brachial index of Neanderthal likely cause of extinction #151
Archimedes Plutonium
recent anthropology series on human evolution. NOVA
is trying to sell "climate change" as key to human
evolution. This book argues that Stone and Rockthrowing is the key to
human evolution.
In the last segment, they will likely talk about Neanderthal man as a
different species from Cro Magnon which is our ancestor. What NOVA
says about
how come Neanderthal was extincted (or perhaps interbreed), is
something I can only guess at-- likely
to say that Neanderthal could not cope with climate changes.
But the Stonethrowing theory emphatically says that
whereever the best throwers of rocks and stones went
would either interbreed or extinct those less efficient
at throwing rocks and stones. By the time of Neanderthal the rocks and
stones are likely to have been replaced with spears.
So all I need is data that the radius and ulna to humerus length or
what is called the brachial index was
in favor of CroMagnon to the detriment of Neanderthal.
--- quoting from the website ---
http://bmsap.revues.org/document6220.html
The “non-Neandertals” have brachial and crural indices of 77 and 83,
virtually the same as a sample of recent North Africans from Afalou.
The “Neandertal” brachial index is even higher than these, 79, but the
crural index at 78 differs and is lower (although the same as Skhul 5
and not as low as in the European Neandertals). A recent discussion of
other differences can be found in the volume edited by T. Akazawa et
al. (1998).
--- end quoting ---
Just a slight or small difference in brachial index means that Cro
Magnon would usually win in a battle
between a tribe of Cro Magnon versus a tribe of Neanderthals.
One of the websites spoke of multiple rock injuries
of a Neanderthal fossil. He was likely to have been
a victim of Cro Magnon rockthrowing.
Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies
Lee Olsen
<plutonium.archime...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I am going to anticipate NOVA's last segment of their
> recent anthropology series on human evolution.
AP is going to anticipate???? This is the same loon who thinks crushed
skulls in
the fossil record are evidence for killing. What this loon believes
is
irrevant because when there are only few possibilities to choose from,
and
right or wrong, could be gotten simply by chance.
A further display of Archimedes Plutonium ignorance can be seen here:
Message-ID:
<fd523a23-99b7-4895-89d4-5d11f409c...@p8g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>
Archimedes Plutonium: "You need an increase in
brain size from a chimp to a human to have
that foresight and planning and then the
geometry of a projectile to hit a target."
Of course just the opposite is true. Nick Toth has demonstrated
that Kanzi, the flintknapping chimp, throws just as accurately
as most humans (for a short distance) and in some types memory
tests chimps can and do remember better than modern humans.
On chimp planning, Kanzi can remember where he hides a favorite
ball more than a year later when kept out of the area he hid it.
Many humans can't remember where they put their car keys five
minutes ago.
Archimedes Plutonium has clearly demonstrated he is nothing more
than a antho-challenged troll.
rmacfarl
"Lee Olsen" <pale...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1c395998-c536-47e7...@v15g2000prn.googlegroups.com...
On Nov 12, 11:46 pm, Archimedes Plutonium
<plutonium.archime...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I am going to anticipate NOVA's last segment of their
> recent anthropology series on human evolution.
...
> Archimedes Plutonium has clearly demonstrated he is nothing
> more
> than a antho-challenged troll.
No shit Sherlock - he's famous enough to have his own wiki page.
So why feed his ego???
Lee Olsen
> "Lee Olsen" <paleoc...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
So, things are a little slow since the AATers bailed :)
rmacfarl
> So, things are a little slow since the AATers bailed :)
Let's see if this brings them back then... :-)
Fight Club: The origins of Man
Was it an accident that Neanderthals died out and humans
survived? Two eminent scientists give their view
YES: by Clive Finlayson, director of the Gibraltar Museum
Darwin saw the extinction of species as the outcome of
competition from superior models. Sudden ruptures affecting many
species were dismissed as artefacts of an imperfect fossil
record. Species can, in fact, disappear for a whole range of
reasons, competition being only one.
History is full of examples of the replacement of cultures by
others, usually with more advanced technology. The demise of the
Incas at the hands of Europeans is but one, albeit conspicuous,
example. It is as if the replacement of some human populations by
others was always the result of technological differential. So it
does not take a great mental leap to apply this logic of conquest
to prehistory, especially when our view of prehistoric humans has
been coloured by prejudice and bad science.
