@Setanta,
Quote:While it is true that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, noting how sparse remains are does nothing to defend a claim that human "killer apes" exterminated h.n.
No need to badmouth apes... I am talking of
modern human beings, a species known to hunt other species to extinction, and to kill his fellow man by the trainload.
Quote:The important "tool kit" changes of 50,000 ybp, the Mousterian period, were changes in the tool kit of Neanderthals. [...] There is a period in the late Mousterian when early modern human cultures began to flourish, and those are generally understood by modern paleoanthropologists to have been the restult of early modern humans (h.s.s.) adding the Mousterian tool kit to their own technological culture. As Neanderthals disappeared, h.s.s. began using and improving upon the tool kit h.n. had used in their final days. The Châtelperronian culture of France/Spain is considered to have represented the overlap between h.n. and h.s.s. Perhaps you don't agree with those assessments, but i'll give far more credence to the considered opinions of professional paleoanthropologists than i will to your ipse dixit contentions. I have no reason to consider you expert in these matters.
These is mumbo-jumbo archeology, misunderstood and misrepresented bits and pieces from wikipedia, not the "opinion of professional paleoanthropologists".
The Mousterian technology, widely associated with Neanderthal (but also used by modern humans from circa 150,000), starts around 200,000 bp and ends, like Neanderthal, around 30,000 bp. Javelins were a big part of the armory. There were also axes, scrappers and sometimes semi-light projectile heads obtained through the Levallois technique, like in the Châtelperronian culture. This is Mousterian:
www.bing.com/images/search?q=mousterian
The technologies that gave Homo sapiens a strong competitive edge against Mousterian techniques and those humans who used them, including neanderthal, and that appears circa 50,000 bp, is the next big thing:
Aurigancian, characterized by much finer tools and weapons, allowing lighter projectiles (arrows or smaller spears) and all sorts of things made from ivory or bones: fishing hooks, needles, spearthrowers, statuettes, etc.
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Aurignacian
http://www.lithiccastinglab.com/gallery-pages/olivebrmiscellaneoustoolssm.jpg
The combination of spearthrowers and lighter missiles gave our ancestors then a weapon system that was lighter, easier to carry, easier to produce in large quantities, and with a similar or better range and precision than javelins, the arm of choice of neanderthal. Or so goes the theory...
The fact is that this new Aurignacian technology is strongly correlated with Sapiens in the archeological record, and concomitant with the invasion of Europe by Sapiens and the disappearance of Neanderthal...
Quote:at a time when it is estimated that there were 1000 or fewer humans in all of Eurasia, whose daily existence was given over to hunting, collecting food and storing that food, you allege that they ran around in bands slaughtering h.n. and sasquatch and whatever other crypto-species you mentioned in that silly post. Even had there been 10,000 human individuals, as some suggest, that's a hell of a lot of ground for them to have covered at the same time as they needed to hunt, gather and store food.
I don't believe these figures, certainly not the lower ones. Populations go up and down. I've already explained that hunter-gatherers need a lot of space to survive and that, as any species, they would have filled up their ecological space given sufficient good times... Fishing and better hunting could have led to a demographic explosion of sorts among Sapiens, which would explain the whole movement of Sapiens out of Africa.
In the end, occasional violence between groups with asymetrical technology is just one plausible explanation. It doesn't need to be the
only factor in Neanderthal's extinction, but ruling it out entirely is quite unwise IMO.
After all, you guys didn't shoot all the American natives did you? Diseases and displacement and lack of hunting grounds did most of the trick in the Wild West.... with the occasional war.