>I don't want your pants.
Good thing!
>Do you have any money?
>
Colleges and Universities have all my money. Have ever since my oldest began
college.
>Nah, I just wanted to clear up what may have been a false impression about
>Shreeve's views. No big deal. You agree when you write:
>
><<I agree that Shreeve does not believe that neanderthals were human>>
>
That may be, but the point of the cape, the fact that it was clothing, makes
this observational data point shows that clothing, the mark of the Fall, was
manufactured at least 50,000 years ago. Or do you believe that animals
manufacture clothing from fur?
>Although you continue to think that the language issue is "moot." It isn't,
>of course, but remains the subject of vigorous debate. This you fail to note.
>You cite the Kebara skeleton, for example, but don't discuss it fully. My
>expert says:
>
>"What there is of this bone looks pretty modern, but the problem is that only
>a small part of the whole hyoid actually ossifies; what this element's
>long-disappeared cartilaginous portion looked like is anyone's guess. However
>the hyoid argument works out, however, when you put the skull-base evidence
>together with what the archaeological record suggests about the capacities of
>the Neanderthals and their precursors, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that
>articulate language, as we recognize it today, is the sole province of fully
>modern humans." [Ian "I Threw in the Towell" Tattersall, The Fossil Trail,
> p. 212]
>
What I object to with Tattersall's treatment is that he ignores the evidence
we do have because it doesn't fit his preconception of Neanderthal. The
evidence we have supports in every manner the modernity of the Neanderthal
vocal tract. The only evidence which doesn't fit the modern form of the vocal
tract is the evidence we do NOT have--namely the cartillage.
Tattersall is basing his view on non-existent data. This is a bad way to do
science.
Tattersall also ignores the reconstruction of the Old man of La Chapelle which
has a skull base like medieval Hungarians. I cited this last night and you
then say I am not being honest with the data. Tsk Tsk. You cite Tattersall
where he does not deal with the counter argument.
>
><<Neanderthal was the first to bury their dead and use flowers as happened
> at Shanidar Cave.>>
>
>You continue to oversell this evidence as well. From Shreeve:
>
>"The demotion of Monte Circeo from human sacrament to hyena fodder was indeed
>only the latest in a string of recent Neandertal behavioral deflations. New
>looks at old evidence were suggesting that the Neandertals left no
>unambiguous trace of ritual activities, circular or otherwise. They spoke
>crudely (if they spoke at all) and lacked foresight, organizational ability,
>efficient fire techniques, hunting prowess, and emotional depth. If Rob
>Gargett, a young archaeologist in Berkeley, was to be believed, they may not
>even have buried their dead." (p. 91)
I agree that the last decade, the 80s, were a decade of criticism for
Neanderthal. Shreeve was outlining the history here and you can't see that.
When you depend upon one authority (Tattersall)as much as you do, you don't
get all the facts. And with Tattersall all you get are the conclusions. He
often skips the facts. Gargett was not well received by his commentators. You
should read the comments after his article. Concerning Shanidar,
"The 3 samples from the dark-brown loamy soil directly beneath Shanidar
IV were unique in the cave in containing numerous (145) clusters of anthers.
None of the other 50 samples from occupational deposits from Mousterian to
Mesolithic contained any anthers, even though ,more than 6,000 pollens were
identified."~Arlette Leroi-Gourhan, "Comments" Current Anthropology,
30:2(April 1989), pp 157-190, p. 182
The only place that flower anthers were found was with the burial. Hayden
doesn't agree with Tattersall either
"Arlette Leroi-Gourhan's original analysis of pollen and anthers from
Shanidar Cave, and her subsequent defense of those interpretations, leave
little doubt that flowers were used in some Neandertal burials and were not
deposited elsewhere in the cave in any quantity. Thus, this constitutes an
apparent example of symbolic and religious behavior. It has been suggested
that workmen introduced flower elements into the excavations, however, it is
difficult to account for the unique distribution of pollen and anthers by such
arguments, besides which fossil pollen and anthers over 40,000 years old are
easily distinguished from fresh pollen and anthers. Moreover, the skeleton
associated with pollen and anthers was excavated in August whereas the pollen
and anthers are from late spring/early summer flowers. The Shanidar botanical
remains thus constitute reasonable evidence for symbolic and ritual behavior
on the part of Neandertals."~Brian Hayden "The Cultural Capacities of
Neandertals ", Journal of Human Evolution 1993, 24:113-146, p. 120
Gargett's reply to Arlette Leroi-Gourhan displayed a huge ignorance on the
part of him about fossil pollen. He wrote:
"With due respect to Mme. Leroi-Gourhan, I do not see how the criticisms
I raised regarding the context of Shanidar 4 or of the plant macrofossils said
to have been associated with it are diminished by the color or number of
flowers that found their way into the cave." ~Robert H. Gargett, "Reply",
Current Anthropology, 30:2(April 1989), pp 157-190, p. 185
The color of the pollen is related to the age. Ask Art Chadwick! Old pollen is
discolored. This is shows that Gargett is terribly uninformed on a topic he is
criticising. Gargett also ignores the fact that most Neanderthal burials have
flexed bodies. Flexing a body means tying it up so that the knees are at the
chest. People who die and lie unburied do not fold their knees up to their
chest.
