Re: Neanderthal spelunking

Stephen Jones (sejones@ibm.net)
Tue, 01 Jul 97 21:33:24 +0800

Glenn

On Sun, 22 Jun 1997 15:40:18 -0500, Glenn Morton wrote:

GM>New discoveries last year are showing that Neanderthal possessed more
>sophistication than was previously believed. (Of course with the denigration
>that Neanderthal has been subjected to over the past 20 years, this isn't
>surprising). Berkowitz writes:
>
>"A discovery by Francois Rouzaud of the French
>archaeological service suggests Neandertals were more
>sophisticated in their use of fire than previously believed. A
>burnt bear bone found deep in a cave in southern France has been
>dated to at least 47,600 years ago, before modern humans reached
>western Europe. It proves Neandertals were able to use fire for
>illumination. Earlier evidence showed only that they used fire
>in simple hearths. The bone came from a 13- by 16-foot structure
>made of stalactite and stalagmite fragments. Built by
>Neandertals, its purpose is unknown."~Mark Berkowitz, "Neandertal
>News," Archaeology, Sept./Oct. 1996, p. 22

I would have no problem if "Neandertals were able to use fire for
illumination" but the fact that there is no evidence they did so,
until just before the advent of Homo sapiens in Europe about
35,000 years ago, and its location in "southern France" makes me
suspect that this could have been an early advance party of Homo
sapiens from Africa, 10,000 years before the main pulse.

Current thinking is that Homo sapiens was infiltrating into
Western Europe at least 50,000 years ago:

"For a long time, the Upper Paleolithic Revolution was taken as an
indication that the final emergence of modern humans occurred in
Western Europe. After all, the archeological signal and the fossil
record coincided there precisely: both indicate a dramatic event about
35,000 years ago: modern humans appeared in Western Europe
35,000 years ago and their modern behavior is immediately part of
the archeological record. Or so it was assumed. Recently, this view
has changed. western Europe is now recognized as something of a
backwater, and we can discern a transformation sweeping across
Europe, from east to west. Beginning about 50,000 years ago, in
Eastern Europe, the existing Neanderthal populations disappeared
and were replaced by modern humans, the final replacement taking
place in the far west by about 33,000 years ago. The coincidental
appearance of modern humans and modern human behavior in
Western Europe reflects the influx of a new kind of population,
modern Homo sapiens. The Upper Paleolithic Revolution in Europe
was a demographic signal and not an evolutionary signal. If modern
humans were migrating into Western Europe beginning 50,000 years
ago, where did they come from? On the basis of the fossil evidence,
we would say Africa, in all probability-or perhaps the Middle East."
(Leakey R., "The Origin of Humankind", 1994, p94)

GM>Robert G. Bednarik, notes of the same discovery,
>
>"The cave of Bruniquel in southern France has just produced
>fascinating new evidence. Several hundred metres in from the
>cave entrance, a stone structure has been discovered. It is
>quadrilineal, measures four by five metres and has been
>constructed from pieces of stalagmite and stalactite. A burnt
>fragment of a bear bone found in it was radiocarbon analysed,
>yielding a 'date' of greater than 47 600 years BP. This suggests
>that the structure is the work of Neanderthals. It is located in
>complete darkness, which proves that the people who ventured so
>deep into the large cave system had reliable lighting and had the
>confidence to explore such depths. Bruniquel is on of several
>French caves that became closed subsequent to their Pleistocene
>use, but were artifically opened this century."~Robert G.
>Bednarick, "Neanderthal News," The Artefact 1996, 19:104

If this date of "47 600 years BP" was obtained solely by "radiocarbon"
analysis, then it is unreliable:

"But by the 1970S, scientists began to realise the layers of sediments
in which they had found these 'proto-human' remnants were much
more complex than previously appreciated. Unfortunately, they
lacked instruments that could peer far enough into the past, with
sufficient precision, to date the strata and their fossil contents. The
only effective technology that was then available relied on
radiocarbon dating, a technique that is only effective with remains
less than 40,000 years old - which put the Levant sediments
tantalisingly out of reach." (Stringer C., & McKie R., "African
Exodus", 1997, p77)

