Nature of the Neanderthal: video with Greg Jay

[Xuxalina Rihhia]

https://youtu.be/GXyt8c6OfnU

https://www.facebook.com/groups/496995177365879/
Neanderthal Realities.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/514483018695199/
The Ganymede Hypothesis.

[Xuxalina Rihhia]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZbmywzGAVs
Neanderthal: profile of a super-predator.

They were carnivorous apes with stone knives and stone-tipped spears.

[Xuxalina Rihhia]

https://scontent-frt3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/ ... e=5F2F9A3B

A fine painting of what Neanderthals must have looked like during the Purple Dawn Era of Earth.

[Xuxalina Rihhia]

https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2016/03/ ... -starters/

https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2019/08/ ... -believed/

It seems as though the incredibly difficult tar-based glue that Neanderthals made wasn’t so difficult to make after all. It was previously thought that the glue – which they made from birch tree bark – had to be created in oxygen-free environments in order to preserve some of the chemicals of the burnt bark. However, new studies have shown that the glue wasn’t as hard to make as was once thought.

Researchers discovered that they could just as easily create the glue in the open air and it was even stronger than if they would have made it in an oxygen-free environment. They recreated the glue by setting some birch bark on fire, and then they placed a stone next to the fire so that the flames licked the side of the rock. After about three hours of burning the bark onto the rock, they had enough tar that they could scrape off and use to glue a flint flake to a wooden handle. Then they used the tool to scrape some wood as well as take some flesh off of a calf bone and incredibly enough, the tool remained glued together throughout both activities.

[tholden]

Jill Holod's Neanderthal Reconstruction:

http://www.bearfabrique.org/jillneanderjpeg.jpg


Can't make this image show on this forum software, retarded error message says

It was not possible to determine the dimensions of the image. Please verify that the URL you entered is correct.

[Xuxalina Rihhia]

That's a good image of what Neanderthals most likely looked like and acted. I hope to see a bigger version of that picture.
I also miss your old forum as well. I hope you are doing well these days.

[Xuxalina Rihhia]

http://www.sci-news.com/archaeology/hoh ... 09905.html


Neanderthals Hunted with Leaf-Shaped Spears, Archaeologists Say
Jul 28, 2021 by News Staff / Source

Archaeologists say they have found a 65,000-year-old leaf point in a cave in the Swabian Jura, Germany.
The 65,000-year-old leaf point from Hohle Fels Cave, Germany. Image credit: University of Tübingen.

The 65,000-year-old leaf point from Hohle Fels Cave, Germany. Image credit: University of Tübingen.

“This discovery represents the first time a leaf point has been recovered from a modern excavation, allowing us to study the fresh find with state-of-the-art methods,” said Professor Nicholas Conard, a researcher at the University of Tübingen and the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment.

“The last time archaeologists in the region recovered such artifacts was in 1936.”

The leaf point was found at the archaeological site of Hohle Fels, a cave in the Swabian Jura of Germany.

The artifact is 7.6 cm (3 inches) long, 4.1 cm (1.6 inches) wide, 0.9 cm (0.35 inches) thick, and has a mass of 28 grams.

“Our results document how the tool was made, used and why it was discarded,” Professor Conard said.

“Thanks to a series of four ESR-dates the find is securely dated to over 65,000 years ago.”

“Until now finds of leaf points were interpreted as belonging to the period between 45,000 and 55,000 years ago — the last cultural phase of Neanderthals in Central Europe,” he added.

“The new results demonstrate that our assumptions about the dating of the cultural groups of the late Neanderthals were wrong and need revision.”

Using detailed microscopic analyses, the researchers found that the leaf point was mounted on a wooden shaft.

“Damage to the tip indicates that the artifact was used as a hafted spear point, and that the spear was likely thrust into prey rather than being thrown,” they said.

“Neanderthals used plant-based glue and bindings made from plant fibers, sinew, or leather, to secure the leaf point to the spear.”

“They clearly used the spear for hunting. While they re-sharpened the tool it broke, leading to its discard.”

“Neanderthals were expert stone knappers and knew exactly how to make and use complex technologies combining multiple parts and materials to produce and maintain deadly weapons,” said Dr. Veerle Rots, a researcher at the University of Liège.

“"Homo" heidelbergensis, [a bipedal ape, similar to the Neanderthals] used sharpened wooden spears for hunting too, but their spears lacked mounted stone points like those used by Neanderthals.” [Chimpanzees can manufacture small spears to hunt for bushbabies in the jungles of Africa. They use their teeth to sharpen the spears. They then look for hollows and holes where bushbabies might be hiding, spear them and then eat them.]

