Frightening new take on Neanderthals

apparently hes a showman. His "forensics reconstruction expert" is trully full of it because he apparently avoided using the muscle insertions that define the face. ALso he took one particular skull bd apparently absed his reconstruction on it. The nasal ridge isnt shown on Vendraminis.

And , of course, one of the 800 pound gorillas in the room is that he insists on making this specimens vertebra insert at the back of models skull. That we know is bullshit too. SO,Vendramini is apparently just trying to sell story books and , even though his "idea" was conceptualized in a book 3 years ago, nothing of his is in a peer reviewed journal has appeared.
The term "good catches" is a term apparently coined by Vendramini himself and picked up by his admirers. Gunga would, of course , be stuck spomehwere in the middle on this because he doesnt "Believe" in the process of evolution and even Vendramini embraces it as foundational.

http://media.photobucket.com/image/neanderthal%20skull/eoinandobi/Anthro/neanderskull.jpg?o=2#!oZZ10QQcurrentZZhttp%3A%2F%2Fmedia.photobucket.com%2Fimage%2Fneanderthal%20skull%2Ffesterisn%2Fgif%2Fbh-030_web-md.jpg%3Fo%3D10 Heres a whole collection of neanderthal skulls , most of which show the pronounced bnasal ridge that Vebndramini likes to omit. Also, the brow ridges are pronounced or not to varios degrees. (I wonder if these brow ridges correlate to different Pleistocene ages of the specimens?)

Maybe it relates to the crazy uncle in the attic.

One thing I notice... DESPITE laboring under the misconception of evolution/evoloserism, Vendramini has put a huge amount of work and study into this project, and it shows, so that even somebody like myself who has no use for evoloserism can glean valuable pieces of information from the work.

This is in sharp contradistinction to the academic dead wood and blowhards who see themselves as automatic experts on everything which we see here.

see thats what an education can do for you, it makes you skeptical of every asshole who wants to sell books first.

Eriv von Deniken did a lot of field work and study to try to find evidence to support his idea too. Did that make his work credible? Answer----HELL NO, but he sold more books than did Lewis Carroll

Arturo Balseiro, "one of the world's foremost digital sculptors" according to Vendramini, the guy he hired to make his "re-creation" of Neanderthal, makes his living by creating monsters and aliens for the movies. In other words, he specializes in imagining nonexistent beings with no actual reality, that can be either digitally created thru special effects, or that humans can somehow play with pounds and pounds of makeup that look nothing like actual humans. It isn't apparent that he has any actual experience in creating something that is actually based on real evidence. As Farmer points out, you can actually tell quite a bit about human (or other primate) posture, locomotion, and appearance by studying the attachment points of muscles and soft tissue on bones of the body and the skull. Looking at his recreations, it's apparent that he totally screwed up the relation of the skull to the body, just as the first point. He should have hired someone who actually knows something about human AND primate anatomy and what the physical evidence left behind on the body can tell us, rather than a special effects artist. Movies are not real life. Vendramini doesn't seem to have realized that yet.

Good questions and I wish I had better answers to them... Far as I know Pleistocene artwork is from the late middle and late Pleistocene and not from the Middle Pleistocene when neanderthals would have dominated Europe. I also do not know of any representational images of cro-magnons or other early humans.

Vendramini's images ( themandus.org ) show neanderthals with their fight faces on:



That would normally be for picking some sort of a fight with another neanderthal. I've never heard of a hunter making a face like that at any sort of a prey animal, you'd risk scaring the prey animal off...

Mousterian culture is at least 30 to 50 K years old and there is only one site with cave art that is clearly Neanderthal. That is from the Nerja cave complex in SPain. The drawings are "Red ochre" based and are quite primitive. Theyd been described as a"double helix of DNA" look to them. BUT , carved art from the Mousterian culture (Neanderthal) has been found at one of the NEander Valley sites . It showed a "gravid" woman, sort of a fetish.


Vebdramini has his head up his anal orifice. In the last 3 days Ive seen photos of about 25 different neanderthal skulls on the web and the one he chose for his "reconstruction" is missing the orbital ridge massif and the nasal bridge . SO his reconstruction of a big eyed small nosed ape is fucked up from the start Id say. His cartoon sculptor didnt know enough about muscle attachment or ridge lines and resulting structures of the face.

Hes made the "piltdown man" of reconstruction and youve not even questioned his veracity.

The ONLY thing I see wrong with the picture is the question of a predator ever making a face like that at a prey animal. Other than that, the creature Vendramini depicts is pretty much ballpark for what I'd expect of a creature whose DNA was halfway between ours and that of a chimpanzee, which had gone totally carniverous in ice-age Europe, and adapted to the low light conditions of the European ice age and/or gone nocturnal.

Vendramini's pictures are logical; images we've seen previously are not.

then you are ignoring the whole aspect of anatomy of the skull. Im nothere to try to convince you because Ive known how you are obstinately ignorant of alot of things in biology and geology. Its not my job dude.

