Comments on: No 10,000 years of coexistence?

By: Eurologist

Eurologist — Fri, 13 May 2011 10:06:51 +0000

The other thread took a weird turn, so please let me apologize here – my choice of words wasn’t very wise. At least we know now that some people actually got the humor intended in my user name…

I of course agree with many that one also has to look at the dating of sites that do *not* contain human bones, and some of these seem to be reliably after 40,000 years ago and associated with Neanderthals. The question is, how many of them, where, and at what time? I still believe that the paper raises a good question, in this context. And I find that John Hawks’ comment “But there’s really no serious challenge to the idea that Neandertals existed in Western Europe after 40,000 years ago” is a strawman argument is the sense that the paper in question never really states that. There are subtle but important differences that got lost in translation in the press release and in the media.

By: Neandertals not gone in haste? | Gene Expression | Discover Magazine

Neandertals not gone in haste? | Gene Expression | Discover Magazine — Wed, 11 May 2011 15:21:34 +0000

[...] « No 10,000 years of coexistence? Political concordance among mates [...]

By: Onur

Onur — Tue, 10 May 2011 17:31:05 +0000

Estimates of the duration of co-existence in any one place that I’ve seen are on the order of 1,000 years

But according to this study they only lasted a few hundred years (thus implying fast retreat/extinction). There is a big difference.

By: Millan Mozota

Millan Mozota — Tue, 10 May 2011 17:25:14 +0000

I find they mixed too many and different things in a non very scientific (even not very ethical, i’ll dare to say) way:

On one hand, we have the empirical scientific result: a new C14 datation of a Neanderthal. It goes with what it lokks like a big metodological innovation (Ultrafiltration incorporated to method).

Then we go into the realistic consecuences of the empirical scientific results. It seems that a huge revision will be necesary now, both of scores of industries (including EUP) and dozens of human bones (Neanderthal and AMH) for OIS3.

And finally we get in what i’ll call narcisists fantasies: I’m talking about those hiperboled final conclusions, wich are completely and artificially narrowed to the absurd, molded to be of relevance for only the OIS3-Neanderthals.

By: ohwilleke

ohwilleke — Tue, 10 May 2011 15:49:12 +0000

It is also worth noting that Neanderthal extinction 30,000 years ago, as opposed to 40,000 years ago does not necessarily imply 10,000 years of co-existence. Estimates of the duration of co-existence in any one place that I’ve seen are on the order of 1,000 years, and the amount of interaction during this slow retreat may have been modest.

By: jb

jb — Tue, 10 May 2011 14:43:10 +0000

Did they get any of those “ultrafiltered bone collagen radiocarbon dates” for modern humans in Europe? If those dates get pushed back as well, doesn’t the problem come back?

By: dave chamberlin

dave chamberlin — Tue, 10 May 2011 13:03:41 +0000

How the northern Caucasus became “maybe all of Europe” doesn’t sound right, I’ll wait for John Hawks to get back to us.

By: John Hawks

John Hawks — Tue, 10 May 2011 09:04:35 +0000

I’m not writing about this until I hear back from the authors, but you can find in Figure 3 of the paper the 15 Neandertal specimens that date younger than 40,000 years ago, not to mention the scores of Mousterian sites dated after that time.

I would have said there is controversy about Neandertals after 30,000 years ago, but not 40,000 — not by a long shot.

By: Eurologist

Eurologist — Tue, 10 May 2011 07:56:29 +0000

Perhaps AMHs had some help from the “Campanian Ignimbrite super-eruption” (perfect timing) and/or from domesticated dogs, in addition to a much wider exploitation of natural resources. Something surely scared them the previous ~90,000 year.

“If Papuans had Neanderthal admixture the logical conclusion was that that had to occur in the Middle East. ”

That’s stretching it – it could have been any place between Iran and any of the -stans. Much less likely in the Near East, given population numbers.