Tsk, Tsk. This does not send me reeling.
>First, the article from Nature #381 (1996) pp. 224-226 which I'm quoting
>states that the replacement theory is most viable now. That, added to the
> DNA evidence, shows Neanderthals were not our ancestors. Score another one
>for Hugh Ross.
The reality of the case is that it is not a case of EITHER replacement OR
regional continuity, but it is a matter of degrees. There had to be both. In
eastern Europe there is a gradational series between the Neanderthals and the
earliest modern humans. This implies some continuity. But other areas show a
replacement. I think the argument is not as divisive as you want to make it.
>
>Now for the biggie, the flute. Let's assume for a moment that's what it is,
>even though no model testing has been done (Glenn brought up some other
> flute designs, but nothing on the model of this "flute").
Let me ask something. If you find the mid section of a clarinet, do you have
to make a model to prove that it is a clarinet? Of course not. You and Hugh
are acting as if this neanderthal flute is the only flute ever found in the
archaeological record and thus it cannot be recognized as such. Note this:
"In addition, dance and song leave no traces at all, and such things as
reed-pipes, wooden instruments, and stretched-skin drums will have
disintegrated; however, a few musical instruments have survived from the Upper
Palaeolithic--there are about 30 'flutes', spanning the Aurignacian and
Gravettian (18), the Solutrean (3) and the Magdalenian; a handful come from
Hungary, Yugloslavia, Austria and the USSR, but most are from France, with 14
from the supersite of Isturitz alone. The majority are broken; the French
ones are made of hollow bird-bones, while the eastern specimens are of
reindeer or bear-bone; they have between three and seven finger-holes along
their length, and are played like penny-whistles rather than true flutes."Paul
G. Bahn and Jean Vertut, Images in the Ice, (Leichester: Windward, 1988), p.
68-69
Give the archaeologists some credit for having the intelligence to know what
they are doing. The idle speculations of people who have not studied any area
are just that--speculations. Would you consider my mumblings on anti-trust
law to be on a par with yours? Of course not. So why do you think that Hugh's
speculations are on par with those of the experts? If one wants to challenge
the expert, he better spend a lot of time becoming familiar with the field.
> One big assumption >that is being made is that because it is found in a
Neanderthal site, it must >have been fashioned by a Neanderthal. As will be
seen below, that is not the
> case at all! A Modern may have traded with the Neanderthal (and gipped him
>to boot because the thing probably wouldn't play anyway. Talk about your
>early consumer frauds!)
>
OOOOOHHHHH MY. This is awful. :->
Let us suppose that you are correct. Neanderthal traded for the flute.
Can you name the last successful negotiation carried out by a chimpanzee, a
baboon or a gorilla? To paraphrase Hugh, are successful negotiating and
trading techniques now one of the traits we share with the soulish bird and
mammal species? Is this objection of yours for real? This is a joke, right?
>****
>
>The Neanderthals of Ice-Age Europe died out without issue -- but not
>before a last sartorial swansong. In a report in the 16 May issue of
>Nature, Dr Fred Spoor of University College, London, UK and colleagues
>show how Neanderthals borrowed the more advanced technology (and even
>the fashion jewellery) of the modern humans with whom they shared
>Europe, before becoming extinct. *Crucially, Neanderthals didn't evolve
>into modern humans themselves.*
>
>This report may be the last and decisive
>shot in a long battle over the origins of modern humans.
Of one thing I am certain, this will not be the last shot in that war.
[snip]
>The last piece of the jigsaw is the age of the Arcy-sur-Cure
>collection. At 34,000 years old, it represents virtually the last gasp
>of the Neanderthals as a species, 6,000 years after the Moderns entered
>Europe. From this, one might be able to reconstruct the European scene
>of 400 centuries ago. Neanderthals had occupied Europe for hundreds of
>thousands of years, doing very much the same things in terms of
>technology as they always had. In the Neanderthal world, there was no
>such thing as progress. Then, the Moderns appeared on the scene, with
>their paintings and sculptures, and their vibrant, complex and rapidly
>changing (almost ephemeral) technologies, aided, many researchers think,
>by sophisticated spoken language. Perhaps violently, perhaps simply by
>better use of resources, the Moderns drove the Neanderthals into more
>marginal areas. The process took a long time, but against this picture
>of a long and losing battle, the Neanderthals and Moderns were able to
>forge some technological links, however tenuous. Neanderthals 'borrowed'
>some of the techniques of the Moderns to create the Chatelperronian. The
>presence of pierced ivory and teeth -- jewellery, essentially -- is
>possibly even more poignant. *Perhaps these particular artefacts record
>an attempt by the colonial Moderns to buy favours from the indigenous
>Neanderthals,* in the same way that colonial Europeans used trinkets to
>trade with soon-to-be subject peoples from other parts of the world. To
>the last Neanderthals (who had managed for a quarter of a million years
>to get by without such things), the very idea of jewellery must have
>been alien indeed.
You greatly OVERPLAY the conclusion of Arcy. Hublin, Spoor, et al, say in the
May 16 Nature, "At least in the case of these specific objects, we may be
facing evidence of a trading process rather than the result of technical
imitation of modern human technology by Neanderthals." p. 226
But what is not said in that article is that the cultural tradition which
these jewelry belong to, is the Chatelperronian and it was first found in
Europe PRIOR to the time that modern humans entered Europe.
And, even if it was traded for, that does not make them non-human. You can't
trade with a chimp.
glenn
Foundation,Fall and Flood
http://members.gnn.com/GRMorton/dmd.htm