Europe, Africa and Asia.

It is thought the species evolved into Neanderthals in Europe and into Homo sapiens in Africa. Neanderthals had more muscle and were broader than modern humans, an adaptation to Europe's colder environment. Homo sapiens was better able to lose body heat, a key response to the conditions in Africa. Homo sapiens began to evolve artistic skills and a capacity for symbolic thinking.

About 60,000 years ago, modern humans migrated from Africa into Asia and Europe. It is not known when they first met Neanderthals, but at least once, in one location, there was a positive outcome - for genetic evidence suggests some interbreeding took place between the species. As a result, tiny fragments of Neanderthal DNA live on in our genes.
 
Neanderthals shared speech and language with modern humans, study suggests
July 9th, 2013 in Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils
Neanderthals

Fast-accumulating data seem to indicate that our close cousins, the Neanderthals, were much more similar to us than imagined even a decade ago. But did they have anything like modern speech and language? And if so, what are the implications for understanding present-day linguistic diversity? The MPI for Psycholinguistics researchers Dan Dediu and Stephen C. Levinson argue in their paper in Frontiers in Language Sciences that modern language and speech can be traced back to the last common ancestor we shared with the Neandertals roughly half a million years ago.

The Neanderthals have fascinated both the academic world and the general public ever since their discovery almost 200 years ago. Initially thought to be subhuman brutes incapable of anything but the most primitive of grunts, they were a successful form of humanity inhabiting vast swathes of western Eurasia for several hundreds of thousands of years, during harsh ages and milder interglacial periods. We knew that they were our closest cousins, sharing a common ancestor with us around half a million years ago (probably Homo heidelbergensis), but it was unclear what their cognitive capacities were like, or why modern humans succeeded in replacing them after thousands of years of cohabitation. Recently, due to new palaeoanthropological and archaeological discoveries and the reassessment of older data, but especially to the availability of ancient DNA, we have started to realise that their fate was much more intertwined with ours and that, far from being slow brutes, their cognitive capacities and culture were comparable to ours.

Dediu and Levinson review all these strands of literature and argue that essentially modern language and speech are an ancient feature of our lineage dating back at least to the most recent ancestor we shared with the Neanderthals and the Denisovans (another form of humanity known mostly from their genome). Their interpretation of the intrinsically ambiguous and scant evidence goes against the scenario usually assumed by most language scientists, namely that of a sudden and recent emergence of modernity, presumably due to a single – or very few – genetic mutations.

This pushes back the origins of modern language by a factor of 10 from the often-cited 50 or so thousand years, to around a million years ago – somewhere between the origins of our genus, Homo, some 1.8 million years ago, and the emergence of Homo heidelbergensis. This reassessment of the evidence goes against a saltationist scenario where a single catastrophic mutation in a single individual would suddenly give rise to language, and suggests that a gradual accumulation of biological and cultural innovations is much more plausible.

Interestingly, given that we know from the archaeological record and recent genetic data that the modern humans spreading out of Africa interacted both genetically and culturally with the Neanderthals and Denisovans, then just as our bodies carry around some of their genes, maybe our languages preserve traces of their languages too. This would mean that at least some of the observed linguistic diversity is due to these ancient encounters, an idea testable by comparing the structural properties of the African and non-African languages, and by detailed computer simulations of language spread.

More information: Dediu, D., & Levinson, S. C. On the antiquity of language: The reinterpretation of Neanderthal linguistic capacities and its consequences. Frontiers in Language Sciences, 4: 397. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00397

Provided by Max Planck Society

"Neanderthals shared speech and language with modern humans, study suggests." July 9th, 2013. http://phys.org/news/2013-07-neandertha ... umans.html
 
Neanderthals made leather-working tools like those in use today
Archaic humans may have invented bone implements still used to make expensive handbags.
http://www.nature.com/news/neanderthals ... ay-1.13542
Ewen Callaway
12 August 2013

A bone tool found in a cave in southwestern France suggests that Neanderthals had sophisticated ways of working leather.
IMAGE COURTESY OF THE ABRI PEYRONY AND PECH-DE-L’AZÉ I PROJECTS

Excavations of Neanderthal sites more than 40,000 years old have uncovered a kind of tool that leather workers still use to make hides more lustrous and water resistant. The bone tools, known as lissoirs, had previously been associated only with modern humans. The latest finds indicate that Neanderthals and modern humans might have invented the tools independently.

