RTB's Connections has an article in the 1st quarter issue reporting on
Steven Kuhn's "Ornamets of the Earliest Upper Paleolithic: Proc. Natl. Acad.
Sci. USA 98(2001):7641-7646. The RTB article is Fazele R. Rana, “A
Fashionable Find,” Connections, 4(2002):1:2,3. It states:
"The earliest humans appear to have been absorbed with making jewelry.
Ornamental shells far outnumber shells used for food in the earliest
geological layers investigated.
“This discovery indicates that artistic expression and the use of symbolic
language belong inherently and uniquely to humanity. Bipedal primates
preceding modern humans lacked such capabilities."
As usual, they get their facts totally wrong and/or ignore other
anthropological data which doesn't fit in with their viewpoint. If, as Rana
says, Jewelry is a mark of humanity, then Neanderthals are human. Hublin et
al write:
"The French site of Arcy-sur-Cure is a key locality in
documenting the Middle-Upper Palaeolithic transition in Europe.
Reliable attributrion of the fragmentary hominid fossils
associated with its early Upper Paleolithic Chatelperronian
industry has not been possible. Here we report the first
conclusive identification of one of these fossils as Neanderthal
on the basis of newly discovered derived features of the bony
labyrinth. Dated at about thirty-four thousand years (34 kyr)
ago, the fossil is representative of the youngest known
Neanderthal populations, and its archaeological context indicates
that these hominids used a rich bone industry as well as personal
ornaments. The evidence supports the hypothesis of a long term
coexistence with technocultural interactions between the first
modern humans and the last Neanderthals in Europe. However, the
complete absence of the derived Neanderthal traits in labryinths
of modern Upper Palaeolithic specimens from western Europe argues
against phylogenetic continuity between the two populations in
this region." ~ Jean-Jacques Hublin, Fred Spoor, Marc Braun
F.Zonnenveld and Silvana Condemi, "A Late Neanderthal Associated
with Upper Palaeolithic Artefacts," Nature, 381: May 16, 1996, p. 224
Hublin believed that the Neanderthals traded with Cro-magnon for the
necklace but Joao Xilhao et al demonstrated the the Arcy-sur-Cure necklace
was manufactured by techniques unique to this specimen, thus they were not
due to the techniques used by Cromagnon. Braineard wrote:
"These ideas are disputed by Joao Xilhao of the University of
Lisbon in Portugal and his French colleagues in the June CURRENT
ANTHROPOLOGY. They analyzed other ornaments and tools from the cave
that yielded the 1996 discovery, the Grotte du Renne in Arcy-sur-
Cure, near Auxerre, France.
"They argue that Neandertals probably made Chatelperronian-
style ornaments at Arcy-sur-Cure, using methods and materials quite
different from those of the Aurignacian style attributed to modern
humans." ~ Jeffrey Brainard, "Giving Neandertals Their Due," Science
News 154(Aug. 1, 1998), p. 72-74, p. 72
"Hublin et al, cite Lejeune and Taborin to stress the
similarity between the Chatelperronian personal ornaments of Arcy
and those found in the Aurgnacian layers of Belgian and French
sites. The technique of grooving the tooth or the bivalve's umbo,
very commmon in the Arcy Chatelperronian, is unknown, however, among
the 121 teeth of the nine Belgian sites which have yielded
Aurignacian pendants. Also, according to Taborin's survey of the
evidence, the belemnite and the fossil Rhynchonella shell used at
Arcy have never been found in an Aurignacian context. Although the
use of fox canines is indeed a shared feature, bovid, marmot, and
reindeer incisors and fragments of rhinoceros molars, used at Arcy,
are absent in the Belgian sample. Even when the same species is
used, differences appear in the choice of the teeth. The
Chatelperronians from Arcy made pendants of bear incisors and wolf
canines, while the Belgian Aurignacians preferred bear canines and
wolf incisors.
"The only possible point of similarity would be the ivory
rings. Before interpreting these as evidence of imitation or
exchange, as suggested by White and Otte, one should bear in mind
that this raw material was worked at Arcy, as demonstrated by the
long ivory point (possibly a spear) recovered in level Xc and by the
many thin points discussed above. This means that the
Chatelperronians from Arcy had the technical ability to produce
ivory rings. A similar object, apparently produced with a different
technique, was recently found at the Roche-au-Loup cave, a few
kilometers from the Grotte du Renne. Though the object comes from a
reworked layer, this site has revealed a single Chatelperronian
occupation, dated to ca. 40,000 years B.P. Given the in situ
condition of the arcy material, this new find makes it clear that
trading is the least parsimonious explanation for the presence of
such rings in Chatelperronian contexts.
"Furthermore, it should be noted that all other ivory rings
traditionally attributed to the Aurignacian come from old
excavations at the sites of Spy, Grotte de la Princesse, and Trou
Magritte (Belgium). At Spy the layer in which they were found
contained a mixture of Mousterian, Aurignacian, and 'initial Upper
Paleolithic with foliate points' (the chronological equivalent of
the Chatelperronian in France and the Uluzzian in Italy). At Trou
Magritte, the ivory ring was found in layer 3 and was attributed to
the Aurignacian on the basis of its similarity to the one from Spy.
