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Claim: Neanderthals chewed more, died out

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File:Homo neanderthalensis adult male - head model - Smithsonian Museum of Natural History - 2012-05-17.jpg
Neanderthal 70-80 kya/Tim Evanson, John Gurche

Another ntry inth “why the Neanderthals died out” science talk show, from ScienceDaily:

Neandertals adapted their diet to the resources that were most readily available and easily accessible, while modern humans seemed to have invested more effort in accessing food resources. Modern humans’ changes in diet were possibly more strongly marked by the use of new technologies in obtaining food. The researchers concluded that Upper Paleolithic modern humans’ differing dietary strategies may have given them an advantage over the Neandertals.

“Actually, one would expect that the Neandertals would be better adapted to the occasionally very harsh climatic conditions in Ice Age Europe,” says Sireen El Zaatari. “They developed there, while anatomically modern humans evolved in Africa and only migrated to Europe much later,” she explains. El Zaatari is able to draw conclusions about diet by assessing the type and degree of microwear on the molars. The data for her study were taken from the remains of 52 European and Levantine individuals — Neandertals and Upper Paleolithic humans — from 37 sites dating back to between 500,000 and 12,000 years before the present. “The alternation between colder and warmer phases reshaped the landscape again and again. Sometimes, the habitat was that of the steppe, at other times, there were forests,” says El Zaatari. More. Paper. (public access) – Sireen El Zaatari, Frederick E. Grine, Peter S. Ungar, Jean-Jacques Hublin. Neandertal versus Modern Human Dietary Responses to Climatic Fluctuations. PLOS ONE, 2016; 11 (4): e0153277 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0153277

So the study draws such large conclusions from 52 assorted individuals over half a million years…

Count ‘em. Won’t take long.

No offense intended, but if this sort of thing weren’t fuelled by Darwinism, it would be laughed at for sheer insufficiency of information. When blessed by Darwinism, it becomes “science.” Because Darwinism is not a form of enquiry; it is a search for evidence to prove a point.  Whole different project.

Someday one hopes, with more information, early human history will be put on a historical footing, which will advance knowledge by slaughtering thousands of speculations based on very little evidence.

Yes, guys, that’s the sea boiling over again.

See also: Neanderthal Man: The long-lost relative turns up again, this time with documents

and

New Scientist tells us what human gene traits conquered world One must pay to read anything significant, and one senses that we’re not going to hear why, exactly, those other groups are somehow classified as not “the human species.” Because if they are, the story collapses: Everyone who wasn’t cloned has a blended genetic inheritance.

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Comments
Neanderthals dominated Europe for 250,000 years, more than 100,000 years longer than Homo Sapiens are believed to have existed. So whatever it was that our cousins were doing was INCREDIBLY useful and productive, even if they had to survive on B&W TV and landline telephones. We have NO IDEA why Neander-buddies disappeared. Perhaps they were taken home by the space aliens. But I find it incredible (i.e., not believable) that a group of smart humans who had spent 150,000 years adapting their culture and technologies to life in Eurasia were suddenly outcompeted by puny little upstarts from the Mideast who had to learn cold-weather tech piecemeal as our bands moved north. But, hey. The guys got their paper published and they're shoo-ins to get another grant for even more "research". And that's what it's all about: grant money.mahuna
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