He at least got the nose dead wrong dont you see that?? He worked with a busted skull that had no nasal ridge.

As far as the "halfway point" . I dont know if its halfway or even 1/3 of the way, but on a continuum from chimpas to us the neanderthal Genome is a fully Homonim one. The chromosome 1 and 2, the 19 other HARs are included within the Neanderthal genome. Hes sorta more like an archeopteryx or a tiiktalik. He walked upright, he had a human looking skull, he made fire and weapons. He used clothing like coverings. He buried his dead and made some cave art and artifacts.
To draw him with ape-like features is kind of a joke . The artist was making something for his next sci fi, not for science.
These two guys are story tellers not scientists and youve bought into it without any skepticism.
ANd passing the conclusion that the artist was right is silly. You fail to recognize that reconstructions of animal and human physiognomies is a science not cartoon art. But, as long as you dont go trying to arguie that its real science, you can believe what you wish, this is Merka after all.

This is a scientific work in the same way Jurassic Park is a documentary.

Being green is often difficult unkess you have red eyes. (Theres a song there)


AS far as this Neanderthal theory, I think we kept open minds at first, even though gungas past support of the outrageous is well documented herein. It took comparisons of several available complete Neanderthal skulls to provide information that casts a lot of doubt on this guys reconstruction. If, at least, hed put a nose that was human on the thing (and of course stop trying to make his neck attachment so apelike, taht was the first thing upon which someone here cast doubt ) .If they gave him a schnozz , I woldnt make any comments on tne high melanin skin (even though most Neanderthals were found on Northern climes)

Since this is a three yera old story, I dont see a rush to confirm his "theory" from recognized paleoanthropologists.


OH well, as we said before, it makes a great story so even if its not, it oughta be true eh?

Compare chimpanzee, Neanderthal, and modern human skulls (e.g. shape, cranial capacity, spine shape, point at which spine and skull join--indicative of bipedalism), facial angle, nose structure, jaw size and shape), and tell me neanderthals aren't far more like modern humans. Interactive graphic:
http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/humanorigins/meettherelatives/w5i5.html

Ain't no bullshit "halfway between chimpanzee and human" about it. For that matter, eyeballing modern human and neanderthal skulls, we both have larger eye sockets than chimps, and by eyeball we both look similar in size, and it's for damn sure we're not nocturnal predators (at least not before the invention of electricity, and to date there have been no Neanderthal electrical generating plants found fossilized)

youve gotta understand that gunga believes that humans, chimps, and nenaderthals all lie on a scatter gram of genomes rather than a sort of continuum. SO his "halfway" point doesnt have any evolutionary significance and is therefore meaningless. I dont think we know where the variances lie in human v neanderthal genomes. Im sure the hair and speech areass are some. Howerever the HARs(Human Accelerated Regions) include over 200 specific areas containing these single strands of DNA, which are like single nucleotide polymorphic structures. The HARs are actually functioning areas that tell genes to turn off or on. The Neanderthals and humans have many of these HAR areas in common, whereas NONE of them between chimps and humans. Also the big area of human and neander similarity in the genpomes is the fused chromosome 1 and 2 of the chimp which has become a single chromosome in gumans AND neanderthals. SO, evolutionary tracking shows that the fused chromosome occured AFTER the break from the common ancestor for chimps and humans.

MJ, that link you posted is taking forever to load, any way to clip a section to speed it up > Im on an old laptop in the field at a countryside Starbucksand Im using WiFi

I got it to open, thanks, its a really good comparison that shows the idiocy of Vendraminis sci-fi construction.

yeah, sorry, it's interactive graphics, so it's gotta be a big file. The fused chromosomes are a definite indicator of differentiation between us and the great apes, but I don't know that we know where along the line they originated, probably pretty far back, I'm not sure how much of an indicator of differentiation of specific traits they would be.

Regulator genes probably have a lot to do with who we are too. I read somewhere that there are some indication that brain structure is self-organizing when it's turned on for a longer time, which might be a simple answer in part to where all that cranial capacity came from.

both nneanderthals and gumans have the fused chromosome 2. That is a good indication of the line of ascendancy. I understand that the HARs wich are the regulators, are piling up more and more for us and neandethals Im sure we will see many that arent in common but thise would be the areas of difference beyween Nenderthals and sapiens

farmer, oil geologists regard Starbucks as being "in the field"? I had no idea how sophisticated you guys had become.

Interesting too is that there is a suggestion that some Neanderthal DNA contains a gene that may figure in having red hair, which in modern humans is highly correlated with pale white skin. Maybe Neanderthals looked Scottish, rather than that obvious gorilla-like tropical skin adaptation Vendramini gave his fantasy picture.

Funny how the term "Neanderthal Man" turns out to be an oxymoron, isn't it.