THE NEANDERTHAL DAWN.

ARCHAEOLOGY RESEARCH PROJECT 2012

NEANDERTHAL DAWN. Ronnie Carleton 2012 Co Researcher ;Tanja Mancinelli.

ARCHAEOLOGY RESEARCH PROJECT 2011 EARLY HUMANS.

CHAPTER ONE.

Much has been written and filmed about the early apes and the first human, reputations made and lost, fraud, and ego going hand in hand and those who work in the field of archaeology, scratch or shake their heads at such going skulduggery, but brave as they are, even foolhardy they struggle on seeking answers and getting more questions instead. Thirty years of research, notes scribbled here and there, papers have finished or not at all I still seek, I find and now I put it all together as my research here. Half way through 70 years of age I have at least discovered a number of things, three that are important to me; The study of archaeology is life though I look at the dead and rattle bones, history often repeats itself and the human race as a species in on the road to extinction, and somewhere out there, hidden bones and clues to early man like the Neanderthals who led us into what we are today. This research starts with the dawn of the Neanderthal but must also

in passing deal with those great pretenders, the early upright apes who many call Homo and yet cannot claim that they were or are human but some still do. Neanderthal man is like a salmon coming back to the river where it was first an egg in gravel, then a fry followed as a fingerling and migrated to the sea for years and turned silver then became known as the fish of knowledge. The man, the first, keeps coming back like the salmon of knowledge but not living just to haunt us and is little more now than a wisp of wood smoke. That is what happens when your mind is left open because no matter what else you have been doing over the years the seed of early humans has been planted and you keep going back to it, looking at it finding out more, deleting old research data and adding more. This research of mine therefore leaves questions to be answered and rechecking and that is what I have done over the years. It may come to nothing or little but it has opened doors into the world of early humans and decluttering the mind of this researcher. Now all that is left to do is write it up and from there when and if it gets finished what to do with it.

BONES OF CONTENTION DATA. Ronnie Carleton (c) 2011 PART ONE. What is it with archaeology and bones that in the past causes so many debates, some very heated on the subject of bones of past apes, ape men and the first humans? It is not a question that can be easy answered because there are two sides, or two answers to it and maybe as this research of mine will show both wrong because of dating and interpretation of the subject. There is in my mind and my own opinion that the walking apes of Africa in the past were not and never were 'human' until the time of the coming of the Neanderthals and it is at this stage that the change took place, not through the well-known and broadcast opinions of experts but because the human beings from that time to now are the result of mutations caused by some biological or chemical agent. Thirty years of study and research has brought me to this final conclusion. What has been put forward in the past on early upright apes, the research into their bones and the thousands of books and papers written on that subject is in fact a wildlife study of primates, good information but lacking conviction to suggest that these were our early genetic links. It was not in any way a useless study because it did for the most give us a better understanding in the evolution of apes which I should point out stopped dead in its tracks because there is no evidence anywhere that it continued in present day apes or other primates world-wide.

This research does not just look at Early Humans as humans but as I suggested before it starts with the Neanderthals because in my opinion and the supporting evidence there is little point in going back further in history like Zing above or other apes. They will of course be mentioned from time to time but only in passing. What moved out of Africa at two points was not apes though some of the upright apes did migrate long distances but never went anywhere in a boat or raft. The Neanderthals unknown to many were in fact and advanced culture of Homo and it was much later that Cro-Magnon and the Neanderthals crossed paths even for a time living almost side by side. Then something went wrong and the Neanderthals died out either by disease or killed off. What I discovered about past research that in many areas of humans data there is a lot of science jargon but little wisdom involved and each paper written is repetitive. That is because most of other peoples research is in fact copied from others and no field work done that would at least present some evidence that would stand up without it being 30 thousand years each side of the recorded data by a research. Unless I am missing something, 30 thousand years in human progress is a very long time which to be left in the dark of what happened how and why? This suggests to me guesswork by some of the past researchers rather than good down to earth research, like field work. Here I am talking about the Neanderthals onwards and enter Cro-Magnon

many years later but both thinking humans rather than apes with sticks and stones in Africa. What therefore migrated out of Africa by two suggested routes were apes, followed by some Neanderthals, a small group in fact and Cro-Magnon did not come from Africa though I will suggest and of the opinion that some small groups migrated there in time. Cro-Magnon where they did show up came from the NE of Europe which leaves the question still unanswered today where in Europe or Asia did they come and why if they are being linked to early humans why were they hairless?

Old bones and skulls will only give part of the answer but without background research of a site and area that is all you have in the long run, old bones that can be dated sometimes yet no evidence looked for or found of who this tribe was and what was their natural history. As a child in Ireland my first reaction of seeing a black man in1948 was that he was from Africa and a good friend of Tarzan the Ape Man and when I was told that he did in fact come from some islands of South America and his family in the past may have come from Africa but as slaves I was more than disappointed. Later when I was told another man came from India I was again disappointed because he did not look like any Indian I seen in the cinema and wore not a single feather in his hair and did not carry an axe or bow and arrow.

For a boy such events were indeed rare but always ended up as a wet squib and put out of the mind quickly as other things took over. Without knowing it at the time, the seeds had been sown and my interest in tribes of all kinds increased until it became Anthropology and Archaeology studies that remains with me today. I therefore plough on, research and re-research and make some journeys to strange places in search of answers and sometimes I get them.

CHAPTER TWO

THE HUMAN THAT TIME FORGOT.

If we look at the modes of archaeology worldwide and more so when it comes to early apes and early humans most deal with what others have found in the way of bones and of course naming such a find at a named site. Their finds for the most deal with the apes classified by some as Homo meaning Hominid genus which it is said that Humans belong. Early apes were never human so the name Homo is misleading and wrong and because an ape stands upright, face and neck forward of the spine, uses stone tools, like a rock or club (stick) it cannot be classified therefore as a thinking human or have a group religious culture. My research here is based on the Neanderthal boundary of their world which runs from as far East in, Asia Teshik Tash, NW to Denmark, Norway and Sweden, SW to Morocco and a thin belt of North Africa taking in the Mediterranean Sea, SE to the Persian Gulf. Therefore included within the boundary are the countries of Italy, Israel, Crimea, France, Germany, Croatia, Belgium, Spain, Gibraltar, Belgium and the South of the UK. I call this the Research Project Areas or RPA to keep it simple for the reader and myself in writing up my research. Forty years of start and stop research, scribbled notes, hidden notebooks, scribbles and drawings, marked text in old books, maps and field research in Borneo, and India, Museum and University visits and last but not least, computer research all massed a wealth of material chaff that had to be sorted. Sorted it now is and the research project is the result. I have named it for reference as ; BONES OF CONTENTION PROJECT 2012 and for good reason as you will see. It would be useless of course to leave out the classification by others of early Homo species mentioned by others and their dates suggested as well as early

Apes because to do so would take away the main points of my own research and therefore would be no evidence of comparison to work with or leave room for debate on my and other findings over the last forty years. The forensics within this research (2011/2012 may not always agree with others in the same field but at least I hope it will give food for thought that poor interpretation of artefacts, geology, dating and habits of culture can no longer be ignored or excepted as good stand up evidence. There is no room for fiction in field archaeology and less so when it comes down to dating of bones and bone fragments and looking at the dating of the past of such in some cases it does suggest guesswork of the worse kind along with slap happy archaeology interpretation just so a paper can be rushed through and published in scientific journals and magazines to help build the human ego. In my research this is not the case because I dont need approval or praise from others much younger than me. What I do need and except for this research would be constructive input or comment that would add to the research and points made where I may have gone down the wrong track. Research into the Neanderthals will of course continue by others long after I am gone which I hope it will. If I have just uncovered a fragment of new evidence into the human Neanderthal then I will feel that after many years I have completed something worthwhile.

SUGGESTED TIMELINES FOR EARLY APES AND HUMANS.

APES. FAMILY; Oreopithecidae

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Apidium 30 mya Oreopithecus 30 mya Pongidae. Pliopithecus 26-27 mya Africa and Europe. limnopithecus. Hylobates (Gibbon) Recent. Symphalangus (Siamang) Recent. Aegyptopithecus 30 mya Dryopithecus 25-10 mya, Europe, Asia and Africa (Includes; Sivapithecus,Proconsul,Bramapithecus.) Pongo ( Orang-utan) Recent. Pan (Chimpanzee) Recent. Gorilla, Recent.