The first of the lissoir fragments surfaced a decade ago at a rock shelter called Pech-de-l’Azé in the Dordogne region of southwest France. Archaeologist Marie Soressi of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, knew the tool at once, says her colleague Shannon McPherron.

The tools are also known as slickers and burnishers, says McPherron. Soressi contacted luxury-goods manufacturer Hermès in Paris, and found that their high-end leather workers use just such a tool. “She showed them a picture, and they recognized it instantly,” says McPherron. The company's line includes the wildly popular Birkin handbag, which sells for around US$10,000 and upwards.

McPherron says that a single artefact, however, was not enough for the researchers to draw broad conclusions. “You find one, and there’s always some doubt. You’re worried that it’s not a pattern — that it’s anecdotal behaviour.” But subsequent digs at Pech-de-l’Azé and nearby Abri Peyrony turned up further lissoir fragments, leading the researchers to conclude that Neanderthals made the tools routinely.

The lissoirs are not the first Neanderthal bone tools ever discovered. But McPherron says that they stand out from others: most bone tools are facsimiles of stone tools, but lissoirs take advantage of the physical properties of bone, such as its texture and ability to bend without breaking. Neanderthals probably fashioned the lissoirs from the long, flexible ribs of deer.

Skins and bones
The researchers cannot be certain that Neanderthals used the bone tools to burnish hides. But McPherron points out that his team found only the tips of tools, which may have broken off after polishing leather. Furthermore, the team created its own lissoirs and used them to smooth a dry hide, generating small ridges on the implements similar to those found on the Neanderthal tools. The team's work is published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1.


Neanderthals might have used the tools known as lissoirs, or burnishers, to make hides shinier or more water-proof.
IMAGE COURTESY OF THE ABRI PEYRONY AND PECH-DE-L’AZÉ I PROJECTS
McPherron says that the origin of the lissoirs is likely to be the most contentious aspect. There is little doubt that the tools belonged to Neanderthals, because modern humans did not live in Pech-de-l’Azé or Abri Peyrony. But uncertainties surrounding the age of the artefacts make it difficult to determine whether modern humans learned to make lissoirs by copying Neanderthals, or vice versa — or if the two closely related species invented the bone tools independently.

Different techniques dated the two sites to between 51,000 and 41,000 years old. The most recent date overlaps with the earliest known modern-human occupations of western Europe 42,000 years ago, but most archaeologists agree that only Neanderthals called Europe home at the time of the earliest date. McPherron is now looking for lissoirs at even older Neanderthal sites to settle the confusion.

Paul Pettitt, an archaeologist at Durham University, UK, thinks that the tools precede the arrival of Homo sapiens to Europe, so their presence “cannot be an isolated occurrence, but was part of an indigenous Neanderthal tradition”. The tools also point to the sophistication of Neanderthal fashions, Pettitt says — if not their taste in handbags.

Nature doi:10.1038/nature.2013.13542
References

Soressi, M. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1302730110 (2013).
PubMed
 
Archaeologists rediscover the lost home of the last Neanderthals
October 17th, 2013 in Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils

This is the La Cotte Site at low tide. Credit: Institute of Archaeology

This is the La Cotte Site at low tide. Credit: Institute of Archaeology
A record of Neanderthal archaeology, thought to be long lost, has been re-discovered by NERC-funded scientists working in the Channel island of Jersey.

The study, published yesterday in the Journal of Quaternary Science, reveals that a key archaeological site has preserved geological deposits which were thought to have been lost through excavation 100 years ago.

The discovery was made when the team undertook fieldwork to stabilise and investigate a portion of the La Cotte de St Brelade cave, on Jersey's south eastern coastline.

A large portion of the site contains sediments dating to the last Ice Age, preserving 250,000 years of climate change and archaeological evidence.
The site, which has produced more Neanderthal stone tools than the rest of the British Isles put together, contains the only known late Neanderthal remains from North West Europe. These offer archaeologists one of the most important records of Neanderthal behaviour available.

"In terms of the volume of sediment, archaeological richness and depth of time, there is nothing else like it known in the British Isles. Given that we thought these deposits had been removed entirely by previous researchers, finding that so much still remains is as exciting as discovering a new site," says Dr Matt Pope of the Institute of Archaeology at University College London, who helped lead the research.

The team dated sediments at the site using a technique called Optically Stimulated Luminesce, which measures the last time sand grains were exposed to sunlight. This was carried out at the Luminescence Dating Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art at Oxford University.