The team’s results appear in two papers in the journal Archäologische Ausgrabungen in Baden-Württemberg and the journal Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Urgeschichte.

_____

Nicholas J. Conard & Alexander Janas. Ausgrabungen im Hohle Fels: Fundschichten aus dem Mittelpaläolithikum und Neues zur Jagdtechnik der Neandertaler. Archäologische Ausgrabungen in Baden-Württemberg 2020: 60-65

Veerle Rots et al. 2021. A Leaf Point Documents Hunting with Spears in the Middle Paleolithic at Hohle Fels, Germany / Eine Blattspitze belegt die Jagd mit Speeren im Mittelpaläolithikum am Hohle Fels, Deutschland. Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Urgeschichte 30: 1-28

[Xuxalina Rihhia]

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-ne ... 180978737/

To Understand Neanderthal Night-Hunting Methods, Scientists Caught Thousands of Birds With Their Bare Hands in Spanish Caves

Researchers captured more than 5,000 birds to learn how Neanderthal foraged for food
Elizabeth Gamillo

Elizabeth Gamillo

Daily Correspondent
September 22, 2021

Edited for truth.

Since the first Neanderthal (Homo neanderthalensis) fossils were discovered in the 1800s, scientists have done extensive studies on how these hominids lived. Researchers previously thought the bipedal apes only slept at night and hunted during the day. However, new findings suggest that Neanderthals worked together to hunt birds at night...but then, their world was a permanent twilight aka Purple Dawn. They even used tools—like fire torches and nets—to forage for choughs, a cave-dwelling bird belonging to the corvid family, reports Maddie Bender for Vice.

To simulate how Neanderthals may have foraged for food at night, researchers in Spain traveled to caves and used nets and lamps to capture the roosting birds. The study was published earlier this month in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.

"Here, we show that Neanderthals likely preyed on choughs, birds that spend the night in caves, the preferred shelter of Neanderthals. We reconstruct how Neanderthals could have used fire to dazzle, corral, and grab flying choughs at night," says Guillermo Blanco, a researcher from the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid, in a Frontiers statement.

Neanderthals, a bipedal ape went extinct 35,000 to 40,000 years ago. They hunted mammals—like red deer in the summer and reindeer in the winter—using sharp flint-bladed, wooden spears. There is also evidence that Neanderthals hunted various birds, including birds of prey, members of the crow family, and rock pigeons, according to the statement.

In the new study, researchers focused on how Neanderthals hunted choughs, which roosted in caves our ancestors used for shelter. Scientists first conducted a literature review to find out how many chough fossils were found in caves also containing Neanderthal fossils or tools, Vice reports. In Europe, chough fossils were abundantly found in Neanderthal caves, especially in archeological sites in the Iberian Peninsula. In nine locations within the Iberian Peninsula, chough remains had char marks, bite marks or cut marks from tools, per Vice.

Then, the team decided to put their hypothesis to the real test. For several years, the researchers visited existing caves and learned how to catch choughs by hand under the cloak of night. They used lamps to surprise resting birds and simulate torches that may have been carried by Neanderthals looking for a quick meal. All birds were banded and released unharmed after their experiment. In 296 experimental trials at 70 chough roosting sites, scientists caught a total of 5,525 birds.

"We conclude that choughs would have been uniquely vulnerable to Neanderthals if they used artificial light, such as fire, in caves at night," says study author and paleo-ornithologist Antonio Sánchez-Marco, a paleo-ornithologist of the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont in Barcelona, in a statement. "We show that when dazzled, choughs either try to escape to the outside, in which case you can catch them with nets across the entrance, or flee upwards to the ceiling, where you can often catch them by hand. Two to three choughs would yield enough energy to be a full meal for an adult Neanderthal, while a few skilled hunters could easily catch 40 to 60 choughs per night."

The birds would have made a nutritious meal for the early hominids, especially the red-billed chough which has the highest concentration of carotenoids, an essential micronutrient, Vice reports. The behaviors and social skills needed to capture the birds also align with how Neanderthals lived socially in groups consisting of 10 to 20 adults along with their children. Because choughs are difficult to capture during the day out in the open, the hominid's night hunting habits reveal impressive details about their anatomical, technological and cognitive abilities.

