How Our Ancestors Won Out Over the Neanderthals: They Ate Them -A Galaxy Classic

After more than 200,000 years of existence in Europe and Western Asia, the closest living relative to Homo sapiens had gone extinct.

Why our ancestors won out over the Neanderthals is an important anthropological question.  Some say we were better at acquiring resources, we bred faster, we adapted better to a changing climate - oh, and the minor matter of how we hunted them down and ate them.  That helped.

That's the conclusion reached by fossil expert Fernando Rozzi of Paris's Centre National de la Récherche Scientifique, and considering it's based on a jawbone from a Neanderthal clearly butchered for food by someone with Homo Sapiens tools, there really aren't many other options.  The chips and damage to the jawbone were consistent with skeletons from deer which had been harvested for meat - except for, you know, the way it was a kinda-sorta person being eaten.  Go Team Humanity!

After more than 200,000 years of existence in Europe and Western Asia, the closest living relative to Homo sapiens had gone extinct.

Why our ancestors won out over the Neanderthals is an important anthropological question.  Some say we were better at acquiring resources, we bred faster, we adapted better to a changing climate - oh, and the minor matter of how we hunted them down and ate them.  That helped.

Examination of the jawbone shows that even the tongue was cut out and eaten, proving that either early humans had an advanced culinary sensibility or were just really really hungry.  This isn't very odd - the idea of actually choosing not to eat certain parts is an incredibly recent invention.  For most of human history we've just had to eat everything, then there was a brief period where wealth allowed people to turn their noses up at the "gross" bits, then the hot dog was invented and we ate everything again.

The cannibal conclusion has already been opposed by other anthropologists, who apparently believe that the Neanderthals just spontaneously died out when humanity arrived.  Also they don't study the entirety of human history, which has basically been "kill each other."  While we agree it can be important to protect your family name, when you find actual murder-investigation-grade evidence that your great-great-great-great^3500-father ate people, you should face the facts.  If only because we can absolutely guarantee he has no descendants to vow revenge.

[Were just kidding, Conan!].

Luke McKinney and Casey Kazan.

Recommended Post:

Darwin's Radio: Prehistoric Gene Reawakens to Battle HIV

Source

Humans Ate Neanderthals

Comments

[claudio]

It is areally a controversial matter.

1) the Neanderthal men lived in western Europe from some 150KY to about 40KY agò.
2) they were totally overlapped with Cromagnon men a sort of sapiens in their last period from 60KY to 40KY agò.
3) it is also controversial that the cromagnon men that had skulls similar to ours is really a true sapiens...it is likely the ancestor of the sapiens-sapiens men that revealed their capability building civilized societies and they were using written languages (sumerian....populations in Iraq and Iran...others in central asia).

These true sapiens-sapiens appeared some 10KY agò and NOT before.

4) it is indeed true that in those very cold days some 60-40KYagò of ice ages the fights for food and refuges (caves) was likely strong and a theory suggests that the Cromagnon fighted the Neanderthal.....with obvious consequences (Neanderthal disappeared)

5) It is also possible that Cromagnon was immune to Viruses that must have proliferated during those very cold days...and these viruses have finished the remnants of Neanderthal.

6) How the sapiens-sapiens of 10KY agò was born or created or blessed by GOD we honestly do not know....but definitely was NOT fighting with Neaderthal disappeared some 40KYagò.

7) Nothing proves that sapiens-sapiens was a direct derivative of Cromagnon (also called 'sapiens' that according to other theories had migrated from center-south Africa to europe and asia some 80-60KY agò).

8)Lot of inference and a complete mistery pervades our very origin.

These researchers will never stop debating to each other...BUT it is very possible that the insurgence of the intelligence and capacity of the sapiens-sapiens has Nothing to do with the cromagnon ....it is better to study the 'homo tree'....and use the brain and logic...rather than searching fires , stone works and skull around.

Regards to the s'apiens sapiens' that were clever at written languages.

[durpdurp]

@claudio

Your #6 is pretty funny considering you honestly do not know if anything was created or blessed by god so why even bring up the point?

[dirk alan]

mmmmmm neanderthal. is conan thinking of devouring his little friend ? soylent red. no wonder we kill each other like flys. being veggie may be the next step in human evolution. cheers.

[probably not sapiens sapien]

"it is better to study the 'homo tree'....and use the brain and logic...rather than searching fires , stone works and skull around."

If I read this correctly, you say we should ignore physical evidence and just talk about it? The thought-experiment as proof just doesn't work.

To return to the article, a jawbone with food-butchery marks on it is incontrovertible. What it doesn't say is how wide spread the practice is. I'm perfectly willing to accept that some primitives ate some other primitives. I'd just as quickly accept that neanderthals snacked on a few cro-magnons. Meat is meat when survival is at steak. I find it distastful, but I bet you I would do it, when push came to shove.

Lastly, this is hardly the first time I've seen arguments distancing us from prehistoric men. People seem to want to simultaneously cling to the (it seems to me) antithetical ideas that there WERE prehistoric humans and that our branch wasn't them. 10k years ago? Humanity had already spread the world over 10k years ago: evidence suggests that north america was populated as early as 45k years ago - or do you suggest that amerinds aren't sapiens sapien? My grandmother and I vociferously object.