The results showed that part of the sequence of sediments dates between 100,000 and 47,000 years old, indicating that Neanderthal teeth which were discovered at the site in 1910 were younger than previously thought, and probably belonged to one of the last Neanderthals to live in the region.

"The discovery that these deposits still exist and can be related to previously excavated deposits opens up a range of exciting possibilities," says Dr Martin Bates, University of Trinity St Davids, who is leading current fieldwork at the site.

The findings bring the large collections of stone tools, animal bone and the Neanderthal remains from the area under renewed study.

"Excavation in the future will provide us with the opportunity to subject the site to the wide range of approaches we use today in Palaeolithic archaeology and Quaternary science.

For example we are hoping to be able to link our site with the broader Neanderthal landscapes through study of similarly aged deposits around the island and, through bathymetric survey, on the seabed," says Bates.

"We were sure from the outset that the deposits held some archaeological potential, but these dates indicate we have uncovered something exceptional," explains Pope. "We have a sequence of deposits which span the last 120,000 years still preserved at the site. Crucially, this covers the period in which Neanderthal populations apparently went 'extinct'."
It was during this period that Neanderthals appear to have been replaced by our own species – Homo sapiens.

The NERC-funded work represented the first formal programme of scientific research to be focused on the site since the early 1980s. The site has since then been managed and preserved by the Société Jerisaise, the Jersey-based academic society involved in early investigation of the site and which continues to manage and protect the site through to the present day.
"For over a hundred years the Societe has tried to maintain the interest of the wider academic world in La Cotte, having realised its international importance from the beginning. We are delighted, therefore, that such a prestigious team is now studying the site, and, in addition, the wider Palaeolithic landscape of Jersey," says Neil Molyneux, president of the Société Jersiaise.

The wider project, supported also by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Jersey Government will now continue to investigate the site and material excavated from it over the past 110 years.

"Working with our partners to bring these rediscovered sediments under new analysis will allow us to bring the lives of the last Neanderthal groups to live in North West Europe into clearer focus," says Pope.

"We may be able to use this evidence to better understand when Neanderthal populations disappeared form the region and whether they ever shared the landscape with the species which ultimately replaced them, us," he concludes.

Provided by Natural Environment Research Council

"Archaeologists rediscover the lost home of the last Neanderthals." October 17th, 2013. http://phys.org/news/2013-10-archaeolog ... thals.html
 
Neanderthals Used Toothpicks to Alleviate the Pain of Diseases Related to Teeth, Such as Inflammation of the Gums
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 080300.htm

In the left image, the arrow shows the interproximal groove of the upper Pm3. The right image is a groove detail view as seen with an Environmental Chamber Electron Microscope.

Oct. 17, 2013 — Removing food scraps trapped between the teeth one of the most common functions of using toothpicks, thus contributing to our oral hygiene. This habit is documented in the genus Homo, as early as Homo habilis, a species that lived between 1.9 and 1.6 million years ago. New research based on the Cova Foradà Neanderthal fossil shows that this hominid also used toothpicks to mitigate pain caused by oral diseases such as inflammation of the gums (periodontal disease). It is the oldest documented case of palliative treatment of dental disease done with this tool.

This research is based on toothpicking marks on the Neanderthal teeth related to periodontal disease. The chronology of the fossil is not clear, but the fossil remains were associated with a Neanderthal Mousterian lithic industry (about 150,000 to 50,000 years).

The research showed that the remains had maxillary porosity, characteristic of periodontal disease and alveolar bone loss (where the teeth are inserted), with a bone mass reduction of four to eight millimeters exposing the roots of the teeth, usually inside the alveoli.

The article "Toothpicking and periodontal disease in a Neanderthal specimen from site Cova Foradà (Valencia, Spain)," was published by PLOS ONE, on October 16. It was authored by Marina Lozano, Carlos Lorenzo and Gala Gomez of the IPHES (Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana I Evolució Social), in collaboration with Maria Eulalia Subirà, Biological Anthropology professor and researcher at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), and José Aparicio of the Diputació Provincial de València.

Marina Lozano said: "This individual attempted to alleviate the discomfort caused by periodontal disease. This disease usually causes bloody and inflamed gums, so the systematic use of toothpicks could mitigate sore gums."

The examples of grooves caused by toothpicking are numerous between Neanderthals and usually are not associated with any dental disease. "However, in the case of Cova Foradà the toothpick was not only used as a primitive method of dental hygiene, but it is associated with a dental disease and with the clear intention to alleviate the pain, and that makes it unique," said Marina Lozano.