Hominidae. Ramapithecus 14-7 mya ( Includes Kenyapithecus) Australopithecus 5-1 mya (Includes Paranthropus,Plesianthropus.) Homo. Homo Human species (Man) Recent. NOTE; The above is the suggested data by J.Z,YOUNG in her book

Introduction to the Study of Man To the layperson the above data presented by Young may mean little or nothing except for the mention of Orang-utan, chimpanzee, gorilla and Man

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which can be identified with as known yet to many others the jumble of possible data on apes may mean much more. THE MISSING TRIBES. The discovery of human remains on the island of Flores in Indonesia of a missing tribe is of no surprise to me because if we look at a map of that area there could well be many more discoveries there. I am of the opinion still after seeing a small female nude in the rainforests of Borneo a few years back that she and the remains found have a link. The skulls above show the small size compared with a skull of resent past history and it is not of a child but full adult, more than likely and aged person as shown below. The female I seen and have had reports on when I was back in Borneo in 2004 was modern looks and small build. She was not alone judging for later reports and local Borneo tribes did still talk about them and were I felt staying well away from the areas that they may have lived. Both were no more than 3 feet or 1 M high . The other problem I have with this is that I always did feel that there were two or even three different stages of human progress in all parts of the world rather than just the one that was always being pushed towards Africa as the start of human kind. I do agree that Africa had ape like creatures that may well have progressed towards an evolution path but not human but I disagree strongly that this was the main stage for mankind today. Asia and South East Asia is I feel a major source of human kind and more advanced at the time when the ape in Africa stood upright. The human apes died away as did some aspects of early man but the small tribes in Asia were still around 300 years ago and also in the rainforests of Borneo, a few groups still remain, for the moment untouched by western

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minds and thinking but there at the sources of many of the rivers. Missing Tribes is not a Myth. It is a fact though in some cases reported the evidence is thin on the ground. The rainforests of Borneo are for the most still hidden from public gaze in most of the areas. They are hard to get into and most of the time travel by boat is the only highway to even get to the edge of the wilder and remote parts of it. Once you are inland from the coast you do enter a world of rainforest, high moist temperatures, rain most days with a thunder storm thrown in just for the fun of it, leeches which can be found almost everywhere even away from the rivers and streams, crocodiles that can and will eat you if given the chance, all types of bats and snakes, and plants that cure or kill. From a tribal point of view there is no shortage of food or natural building materials, fresh water in the side streams is plentiful and if you want to live a life well away from other more advanced tribes such as those on the coast, you can lose yourself and never have to worry about being found if you dont want to. The KG Walau area is a good example of this if you move west and SW into rain forest. I would suggest to also seek evidence of small people NE and E of Borneo on the TAWI TAWI groups of islands because these people could and did move from Island to Island on primitive rafts of bamboo. I am talking here about four or more Pigmy Races of Tribal peoples who were located in and around Borneo and other Islands and though a few tribes will have died out or killed off, there will be still survivors and genetic links to be found. There will also be bones somewhere and the real possibility of DNA extraction from these to match with other samples from living tribes. Any expedition to the rainforests would have to be worthwhile, involves archaeologists, biologists of the rainforest type, anthropologists, tribal guides,

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SE Asia Departments of Sciences, and of course the local government and tribal intuitions. There would also need to be up front funding over a few years and continued if the research evidence is positive. There has always been, a political problem of movement between the borders and into the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia, mainly by the military establishment of Indonesia. Medical and Genetic personal would need to be recruited and work on results fast because of the rainy seasons. Local people would need to be involved from the beginning and from local tribes. Without their involvement the project would not get off the ground and therefore fail. My last trip in 2004 involved an 18-hour flight from the UK to Sabah, a boat ride and a lot of walking. You gain more information from tribal elders than you will from any local city resource unless it deals directly with archaeology. Books of the area are useful to a point but communications with elders is more useful. Many of the tribes in Borneo that are known, were and in some areas still are, fond of removing the head of anyone who offends them and I have seen skulls that belonged to invaders from Japan in long houses. Other skulls were passed down over the years and this includes a number of skulls of people from the west going back around 200 years + If present day skulls were taken from Westerners, France, Spain, Europe and the UK then they must be well hidden but I have no doubt at least a few men have lost their heads over local tribal women! My own research into small people and that includes the medical condition of Dwarfism, showed that the medical condition is totally separate from small tribal men and women. On looking at tribal similarities in the Asia area I came up with skull sizes and features but with no loss of human intelligent even

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though the brain of the human remains found in Asia was small by modern standards. Pygmy, Africa. Iban woman, Borneo. Kuba, Sumatra. Small people in a number of tribes in Africa and SE Asia are known but what is not known at the moment is what tribes and links are still to be found in remote areas such as in Borneo. There is in my opinion a common genetic link between them and the pygmy tribes of Africa. To get to Africa they would have to go by raft or small boat over vast areas of open sea and vice versa. If we then take a movement or possible movement of such people Island hopping east and SE then in time they would reach the west coasts of South America. I feel that this was the case of some of the tribal groups in the Amazon areas. Yanomami. Jivaro. Let us look at Borneo and the blowpipe and dart use. In my own observations the blowpipe is a useful and deadly weapon in the right hands, the poison on the darts is quick acting when it hits the prey and this poison is obtained from a tree bark and other vines of the same species off tree. The groups in South America are the same and their poison works in the same way. The blowpipe is shaped and made as in Borneo and there is no way that the making and use of a blowpipe here was a matter of luck in its design. It had to be passed on and the only way that could happen is by contact within the two groups at some stage. When that happened I dont know. Proof of this would require DNA testing in all groups and the remains of past humans in such groups but I am sure that there will be evidence of inherited traits in both groups though they live thousands of miles apart with the Pacific Ocean between them.

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Though there may well now be a spoken language barrier between the Asia and South America groups there would be I am sure a well-known nonspoken language and again the only way to test this is to take a member of one group and place them with another to see how well communication works. Language games would also be useful to support this. I know that many will disagree with these findings but until they come up with a much better theory then we all need to act in conserving the tribes of small people and of course their remains. What they dont need is religion brought in from outside, disease and unnecessary western artefacts that we claim to be useful. We do need to learn from such people before all is lost. WHO WERE YOU? NOTE. That in fact is one of the many questions in my research when it comes to the Neanderthals because the human race today and more so the educated human race, unless they work in the field of biology, archaeology, or anthropology then a great amount of knowledge is going to be lost. The UN is well aware of such and is I believe doing its best to find solutions of enforced tribal relocations while some countries, including the USA and the UK make noises but do little to help sort out this official genocide which is taking place even as I write. If there is oil, timber, gold, silver and many other materials that would make a company rich or a country better off than jungle and forest habitats, so be it because to them it means little. Great amounts of hard cash finds a way into the hands of officials to pave the road into tribal areas, to bribe tribal elders and to hire protection for work groups who are intent on taking the land, what is on it and have a burn and slash policy. (Carleton 2011)

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CHAPTER THREE THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF AFRICA. RESEARCH PROJECT 2012

Ronnie Carleton 2012

This research Project ( DATA RED CODEX 2011) has now been updated in 2011 and though changes have been made to my files folders and research work over thirty years I am still of the opinion that early apes were not early humans as so often put forward as fact. We know much about early apes, very little about early humans and nothing at all about how it all came about except the word Evolution is the word used to explain everything and yet nothing as factual evidence. I have now included some of the research carried out by others so that at least some sort of intelligent debate can restart, something that has been lacking in archaeology writing for many years now. My opinion, with evidence, is that an early ape is just that, not in anyway, 'human' or for that matter

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progressed into human form. They were stand up apes that used tools but the true humans as now known, were the result of genetic and gene mutations. Apes today still used tools at times but they have not moved forwards as much as humans have and this on its own is a good indicator that if humans and apes were linked then apes today should be able to speak in a language, write, draw, play music, plant a crop and tend it. There is no evidence anywhere that early apes or today's apes were into crop growing or farming, one of the main trends of a community or small civilization of early human history. The study therefore of archaeology is always pushing this agriculture progress of humans but no such evidence for pre-history apes even today. By that I mean 'organised' agriculture and not a ape burying fruit or fruit seeds in their natural habitat.

THE EARLY 'APE' LIKE CREATURES.

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MEASURING SKULLS AND THE EVIDENCE OF BRAIN SIZE. There has been much debate about skull and brain size in the cases of early Homos as well as the overall measuring view of the skulls themselves. A large skull and brain as we know, or should, does not mean a high IQ if many of todays humans is anything to go by. What is needed is more research on what is now linked to what when it comes to early skull history and of course possibilities. This should also be applied to all bones discovered along with the skull. ANTHROPOMETRICS MEASUREMENTS are the main key to all this. When it comes down to the growth and development of skulls it is one of comparison and measurements that is needed. A predetermined set of measurements on a number of skulls is known of different age groups and through the growth stage process; a fixed point is therefore established. A common one is the line connecting the anterior midpoint of the foremen magnum, the hole that is large where the spinal cord exits the skull, to the posterior midpoint of the foremen magnum. From here all other measures are taken from this point to other anatomical

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points on the FACE and BRAINCASE. The spot on the mid line between the orbits, farthest anterior projection of brow-ridges, highest point on the skull vault. As many as 10 to 20 points can be defined and measured and to display the results a trace of profiles of all skulls known are aligned on a registration plane. Therefore a classic image shows the skull as onion, with the younger and smaller skull profiles contained within the older and larger ones.