[David Craig]

I think most of these posts were written by Neanderthals and obvious cave-school dropouts. Neanderthals, who were absolutely cannibals and a plethora of evidence exists to this effect, disappeared about 27,000 years ago, not 40, in the area of Gibraltar. A site has even been found suggestive of 24,000 years ago. One British paleoanthropologist - discredited, of course - claims they still exist in the remote fastnesses of Asian mountain ranges. Homo sapiens probably ate human flesh in the face of no other alternatives. The Cro-Magnons, which ARE us, painted those beautiful cave paintings at Lascaux, Altamira and elsewhere. Homo sapiens has been around for at least 195,000 years - anatomically like us but not behaviorally until about 40,000 years ago. I hope this has helped. My new neighbor, I think, is a Neanderthal and I'm hungry.

[Sarah Jumel]

Ah, this was in France. Acadians come from France (so did some of my ancestors, and my name) and believe me acadians will eat anything (because there is not much to eat some seasons in Louisiana).
Before you get all riled up, remember that fun little excursion the Donner Party? Everybody involved was a Homo Sapiens.

[Bob Smith]

"Meat is meat when survival is at steak."

I laughed so hard...

And what makes it even better is that it was unintentional.

[mick burke]

Who cares?...we won. Would you pass me a tooth pick?

[Christopher]

claudio: "it is better to study the 'homo tree'....and use the brain and logic...rather than searching fires , stone works and skull around."

prob-not-sap.-sap.: "If I read this correctly, you say we should ignore physical evidence and just talk about it? The thought-experiment as proof just doesn't work."

Yeah, I think that's what claudio is getting at, which might eve be an argument if the idiot didn't bring up the creationist issue. He is a capital-M Moron.

The point of the article is, science can be proven and leaves factual evidence. Faith is, well, taken as a matter of faith. Like philosophy. If the evdence says we carved em up for the stew pot, it's really hard to argue -- even if some find that hard to stomach.

[ThankGodForAtheism]

Just ignore him and he'll go away, Claudio is a troll.

You can tell by the way he says things like:

"it is better to study the 'homo tree'....and use the brain and logic...rather than searching fires , stone works and skull around."

On a science website.

It is actually better to study the "homo tree" with "brain", logic and scientific deduction whilst searching for fires, stone works and skulls; not that I would expect you to understand, you carry on thinking about things and we'll work it out and let you know.

[claudio]

I see a lot of controversy even in many of the comments....

Agreed , anybody can think as he likes.

I insist on the indisputable fact that cromagnon had NOT the ability to leave us a written language that is the only proof of intelligent behaviour....within an organized kind of society and only that fact resembles us modern humans (sapiens-sapiens).

Agree that some 50KYago some asian populations during a though
ice age migrated from Siberia to North america......again NO signs of written language...in the USA indians
or central-south america population of 10KYagò . NO signs of written languages of those days.

As far as I know the sumearians were the 1st which left over languages in written form and the the iraqis and iranians and after the egyptians....and..and ..and many others in the MED areas....I do not know very well the very old written languages of populations in india and asia....if they dated back 10KY agò, but I do not think so.

A strange guy above accredited my comment on who made us or how we popped up possibly from cromagnon ...saying 'this idiot' ....he is in fact a cretin & likely atheist.....be sure super-cretin that i am not a religion fanatic...however there is a solid possibility that our intelligence has nothing to do with evolution....from cromagnon.

You guys keep studying skulls and magic fires around and You and some well payed researchers will find the missing ring linking the cromagnon to the sapiens-sapiens looking at skulls and bones and fires ....and doing a lot of abstract speculations ------NOTHING has benn demonstrated nor proven until now...or IF you guys have such evidence show where these proofs are....rather than using stupid/offensive language and fancy arguments.

Regards to sapeins-sapiens that was not cromagnon.

[ThankGodForAtheism]

Claudio, no-one is using "fancy arguments", it's just that we know how to construct one...

You have no idea what you are talking about and it is becoming more and more evident with every post, please just stop it... you don't know what you are talking about and you are unable to realise that you are wrong.

Your whole comment could be condensed into one paragraph:
I think... about 10,000 years ago the first written languages were found.

Wrong, the earliest known writing as we would recognise it was in fact only discovered about 7,000 years ago... before that and from 30,000 years ago people were using simple symbols that evolved into more and more complex ideas, leading to people being able to convey extremely complex ideas... this probably contributed to our intelligence which at that point was growing exponentially.

"Magic fires" & "missing rings" -- OMFG

"A strange guy above accredited my comment on who made us or how we popped up possibly from cromagnon ...saying 'this idiot' ....he is in fact a cretin & likely atheist"

1. You probably are in fact a religious fanatic, trolling science websites trying to stir up trouble lol.

2. WTF do you mean by "likely atheist" - It has been proven that a religious mind is not as intellignet as a *clear* mind
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity_and_intelligence

3. STOP with the fucking ................... and the ---------------- and... you used the word accreditted in the complete wrong way.

Stop trolling.

ThankGodForAtheism

[Anna]

ThankGodForAtheism,

A few months after your last post, but can't ignore...

Just to be clear: I am no fan of claudio. But I am also no fan of stupid generalisation. To say that any single religious person is less intelligent than any single of your "clear" thinkers, just because a wiki-article states that in America, in general, on average, a more religious population has a slightly lower IQ..? That has little to do with clear thinking.

Oh, and a quote from your article: "I am not saying that believing in God makes you dumber. My hypothesis is that people with a low intelligence are more easily drawn toward religions, which give answers that are certain, while people with a high intelligence are more skeptical,"

Also, according to the same article, the emotional intelligence, which is at least as important in everyday life, positively correlates with being religious (on average, in certain groups, etc etc...).

So, if you want to tell someone he's not using his brains well, there are more convincing ways to go about it.

Regards,
Anna