This means that we have one of the first examples of palliative treatment with toothpicks, the oldest documented. Therefore, "this study is a step to characterize the Neanderthals as a species with a wide range of adaptations to their environment and wide resources even in the field of palliative medicine" says the same researcher.

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, via AlphaGalileo.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Journal Reference:

Marina Lozano, Maria Eulàlia Subirà, José Aparicio, Carlos Lorenzo, Gala Gómez-Merino. Toothpicking and Periodontal Disease in a Neanderthal Specimen from Cova Foradà Site (Valencia, Spain). PLoS ONE, 2013; 8 (10): e76852 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0076852
 
World's oldest string found at French Neanderthal site
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2 ... otqc8R91Bw
13 November 2013 by Colin Barras
Magazine issue 2943. Subscribe and save
Editorial: "Why string is one of the greatest inventions"

CALL it prehistoric string theory. The earliest evidence of string has been found – apparently created by our Neanderthal cousins.

Perishable materials usually rot away, so the oldest string on record only dates back 30,000 years. But perforations in small stone and tooth artefacts from Neanderthal sites in France suggest the pieces were threaded on string and worn as pendants. "The wear patterns provide circumstantial evidence of early use of string, but the evidence is not definitive," says Bruce Hardy at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. Similar circumstantial evidence has been found in perforated shells.

Now, Hardy and his colleagues have found slender, 0.7-millimetre-long plant fibres that are twisted together near some stone artefacts at a site in south-east France that was occupied by Neanderthals 90,000 years ago. Such fibres are not twisted together in nature, says the team, suggesting that the Neanderthals were responsible (Quaternary Science Reviews, doi.org/pzx).

"If they are indeed remnants of string or cordage, then they would be the earliest direct evidence of string," says Hardy. "Albeit very fragmentary evidence."

At 90,000 years old, the material purported to be string predates the arrival of Homo sapiens in Europe. That means the Neanderthals occupying the French site learned to make it themselves, rather than imitating modern humans, says Hardy. In fact, a growing body of evidence suggests our extinct cousins developed a number of sophisticated behaviours – and perhaps even taught some skills to our species when the two met.

Last year, stone tools created by Neanderthals were found on Mediterranean islands, hinting that the species may have made and used boats to cross the sea – although no direct evidence of boats has been found. Hardy points out that sturdy ropes would have been necessary to build and use rafts and boats. "The ability of Neanderthals to manufacture string and cordage certainly does make the idea of Neanderthal seafaring more plausible," he says.

This article appeared in print under the headline "Neanderthals add another string to their bow"
 
Virus DNA first found in Neanderthal genome identified in modern humans
November 19th, 2013 in Biology / Biotechnology

Neanderthal

Homo neanderthalensis, adult male. Image Credit: John Gurche, artist / Chip Clark, photographer

Homo neanderthalensis, adult male. Image Credit: John Gurche, artist / Chip Clark, photographer

(Phys.org) —An ancient retrovirus that altered the DNA of Neanderthals and Denisovans has now been found to have left alterations in modern human DNA as well—in some cancer patients. The team of researchers from the U.K. that made this startling discovery has written about what they've uncovered in a paper published in the journal Current Biology.

Scientists have known for many years that some viruses can impact not just the general biology of animals (and humans) but can make their way into their genome, causing changes to strands of DNA. Those changes can then be passed on to offspring. To date, no such strands have ever been found to cause ailments in humans, however.

In June of 2012, another team of researchers discovered changes that had come about in Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA due to an ancient retrovirus. The virus left evidence of its existence in a parts of the genome known as "junk" sequences—so named because they don't hold any information related to creating proteins—they don't appear to do anything. That team found 14 unique instances of such virus evidence. Intrigued, the team then looked to see if any of the 14 existed in modern human DNA. Their cursory inspection didn't find any matches.

In this new research, the team in Britain took a much closer look, and in doing so, found 7 matches—but only in cancer patients. More specifically, they took DNA samples from 67 people, all of whom had some form of cancer. In studying the samples, the researchers found that every single one of the cancer patients had seven of the virus sequences that matched those found in Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA last year.

The findings by the team suggest that there might be a link between people with the ancient virus information stored in their junk sequences and a tendency to get cancer. The researchers suggest that because of what they've found, it seems likely that the other seven retroviruses found by the team last year in Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA exist in the genomes of other people alive today. That could mean that such people have a higher incidence of other unknown medical problems. More research will have to be conducted, though the team acknowledges it could take a lot of time as the process could potentially involve examining the genomes of groups of people afflicted with any number of ailments.