[Xuxalina Rihhia]

https://www.sci.news/archaeology/neande ... 11589.html

Neanderthal art was perhaps more abstract than the stereotypical figure and animal cave paintings Humans made after Neanderthals disappeared. But archaeologists are beginning to appreciate how creative Neanderthal art was in its own right.

La Pasiega Cave, section C, cave wall with paintings: the ladder shape composed of red horizontal and vertical lines (center left) dates to older than 64,000 years and was made by Neanderthals. Image credit: P. Saura.

La Pasiega Cave, section C, cave wall with paintings: the ladder shape composed of red horizontal and vertical lines (center left) dates to older than 64,000 years and was made by Neanderthals. Image credit: P. Saura.

Neanderthal populations in Europe have been traced back at least 400,000 years.

As early as 250,000 years ago, Neanderthal were mixing minerals such as hematite (ochre) and manganese with fluids to make red and black paints — presumably to decorate the body and fur.

In the 1990s, research by archaeologists radically changed the common view of Neanderthals as dullards.

We now know that, far from trying to keep up with Homo sapiens, they had a nuanced behavioral evolution of their own. Their large brains earned their keep.

We know from finding remains in underground caves, including footprints and evidence of tool use and pigments in places where Neanderthals had no obvious reason to be that they appear to have been inquisitive about their world (under the dwarf star Saturn).

Why were they straying from the world of light into the dangerous depths where there was no food or drinkable water?

We can’t say for sure, but as this sometimes involved creating art on cave walls it was probably meaningful in some way rather than just exploration.

Neanderthals lived in small, close-knit groups that were highly nomadic.

When they traveled, they carried embers with them to light small fires at the rock shelters and river banks where they camped. They used stone tools to whittle their spears and butcher carcasses.

We should think of them as family groups, held together by constant negotiations and competition between themselves.

Although organized into small groups it was really a world of individuals.

The evolution of Neanderthals’ visual culture over time suggests their social structures were changing.

They increasingly used pigments and ornaments to decorate their bodies and fur.

As I elaborate in my book, Homo sapiens Rediscovered, Neanderthals adorned their bodies perhaps as competition for group leadership became more sophisticated.

Colors and ornaments conveyed messages about strength and power, helping individuals convince their contemporaries of their strength and suitability to lead.

Then, at least 65,000 years ago, Neanderthals used red pigments to paint marks on the walls of deep caves in Spain.

In Ardales cave near Malaga in southern Spain, they colored the concave sections of bright white stalactites.

In Maltravieso cave in Extremadura, western Spain, they drew around their hands.

And in La Pasiega cave in Cantabria in the north, one Neanderthal made a rectangle by pressing pigment-covered fingertips repeatedly to the wall.

We can’t guess the specific meaning of these marks, but they suggest that Neanderthals were becoming more imaginative.

Later still, about 50,000 years ago, came personal ornaments to accessorize the body and body fur.

These were restricted to animal body parts — pendants made of carnivore teeth, shells and bits of bone.

These necklaces were similar to those worn around the same time by Humans, probably reflecting a simple shared communication that each group could understand.

Did Neanderthal visual culture differ from that of Humans? I think it probably did, although not in sophistication.

They were producing non-figurative art tens of millennia before the arrival of Humans in Europe, showing that they had independently created it.

But it differed. We have as yet no evidence that Neanderthals produced figurative art such as paintings of people or animals, which from at least 37,000 years ago was widely produced by the Human groups that would eventually replace them in Eurasia.

Figurative art is not a badge of modernity, nor the lack of it an indication of primitiveness.

Neanderthals used visual culture in a different way than Humans.

Their colors and ornaments strengthened messages about each other through their own bodies rather than depictions of things.

It may be significant that our own species didn’t produce images of animals or anything else until after Neanderthals, Denisovans and other bipedal pongid groups had become extinct.

Nobody had use for it in the biologically mixed Eurasia of 300,000 to 40,000 years ago.

But in Africa a variation on this theme was emerging. Our early ancestors were using their own pigments and non-figurative marks to begin referring to shared emblems of social groups such as repeated clusters of lines — specific patterns.

Their art appears to have been less about individuals and more about communities, using shared signs such as those engraved onto lumps of ochre in Blombos cave in South Africa, like tribal designs.

Ethnicities were emerging, and groups — held together by social rules and conventions — would be the inheritors of Eurasia.