"Measuring the amount of radiocarbon relative to other carbon
contained in an organic sample thus provides a way of finding out
how much time has elapsed since the death of the organism
concerned. At 5,730 year the half-life of radiocarbon is relatively
short, so that when a sample is older than about 40,000-50,000 years
(40-50 kyr) it contains an unmeasurable small amount of radiocarbon.
This obviously places an effective limit of the usefulness of the
method...Given the 40 kyr maximum of radiocarbon dating, this
method was clearly going to be restricted to the latest part of the
Pleistocene." (Tattersall I., "The Fossil Trail", 1995, p99)

GM>This discovery is important for two reasons. First it shows the ability to
>construct structures. and secondly, it shows an incredible ability to plan
>an expedition to regions of a cave far removed from sunlight. While the
>following was a discussion of underground mining, many of the pre-requisites
>for underground mining are required for building structures underground.
>Bednarik notes,
>
>"Underground mining involves quite a number of both technological and
>cognitive pre-conditions. To begin with, it requires a preparedness to enter
>an alien environment which most animal species avoid, or the behavioural
>fexibility to manage a perhaps genetically determined cortical response
>pattern to fear of caves. This already provides considerable insights into
>the level of conscious decision making required in this context. Next, most
>of the underground work presupposes the availability of artificial lighting,
>and there is some evidence of lamps and torches having been involved in these
>quests. It is also obvious from several of the sites that the mining
>activities must have been team work, involving at least two or three people,
>who no doubt had to co-ordinate various aspects of their efforts. We know
>that a variety of mining tools were involved, and we can assume that items
>such as pointed, perhaps fire-hardened wooden wedges were prepared outside the
>cave. At a few sites there is evidence of the use of scaffolding, which would
>imply even more planning. These observations together suggest that fairly
>complex planning patterns need to be postulated. Finally, some of the caves
>are of quite difficult access, and the sheer logistics of the mining
>operations conducted in them must have involved engineering skills of an order
>of magnitude few archaeologists would be currently prepared to credit any
>'pre-Upper Palaeolithic' people with. Not only does the evidence for these
>abilities permit considerably more insight into the cognitive, intellectual,
>social and, presumably, linguistic skills of the people concerned than the
>futile and yet perennial arguments about language ability, the hyoid bone and
>Broca's area, there is still another factor to be considered."Robert G.
>Bednarik, "Early Subterranean Chert Mining," The Artefact, 15:(1992), pp
>11-24, p. 20-21
>
>Once again, the abilities of Neanderthal have been underrated. Neanderthal
>was human in the everyday sense of that word. Christians who wish to have a
>recent Adam which excludes Neanderthal (in order to avoid evolution) should
>reconsider their position.

There is nothing in the last quote that indicates it was "Neanderthal". "pre-
Upper Palaeolithic" could still have been early Homo sapiens.

However, even if all the above was "Neanderthal", it is irrelevant, since
the latest thinking is that modern Homo sapiens did not directly descend from
Homo neandertalensis:

"Fossil remains are traditionally lumped together as "archaic" H.
sapiens-including the famous neanderthals of Europe and the Near
East who are placed in their own subspecies H. sapiens
neanderthalensis-and modern humans another subspecies H. sapiens
sapiens. I question this classification. "Archaic" skulls are very
different from our own-more robust with large faces and teeth and
conspicuous brow ridges. I classify H. neanderthalensis as a species in
its own right and place the rest of the archaics in a separate species,
H. heidelbergensis. The latter arose in Africa and spread throughout
the world. Both Neanderthals and modern humans are then seen as
separate offshoots of H. heidelbergensis and classified as full species."
(Wood B., "Boning up on dates", New Scientist, 20 May 1995, p27)

"Early Homo maintained a generalized anatomy as it spread
throughout tropical and subtropical Asia, but apparently became
specialized with the evolution of Homo erectus by 1.8 million years
ago. The much later European dispersal of African Homo
heidelbergensis also seems to have resulted in the specialized
Neanderthals. All of these early dispersals of Homo were apparently
eclipsed by the late Eurasian dispersal of Homo sapiens, from Africa,
some 100,000 years ago." (Larick R. & Ciochon R.L., "The African
Emergence and Early Asian Dispersals of the Genus Homo",
American Scientist, Vol. 84, No. 6, November-December 1996,
p540)

God bless.

Steve

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