More information: Neanderthal and Denisovan retroviruses in modern humans, Current Biology, Volume 23, Issue 22, R994-R995, 18 November 2013. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2013.10.028

Abstract
In the June 5th 2012 issue of Current Biology, Agoni et al. reported finding 14 endogenous retrovirus (ERV) loci in the genome sequences of Neanderthal and/or Denisovan fossils (both ?40,000 years old) that are not found in the human reference genome sequence. The authors [1] concluded that these retroviruses were infecting the germline of these archaic hominins at or subsequent to their divergence from modern humans (?400,000 years ago). However, in our search for unfixed ERVs in the modern human population, we have found most of these loci. We explain this apparent contradiction using population genetic theory and suggest that it illustrates an important phenomenon for the study of transposable elements such as ERVs.

Press release

© 2013 Phys.org

"Virus DNA first found in Neanderthal genome identified in modern humans." November 19th, 2013. http://phys.org/news/2013-11-virus-dna- ... odern.html
 
But did they use Feng Shui?:

New Evidence Suggests Neanderthals Organized Their Living Spaces
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 091616.htm

Archeologists are shown excavating Neanderthal levels at Riparo Bombrini, Northwest Italy. (Credit: Fabio Negrino)

Dec. 3, 2013 — Scientists have found that Neanderthals organized their living spaces in ways that would be familiar to modern humans, a discovery that once again shows similarities between these two close cousins.

The findings, published in the latest edition of the Canadian Journal of Archaeology, indicate that Neanderthals butchered animals, made tools and gathered round the fire in different parts of their shelters.

"There has been this idea that Neanderthals did not have an organized use of space, something that has always been attributed to humans," said Julien Riel-Salvatore, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Colorado Denver and lead author of the study. "But we found that Neanderthals did not just throw their stuff everywhere but in fact were organized and purposeful when it came to domestic space."

The findings are based on excavations at Riparo Bombrini, a collapsed rock shelter in northwest Italy where both Neanderthals and, later, early humans lived for thousands of years. This study focused on the Neanderthal levels while future research will examine the more recent modern human levels at the site. The goal is to compare how the two groups organized their space.

The site comprises three levels assigned to Neanderthals. Scientists found that Neanderthals divided the cave into different areas for different activities. The top level was used as a task site -- likely a hunting stand -- where they could kill and prepare game. The middle level was a long-term base camp and the bottom level was a shorter term residential base camp.

Riel-Salvatore and his team found a high frequency of animal remains in the rear of the top level, indicating that the area was likely used for butchering game. They also found evidence of ochre use in the back of the shelter.

"We found some ochre throughout the sequence but we are not sure what it was used for," Riel-Salvatore said. "Neanderthals could have used it for tanning hides, for gluing, as an antiseptic or even for symbolic purposes -- we really can't tell at this point."

In the middle level, which has the densest traces of human occupation, artifacts were distributed differently. Animal bones were concentrated at the front rather than the rear of the cave. This was also true of the stone tools, or lithics. A hearth was in back of the cave about half a meter to a meter from the wall. It would have allowed warmth from the fire to circulate among the living area.

"When you make stone tools there is a lot of debris that you don't want in high traffic areas or you risk injuring yourself," Riel-Salvatore said. "There are clearly fewer stone artifacts in the back of the shelter near the hearth."

The bottom level, thought to represent a short-term base camp, is the least well known because it was exposed only over a very small area. More stone artifacts were found immediately inside the shelter's mouth, suggesting tool production may have occurred inside the part of the site where sunlight was available. Some shellfish fragments also suggest that Neanderthals exploited the sea for food; like ochre, these are found in all the levels.

The discoveries are the latest in continuing research by Riel-Salvatore showing that Neanderthals were far more advanced than originally thought.

In an earlier study, he found that Neanderthals were highly innovative, creating bone tools, ornaments and projectile points. He also co-authored a paper demonstrating that interbreeding between Neanderthals and humans may have led to the ultimate demise of the outnumbered hominins. Still, Neanderthal genes make up between one and four percent of today's human genome, especially among Europeans.

"This is ongoing work, but the big picture in this study is that we have one more example that Neanderthals used some kind of logic for organizing their living sites," Riel-Salvatore said. "This is still more evidence that they were more sophisticated than many have given them credit for. If we are going to identify modern human behavior on the basis of organized spatial patterns, then you have to extend it to Neanderthals as well."