HOMO SAPIENS (ARCHAIC) HOMO SAPIENS NEANDERTHAL. This Homo Sapiens Neanderthal is the main part of all my research and I still feel, with confidence that new finds could be made in the caves of Borneo and other large islands East of it. The word "hominid" refers to members of the family of humans, Hominidae, which consists of all species on our side of the last common ancestor of humans and living apes. (Some scientists use a broader definition of Hominidae which includes the great apes.) Hominids are included in the superfamily of all apes, the Hominidae, the members of which are called hominoids. Although the hominid fossil record is far from complete, and the evidence is often fragmentary, there is enough to give a good outline of the evolutionary history of humans. The time of the split between humans and living apes used to be thought to have occurred 15 to 20 million years ago, or even up to 30 or 40 million years ago. Some apes occurring within that time period, such as Ramapithecus, used to be considered as hominids, and possible ancestors of humans. Later fossil finds indicated that Ramapithecus was more closely related to the orang-utan, and new biochemical evidence indicated that the last common

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ancestor of hominids and apes occurred between 5 and 10 million years ago, and probably in the lower end of that range (Lewin, 1987). Ramapithecus therefore is no longer considered a hominid. The field of science which studies the human fossil record is known as palaeoanthropology. It is the intersection of the disciplines of palaeontology (the study of ancient life forms) and anthropology (the study of humans).

Hominid Species The species here are listed roughly in order of appearance in the fossil record (note that this ordering is not meant to represent an evolutionary sequence), except that the robust australopithecines are kept together. Each name consists of a genus name (e.g. Australopithecus, Homo) which is always capitalized, and a species name (e.g. africanus, erectus) which is always in lower case. Within the text, genus names are often omitted for brevity.

Ardipithecus ramidus This species is a recent discovery, announced in September 1994 (White et al.1994; Wood, 1994). It is the oldest known hominid species, dated at 4.4 million years. Most remains are skull fragments. Indirect evidence suggests that it was possibly bipedal, and that some individuals were about 122 cm (4'0") tall. The teeth are intermediate between those of earlier apes and A. afarensis, but one baby tooth is very primitive, resembling a chimpanzee tooth more than any other known hominid tooth. Other fossils found with ramidus indicate that it may have been a forest dweller. This may cause modification of current theories about why hominids became bipedal, which often link

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bipedalism with a move to a savannah environment. (White et al. have since discovered a skeleton which is 45% complete, but have not yet published on it.)

Australopithecus anamensis This species was only named in August 1995. The material consists of 9 fossils, mostly found in 1994, from Kanapoi in Kenya, and 12 fossils, mostly teeth found in 1988, from Allia Bay in Kenya (Leakey et al.1995). Anamensis existed between 4.2 and 3.9 million years ago, and has a mixture of primitive features in the skull, and advanced features in the body. The teeth and jaws are very similar to those of older fossil apes. A partial tibia (the larger of the two lower leg bones) is strong evidence of bipedalism, and a lower humerus (the upper arm bone) is extremely humanlike. Note that although the skull and skeletal bones are thought to be from the same species, this is not confirmed.

Australopithecus afarensis A. afarensis existed between 3.9 and 3.0 million years ago. Afarensis had an apelike face with a low forehead, a bony ridge over the eyes, a flat nose, and no chin. They had protruding jaws with large back teeth. Cranial capacity varied from about 375 to 500 cc. The skull is similar to that of a chimpanzee, except for the more humanlike teeth. The canine teeth are much smaller than those of modern apes, but larger and more pointed than those of humans, and shape of the jaw is between the rectangular shape of apes and the parabolic shape of humans. However their pelvis and leg bones far more closely resemble those of modern man, and leave no doubt that they were bipedal (although adapted to walking rather than running (Leakey, 1994)). Their bones show that they were physically very strong. Females were

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substantially smaller than males, a condition known as sexual dimorphism. Height varied between about 107 cm (3'6") and 152 cm (5'0"). The finger and toe bones are curved and proportionally longer than in humans, but the hands are similar to humans in most other details (Johanson and Edey, 1981). Some scientists consider this evidence that afarensis was still partially adapted to climbing in trees, others consider it evolutionary baggage. It is more than likely in my opinion that this species did both and there is no room for doubting that. A nest or bed built off the ground at night would be good thinking, even today.

Australopithecus africanus A. africanus existed between 3 and 2 million years ago. It is similar to afarensis, and was also bipedal, but body size was slightly greater. Brain size may also have been slightly larger, ranging between 420 and 500 cc. This is a little larger than chimp brains (despite a similar body size), but still not advanced in the areas necessary for speech. The back teeth were a little bigger than in afarensis, the front teeth a little smaller. Although the teeth and jaws of africanus are much larger than those of humans, they are far more similar to human teeth than to those of apes (Johanson and Edey, 1981). The shape of the jaw is now fully parabolic, like that of humans, and the size of the canine teeth is further reduced compared to afarensis. Australopithecus afarensis and africanus are known as gracile

australopithecines, because of their relatively lighter build, especially in the skull and teeth. (Gracile means "slender", and in palaeoanthropology is used as an antonym to "robust".) Despite this, they were still more robust than modern humans.

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Australopithecus aethiopicus A. aethiopicus existed between 2.6 and 2.3 million years ago. This species is known from one major specimen, the Black Skull discovered by Alan Walker, and a couple of other lower jaw specimens which may belong to the same species. It may be an ancestor of robustus and boisei, but it has a baffling mixture of primitive and advanced traits. The brain size is very small, at 410 cc, and parts of the skull, particularly the hind portions, are very primitive, most resembling afarensis. Other characteristics, like the massiveness of the face, jaws and single tooth found, and the largest sagittal crest in any known hominid, are more reminiscent of A. boisei (Leakey and Lewin, 1992). (A sagittal crest is a bony ridge on top of the skull to which chewing muscles attach.)

Australopithecus robustus A. robustus had a body similar to that of africanus, but a larger and more robust skull and teeth. It existed between 2 and 1.5 million years ago. The massive face is flat or dished, with no forehead and large brow ridges. It has relatively small front teeth, but massive grinding teeth in a large lower jaw. Most specimens have sagittal crests. Its diet would have been mostly coarse, tough food that needed a lot of chewing. The average brain size is about 530 cc. Bones excavated with robustus skeletons indicate that they may have been used as digging tools.

Australopithecus boisei (was Zinjanthropus boisei) A. boisei existed between 2.1 and 1.1 million years ago. It was similar to robustus, but the face and cheek teeth were even more massive, some molars being up to 2 cm across. The brain size is very similar to robustus,

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about 530 cc. A few experts consider boisei and robustus to be variants of the same species. Australopithecus aethiopicus, robustus and boisei are known as robust australopithecines, because their skulls in particular are more heavily built.

Homo habilis H. habilis, "handy man", was so called because of evidence of tools found with him. Habilis existed between 2.4 and 1.5 million years ago. It is very similar to australopithecines in many ways. The face is still primitive, but it projects less, and the back teeth are smaller, but still considerably larger than in modern humans. The average brain size, at 650 cc, is considerably larger than in australopithecines. Brain size varies between 500 and 800 cc, overlapping the australopithecines at the low end and Homo erectus at the high end. The brain shape is also more humanlike. The bulge of Broca's area, essential for speech, is visible in habilis brain casts, and indicates it was probably capable of rudimentary speech. Habilis is thought to have been about 127 cm (5'0") tall, and about 45 kg (100 lb.) in weight. Habilis has been a controversial species. Some scientists have not accepted it, believing that all habilis specimens should be assigned to either the australopithecines or Homo erectus. Many now believe that habilis combines specimens from at least two different Homo species.

Homo erectus H. erectus existed between 1.8 million and 300,000 years ago. Like habilis, the face has protruding jaws with large molars, no chin, thick brow ridges, and a long low skull, with a brain size varying between 750 and 1225 cc. Early

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erectus specimens average about 900 cc, while late ones have an average of about 1100 cc (Leakey, 1994). Some Asian erectus skulls have a sagittal crest. The skeleton is more robust than those of modern humans, implying greater strength. Body proportions vary; the Turkana Boy is tall and slender, like modern humans from the same area, while the few limb bones found of Peking Man indicate a shorter, sturdier build. Study of the Turkana Boy skeleton indicates that erectus may have been more efficient at walking than modern humans, whose skeletons have had to adapt to allow for the birth of larger-brained infants (Willis, 1989). Homo habilis and all the

australopithecines are found only in Africa, but erectus was wide-ranging, and is found through Africa and Asia (and was probably in Europe, but no unambiguous skeletal remains are known from there). Evidence from the Peking Man site in China indicates that erectus used fire, and their stone tools are more sophisticated than those of habilis.