As to Monte Circeo, not all have rejected this evidence (But Tattersall won't
tell you that). Dean Falk writes:
"Maser and Gallup ahve done nothing less than identify a basic
behavioral complex that seems dependent upon higher cognitive abilities that
are facilitated by an expanded prefrontal cortex. From a paleoneurological
perspective, it is significant that religion appears exclusively and
universally in humans. But what of the fossil record? When do the concepts of
death and an afterlife first appear? Although a precise answer may never be
determined,the fossil record does provide some upper limits for the appearance
of religious behaviors.
"Certainly big-brained, but beleaguered Neandertals had some sort of
religion. As far as we know, they were the first hominids to bury their dead.
Times were cold and the earth was frozen hard. Consequently, Neandertals often
buried their dead in small graves, with corpses in flexed or semiflexed
positions. Despite the practicality of their burials, by 50,000 years ago some
Neandertal graves had become quite spectacular. For instance, analysis of
pollen deposits from Shanidar Cave in northeastern Iraq indicates that the
grave of an adult male may have been covered with an assortment of colorful
flowers.
"From our Western perspective, we might be tempted to view other
examples of Neandertal's treatment of the dead as ghoulish. For example,
there's the lad from a shallow grave in Teshik-Tash, Russia,whose remains were
surrounded by numerous pairs of goat horns. An equally intriguing find emerged
with the discovery of a cave that had been closed for many thousands of years
in Monte Circeo Italy. Within the cave, a Neandertal skull was found resting
bottom up in the middle of a circle of rocks. The base of the skull was broken
away as if the brains had been deliberately removed. Nor was this the first
sign of a possible cannibalistic ceremony in the fossil record! Perhaps as
long ago as half a million years, Homo erectus had acquired the unsavory habit
of breaking into the braincases of his dead brethren.
"Although the reader may flinch at the suggestion that cannibalism
indicates higher cognitive abilities, historical records indicate that
cannibalism practiced by Homo sapiens in the late nineteenth and first half of
the twentieth centuries served ceremonial more than nutritive purposes."~Dean
Falk, Braindance,(New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1992), p. 181-182
As to future planning and foresight on the part of Neanderthal, Mellars cites
evidence of planning for the future,
"A more universal pattern is the tendency for sites to occur
predominantly along the south or south-east facing flanks of valleys, in
preference to the north or north-west-facing slopes. The explanation in this
case is almost certainly related to simple climatic factors. South-facing
locations inevitably benefit from the maximum exposure to temperatures in all
seasons of the year. Protection from winds was no doubt an equally important
factor, in an area where the prevailing wind direction is mainly from the
west, and where the coldest and harshest winds come mainly from the north.
This would no doubt have been an especially crucial factor during the winter
months when local temperatures during the colder periods of the Upper
Pleistocene could well have fallen below -200 C. Even today local temperature
differences of up to 25o C can occur between the north and south facing slopes
of certain river valleys in the Perigord."~Paul C. Mellars, The Neanderthal
Legacy, (Princeton: University Press, 1996), p.250
They also planned for future food. Both Middle Paleolithic (Neanderthal) and
Upper Paleolithic (Homo sapiens) sites are found along the animal migration
pathways. Of course Tattersall will only give you a conclusion and not tell
you this. Mellars writes of the Middle and Upper Paleolithic sites:
"The point is that by locating settlements or hunting locations directly
astride these major migration trails it was possible for human groups to
intercept animal populations deriving from relatively large territories within
southwestern France - i.e. the combined summer and winter ranges- at a single
location."~Paul Mellars, The Neanderthal Legacy, (Princeton: University Press,
1996), p. 55
>
>Once again, this is Shreeve's report on a particular view. But it is out
>there, held by well known experts, and makes another issue far from "moot."
>Shreeve, Leakey, Tattersall and many others do not find Neanderthal
>"awareness" of the same kind as modern man. Why not? Because he wasn't like
>us. We are homo divinus--true spiritual beings, who unequivocally
> demonstrated that aspect when we exploded onto the scene in the recent past.
So why did morphologically modern man act like Neanderthal for the first
70,000 years of his existence? He made the same tools, left the same types of
artefacts. Were the morphologically modern men from 120,000 years ago, who
behaved like Neanderthals, not human? If they weren't human, then how do I
know every morphologically modern human alive today is human? This is a flaw
in your view.
>
>Glenn turns theological:
>
><<Jim, Do non-Fallen beings make clothing? Are you saying that
> non-spiritual creatures engage in making the one thing we wear which marks
>our Fall?>>
>
>They do if they're cold. Or are you saying "Clothes make the man"?
>
If you could cite one animal that manufactured its clothing I might agree with
you but you can't.
Jim, you read an extremist, Tattersall, and like a little duckling, you have
become imprinted with Tattersall tales. It is time to look at the data rather
than Tattersall conclusions. Tattersall didn't tell you that flower anthers
were only found with the burial and no where else in Shanidar cave, did he?
That little fact goes against his view so he doesn't tell you and you are
gullible enough to uncritically believe him.
glenn
Foundation,Fall and Flood
http://members.gnn.com/GRMorton/dmd.htm