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by University of Colorado Denver, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Journal Reference:

Julien Riel-Salvatore; Ingrid C. Ludeke; Fabio Negrino; Brigitte M. Holt. A Spatial Analysis of the Late Mousterian Levels of Riparo Bombrini (Balzi Rossi, Italy). Canadian Journal of Archaeology, Volume 37, Issue 1, p.070-092 (2013) [link]
 
They probably had their own interior architects.
 
Scientists sequence oldest human DNA

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/scien ... 83416.html

Scientists have extracted and sequenced the oldest human DNA. It came from a fossilised leg bone of an early human who died about 400,000 years ago in what is now northern Spain.

Its DNA sequence indicates that this early European was more closely related to a much earlier species of human living in Siberia about 700,000 years ago than to the later Neanderthals of Europe who became extinct about 30,000 years ago.

The genetic link between early Europeans and even earlier Asians has surprised researchers who had expected to find a closer genetic relationship to the later Neanderthals, who had occupied Europe for tens of thousands of years before eventually dying out after anatomically-modern humans arrived.

“It really raises more questions than it answers,” said Svante Paabo, the director the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig where the ancient DNA was extracted from the thigh bone of a skeleton excavated from the cave site known as the “pit of bones” in Sierra de Atapuerca.

More than 28 human skeletons have been excavated from Sima de los Huesos cave, along with the bones of extinct animals such as cave bears dating back about 600,000 years, making it one of the richest sources of prehistoric fossils in Europe.

Many palaeontologists believe that the femur bone used in the DNA extraction comes from an early “hominin” species known as Homo heidelbergensis, although other experts think that it is more likely to be a primitive ancestor of Neanderthal man.

However, what has surprised the researchers is the relatively close similarity between the mitochondrial DNA of this Neanderthal-like European and the mitochondrial DNA of the Denisovans, a species that lived about 700,000 years ago in the Altai mountains of Siberia and known only from a small finger bone and two relatively large molar teeth.

“The fact that the mitochondrial DNA of the Sima de los Huesos hominin shares a common ancestor with Denisovan rather than Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA is unexpected since its skeletal remains carry Neanderthal-derived features,” said Matthias Meyer of the Max Planck Institute, who led the study published in the journal Nature.

DNA from a skeleton was taken by scientists who found it in a cave (Madrid Scientific Films)
One possibility is that the Sima humans were related to a population of early man that was ancestral to both the Denisovans and the Neanderthals. Alternatively, there could have been interbreeding with another group of humans who brought Denisovan-like DNA from Asia into the Sima people or their direct ancestors.

Dr Paabo said that one way to resolve the conundrum over who was related to whom, would be to extract the nuclear DNA of the chromosomes, which is technically harder in fossilised bone than extracting the DNA of the mitochondria, which is inherited solely down the maternal line.

“Our results show that we can now study DNA from human ancestors that are hundreds of thousands of years old. This opens prospects to study the genes of ancestors of Neanderthals and Denisovans. It is tremendously exciting,” Dr Paabo said.

Juan-Luis Arsuaga, director of the Centre for Research on Human Evolution and Behaviour in Madrid, said: “The unexpected result points to a complex pattern of evolution in the origin of Neanderthals and modern humans. I hope that further research will help clarify the genetic relationships of the hominins from Sima de los Huesos to Neanderthals and Denisovans.”

Professor Chris Stringer, head of human origins at the Natural History Museum in London, said that the unusual finding poses intriguing questions about the early origins of Neanderthals and their relationship with other humans living at that time.

“It is exciting to see genetic material of this age being successfully sequenced. The mitochondrial DNA from a fossil femur found at La Sima de los Huesos or the Pit of Bones in Spain could be from around 400,000 years old. This represents the oldest human DNA material yet recovered,” Professor Stringer said.
 
Not so log ago they were regarded as cannibalistic savagesl

Neanderthals Buried Their Dead, New Research of Remains Concludes
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 154328.htm e

Skeleton of a prehistoric man (stock image). Neanderthals buried their dead, an international team of archaeologists has concluded after a 13-year study of remains discovered in southwestern France. Their findings confirm that burials took place in western Europe prior to the arrival of modern humans. (Credit: iStockphoto/Fanelie Rosier)

Dec. 16, 2013 — Neanderthals buried their dead, an international team of archaeologists has concluded after a 13-year study of remains discovered in southwestern France.

Their findings, which appear in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, confirm that burials took place in western Europe prior to the arrival of modern humans.