Homo sapiens (archaic) Archaic forms of Homo sapiens first appear about 500,000 years ago. The term covers a diverse group of skulls which have features of both Homo erectus and modern humans. The brain size is larger than erectus and smaller than most modern humans, averaging about 1200 cc, and the skull is more rounded than in erectus. The skeleton and teeth are usually less robust than erectus, but more robust than modern humans. Many still have large brow ridges and receding foreheads and chins. There is no clear dividing line between late erectus and archaic sapiens, and many fossils between 500,000 and 200,000 years ago are difficult to classify as one or the other. Neanderthal man existed between 150,000 and 35,000 years ago. The

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average brain size is slightly larger than that of modern humans, about 1450 cc, but this is probably correlated with their greater bulk. The brain case however is longer and lower than that of modern humans, with a marked bulge at the back of the skull. Like erectus, they had a protruding jaw and receding forehead. The chin was usually weak. The mid facial area also protrudes, a feature that is not found in erectus or sapiens and may be an adaptation to cold. There are other minor anatomical differences from modern humans, the most unusual being some peculiarities of the shoulder blade, and of the pubic bone in the pelvis. Neanderthals mostly lived in cold climates, and their body proportions are similar to those of modern cold-adapted peoples: short and solid, with short limbs. Men reached about 168 cm (5'6") in height. Their bones are thick and heavy, and show signs of powerful muscle attachments. Neanderthals would have been extraordinarily strong by modern standards, and their skeletons show that they endured brutally hard lives. A large number of tools and weapons have been found, more advanced than those of Homo erectus. Neandertals are the first people known to have buried their dead, with the oldest known burial site being about 100,000 years old. Neandertals are found throughout Europe and the Middle East. Western European Neandertals usually have a more robust form, and are sometimes called "classic Neandertals". Neandertals found elsewhere tend to be less excessively robust. (Trinkaus and Shipman, 1992; Trinkaus and Howells, 1979)

Homo sapiens sapiens (modern) Modern forms of Homo sapiens first appear about 120,000 years ago. Modern humans have an average brain size of about 1350 cc. The forehead rises sharply, eyebrow ridges are very small or more usually absent, the chin is

27

prominent, and the skeleton is very gracile. About 40,000 years ago, with the appearance of the Cro-Magnon culture, tool kits started becoming markedly more sophisticated, using a wider variety of raw materials such as bone and antler, and containing new implements for making clothing, engraving and sculpting. Fine artwork, in the form of decorated tools, beads, ivory carvings of humans and animals, clay figurines, musical instruments, and spectacular cave paintings appeared over the next 20,000 years. (Leakey, 1994) Even within the last 100,000 years, the long-term trends towards smaller molars and decreased robustness can be discerned. The face, jaw and teeth of Mesolithic humans (about 10,000 years ago) are about 10% more robust than ours. Upper Paleolithic humans (about 30,000 years ago) are about 20 to 30% more robust than the modern condition in Europe and Asia. These are considered modern humans, although they are sometimes termed "primitive". Interestingly, some modern humans (aboriginal Australians) have tooth sizes more typical of archaic sapiens. The smallest tooth sizes are found in those areas where food-processing techniques have been used for the longest time. This is a probable example of natural selection which has occurred within the last 10,000 years (Brace, 1983). This diagram shows roughly the times during which each hominid species lived. Ages are in millions of years, with each character position representing 100,000 years. This resolution is a little coarse to accurately represent the most modern species. 5.0 4.0 3.0 2.0 1.0 0.0

|---------|---------|---------|---------|---------| | | | | | | | | | |

A.robustus ******

28

| | |

A.boisei ***********| A.aethiopicus **** |

| | |

| |

| | |

| | | |

| | | | | | | | | | |

A.ramidus * | A.anamensis ****

A.afarensis ********** | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

A.africanus *********** | | |

H.habilis **********

| H.erectus **************** | | | | | archaic H.sapiens *****| | Neandertals *|

| modern H.sapiens ** | | |

|---------|---------|---------|---------|---------|

Prominent Hominid Fossils This list includes fossils that are important for either their scientific or historic interest, or because they are often mentioned by creationists. One sometimes reads that all hominid fossils could fit in a coffin, or on a table, or a billiard table. That is a misleading image, as there are now thousands of hominid fossils. They are however mostly fragmentary, often consisting of a single bone or isolated teeth. Complete skulls and skeletons are rare. The list is sorted by species, going from older to more recent species. Within each species, finds are sorted by the order of their discovery.

29

Each entry will consist of a specimen number if known (or the site name, if many fossils were found in one place), any nicknames in quotes, and a species name. The species name will be followed by a '?' if suspect. If the fossil was originally placed in a different species, that name will also be given. The following terminology is used. A skull refers to all the bones of the head. A cranium is a skull minus the lower jaw. A braincase is the cranium minus the face and upper jaw. A skullcap is the top portion of the braincase.

Abbreviations: KNM-ER KNM-WT KP SK Sts TM OH AL

Kenya National Museum, East Rudolf

Kenya National Museum, West Turkana

Kanapoi, Kenya Swartkrans, South Africa Sterkfontein, South Africa Transvaal Museum Olduvai Hominid, Tanzania Afar Locality, Ethiopia Aramis, Ethiopia

ARA-VP

"ARA-VP,

Sites

1,

&

7",

Ardipithecus

ramidus

Discovered by a team led by Tim White, Bernard Asfaw and Gen Suwa (1994) in 1992 and 1993 at Aramis in Ethiopia. Estimated age is 4.4 million years. The find consist of fossils from 17 individuals. Most remains are teeth, but there is also a partial lower jaw of a child, a partial cranium base, and arm bone ARA-VP-6/1 fragments consists of 10 from teeth from 2 a single individuals. individual.

ARA-VP-7/2 consists of parts of all three bones from the left arm of a single

30

individual, with a mixture of hominid and ape features. KP 271, "Kanapoi Hominid", Australopithecus anamensis

Discovered by Bryan Patterson in 1965 at Kanapoi in Kenya (Patterson and Howells, 1967). This is a worn fragment of a lower left humerus which is about 4.0 million years old. KP 29281, Australopithecus anamensis

Discovered by Peter Nzube in 1994 at Kanapoi in Kenya. This is a lower jaw with all its teeth which is about 4.15 million years old. KP 29285, Australopithecus anamensis

Discovered by Kamoya Kimeu in 1994 at Kanapoi in Kenya. This is a tibia, missing the middle portion of the bone, which is about 4.0 million years old. It is the oldest known evidence for hominid bipedalism. Australopithecus afarensis

Discovered by Donald Johanson in 1973 at Hadar in Ethiopia (Johanson and Edey, 1981; Johanson and Taieb, 1976). Estimated age is about 3.4 million years. This find consisted of portions of both legs, including a complete knee joint which is almost a miniature of a human knee, but apparently belongs to an adult. AL 288-1, "Lucy", Australopithecus afarensis

Discovered by Donald Johanson in 1974 at Hadar in Ethiopia (Johanson and Edey, 1981; Johanson and Taieb, 1976). Estimated age is about 3.2 million years. Lucy was an adult female of about 25 years. About 40% of her skeleton was found, and her pelvis, femur (the upper leg bone) and tibia show her to have been bipedal. She was about 107 cm (3'6") tall (small for her species) and about 28 kg (62 lbs.) in weight.

31

AL

333

Site,

"The

First

Family",

Australopithecus

afarensis?

Discovered in 1975 by Donald Johanson's team at Hadar in Ethiopia (Johanson and Edey, 1981). Estimated age is 3.2 million years. This find consisted of remains of at least 13 hominid individuals, of all ages. The size of these specimens varies considerably. Scientists debate whether the specimens belong to one species, two or even three. Johanson believes they belong to a single species in which males were considerably larger than females. Others believe that the larger specimens belong to a primitive species of Homo. If this was the case then this so called primitive species should also have turned up elsewhere and of course named. In this case I am of the opinion that there is not enough evidence, yet, and this should be looked for "Laetoli footprints", Australopithecus afarensis?

Discovered in 1976 at Laetoli in Tanzania. Estimated age is 3.7 million years. The trail consists of the fossilized footprints of two or three bipedal hominids. Their size and stride length indicate that they were about 140 cm (4'8") and 120 cm (4'0") tall. Many scientists claim that the footprints are effectively identical to those of modern humans (Tattersall, 1993; Feder and Park, 1989), while others claim the big toes diverged slightly (like apes) and that the toe lengths are longer than humans but shorter than in apes (Burenhult, 1993). The prints are tentatively assigned to A. afarensis, because no other hominid species is known from that time. I suggest that it may well not have been A. afarensis prints because we are still in the dark of what else in the form of apes, were around in the same time line as suggested by others and that the footprint timeline is only guess work.

