Did humans eat neanderthals?

[danmand]

http://www.isita-org.com/jass/Conten...amirezRozi.pdf

Cutmarked human remains bearing Neandertal features
and modern human remains associated with the
Aurignacian at Les Rois
Fernando V. Ramirez Rozzi1, Francesco d’Errico2, Marian Vanhaeren3, Pieter
M. Grootes4, Bertrand Kerautret5 & Véronique Dujardin6
1) UPR 2147, Dynamique de l’Evolution Humaine, CNRS, 44 Rue de l’Amiral Mouchez, 75014 Paris,
France
e-mail: fernando.ramirez-rozzi@evolhum.cnrs.fr
2) UMR 5199 PACEA, CNRS, Institut de Préhistoire et de Géologie du Quaternaire, Avenue des Facultés,
33405 Talence, France
3) UMR 7041 ArScAn, Ethnologie préhistorique, CNRS, 21 allée de l’université, F-92023 Nanterre,
France
4) Leibniz Labor für Altersbestimmung und Isotopenforschung Universität Kiel, Max-Eyth-Strasse 11-13,
24118 Kiel, Germany
5) IUT St Dié - LORIA - ADAGIo Team, Campus Scientifique, B.P. 239, 54506 Vandoeuvre-Lès-Nancy
cedex, France
6) DRAC Poitou-Charente, 102 Grand’Rue, 86020 Poitiers, France
Summary -  e view that Aurignacian technologies and their associated symbolic manifestations
represent the archaeological proxy for the spread of Anatomically Modern Humans into Europe, is supported
by few diagnostic human remains, including those from the Aurignacian site of Les Rois in south-western
France. Here we reassess the taxonomic attribution of the human remains, their cultural affi liation, and
provide fi ve new radiocarbon dates for the site. Patterns of tooth growth along with the morphological and
morphometric analysis of the human remains indicate that a juvenile mandible showing cutmarks presents
some Neandertal features, whereas another mandible is attributed to Anatomically Modern Humans.
Reappraisal of the archaeological sequence demonstrates that human remains derive from two layers dated
to 28–30 kyr BP attributed to the Aurignacian, the only cultural tradition detected at the site.  ree possible
explanations may account for this unexpected evidence.  e fi rst one is that the Aurignacian was exclusively
produced by AMH and that the child mandible from unit A2 represents evidence for consumption or, more
likely, symbolic use of a Neandertal child by Aurignacian AMH.  e second possible explanation is that
Aurignacian technologies were produced at Les Rois by human groups bearing both AMH and Neandertal
features. Human remains from Les Rois would be in this case the fi rst evidence of a biological contact
between the two human groups.  e third possibility is that all human remains from Les Rois represent an
AMH population with conserved plesiomorphic characters suggesting a larger variation in modern humans
from the Upper Palaeolithic.

 

[Aardvark154]

Also see: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...ow-Neanderthals-met-grisly-end--ate-them.html

 

[oldjones]

So the NeoCons ate the Neanderthals? Is that the political point? Or was it international diplomacy? A state dinner perhaps?

 

[wet_suit_one]

I'm pretty sure humans have always eaten everything they could (literally and metaphorically). Business as usual and really, nothing to see here...

 

[WoodPeckr]

So the NeoCons ate the Neanderthals?

Lumping Neanderthals in with NeoCons really gives Neanderthals a bad name...

 

[oldjones]

Lumping Neanderthals in with NeoCons really gives Neanderthals a bad name...

Au contraire, for once they're the innocent victims.

Besides, neocon neanderthal looked better than Cro-Magnon Cons.

 

[WoodPeckr]

LOL!
Point taken.....

 

[Robinto]

I can't get the link to work.

But, I wouldn't be surprised, just based on human nature.
With the absence of physical evidence, there is a lot of revisionist speculation about our Neaderthal cousins in certain circles. On the basis of a few flower pollen grains amidst some N bones, (which may just have blown in on the wind) a theory has arisen, that the species may have been sentient enough to have burial rituals akin to Homo Sapiens. A new hypothesis has become very popular, about peacenik, flower toting, cavemen, with more advanced psychic abilities than early humans.

Whatever.

The same folk also imagine a matriarchal society, or a female-dominated society around the same time, based on the number of those fat little, pregnant-looking, Venus figurines they keep finding, despite an absence of a matriarchal society any where on earth, or at any time in recorded history.

To my mind, judging from the way our primate relatives behave in groups, when other primates wander onto their territory, (monkeys will make war on other monkeys, and chimps will make war on monkeys, and eat 'em if they can catch 'em) and the way human tribes, bands, clans, and nations behave to strangers, then Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals probably wouldn't have gotten along very well.
There were only a few thousand individual running around fifty to thirty thousand years ago, and food was scarce.
The territorial instinct, combined with the imperative to jealously guard any food resources back in ice age Europe, would have made for a dangerous world for everybody.

Canibalism exists in every historical period in human history, and in every human society.

To imagine that there was a magical hiatus of peace and cooperation at one of the earliest stages of our evolution, at a time we faced some of our most challenging climatic conditions, (the end of the ice age) is a too fanciful for an old cynic like me.

I'm sure humans hunted them to extinction, 25,000 years ago, and probably chowed down on a few of them along the way. Maybe in some barbaric religious rituals, or maybe just 'cause someone was hungry. I'll bet one day we'll find some fossilized Homo Sapien fecal matter with odd DNA signatures to prove it.

We are a young and largely immature species. What chance would another, completely different SPECIES have had living amongst us? Would they have survived Hitler's Germany, only 60 years ago, when humans were butchering other humans based on perceived cultural differences, and minor, transient physical differences based on the completely non-scientific concept called RACE?