The layer in question was reexcavated recently. Its radiocarbon
dating indicated an age of ca. 40,000 years B. P., but it yielded a
nondiagnostic lithic assemblage hardly classifiable as Aurignacian,
dominated by Mousterian elements and in all likelihood corresponding
to an oxygene-isotope stage 3 mixed context identical to that from
Spy." ~ Francesco d'Errico, et al, "Neanderthal Acculturation in
Western Europe? Current Anthropology, Supplement, 39(1998):1-44, p.
12-13
Eventually Hublin agreed that Neanderthals had skill in working ivory
"Hublin is now ready to accept that Neanderthals possessed
'some' skill in bone and ivory technology. Our analysis of the Arcy
bone artifacts and the more refined study of this material that
three of us (Baffier, d'Errico, and Julien) are currently carrying
out confirms the high level of complexity in the technical choices
made--a complexity that does not appear to be in any way
qualitatively different from that observed in more recent periods.
Here again we see an a priori against Neanderthals cognitive
abilities." ~ Francesco d'Errico, et al, "Reply," Francesco
d'Errico, et al, "Neanderthal Acculturation in Western Europe?
Current Anthropology, Supplement, 39(1998):1-44, p. 34
But this isn't all. THere are other examples of Neanderthal Jewelry:
"Much of what is called 'parure' (jewellery) belongs in this
category--ie fossils, teeth, shells or bones which have been
incised, sawn or perforated. Such techniques are by no means
restricted to the Upper Palaeolithic: a growing number of
specimens are known from the preceding (Mousterian) period, and
can therefore be attributed to Neanderthalers: two bones (a wolf
foot-bone and a swan vertebra), with holes bored through the top,
from Bocksteinschmiede (Germany), dating to c 110,000 years ago;
a carved and polished segment of mammoth molar, and a fossil
nummulite with a line engraved across it (making a cross with a
natural crack), from Tata (Hungary), dating to c 100,000 years
ago; a bone fragment from Pech de l'Aze (Dordogne), with a hole
carved in it; a reindeer phalange with a hole bored through its
top, and a fox canine with an abandoned attempt at perforation,
from La Quina (Charente). As will be seen below, other forms of
'aesthetic expression' are also known from the Mousterian.
"The earliest phase of the French Upper Palaeolithic, known
as the Chatelperronian (c 35,000 BC), has yiedled a few more
examples: the best known are those from the cave of Arcy-sur-Cure(Yonne).
These levels at the site also contained a
Neanderthal tooth; in view of the discovery of a Neanderthal
skeleton in a Chatelperronian layer at St Cesaire (Charente
Maritime), it is more than likely that the earliest Arcy
ornaments can be attributed to Neanderthal craftsmanship. They
include wolf and fox canines made into pendants by incising a
groove around the top, at least one sawn reindeer incisor, a
bone-fragment with a wide carved hole, a sea fossil with a hole
bored through its centre, and a fossil shell with a groove cut
around the top.
"The next layer at Arcy, representing the Aurignacian (c
30,000 BC), has material which features the same techniques,
clearly drawing on what had been developing for millennia:
perforated fossils, a bone pendant with a wide carved hole, and
so forth. Even older Aurignacian sites, such as the cave of
Bacho Kiro in Bulgaria (over 41,000 BC), contain perforated
animal-tooth pendants." ~ Paul G. Bahn and Jean Vertut, Images in
the Ice, (Leichester: Windward, 1988), p. 72
In the Foreward to a book produced by the BBC, Christopher Stringer writes:
"There is also some evidence of 'advanced' behaviour by
late Neanderthals, behaviour that has sometimes been
thought exclusive to modern humans ű such as the
exploitation of marine resources (excavations in Gibraltar
show that over 50,000 years ago their diet included baked
mussels, as well as birds, wild goat, deer and rabbit), and
the working of bone and mammoth ivory to make jewelry." Chris
Stringer, "Foreward," in Douglas Palmer, Neanderthal, (London:
Channel 4 Books, 2000), p. 7
not only in bone and antler, but in ivory as well. The
Neanderthals perforated animal teeth and made grooved ornaments,
but the Cro-Magnons with their superior technology achieved much
greater ornamental sophistication, which played a central role in
their social and ritual life." ~ Brian Fagan, The Journey From
Eden, London: Thames and Hudson, 1990, p.160
And Neanderthals made flutes and whistles. To claim that they were merely
bipedal mammals as Ross and Rana do is simply silly and totally ignores
data. When are these apologists going to at least tell their supporters the
anthropological facts?
glenn
see http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/dmd.htm
for lots of creation/evolution information
anthropology/geology/paleontology/theology\
personal stories of struggle
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