32

AL

444-2,

Australopithecus

afarensis

Discovered by Bill Kimbel and Yoel Rak in 1991 at Hadar in Ethiopia (Kimbel et al.1994). Estimated age is 3 million years. This is a 70% complete skull of a large adult male, easily the most complete afarensis skull known. According to its finders, it strengthens the case that all the First Family fossils were members of the same species, because the differences between AL 444-2 and the smaller skulls in the collection are consistent with other sexually dimorphic hominoids. "Taung baby", Australopithecus africanus

Discovered by Raymond Dart in 1924 at Taung in South Africa (Dart, 1925). The find consisted of a full face, teeth and jaws, and an endo-cranial cast of the brain. It is probably between 2.5 and 3.0 million years old, but it and most other South African fossils are found in cave deposits that are difficult to date. The teeth of this skull showed it to be from an infant about 5 or 6 years old (it is now believed that australopithecines matured faster than humans, and that the Taung child was about 3). The brain size was 410 cc, and would have been around 440 cc as an adult. The large rounded brain, canine teeth which were small and not apelike, and the position of the foramen magnum(*) convinced Dart that this was a bipedal human ancestor, which he named Australopithecus africanus (African southern ape). Although the discovery became famous, Dart's interpretation was rejected by the scientific community until the mid- 1940's, following the discovery of other similar fossils. (*) Anatomical digression: the foramen magnum is the hole in the skull through which the spinal cord passes. In apes, it is towards the back of the skull, because of their quadruped posture. In humans it is at the bottom of the skull because our head is balanced on top of a vertical column. TM 1512,

33

Australopithecus

africanus

(was

Plesianthropus

transvaalensis)

Discovered by Robert Broom in 1936 at Sterkfontein in South Africa (Broom, 1936). The second australopithecine found, it consisted of parts of the face, upper jaw and braincase. Sts 5, "Mrs Ples", Australopithecus africanus

Discovered by Robert Broom in 1947 at Sterkfontein in South Africa. It is a very well preserved cranium of an adult. It has usually been thought to be female, but there have been recent claims that it could be male. It is the best specimen of africanus. The brain size is about 485 cc. Sts 14, Australopithecus africanus

Discovered by Robert Broom and J.T. Robinson in 1947 at Sterkfontein. Estimated age is about 2.5 million years. This find consisted of a nearly complete vertebral column, pelvis, some rib fragments, and part of a femur of a very small adult female. The pelvis is far more human than apelike, and is strong evidence that africanus was bipedal (Brace et al.1979), although it may not have had the strong striding gait of modern humans (Burenhult, 1993). KNM-WT 17000, "The Black Skull", Australopithecus aethiopicus

Discovered by Alan Walker in 1985 near West Turkana in Kenya. Estimated age is 2.5 million years. This find is an intact, almost complete cranium. The brain size is very small for a hominid, about 410 cc, and the skull has a puzzling mixture of primitive and advanced features. (Leakey and Lewin, 1992) TM 1517, Australopithecus robustus (was Paranthropus robustus)

Discovered by Robert Broom in 1938 at Kromdraai in South Africa (Broom, 1938). It consisted of skull fragments, including five teeth, and a few skeletal fragments. This was the first specimen of robustus.

34

OH

5,

"Zinjanthropus",

"Nutcracker

Man",

Australopithecus

boisei

Discovered by Mary Leakey in 1959 at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania (Leakey, 1959). Estimated age is 1.8 million years. It is an almost complete cranium, with a brain size is about 530 cc. This was the first specimen of this species. Louis Leakey briefly considered this a human ancestor, but the claim was dropped when Homo habilis was found soon afterwards. KNM-ER 406, Australopithecus boisei

Discovered by Richard Leakey in 1969 near Lake Turkana in Kenya. This find was a complete, intact cranium lacking only the teeth (Lewin, 1987). Estimated age is about 1.7 million years. The brain size is about 510 cc. (see also ER3733 KNM-ER 732, Australopithecus boisei

Discovered by Richard Leakey in 1970 near Lake Turkana in Kenya. The cranium is similar to that of OH 5, but is smaller and has other differences such as the lack of a sagittal crest. The estimated age is about 1.7 million years. The brain size is about 500 cc. Most experts believe this is a case of sexual dimorphism, with the female being smaller than the male. Homo Hablis. Discovered by the Leakeys in the early 1960's at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. A number of fragmentary specimens were found (Leakey et al.1964). OH 7 (Johnny's Child), found by Jonathon Leakey in 1960 (Leakey, 1961), consisted of a lower jaw and two cranial fragments of a child, and a few hand bones. Estimated age is 1.9 million years, and the brain size was about 680 cc. OH 8, found in 1960, consisted of a set of foot bones, complete except for the back of the heel and the tips of the toes. Estimated age is about

35

1.8 million years. The foot bones had most of the adaptations to bipedalism possessed by modern humans. There is a well-developed arch, and the big toe is alongside the other toes instead of diverging, as is the case with apes and monkeys. OH 13 (Cindy), found in 1963, consisted of a lower jaw and teeth, bits of the upper jaw and a cranial fragment. Estimated age is 1.7 million years, and the brain size was about 650 cc. OH 16 (George), found in 1963, consisted of teeth and some very small skull fragments (George was unfortunately trampled by a herd of Masai cattle before he could be excavated, and much of his skull was lost). Estimated age is 1.7 million years, and the brain size was about 640 cc. OH 24, "Twiggy", Homo habilis

Discovered by Peter Nzube in 1968 at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. It consisted of a badly crushed skull and seven teeth. It is about 1.8 million years old and has a brain size of about 590 cc. KNM-ER 1470, Homo habilis

Discovered by Bernard Ngeneo in 1972 at Koobi Fora in Kenya (Leakey, 1973). Estimated age is 1.9 million years. This is the most complete habilis skull known. Its brain size is 750 cc, large for habilis. It was originally dated at nearly 3 million years old, a figure that caused much confusion as at the time it was older than any known australopithecines, from whom habilis had supposedly descended. A lively debate over the dating of 1470 ensued (Lewin, 1987; Johanson and Edey, 1981; Lubenow, 1992). The skull is surprisingly modern in some respects. The braincase is much larger and less robust than any australopithecine skull, and is also without the large brow ridges typical of Homo erectus. It is however very robust in the face. A number of leg bones

36

were found within a couple of kilometres, and are thought to probably belong to the same species. The most complete, KNM-ER 1481, consisted of a complete left femur, both ends of a left tibia and the lower end of a left fibula (the smaller of the two lower leg bones). These are quite similar to the bones of modern humans. KNM-ER 1805, "The Mystery Skull", Homo habilis??

Discovered by Paul Abell in 1973 at Koobi Fora in Kenya (Leakey, 1974). Estimated age is 1.85 million years. This find consisted of much of a heavily built cranium containing many teeth. Its brain size is about 600 cc. Some features, such as the sagittal crest, are typical of A. boisei, but the teeth are too small for that species. (Willis, 1989; Day, 1986) Various workers have assigned it to almost every conceivable species, but it seems most similar to Homo habilis (Wood, 1991). KNM-ER 1813, Homo habilis??

Discovered by Kamoya Kimeu in 1973 at Koobi Fora in Kenya (Leakey, 1974). This specimen is similar to 1470, but is much smaller, with a brain size of 510 cc. Estimated age is 1.8-1.9 million years. Some scientists believe this a case of sexual dimorphism, others believe that the brain architecture is different and that 1813 is another species of Homo, and others believe it is an australopithecine. Like the previous skull, 1805, this one is in the "Suspense Account". (Willis, 1989) OH 62, "Dik-dik hominid", Homo habilis

Discovered by Tim White in 1986 at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania (Johanson and Shreeve, 1989; Johanson et al.1987). Estimated age is 1.8 million years. The find consisted of portions of skull, arm, leg bones and teeth. Almost all the features of the skull closely resemble habilis fossils such as OH 24, ER

37

1813 and ER 1470, rather than the australopithecines. But the estimated height is very small, maybe about 105 cm (3'5"), and the arms are very long in proportion to the legs. These are australopithecine traits, and in fact the skeletal bones are very similar to those of Lucy. This find is significant because it is the only fossil in which limb bones have been securely assigned to habilis. Because of the small size, this was almost certainly a female. As with the australopithecines, males would have been considerably larger. "Java Man", "Pithecanthropus I" H.erectus (was Pithecanthropus erectus) Discovered by Eugene Dubois in 1893 near Trinil in Java. Its age is uncertain, but thought to be about 700,000 years. This find consisted of a flat, very thick skullcap, a few teeth (which may belong to orang- utans), and a femur found about 12 meters away (Theunissen, 1989). The brain size is about 940 cc. Trinkaus and Shipman (1992) state that most scientists now believe the femur is that of a modern human, but few of the other references mention this. "Heidelberg Man", Homo erectus? (was Homo heidelbergensis)

Discovered by gravel pit workers in 1907 near Heidelberg in Germany. Estimated age is between 400,000 and 700,000 years. This find consisted of a lower jaw with a receding chin and all its teeth. The jaw is extremely large and robust, like that of Homo erectus, but the teeth are at the small end of the erectus range. It is therefore identified as erectus on the basis of its age, but could be an archaic sapiens. "Peking Man Site", Homo erectus (was Sinanthropus pekinensis)

Between 1929 and 1937, 14 partial craniums, 11 lower jaws, many teeth, some skeletal bones and large numbers of stone tools were discovered in the Lower Cave at Locality 1 of the Peking Man site at Zhoukoudian, near Beijing, in China. Their age is estimated to be between 500,000 and 300,000 years