"This discovery not only confirms the existence of Neanderthal burials in Western Europe, but also reveals a relatively sophisticated cognitive capacity to produce them," explains William Rendu, the study's lead author and a researcher at the Center for International Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences (CIRHUS) in New York City.

CIRHUS is a collaborative arrangement between France's National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and New York University.

The findings center on Neanderthal remains first discovered in 1908 at La Chapelle-aux-Saints in southwestern France. The well-preserved bones led its early 20th-century excavators to posit that the site marked a burial ground created by a predecessor to early modern humans. However, their conclusions have sparked controversy in the scientific community ever since, with skeptics maintaining that the discovery had been misinterpreted and that the burial may not have been intentional.

Beginning in 1999, Rendu and his collaborators, including researchers from the PACEA laboratory of the University of Bordeaux and Archéosphère, a private research firm, began excavating seven other caves in the area.

In this excavation, which concluded in 2012, the scientists found more Neanderthal remains -- two children and one adult -- along with bones of bison and reindeer.

While they did not find tool marks or other evidence of digging where the initial skeleton was unearthed in 1908, geological analysis of the depression in which the remains were found suggests that it was not a natural feature of the cave floor.

As part of their analysis, the study's authors also re-examined the human remains found in 1908. In contrast to the reindeer and bison remains at the site, the Neanderthal remains contained few cracks, no weathering-related smoothing, and no signs of disturbance by animals.

"The relatively pristine nature of these 50,000-year-old remains implies that they were covered soon after death, strongly supporting our conclusion that Neanderthals in this part of Europe took steps to bury their dead," observes Rendu. "While we cannot know if this practice was part of a ritual or merely pragmatic, the discovery reduces the behavioral distance between them and us."

The study was supported, in part, by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication and supervised by the Regional Archaeological Service of the Limousin region.
|
Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by New York University.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Journal Reference:

William Rendu, Cédric Beauval, Isabelle Crevecoeur, Priscilla Bayle, Antoine Balzeau, Thierry Bismuth, Laurence Bourguignon, Géraldine Delfour, Jean-Philippe Faivre, François Lacrampe-Cuyaubère, Carlotta Tavormina, Dominique Todisco, Alain Turq, and Bruno Maureille. Evidence supporting an intentional Neandertal burial at La Chapelle-aux-Saints. PNAS, December 16, 2013 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1316780110
 
I reckon they ooo-arred like farmers.

Neanderthals could speak like modern humans, study suggests
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25465102
By Melissa Hogenboom
Science reporter, BBC News

Reconstructed face of a Neanderthal hominid

Neanderthals may have had complex language

An analysis of a Neanderthal's fossilised hyoid bone - a horseshoe-shaped structure in the neck - suggests the species had the ability to speak.

This has been suspected since the 1989 discovery of a Neanderthal hyoid that looks just like a modern human's.

But now computer modelling of how it works has shown this bone was also used in a very similar way.

Writing in journal Plos One, scientists say its study is "highly suggestive" of complex speech in Neanderthals.

Continue reading the main story

Start Quote

If Neanderthals also had language then they were truly human, too”

Prof Stephen Wroe
University of New England, Armidale, NSW, Australia
The hyoid bone is crucial for speaking as it supports the root of the tongue. In non-human primates, it is not placed in the right position to vocalise like humans.

An international team of researchers analysed a fossil Neanderthal throat bone using 3D x-ray imaging and mechanical modelling.

This model allowed the group to see how the hyoid behaved in relation to the other surrounding bones.

Stephen Wroe, from the University of New England, Armidale, NSW, Australia, said: "We would argue that this is a very significant step forward. It shows that the Kebara 2 hyoid doesn't just look like those of modern humans - it was used in a very similar way."

He told BBC News that it not only changed our understanding of Neanderthals, but also of ourselves.

"Many would argue that our capacity for speech and language is among the most fundamental of characteristics that make us human. If Neanderthals also had language then they were truly human, too."

Neanderthal remains found in the Kebara Cave in Israel
60,000-year-old Neanderthal remains (replica pictured) also included a hyoid bone (not visible)
It was commonly believed that complex language did not evolve until about 100,000 years ago and that modern humans were the only ones capable of complex speech.

But that changed with the discovery of a Neanderthal hyoid bone in 1989. It was found in the Kebara Cave in Israel and is very similar to our own,

Much older hyoid fossils have also recently been discovered, attributed to the human and Neanderthal relative Homo heidelbergensis. They were found in Spain and are over 500,000 years old.

