Thursday, September 18, 2008
neanderthals 7
To address this question, Smith, Tafforeau, and colleagues had previously used the synchrotron to demonstrate that an early modern human child from a site called Jebel Irhoud in Morocco (dated to around 160,000 years ago) showed the modern human life history pattern. In contrast, the "growth rings" in the 100,000-year-old tooth of a young Neanderthal discovered in the Scladina cave in Belgium indicated that the child was eight years old when it died and appeared to be on track to reach puberty several years sooner than the average for modern humans. Another research team, using a single Neanderthal tooth, had found no such difference between its growth pattern and that of living humans. But while a full analysis from the "jawbone convention" would take time, preliminary results, Smith said, were "consistent with what we see in Scladina."
"This would certainly affect Neanderthal social organization, mating strategy, and parenting behavior," says Hublin. "Imagine a society where individuals start to reproduce four years earlier than in modern humans. It's a very different society. It could also mean the Neanderthals' cognitive abilities may have been different from modern humans'."
Neanderthal society may have differed in another way crucial to group survival: what archaeologists call cultural buffering. A buffer is something in a group's behavior—a technology, a form of social organization, a cultural tradition—that hedges its bets in the high-stakes game of natural selection. It's like having a small cache of extra chips at your elbow in a poker game, so you don't have to fold your hand quite as soon. For example, Mary Stiner and Steven Kuhn of the University of Arizona argue that early modern humans emerged from Africa with the buffer of an economically efficient approach to hunting and gathering that resulted in a more diverse diet. While men chased after large animals, women and children foraged for small game and plant foods. Stiner and Kuhn maintain that Neanderthals did not enjoy the benefits of such a marked division of labor. From southern Israel to northern Germany, the archaeological record shows that Neanderthals instead relied almost entirely on hunting big and medium-size mammals like horses, deer, bison, and wild cattle. No doubt they were eating some vegetable material and even shellfish near the Mediterranean, but the lack of milling stones or other evidence for processing plant foods suggests to Stiner and Kuhn that to a Neanderthal vegetables were supplementary foods, "more like salads, snacks, and desserts than energy-rich staple foods."
Their bodies' relentless demand for calories, especially in higher latitudes and during colder interludes, probably forced Neanderthal women and children to join in the hunt—a "rough and dangerous business," write Stiner and Kuhn, judging by the many healed fractures evident on Neanderthal upper limbs and skulls. The modern human bands that arrived on the landscape toward the end of the Neanderthals' time had other options.
"By diversifying diet and having personnel who [did different tasks], you have a formula for spreading risk, and that is ultimately good news for pregnant women and for kids," Stiner told me. "So if one thing falls through, there's something else." A Neanderthal woman would have been powerful and resilient. But without such cultural buffering, she and her young would have been at a disadvantage.
"This would certainly affect Neanderthal social organization, mating strategy, and parenting behavior," says Hublin. "Imagine a society where individuals start to reproduce four years earlier than in modern humans. It's a very different society. It could also mean the Neanderthals' cognitive abilities may have been different from modern humans'."
Neanderthal society may have differed in another way crucial to group survival: what archaeologists call cultural buffering. A buffer is something in a group's behavior—a technology, a form of social organization, a cultural tradition—that hedges its bets in the high-stakes game of natural selection. It's like having a small cache of extra chips at your elbow in a poker game, so you don't have to fold your hand quite as soon. For example, Mary Stiner and Steven Kuhn of the University of Arizona argue that early modern humans emerged from Africa with the buffer of an economically efficient approach to hunting and gathering that resulted in a more diverse diet. While men chased after large animals, women and children foraged for small game and plant foods. Stiner and Kuhn maintain that Neanderthals did not enjoy the benefits of such a marked division of labor. From southern Israel to northern Germany, the archaeological record shows that Neanderthals instead relied almost entirely on hunting big and medium-size mammals like horses, deer, bison, and wild cattle. No doubt they were eating some vegetable material and even shellfish near the Mediterranean, but the lack of milling stones or other evidence for processing plant foods suggests to Stiner and Kuhn that to a Neanderthal vegetables were supplementary foods, "more like salads, snacks, and desserts than energy-rich staple foods."
Their bodies' relentless demand for calories, especially in higher latitudes and during colder interludes, probably forced Neanderthal women and children to join in the hunt—a "rough and dangerous business," write Stiner and Kuhn, judging by the many healed fractures evident on Neanderthal upper limbs and skulls. The modern human bands that arrived on the landscape toward the end of the Neanderthals' time had other options.
"By diversifying diet and having personnel who [did different tasks], you have a formula for spreading risk, and that is ultimately good news for pregnant women and for kids," Stiner told me. "So if one thing falls through, there's something else." A Neanderthal woman would have been powerful and resilient. But without such cultural buffering, she and her young would have been at a disadvantage.
# posted by roodbont @ 2:49 PM 
