Neanderthals

It s about sophistication, not being a Neanderthal, said Charles Ho, marketing manager for Dewar s, after a hard laugh, man to man, at the question. 

Study, ancient Maya diet shows a A N of 4.5%o (humans-herbivores). The 8 N values for mixed-diet humans in Schoeninger et al. (1983) seem always somewhat too positive for their supposed food European agriculturalists are about 8-10%o. Also, Bocherens et al. (1991) and Lubell et al. (1994) give similar values (aroimd +9%o) for medieval French and Neolithic humans from Portugal, respectively. The 8 N values (+9.3 and 11.6%o) of two human (Neanderthal) samples (Fizet et al. 1995) are very similar to those of associated carnivores but are only slightly higher than those of Neolithic humans. 

Ambrose, S.H. 1998 Prospects for stable isotopic analysis of Later Pleistocene hominid diets in West Asia and Europe. In Akazawa, T., Aoki, K. and Bar-Yosef, O., eds.. Neanderthals and Modem Humans in West Asia. New York, Plenum Press 277-289. 

Bocherens, H., Billion, D., Mariotti, A., Patou-Mathis, M., Otte, M., Bonjean, D., Toussaint, M. (1999). Palaeoenvironmental and paleodietary implications of isotopic biogeochemistry of Last Interglacial Neanderthal and mammal bones in Scladina Cave (Belgium). Journal of Archaeological Science, Vol. 26, pp.599-607. 

Chapter 15 brings the emphasis to the human scale as it describes the use of U-series chronometers to date the history of human evolution. U/Th dating provides one of the few chronometers for a crucial period of such evolution which saw the emergence of modem humans, the extinction of both Neanderthals and H. erectus, and a great deal of environmental change. Recently developed tools, described in this chapter, look set to put the time scales for such change onto a much more secure footing. 

McDermott et al. (1993) produced EU U-series dates and both EU and LU ESR dates on teeth from the hominid bearing layers of Tabun, Qafzeh and Skhul. Their results suggest both the Neanderthals and Modem Humans from Tabun, Skhul and Qafzeh are much older that previously thought, at around 100 5 ky. Some faunal dates from Skhul were younger at around 43 ky, but were possibly the result of recent accumulation of uranium. Not only do these dates represent some of the earliest modem human skeletal material found anywhere, but the dates of the Neanderthal layers were broadly... 

Figure 12. The Tabun Neanderthal (eourtesy Chris Stringer, National History Mnsenm).

At the Sima de los Huesos ( Pit of the Bones ) the well preserved remains of at least 32 individuals, classified as H. heidelbergensis and apparently ancestral to Neanderthals,... 

Bar-Yosef O (2000) The Middle and Early Upper Palaeolithic in sonthwest Asia and neighbonring regions. In The Geography of Neanderthals and Modem Hnmans in Enrope and the Greater Mediterranean Vol. 8, Bar-Yosef O, Pilbeam D (eds), Peabody Museum Bulletin Cambridge, MA, p 107-156... 

Bermndez de Castro JM, Arsuaga JL, Carbonell E, Rosas A, Martinez I, Mosquera M (1997) A hominid from the Lower Pleistocene of Atapuerca, Spain possible ancestor to Neanderthals and modem hnmans. Science 176 1392-1395... 

McDermott F, Griin R, Stringer CB, Hawkesworth CJ (1993) Mass-spectrometric U-series dates for Israeh Neanderthal/early hominid sites. Nature 363 252-255... 

Millard AR, Pike AWG (1999) Uranium-series dating of the Tabun Neanderthal a cautionary note. J Human Evol 36 581-585... 

Schwarcz HP, Simpson JJ, Stringer CB (1998) Neanderthal skeleton from Tabun U-series data by ganuna-ray spectrometry. J Human Evol 35 635-645... 

Hoss, M. (2000), Ancient DNA Neanderthal population genetics, Nature 404,453-454. 

Krings, M., A. Stone, R. W. Schmitz, H. Krainitzki, M. Stoneking, and S. Paabo (1997), Neanderthal DNA sequences and the origin of modern humans, Cell 90,19-30. 

Shreeve, J. (1995), The Neanderthal Enigma Solving the Mystery of Modern Human Origins, Avon, New York. 

Stringer, Ch. (1993), In Search of the Neanderthals Solving the Puzzle of Human Origins, Thames and Hudson, New York. 

The use of plants to influence brain function has long been essential to medical practice, and one could say that the intake of new plant species by early hominids resulting from a change in the climate might have triggered the Mind s Big Bang 50,000 years ago which allowed us to prevail over the Neanderthals, who co-existed with us for tens of thousands of years. 

Neanderthals become extinct Homo sapiens remains the single surviving human species... 

J. Roller, U. Baumer, D. Mania, High tech in the Middle Palaeolithic Neanderthal manufactured pitch identified, European Journal of Archaeology, 4, 385 397 (2001). 

The Mormons were introduced to ephedra by Indians when they arrived in Utah. They used it as an alternate to tea and coffee, ironically, because their religious views prohibited use of those stimulants. Ephedra might be the oldest known human stimulant, because remains of the plant were discovered in a fifty thousand-year-old Neanderthal grave in Iraq. Modern medical use of ephedra began with the identification of the alkaloid ephedrine in 1923. 

There has been discussion for many years about the fate of the Neanderthals who occupied part of what is now Europe for a few hundred thousand years until they became extinct about 30,000 years ago. Most authorities believe that modem humans simply outcompeted the Neanderthals for food and other resources, leading to their ultimate demise. A central question remains did modem humans and the Neanderthals interbreed Do we carry some Neanderthal genes as a result ... 

Small samples of uncontaminated DNA have been successfully recovered from Neanderthal bone. It has been possible to sequence about one million base pairs of this Neanderthal DNA by a group of scientists in California and a second one in Germany." So far, no evidence of interbreeding between modem humans and Neanderthals has been uncovered. There are good prospects for having the complete sequence of the Neanderthal genome sometime in 2009. That information may resolve the question of our possible genetic relationship to Neanderthals. 

The first publications on the Neanderthal genome are J. P. Noonan, G Coop,... 

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