The distorted image of the ape-like Neanderthal, based on an
incorrect reconstruction of an old and arthritic individual a
hundred years ago, has remained ingrained in our minds. History
tends to be written by the victors and prehistory followed the
trend. We are here today so we must be the victors. We are modern
humans and we defeated the brutish Neanderthals in the
battlefields of Pleistocene Europe. That is how a post hoc
conclusion became dogma.
Dogma tells us that our ancestors entered Europe from the Middle
East around 45,000 years ago and replaced the Neanderthals.
Depending on whether a hard or soft approach is taken, it has
been argued that the Neanderthals suffered from genocide, were
outcompeted or were absorbed into a larger gene pool. But the
evidence is simply not there.
So what did happen to the Neanderthals? They were a lineage of
intelligent humans, with brains even larger than ours. They were
resourceful: big and tough ambush hunters who evolved as part of
a suite of animals that thrived in open woodland in southern
Eurasia. But as the climate took a sharp downturn, the woodlands
of Eurasia were replaced by steppe and tundra. Populations of
many species, not only Neanderthals but also strange elephants,
rhinos and others, became fragmented. They became endangered
species and, as could happen with pandas today, succumbed.
Our ancestors were marathon runners, evolved on the African
plains to outrun prey to exhaustion. After millennia on the
doorstep of Eurasia we made our entrance, though only when the
treeless steppe-tundra expanded and the Neanderthals had left.
Had the environmental changes been slow, the Neanderthals might
have had time to change their physique and chase new animals
across treeless plains. But change was fast and there was no time
for adjustment. Neanderthals and our ancestors became ambush
hunters and marathon runners respectively by dint of where they
had evolved. The roulette wheel of life favoured one and not the
other in a particular place and time. A slight change of time,
place, climate or fortunes, and a Neanderthal might have been
writing these lines.
NO: by Chris Stringer, Palaeontology Department, the Natural
History Museum
Neanderthals were one of the last evolutionary experiments in how
to be human. We so-called modern humans represent the sole
survivors of those experiments. This brings us to the nub of the
matter: was Homo sapiens responsible for the extinction of other
late-surviving species such as Neanderthals?
In the early 1990s there were two main views about the fate of
the Neanderthals. One suggested that they had not died out, but
had in fact given rise to modern humans in Europe. The other
view, now predominant, was that modern humans originated in one
area - Africa - and spread out from there during the past 100,000
years, replacing species that had evolved elsewhere, such as
Neanderthals.
I used to believe that the spread of modern humans, with their
superior adaptations, complex language etc, was the critical
factor in the disappearance of the Neanderthals. But Neanderthal
extinction was a complex process that occurred over a wide range
in time and terrain. The reasons why they disappeared from
Siberia may be different from why they died out in Gibraltar.
The period of potential overlap of these species (30,000-45,000
years ago in Europe) was also a time of great climatic
instability. If early modern humans had better ways of coping
with rapid climate change (eg, sewn clothing, better-insulated
dwellings, more efficient food-gathering techniques) they would
have been more likely to survive. That is not to say that modern
humans always survived, since the populations of both species
were probably only in the thousands. And some regions where the
Neanderthals disappeared may have been spared the impact of
modern humans.
So how much did the two populations overlap and how did they
interact if they encountered each other? Despite recent claims
that we screwed, speared or sometimes even ate Neanderthals, more
data is needed for us to draw conclusions. Given their small
populations, perhaps the two species did not encounter each other
that often.
Nevertheless, recent progress on radiocarbon dating has confirmed
that modern human fossils and sophisticated cave art
(attributable to modern humans) date from 35,000-40,000 years ago
in Europe, while Neanderthals may have persisted in places such
as Gibraltar until about 30,000 years ago. There must have been
at least occasional meetings.
I regard the Neanderthals as a closely related but separate
species to modern humans. But, given the vagaries of human
behaviour, interbreeding probably happened. Some scientists see
evidence of this in the fossils. Although the distinct
mitochondrial DNA of Neanderthals and modern humans does not
indicate any interbreeding, it is possible that interbreeding
occurred prior to 30,000 years ago and that the evidence was
largely lost during population crashes around the peak of the
last Ice Age. With whole Neanderthal genomes imminently available
to compare with ours, we will be in a much stronger position to
answer such questions in the next few years.
rmacfarl
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/eureka/article6904661.ece
"rmacfarl" <rmac...@alphalink.com.au> wrote in message
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