These have yet to be modelled, but Prof Wroe said they were likely to be very similar to those of modern humans and Neanderthals, so could take back the origins of speech still further.

He added that his work would not necessarily be accepted as proof that Neanderthals spoke.

"We were very careful not to suggest that we had proven anything beyond doubt, but I do think it will help to convince a good number of specialists and tip the weight of opinion."

Neanderthal skull
Neanderthals had large faces with massive brow ridges and no chin
Neanderthals were stockier and shorter than modern humans, with no chin and backwards sloping foreheads. They are not regarded as direct human ancestors but DNA analysis has revealed that between 1% and 4% of the Eurasian human genome seems to come from Neanderthals.

Dan Dediu, from the Max Plank Institute for Psycholinguistics, Netherlands, published a review article earlier this year suggesting that Neanderthals and modern humans shared a similar capacity for language.

He said that the current study brought more weight to the conclusions that Neanderthals had very similar hyoid bones to us, "not only in form but also in what concerns their mechanical properties".

"The authors themselves are understandably cautious in drawing strong conclusions, but I think that their work clearly supports the contention that speech and language is an old feature of our lineage going back at least to the last common ancestor that we shared with the Neanderthals," Dr Dediu told BBC News.

He stressed, though, that the latest study was only a first step and that future work on other living primates were necessary to better understand the range of variation within modern humans.
 
Diabetes risk gene 'from Neanderthals'
By Paul Rincon
Science editor, BBC News website
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25506198

Neanderthals interbred with humans and their genes are scattered among us today

A gene variant that seems to increase the risk of diabetes in Latin Americans appears to have been inherited from Neanderthals, a study suggests.

We now know that modern humans interbred with a population of Neanderthals shortly after leaving Africa 60,000-70,000 years ago.

This means that Neanderthal genes are now scattered across the genomes of all non-Africans living today.

Details of the study appear in the journal Nature.

The gene variant was detected in a large genome-wide association study (GWAS) of more than 8,000 Mexicans and other Latin Americans. The GWAS approach looks at many genes in different individuals, to see whether they are linked with a particular trait.

People who carry the higher risk version of the gene are 25% more likely to have diabetes than those who do not, and people who inherited copies from both parents are 50% more likely to have diabetes.

The higher risk form of the gene - named SLC16A11 - has been found in up to half of people with recent Native American ancestry, including Latin Americans.

Drug hope
The variant is found in about 20% of East Asians and is rare in populations from Europe and Africa.

Continue reading the main story

Start Quote

This could illuminate new pathways to target with drugs and a deeper understanding of the disease”

Prof Jose Florez
Harvard Medical School
The elevated frequency of this variant in Latin Americans could account for as much as 20% of these populations' increased prevalence of type 2 diabetes - the origins of which are complex and poorly understood.

"To date, genetic studies have largely used samples from people of European or Asian ancestry, which makes it possible to miss culprit genes that are altered at different frequencies in other populations," said co-author Jose Florez, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Massachusetts.

"By expanding our search to include samples from Mexico and Latin America, we've found one of the strongest genetic risk factors discovered to date, which could illuminate new pathways to target with drugs and a deeper understanding of the disease."

The team that discovered the variant carried out additional analyses, in collaboration with Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

Denisova Cave (Bence Viola)
The gene variant was found in Neanderthal remains from Denisova Cave, Siberia
They discovered that the SLC16A11 sequence associated with risk of type 2 diabetes is found in a newly sequenced Neanderthal genome from Denisova Cave in Siberia.

Analyses indicate that the higher risk version of SLC16A11 was introduced into modern humans through interbreeding between early modern humans and Neanderthals.

It is not unusual to find Neanderthal genes. About 2% of the genomes of present-day non-Africans were inherited from this distinctive human group, which lived across Europe and western Asia from about 400,000-300,000 years ago until 30,000 years ago.

But scientists are only just beginning to understand the functional implications of this Neanderthal inheritance.

"One of the most exciting aspects of this work is that we've uncovered a new clue about the biology of diabetes," said co-author David Altshuler, who is based at the Broad Institute in Massachusetts.

SLC16A11 is part of a family of genes that code for proteins that transport metabolites - molecules involved in the body's various chemical reactions.

Altering the levels of the SLC16A11 protein can change the amount of a type of fat that has been implicated in the risk of diabetes. These findings suggest that SLC16A11 could be involved in the transport of an unknown metabolite that affects fat levels in cells and thereby increases risk of type 2 diabetes.
 
Guess that means I'm a Neanderthal, then.
 
Back
Top