[Xuxalina Rihhia]

Hominids may have survived the harsh winters by hibernating

https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 ... ibernating

Seasonal damage in bone fossils in Spain suggests Neanderthals and their predecessors followed the same strategy as cave bears
Robin McKie Science Editor
Sun 20 Dec 2020 10.30 GMT
Last modified on Mon 21 Dec 2020 14.39 GMT

Bears do it. Bats do it. Even European hedgehogs do it. And now it turns out that hominids may also have been at it. They hibernated, according to fossil experts.

Evidence from bones found at one of the world’s most important fossil sites suggests that our hominid predecessors may have dealt with extreme cold hundreds of thousands of years ago by sleeping through the winter.

The scientists argue that lesions and other signs of damage in fossilised bones of hominids are the same as those left in the bones of other animals that hibernate. These suggest that our predecessors coped with the ferocious winters at that time by slowing down their metabolisms and sleeping for months.

The conclusions are based on excavations in a cave called Sima de los Huesos – the pit of bones – at Atapuerca, near Burgos in northern Spain.

Over the past three decades, the fossilised remains of several dozen hominids have been scraped from sediments found at the bottom of the vertiginous 50-foot shaft that forms the central part of the pit at Atapuerca. The cave is effectively a mass grave, say researchers who have found thousands of teeth and pieces of bone that appear to have been deliberately dumped there. These fossils date back more than 400,000 years and were probably from early Neanderthals or their predecessors.

The site is one of the planet’s most important palaeontological treasure troves and has provided key insights into hominids in Europe. But now researchers have produced an unexpected twist to this tale.

In a paper published in the journal L’Anthropologie, Juan-Luis Arsuaga – who led the team that first excavated at the site – and Antonis Bartsiokas, of Democritus University of Thrace in Greece, argue that the fossils found there show seasonal variations that suggest that bone growth was disrupted for several months of each year.

They suggest these hominids found themselves “in metabolic states that helped them to survive for long periods of time in frigid conditions with limited supplies of food and enough stores of body fat”. They hibernated and this is recorded as disruptions in bone development.

The researchers admit the notion “may sound like science fiction” but point out that many mammals including primates such as bushbabies and lemurs do this. “This suggests that the genetic basis and physiology for such a hypometabolism could be preserved in many mammalian species including hominids,” state Arsuaga and Bartsiokas.

The pattern of lesions found in the hominids bones at the Sima cave are consistent with lesions found in bones of hibernating mammals, including cave bears. “A strategy of hibernation would have been the only solution for them to survive having to spend months in a cave due to the frigid conditions,” the authors state.

They also point to the fact that the remains of a hibernating cave bear (Ursus deningeri) have also been found in the Sima pit making it all the more credible to suggest hominids were doing the same “to survive the frigid conditions and food scarcity as did the cave bears”.

The authors examine several counter-arguments. Modern Inuit and Sámi people – although living in equally harsh, cold conditions – do not hibernate. So why did the hominids in the Sima cave?

The answer, say Arsuaga and Bartsiokas, is that fatty fish and reindeer fat provide Inuit and Sami people with food during winter and so preclude the need for them to hibernate. In contrast, the area around the Sima site half a million years ago would not have provided anything like enough food. As they state: “The aridification of Iberia then could not have provided enough fat-rich food for the hominids of Sima during the harsh winter - making them resort to cave hibernation.”

“It is a very interesting argument and it will certainly stimulate debate,” said forensic anthropologist Patrick Randolph-Quinney of Northumbria University in Newcastle. “However, there are other explanations for the variations seen in the bones found in Sima and these have to be addressed fully before we can come to any realistic conclusions. That has not been done yet, I believe.”

Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London pointed out that large mammals such as bears do not actually hibernate, because their large bodies cannot lower their core temperature enough. Instead they enter a less deep sleep known as torpor. In such a condition, the energy demands of the human-sized brains of the Sima hominids would have remained very large, creating an additional survival problem for them during torpor.

“Nevertheless, the idea is a fascinating one that could be tested by examining the genomes of the Sima hominids, Neanderthals and Denisovans for signs of genetic changes linked with the physiology of torpor,” he added.

[Xuxalina Rihhia]

https://www.sci.news/archaeology/straig ... 11619.html






Neanderthal Apes Hunted Straight-Tusked Elephants 125,000 Years Ago
Feb 2, 2023 by Enrico de Lazaro
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Straight-tusked elephants (Palaeoloxodon antiquus) were the largest terrestrial mammals of the Pleistocene epoch, present in Europe and western Asia between 800,000 and 100,000 years ago. A new analysis of 125,000-year-old bones of straight-tusked elephants from ancient lake deposits in Germany shows that hunting of these enormous animals was part of the cultural repertoire of Neanderthal hominids there, over 2,000 years, many dozens of generations.