38

old. (A number of fossils of modern humans were also discovered in the Upper Cave in 1933.) The most complete fossils, all of which were braincases or skullcaps, are: Skull III, discovered at Locus E in 1929 is an adolescent or juvenile with a brain size of 915 cc. Skull II, discovered at Locus D in 1929 but only recognized in 1930, is an adult or adolescent with a brain size of 1030 cc. Skulls LI, LII and LIII were discovered at Locus L in 1936. They are thought to belong to an adult man, an adult woman and a young adult, with brain sizes of 1225 cc, 1015 cc and 1030 cc respectively. Skull 5: two cranial fragments were discovered in 1966 which fit with (casts of) two other fragments found in 1934 and 1936 to form most of a skullcap. These pieces were found at a higher level, and appear to be more modern than the other skullcaps. (Jia and Huang, 1990) Most of the study on these fossils was done by Davidson Black until his death in 1934. Franz Weidenreich replaced him and studied the fossils until leaving China in 1941. The original fossils disappeared in 1941 while being shipped to the United States for safety during World War II, but excellent casts and descriptions remain. Since the war, other erectus fossils have been found at this site and others in China. OH 9, "Chellean Man", Homo erectus

Discovered by Louis Leakey in 1960 at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania (Leakey, 1961). Estimated age is 1.2 million years. It consisted of a fairly complete braincase with a brain size of 1050 cc. OH 12, "Pinhead", Homo erectus

Discovered by M. Cropper in 1962 at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. It is similar

39

to but less complete than OH 9, and smaller, with an estimated brain size of only 750 cc. It is estimated to be between 600,000 and 800,000 years old. Sangiran 17, "Pithecanthropus VIII", Homo erectus

Discovered by Sastrohamidjojo Sartono in 1969 at Sangiran on Java. This consists of an almost complete cranium, with a brain size of about 1000 cc. It is the most complete erectus find from Java. This skull is very robust, with a slightly projecting face and huge flaring cheekbones. It has been thought to be about 800,000 years old, but a recent dating has given a much older figure of nearly 1.7 million years. If the older date is correct, it means Homo erectus migrated out of Africa much earlier than previously thought. KNM-ER 3733, Homo erectus

Discovered by Bernard Ngeneo in 1975 at Koobi Fora in Kenya. Estimated age is 1.7 million years. This superb find consisted of an almost complete cranium. The brain size is about 850 cc, and the whole skull is similar to some of the Peking Man fossils. The discovery of this fossil in the same stratum as ER 406 (A. boisei) delivered the coup de grace to the single species hypothesis: the idea that there has never been more than one hominid species at any point in history. (Leakey and Walker, 1976) KNM-WT 15000, "Turkana Boy", Homo erectus

Discovered by Kamoya Kimeu in 1984 at Nariokotome near Lake Turkana in Kenya (Brown et al.1985; Leakey and Lewin, 1992; Walker and Leakey, 1993). This is an almost complete skeleton of an 11 or 12 year old boy, the only major omissions being the hands and feet. (Some scientists believe erectus matured faster than modern humans, and that he was really about 9 years old (Leakey and Lewin, 1992).) It is the most complete known specimen of erectus, and also one of the oldest, at 1.6 million years. The brain size was

40

880 cc, and it is estimated that it would have been 910 cc at adulthood. The boy was 160 cm (5'3") tall, and would have been about 185 cm (6'1") as an adult. This is surprisingly tall, indicating that many erectus may have been as large as modern humans. Except for the skull, the skeleton is very similar to that of modern boys, although there are a number of small differences. "Rhodesian Man", (was Homo rhodesiensis)

Discovered by a labourer in 1921 at Broken Hill in Northern Rhodesia (now Kabwe in Zambia) (Woodward, 1921). This was a complete cranium that was very robust, with large brow ridges and a receding forehead. Estimated age is between 200,000 and 125,000 years. The brain size was about 1280 cc.

Petralona

1,

Homo

sapiens

(archaic)

Discovered by villagers at Petralona in Greece in 1960. Estimated age is 250,000-500,000 years. It could alternatively be considered to be a late Homo erectus, and also has some Neanderthal characteristics. The brain size is 1220 cc, high for erectus but low for sapiens, and the face is large with particularly wide jaws. (Day, 1986) "Neanderthal skeleton", Discovered by Johann Fuhlrott in 1856 in the Neander valley in Germany. The find consisted of a skullcap, thigh bones, part of a pelvis, some ribs, and some arm and shoulder bones. The lower left arm had been broken in life, and as a result the bones of the left arm were smaller than those of the right. Fuhlrott recognized it as a primitive human, but the German establishment headed by Rudolf Virchow rejected this view, incorrectly claiming that it was a pathological modern human. (Trinkaus and Shipman, 1992)

41

(There were actually two earlier Neanderthal finds. A partial cranium of a 2.5 year old child found in 1829 in Belgium was not recognized until 1936. An adult cranium found on Gibraltar in 1848 gathered dust in a museum until it was recognized as Neanderthal in 1864.) "Spy 1 and 2", Homo sapiens neanderthalensis

Discovered by Marcel de Puydt and Max Lohest in 1886 at Spy (pronounced Spee) d'Orneau in Belgium. Estimated age is about 60,000 years. This find consisted of two almost complete skeletons. The excellent descriptions of the skeletons established that they were very old, and largely discredited the idea that the Neanderthal physique was a pathological condition, but also erroneously concluded that Neanderthal Man walked with bent knees. Discovered by Dragutin Gorjanovic-Kramberger in 1899 near Krapina in Croatia. This site yielded significant remains from two to three dozen individuals, and teeth and jaw fragments from dozens more. When Gorjanovic published on his finds in 1906, it confirmed for once and for all that Neandertals were not pathological modern humans. Discovered by Amedee and Jean Bouyssonie in 1908 near La-Chapelle-auxSaints in France. It is about 50,000 years old, with a brain size of 1620 cc. This nearly complete skeleton was reconstructed by Marcellin Boule, who wrote a definitive and highly influential paper on it which managed to be totally wrong in many of its conclusions. It exaggerated the apelike characteristics of the fossil, popularizing the stereotype, which would last for decades, of a stooping ape-man shuffling along on bent knees. This specimen was between about 30 and 40 when he died, but had a healed broken rib, severe arthritis of the hip, lower neck, back and shoulders, and had lost most of his molar teeth. The fact that he survived as long as he did indicates that Neandertals must

42

have had a complex social structure. Ralph Solecki discovered 9 Neanderthal skeletons between 1953 and 1960 at the Shanidar cave in Iraq. They are thought to be between 70,000 and 40,000 years old. One of them, Shanidar 4, had apparently been buried with offerings of flowers (although this interpretation has recently been disputed). In 1971 Solecki wrote a book, "Shanidar, reversing the earlier stereotypes of semihuman brutes. Another skeleton, Shanidar 1, was partially blind, one-armed and crippled. His survival also is evidence of a complex social structure. "Saint-Cesaire Neanderthal", Homo sapiens neanderthalensis

Discovered by Francois Leveque in 1979 near the village of Saint-Cesaire in France. It consisted of a badly crushed skeleton. The skull was mostly complete, with only the back of the cranium missing. It is dated at about 35,000 years old, and is the most recent Neanderthal known. This find was of special interest because it was found with tools that had previously only been associated with the Cro-Magnon culture, instead of the usual Neanderthal tool kit. Discovered by workmen in 1868 at Cro-Magnon in France. Estimated age is 28,000 years. The site yielded skeletons of about half a dozen individuals, along with stone tools, carved reindeer antlers, ivory pendants, and shells. The Cro-Magnons lived in Europe between 35,000 and 10,000 years ago. They are almost identical to modern man, being tall and muscular and slightly more robust than most modern humans. They were skilled hunters, toolmakers and artists famous for the cave art at places such as Lascaux.

Alternative Taxonomies The above list has used a fairly conservative naming system. Recently a

43

number of scientists have suggested various changes in these names. Many people are now using the genus name Paranthropus, originally given to robustus, to refer to the robust australopithecines (robustus, boisei, and aethiopicus). This change makes sense if all these species form a clade (all of the species descended from a common ancestor) but it is not yet known if this is the case here. Homo habilis is, as mentioned above, controversial. There is much disagreement over which specimens belong in habilis, and which do not. A number of scientists are now using the name H. rudolfensis to refer to ER 1470 and some similar fossils. The smaller habilis-like specimens such as ER 1813 and ER 1805 are variously assigned to habilis, H. ergaster, or to another as yet unnamed species. The name H. microcranous has recently been proposed for 1813. Some scientists have also proposed splitting Homo erectus. The Turkana Boy and 3733 fossils would then become Homo ergaster (Tattersall, 1993). H. erectus would have a larger average brain size than ergaster, and the brow ridges may have a different shape, flaring out to the side more (Burenhult, 1993). It has also been proposed that the names Homo heidelbergensis and Homo neanderthalensis should be restored as species names for archaic Homo sapiens and the Neandertals. There are a number of other recent discoveries which may change current thinking when they have had a chance to be analysed: Some hominid fossils found recently in Spain, and dated at over 780,000 years, would be the oldest European hominids, but it is not yet

44

clear what species they belong to. New finds in Spain and Croatia suggest that Neandertals may have survived longer than previously thought, perhaps as recently as 30,000 years ago. Four australopithecine foot bones dated at around 3.5 million years are the oldest hominid fossils yet found in South Africa. They seem to be adapted to bipedalism, but have an intriguing mixture of ape and human features.

