Why would modern humans mate with Neanderthals?

wv wrote:

Well, some Neanderthal women were just Hot.
Especially the corset-wearing Neanderthals.

w
v

A good personality can go a long way.

Why would modern humans mate with Neanderthals?

Bigger brains. Neanderthals apparently had bigger brains and were stronger physically.

Home Sapiens won the war. But it’s kinda like VHS versus Betamax. The latter should have.

zn wrote:

What I heard.

Basically Neanderthals couldn’t run.

Plus other stuff.

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ARTICLE: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/jun/02/why-did-neanderthals-die-out

Why did the Neanderthals die out?

The puzzle is one of the greatest surrounding our species. On a planet that bristled with different types of human being, including Neanderthals and the Hobbit-like folk of Flores, only one is left today: Homo sapiens.

Our current solo status on Earth is therefore an evolutionary oddity – though it is not clear when our species became Earth’s only masters, nor is it clear why we survived when all other versions of humanity died out. Did we kill off our competitors, or were the others just poorly adapted and unable to react to the extreme climatic fluctuations that then beset the planet?

These key issues are to be tackled this week at a major conference at the British Museum, in London, called When Europe was covered by ice and ash. At the meeting scientists will reveal results from a five-year research programme using modern dating techniques to answer these puzzles.

In particular, researchers have focused on the Neanderthals, a species very close in physique and brain size to modern humans. They once dominated Europe, but disappeared after modern humans emerged from our African homeland around 60,000 years ago. The question is: why?

“A major problem in understanding what happened when modern humans appeared in Europe has concerned the dates for our arrival,” said Professor Chris Stringer, of the Natural History Museum, London. “It was once thought we appeared in Europe around 35,000 years ago and that we coexisted with Neanderthals for thousands of years after that. They may have hung on in pockets – including caves in Gibraltar – until 28,000 years ago, it was believed.”

In other words, there was a long, gradual takeover by modern humans – an idea that is likely to be demolished at this week’s conference, Stringer said. Results from the five-year research programme, Reset (Response of humans to abrupt environmental transitions), will show that modern humans arrived much earlier than previously estimated and that Neanderthals expired earlier than we thought. Careful dating of finds across Europe suggest Homo sapiens could have reached Europe 45,000 years ago. Five thousand years later, Neanderthals had largely disappeared.

“Previous research on Neanderthal sites which suggested that they were more recent than 40,000 years old appears to be wrong,” said Stringer. “That is a key finding that will be discussed at the conference.”

Using radiocarbon technology to date remains that are 40,000 years old has always been tricky. Radioactive carbon decays relatively quickly and after 40,000 years there will only be a tiny amount left in a sample to measure. The tiniest piece of contaminant can then ruin dating efforts.

However, scientists have set out to get round these problems. At Oxford University, scientists led by Tom Higham have developed new methods to remove contamination and have been able to make much more precise radiocarbon dating for this period. In addition, Reset researchers have used evidence of a devastating eruption of the Campi Flegrei volcano west of Naples 39,000 years ago.

Recent studies have shown this eruption was much more destructive than previously recognised. More than 60 cubic miles of ash were blasted into the atmosphere and covered a vast area of eastern Europe, North Africa and western Asia. This layer gives scientists a precise means of dating for this period and, combined with the new radiocarbon dating, shows there seem to be no Neanderthal sites anywhere in Europe 39,000 years ago, a date 10,000 years earlier than previous estimates. It is a significant shift in our thinking about our nearest evolutionary cousins.

Some researchers have even suggested that Campi Flegrei – the biggest volcanic eruption in Europe for more than 200,000 years – would have had a catastrophic impact. Vast plumes of ash would have blotted out the sun for months, or possibly years, and caused temperatures to plummet. Sulphur dioxide, fluoride and chloride emissions would have generated intense falls of acid rain. Neanderthals may simply have shivered and choked to death.

The Campi Flegrei eruption not only gives us a date for the Neanderthals’ disappearance, it may provide us with the cause of their extinction, though Stringer sounds a note of caution.

“Some researchers believe there is a link between the eruption and the Neanderthals’ disappearance. But I doubt it,” he said. “From the new radiocarbon dating and the work carried out by Reset scientists, it looks as if the Neanderthals had probably already vanished. A few may still have been hanging around, of course, and Campi Flegrei may have delivered the coup de grace. But it would be wrong to think the eruption was the main cause of the Neanderthals’ demise.”

So what did kill off the Neanderthals? Given the speed at which they seem to have disappeared from the planet after modern humans spread out of Africa, it is likely that Homo sapiens played a critical role in their demise. That does not mean we chased them down and killed them – an unlikely scenario given their muscular physiques. However, we may have been more successful at competing for resources, as recent research has suggested.

Eiluned Pearce and Robin Dunbar of Oxford University recently worked with Stringer and compared the skulls of 32 Homo sapiens and 13 Neanderthals, finding the latter had eye sockets that were significantly larger. These larger eyes were an adaptation to the long, dark nights and winters of Europe, they concluded, and would have required much larger visual processing areas in Neanderthal skulls.

By contrast, modern humans, from sunny Africa, had no need for this adaptation and instead they evolved frontal lobes, which are associated with high-level processing. “More of the Neanderthal brain appears to have been dedicated to vision and body control, leaving less brain to deal with other functions like social networking,” Pearce told BBC News.

This point is stressed by Stringer. He said: “Neanderthal brains were as big as modern humans’ but the former had bigger bodies. More of their brain cells would have been needed to control these larger bodies, on top of the added bits of cortex needed for their enhanced vision. That means they had less brain power available to them compared with modern humans.”