Straight-tusked elephants are among the most powerful proboscideans (elephants and their extinct relatives) that have ever lived.

The animals had a very wide head and extremely long tusks, and were roughly three times larger than that of living Asian elephants, twice that of African ones, and also much larger than woolly mammoths.

Estimates of maximum shoulder height vary from 3 to 4.2 m (10-14 feet) and body mass from 4.5 to 13 tons for females and males, respectively.

Straight-tusked elephants had a preference for warm temperate settings and has been documented in the middle latitudes of Europe mainly during interglacials, probably finding a refuge in the southern parts of western Eurasia during colder parts of the Pleistocene.

Their distribution overlapped with that of western Eurasian hominins, such as Neanderthals and earlier populations.

Several Paleolithic sites have yielded skeletal remains of straight-tusked elephants, in association with stone tools, leading to rich speculation about the nature of interactions between these large elephants and Pleistocene bipedal apes: were these the remains of scavenged animals or may some of them have been hunted, although hunting of these large animals is often considered a dangerous enterprise, with the costs possibly larger than the benefits?

On the basis of the rich material from the travertine exposures at the Taubach site in Germany, archaeologists suggested back in 1922 that Neanderthal apes were targeting young individuals, hunting them in pit traps there.

In 1948, the site of Lehringen, also in Germany, yielded a skeleton of the straight-tusked elephant, associated with 25 flint artifacts and a wooden lance, while a small number of flint artifacts were recovered during excavation of an adult individual from an ancient lake infill at Gröbern, Germany, in 1987.

However, none of these three localities have yielded bones with unambiguous cut marks, which would provide the most straightforward evidence for elephant exploitation by hominids.

In new research, Professor Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser from the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz and MONREPOS and her colleagues analyzed the richest straight-tusked elephant assemblage known thus far, consisting of the well-preserved remains of over 70 individuals.

The specimens were recovered during archaeological rescue operations carried out from 1985 to 1996 at the site of Neumark-Nord 1, which is located about 10 km south of the city of Halle in central Germany.

They were almost exclusively from adult individuals and conspicuous among these was a predominance of male animals. This pattern had not been observed before — neither in fossil nor in living elephant populations — and was difficult to explain.

“In total, we looked at 3,122 faunal remains of European straight-tusked elephants that had been deposited at the Neumark-Nord 1 site,” said Dr. Lutz Kindler, a researcher at MONREPOS.

According to the team, all of the studied bone complexes from the site displayed traces of primatopogenic modification of elephant carcasses.

Neanderthals had primary access to fresh carcasses and butchered these in similar ways, involving extensive processing.
Cut marks on skeletons of the straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus) from Neumark-Nord, Halle, Germany. Image credit: Gaudzinski-Windheuser et al., doi: 10.1126/sciadv.add8186.

Cut marks on skeletons of the straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus) from Neumark-Nord, Halle, Germany. Image credit: Gaudzinski-Windheuser et al., doi: 10.1126/sciadv.add8186.

“This constitutes the first clear-cut evidence of elephant hunting by hominids,” said Professor Wil Roebroecksm, a researcher at Leiden University.

“Adult male individuals, much larger than the females, are overrepresented in the assemblage, probably because, as with present-day elephants, male adult elephants kept to themselves.”

“Compared to females, they were easier to approach closely without the protection of a herd. Since they were also much larger, hunting them would have yielded much higher returns, for significantly less risk.”

“Hunting these large animals demanded close cooperation between the participating group members, just like prey processing, which entailed extensive butchering, including removing meat scraps from the long bones as well as the fat-rich foot cushions,” the authors said.

“Processing may also have entailed drying products for long-time storage.”

“A 10-ton elephant — not the largest one at Neumark-Nord 1 — could have yielded a minimum of 2,500 adult Neanderthal ape rations of 4,000 kcals, consisting of a safe mixture of protein and fat from one animal only.”

“These figures are important as they suggest that Neanderthals, at least temporarily, congregated in groups much larger than the about 25 individuals usually seen as the maximum size of a local group and/or that they had cultural means for large-scale food preservation and storage.”

The study was published in the journal Science Advances.

_____

Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser et al. 2023. Hunting and processing of straight-tusked elephants 125.000 years ago: Implications for Neanderthal behavior. Science Advances 9 (5); doi: 10.1126/sciadv.add8186
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