Summary There are a number of clear trends (which were neither continuous nor uniform) from early australopithecines to recent humans: increasing brain size, increasing body size, increasing use of and sophistication in tools, decreasing tooth size, decreasing skeletal robustness. There are no clear dividing lines between some of the later gracile australopithecines and some of the early Homo, between erectus and archaic sapiens, or archaic sapiens and modern sapiens. Despite this, there is little consensus on what our family tree is. Everyone accepts that the robust australopithecines (aethiopicus, robustus and boisei) are not ancestral to us, being a side branch that left no descendants. Whether H. habilis is descended from A. afarensis, africanus, both of them, or neither of them, is still a matter of debate. It is possible that none of the known australopithecines is our ancestor. The discoveries of A. ramidus and A. anamensis are so recent that it is hard to say what effect they will have on current theories. It is generally accepted that Homo erectus is descended from Homo habilis, but the relationship between erectus, sapiens and the

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Neandertals is still unclear. Neanderthal affinities can be detected in some specimens of both archaic and modern sapiens. The problem with this I found that many researchers past over the Neanderthal era to quickly and more in depth research is needed including DNA sampling from across Europe and into Asia. The usual creationist response to these fossils is to claim that there are no intermediates; each one is either a human or an ape. It doesn't matter that some of the "humans" have a brain size well below the normal human range, heavy brow ridges, no chin, and teeth larger than modern ones set in a projecting jaw, or that some of the "apes" were bipedal, with very humanlike teeth, and brains larger than those of similar sized apes. There are some skulls which cannot be reliably assigned to either genus. (Willis, 1989) This is exactly what we would expect if evolution had occurred. If, on the other hand, creationism was true, it should be easy to separate hominid fossils into humans and apes. It would not matter even if creationists could decide where to put the dividing line between humans and apes. No matter where it is placed, the humans just above the line and the apes just below it will be more similar to one another than they will be to other humans or other apes. In 1950, Wilfred Le Gros Clark published a paper which definitively settled the question of whether the australopithecines were apes or not. He performed a morphological study (based on the shape and function) of teeth and jaws, since these formed most of the fossil evidence. By studying human and modern ape fossils, Le Gros Clark came up with a list of eleven consistent differences between humans and apes. Looking at A. africanus and robustus (the only australopithecine species then known), he found that they were humanlike rather than apelike in every characteristic. Judged by the same

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criteria, A. afarensis falls somewhere between humans and apes, and possibly closer to the apes (Johanson and Edey, 1981). White et al. (1994) did not judge A. ramidus by these criteria, but it is clear that ramidus is even more chimpanzee-like than afarensis. The ramidus arm bones also display a mixture of hominid and ape characteristics. Solly Zuckerman attempted to prove with biometrical studies (based on measurements) that the australopithecines were apes. Zuckerman lost this debate in the 50's, and his position was abandoned by everyone else (Johanson and Edey, 1981). Creationists like to quote his opinions as if they were still a scientifically acceptable viewpoint. Charles Oxnard (1975), in a paper that is widely cited by creationists, claimed, based on his multivariate analyses, that australopithecines are no more closely related, or more similar, to humans than modern apes are. Howell et al.(1978) criticized this conclusion on a number of grounds. Oxnard's results were based on measurements of a few skeletal bones which were usually fragmentary and often poorly preserved. The measurements did not describe the complex shape of some bones, and did not distinguish between aspects which are important for understanding locomotion from those which were not. Finally, there is "an overwhelming body of evidence", based on the work of nearly 30 scientists, which contradicts Oxnard's work. These studies used a variety of techniques, including those used by Oxnard, and were based on many different body parts and joint complexes. They overwhelmingly indicate that australopithecines resemble humans more closely than the living apes. Creationists often cite Oxnard's qualifications, and use of computers to perform his calculations, with approval. This is special pleading; many other scientists are equally qualified, and also use computers. Gish (1993) states

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that "[a] computer doesn't lie, [a] computer doesn't have a bias". True enough, but the results that come out of a computer are only as good as the data and assumptions that go in. In this case, the primary assumption would seem to be that Oxnard's methods are a useful method of determining relationships. This seems doubtful, given some of the other unusual results of Oxnard's study (1987). For example, he places Ramapithecus as the ape closest to humans, and Sivapithecus as closely related to orang-utans, even though the two are so similar that they are now considered to be the same species of Sivapithecus. Less controversially, Oxnard also claims that, while probably bipedal, australopithecines did not walk identically to modern humans. Creationists sometimes quote this conclusion in a highly misleading manner, saying Oxnard proved that australopithecines did not walk upright, and then adding, as an afterthought (or in Willis' (1987) case, not at all) "at least, not in the human manner". Creationists are generally reluctant to accept that australopithecines, including Lucy, were bipedal. A statement by Weaver (1985) that "Australopithecus afarensis ... demonstrates virtually complete adaptation to upright walking" is dismissed by Willis (1987) as "a preposterous claim". Willis adds: "Many competent anthropologists have carefully examined these and other "Australopithecine" [sic] remains and concluded that Lucy could not walk upright." Willis' evidence for this consists of a statement by Solly Zuckerman made in 1970; a 1971 statement from Richard Leakey that australopithecines "may have been knuckle-walkers", and a quote from Charles Oxnard about the relationship between humans, australopithecines and the apes. In fact, none

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of these quotes refer to Lucy. Two of them were made before Lucy, and A. afarensis, was even discovered (and the third was made very soon afterwards, before Lucy had been studied). Even in 1970, Zuckerman's views had long since been discredited. In what is obviously a fabrication, Willis says that Leakey "referred to Lucy as an ape who did not walk upright", three years before Lucy was discovered. Leakey was merely making a suggestion (about robust australopithecines) which he soon retracted, not stating a firm opinion, and he has since stated (1994) that Lucy "undoubtedly was a biped". Oxnard (1975; 1987) has some unorthodox opinions about the australopithecines, but the Oxnard quote supplied by Willis discusses neither bipedality nor A. afarensis. Elsewhere in the same paper that Willis refers to, Oxnard (1975) repeatedly mentions that

australopithecines may have been bipedal, and he has since stated (1987) that the australopithecines, including Lucy, were bipedal. Gish (1985) has a long discussion of the debate about Lucy's locomotion. He quotes extensively from Stern and Susman (1983), who list many apelike features of A. afarensis and argue that it spent a significant amount of time in the trees. As Gish admits, none of the scientists he mentions deny that Lucy was bipedal, but he goes on to suggest, with no evidence or support, that A. afarensis may have been no more bipedal than living apes, which are well adapted to quadrupedality and only walk on two legs for short distances. By contrast, the feet, knees, legs and pelvises of australopithecines are strongly adapted to bipedality, while the hands and wrists show no adaptations to any form of quadrupedalism (McHenry, 1986). Gish's conclusion is strongly rejected by Stern and Susman, and, apparently, everyone else: "That bipedality was a more fundamental part of australopithecine

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behaviour than in any other living or extinct nonhuman primate is not in serious dispute."

"...we must emphasize that in no way do we dispute the claim that terrestrial bipedality was a far more significant component of the behaviour of A. afarensis than in any living nonhuman primate." (Stern and Susman, 1983)

Gish writes as if showing that A. afarensis did not "walk upright in the human manner" is all that is needed to disqualify it as a human ancestor. But there is no reason that bipedality, when it first arose, had to be identical to human bipedality; that final step could have occurred later. As Stern and Susman (1983) state: "In our opinion A. afarensis is very close to what can be called a "missing link". It possesses a combination of traits entirely appropriate for an animal that had traveled well down the road toward full-time bipedality..."