Thus our ancestors possessed a fair bit of enhanced cerebral prowess, even though their brains were no bigger than Neanderthals’. How they used that extra brain power is a little trickier to assess, though most scientists believe it maintained complex, extended social networks. Developing an ability to speak complex language would have been a direct outcome, for example.

Having extended networks of clans would have been a considerable advantage in Europe, which was then descending into another ice age. When times got hard for one group, help could be sought from another. Neanderthals would have less backup. This point is supported by studies of the flints used for Neanderthal tools. These are rarely found more than 30 miles from their source. By contrast, modern humans were setting up operations that saw implements transported 200 miles.

Cultural life became increasingly important for humans. Research by Tanya Smith of Harvard University recently revealed that modern human childhoods became longer than those of Neanderthals. By studying the teeth of Neanderthal children, she found they grew much more quickly than modern human children. The growth of teeth is linked to overall development and shows Neanderthals must have had a much reduced opportunity to learn from their parents and clan members.

“We moved from a primitive ‘live fast and die young’ strategy to a ‘live slow and grow old’ strategy and that has helped make humans one of the most successful organisms on the planet,” said Smith. Thus Neanderthals – who already lived in sparse, small populations across Europe – were fundamentally ill-equipped to deal with the newcomers who had arrived from Africa.

“There may not have been a single cause of Neanderthal extinction,” said Stringer. “They may have disappeared in different regions for different reasons, but the background cause is clear. They didn’t have the numbers.”

nittany ram wrote:

Invasion Biology stipulates that the species most ecologically similar to the invading species will face the greatest competition from the invading species.

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http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/alien-invasion-ecologist-doubts-exotic/

“…Earlier this spring, he published a bombshell of a book with Oxford University Press called Invasion Biology. Davis claims that alien species have been demonized and resources wasted on purported “invasives” could be better spent protecting habitat. More than that, he disputes the maxim that invasive species are the second-leading cause of species endangerment after habitat destruction, impacting some 42 percent of threatened and endangered species. Such concerns are particularly timely as ecologists debate the risks of relocating species to save them from climate change. In June, one reviewer wrote that Davis “dares to touch the third rail of invasion biology,” slaughtering some of its “sacred cows.”..

nittany ram wrote:

Yeah the bow and arrow was invented in Africa about 70,000 years ago so modern humans had them when they made first contact with Neanderthals 45,000 years ago. And modern humans certainly had spears designed to be thrown whether they had the holder that increases the distance or not.

More on this.

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Lethal weapons may have given early humans edge over Neanderthals
Discovery of sharpened stone blades up to 71,000 years old suggests humans leaving Africa were armed to the teeth

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/nov/07/lethal-weapons-early-humans-neanderthals

Early humans wandered out of Africa armed with darts and arrows that made them formidable hunters and deadly competitors for any Neanderthals that stood in their way.

The revised version of the human story follows the discovery in South Africa of a haul of small stone blades or “bladelets” that formed lethal weapon tips, either for arrows fired from bows, or spears propelled from wooden throwers called atlatls.

Researchers uncovered more than 70 sharp stone tips measuring no more than 5cm long while excavating an eroded cliff face that overlooks the ocean at a site called Pinnacle Point on the south coast.

The development of the technology allowed early humans to attack wild animals or human foes from a greater distance and with more devastating effect. “People who possess light armaments that can be thrown long distances have immediate advantages in hunting prey and killing competitors,” Curtis Marean, project director at Arizona State University, told the Guardian.

The blades were made from a rock called silcrete that must be heated in fire to transform it into a material that can be flaked into a sharp edge. Long, thin flakes of stone were notched and snapped to make smaller tips, and then blunted on one side so they could be fixed into lengths of wood or bone to make a spear or dart.

Tests on the stone tools found at Pinnacle Point revealed they were made throughout a period lasting from 71,000 to 60,000 years ago, suggesting that one of the earliest arms industries was sustained by knowledge and expertise handed down from generation to generation. Details of the haul are reported in the journal Nature.

To manufacture the projectile tips, early humans must have collected raw rock materials, gathered wood for burning, known how to heat-treat the silcrete, prepare and trim the blades, and finally attach them to arrows and spears. The ability to master these tasks and pass them down to others draws on brain functions that are essential to the modern mind.

Scientists have unearthed similar stone bladelets at other sites in South Africa and Kenya, but none so old or as enduring as those discovered at Pinnacle Point. The technology spread to other parts of Africa and Eurasia around 20,000 years later.

Kyle Brown, a co-author on the paper from the University of Cape Town said the team spotted the minute but carefully made tools among the smallest material collected in sieves used at the excavation site.

Marean believes the combination of more advanced weapons and greater cooperative behaviour among the early humans was a “knockout punch” for the Neanderthals. “Combine them, as modern humans did, and still do, and no prey or competitor is safe,” he said. “This probably laid the foundation for the expansion out of Africa of modern humans and the extinction of many prey as well as our sister species such as the Neanderthals.”

In an accompanying article, Sally McBrearty, an anthropologist at the University of Connecticut, notes that the preparation of the stone weapon tips must have taken “days, weeks or months” and been interrupted from time to time by more urgent tasks. This suggests the early human weapons-makers had the brain power to hold tasks and future plans in their memories.

The invention of stone bladelets in south Africa may have defined the success of humans as they moved north to occupy the rest of the world. In the journal, Prof McBrearty writes: “Human populations are thought to have started migrating from Africa shortly after 100,000 years ago. If they were armed with the bow and arrow, they would have been more than a match for anything or anyone they met.”

NewMexicoRam wrote:

“Why would modern humans mate with Neanderthals?”

Well, gee, 49’er fans come from SOMEWHERE, you know!

Same for StanK.