Another creationist writes: "From the neck down, certain clues suggested to Johanson that Lucy walked a little more erect than today's chimps. This conclusion, based on his interpretation of the partial hip bone and a knee bone, has been hotly contested by many

paleoanthropologists." (Morris, 1994)

Almost everything in this quote is a distortion (Johanson's and Lucy's names

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are about the only exceptions). "Certain clues suggested" doesn't mention that the whole find screamed "bipedality" to every qualified scientist who looked at it. "a little more erect", when everyone believes that Lucy was fully erect. "the partial hip bone and a knee bone", when Lucy included almost a complete pelvis and leg (taking mirror imaging into account, and excluding the foot). "has been hotly contested", when no reputable paleoanthropologist denies that Lucy was bipedal. The debates are about whether she was also arboreal, and about how similar the biomechanics of her locomotion was to that of humans. Given that we have most of Lucy's leg and pelvis, one has to wonder what sort of fossil evidence it would take to convince creationists of australopithecine bipedality. To support the idea that australopithecines are just apes, Parker says: "In their critique of the Leakeys, Johanson and White (1980) noted: 'Modern chimpanzees, by this definition [Richard Leakey's] would be classified as A. africanus.' Apes after all?" (Morris and Parker, 1982)

When the paper by Johanson and White is examined, it is apparent that Parker has taken their quote out of context in a way that almost reverses its meaning. Leakey did not call A. africanus a chimp, nor did Johanson and White accuse him of doing so. They criticized Leakey's definition because it was imprecise enough to also include chimps. Of course, such a criticism only makes sense if A. africanus is not a chimp. In 1987, creationist Tom Willis accused Donald Johanson of fraud, claiming that the skeleton known as "Lucy" consisted of bones that had been found at two sites about 2.5 km (1.5 miles) apart. Willis had actually confused two

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separate finds which belong to the same species. (This was in spite of the fact that a best-selling book (Johanson and Edey, 1981) has photos of both fossils: AL129-1 is a right knee, while Lucy has a right femur and a left tibia.) This was a spectacular error which could hardly have been made by anyone who had done the most elementary research, but that didn't stop a number of other creationists from picking up the claim and repeating it. Creationists rarely address the issue of why australopithecines have a foramen magnum at the bottom of the skull. Gish (1985) criticizes Dart's reasoning that the Taung baby walked upright, based on the position of its foramen magnum. Gish correctly states that the position of the foramen magnum is closer in juvenile apes and humans than it is in adults (in apes, it moves backwards during growth), and concludes that Dart was unjustified in analyzing this feature on a juvenile skull. This is the same criticism that Dart originally faced from scientists, but Gish fails to mention that later evidence proved Dart's analysis correct and silenced his critics. Creationists also rarely mention australopithecine teeth. Gish says that "[Dart] pointed out the many ape-like features of the skull, but believed that some features of the skull, and particularly of the teeth, were man-like". (Note the misleading implication that the apelike features really exist, while the humanlike ones are a figment of Dart's imagination.) Gish disputes this, pointing out that the molar teeth of africanus are extremely large. What Gish does not tell readers is that this is one of the few differences between them and human teeth. When the teeth of the Taung child could be properly examined, Dart's claim was strongly confirmed, and is now universally accepted. Despite its importance, Homo habilis is virtually ignored by creationists. The

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one exception is ER 1470, which is too well-known to be totally ignored. Creationists disagree on whether 1470 is an ape or a human. The other habilis fossils are never analysed, but the few creationists who do mention them are in agreement that they are all apes. The skull ER1471 was discovered in 1972, and publicized as both amazingly humanlike, and extremely old, at nearly 3 million years. Creationists eagerly seized on the statement of Richard Leakey, its discoverer, that 1470 "wipes out everything we have been taught about human evolution [this proved to be wrong], and I have nothing to offer in its place". Creationists sometimes give the impression that it is a modern human skull. But despite some modern traits, it has a number of australopithecine features, and a brain size of about 750 cc. Gish (1979) points out its small size, but states that its age and sex are unknown, presumably seeking to imply that it might belong to a child. That is not probable, as can be seen from comparative photos (Weaver, 1985). 1470's face is very robust, and as large as that of a modern Cro-Magnon skull, despite a much smaller brain size, and the cranium has a markedly different shape. There is also other evidence that it was an adult. Curiously, as a debating tactic to discredit other hominid fossils, creationists often accept 1470 as human, even though many of them reject larger-brained erectus specimens as apes.Creationists, however, are unlikely to find the idea of a human with a brain size of 510 cc very appealing. Gish in 1979 tentatively accepted 1470 as fully human. By 1985, he seemed to have reversed that opinion, and was suggesting that it should be placed in the genus Australopithecus (as have some scientists). His reasoning for this is that another habilis fossil OH 8 a set of foot bones) had been claimed by Oxnard and Lisowski to be not as humanlike as previously thought. This is

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used to justify placing all habilis fossils, including 1470, into the australopithecines. OH 8, of course, does not belong to 1470, and may not even have belonged to a member of the same species, so it is irrelevant to determining 1470's status. Gish implies that his earlier evaluation of 1470 was based on preliminary information, but the photos and descriptions on which Gish based his earlier opinion were published as early as 1973. Gish gives no new information about 1470 that would justify reclassifying it from a human to an ape. If 1470 was an ape, it would be a truly extraordinary one. The brain is far larger than that of any ape, with the exception of a few very large male gorillas. The braincase is far more rounded and gracile than that of any ape, and the brain has a human rather than an apelike pattern. Cronin et al.(1981) list nine features of 1470 which are either shared with A. africanus, or intermediate between africanus and other H. habilis specimens. Gish lists some of these in support of his contention that 1470 is australopithecine, but, in a fine example of selective quotation, failed to include another section from the same paragraph listing other features of 1470 that are generally associated with the genus Homo. Lubenow (1992), by contrast, considers 1470 fully human. So two of the foremost creationist experts on palaeoanthropology are both certain that 1470 is not intermediate between human and ape, yet one of them thinks it an ape, and the other thinks it is a human! There could be no more convincing demonstration of its transitional status. Although 1470 is usually placed in the genus Homo, it is definitely not a modern human. There is ample evidence of this: "The endocranial capacity and the morphology of the calvaria

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[braincase] are characters that suggest inclusion within the genus Homo, but the maxilla [upper jaw] and facial region are unlike those of any known form of hominid." (Leakey, 1973)

"KNM-ER 1470, like other early Homo specimens, shows many morphological characteristics in common with gracile

australopithecines that are not shared with later specimens of the genus Homo" (Cronin et al.1981)

"There is no evidence that this cranium particularly resembles H. sapiens or H. erectus according to either phenetic or cladistic evidence. Phenetically, KNM-ER 1470 is closest to the remains from Olduvai [considered apes by creationists] referred to H. habilis. (Wood, 1991)

Shortly after 1470 was discovered, anatomist A. Cave said in an interview that it was, "as far as I can see, typically human". Creationists interpret this to mean that it was the skull of a modern human. More likely is that Cave was merely saying that the skull belonged to, and had features typical of, the genus Homo. Another fossil which Lubenow considers human is ER 1590, consisting of cranial fragments and teeth of a child of about 6 years. It is not complete enough for the brain size to be directly measured, but it seems to be very close in size to 1470. However this child had teeth which were larger than those of Homo erectus, which are in turn larger than those of Homo sapiens. In addition, the sequence of tooth development has little resemblance to that

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of Homo sapiens (Wood, 1991). To support the claim that 1470 is human and other habilis fossils are apes, Lubenow quotes from a paper by Falk, which states that the endocast of 1470 has a human pattern, while that of 1805 is apelike (these were the only fossils discussed by Falk). However Tobias (1988) shows that other habilis fossils such as OH 7, OH 13, OH 16 and OH 24 (which creationists consider apes) all share many advanced features with ER 1470.

It is lightly built, with a rounded skull and no sagittal crest, modest eyebrow ridges, and a small amount of nasal prominence (Day, 1986). This is combined with a jaw and teeth that are similar to but larger than those of modern humans. Another transitional fossil! Because its brain was far smaller than any human, creationists have no choice but to call this an ape, despite the fact that 1470 looks more similar to 1813 than it does to a modern human skull. In fact, despite its larger brain size, Cronin et al.(1981) consider 1470 to be more primitive, with more australopithecine features, than 1813. The teeth of 1470 (as inferred from the sockets) were australopithecine-sized, while 1813 had smaller, Homo erectus-sized teeth (Klein, 1989). Others (reviewed in Wood (1992)) consider 1470 to belong to the same species as either OH 7 or 1813. OH 62 also closely resembles 1470 (Johanson et al.1987). Sorting out the exact relationships of these fossils is very difficult, but it is clear that all of them are similar, with a mixture of Homo and Australopithecus features. There is no "significant gap" separating 1470 from the others. The only Homo erectus fossils mentioned by many creationists (Huse, 1983; Morris and Parker, 1982; Taylor, 1992) are the Java Man and Peking Man

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fossils (discussed in the following sections). Most creationists consider both apes, although Lubenow (1992) considers both human even though many books stress their very close similarity. A few authors do mention other erectus fossils in passing. Morris suggests (although it is not clear which specimens he is referring to) that they are degenerate humans: "It may well be that Homo erectus was a true man, but somewhat degenerate in size and culture, possibly because of inbreeding, poor diet and a hostile environment" (Morris, 1974).

Gish (1985) suggests that many erectus fossils would have been attributed to Neanderthal Man were it not for their supposed age, and hence probably also considers the erectus morphology to be caused by disease. There is no explanation of why these adverse conditions would cause H. erectus to be so physically powerful, and in fact many erectus may have been of average human size (see the entry on the Turkana Boy fossil). Nor is it explained why all human skulls over 500,000 years old are erectus, and why, given the number of modern people who face a poor diet and a hostile environment, no erectus specimens are found nowadays. One Homo erectus specimen, the Turkana Boy, is recognized by Gish (1985) as human. Unavoidably, since it is an erectus skull attached to a body that is almost completely modern. Gish suggests that except for the brain size, all major aspects of the skeleton are within the limits of Homo sapiens, and that were it not for the estimated age of 1.6 million years it would be assigned to that species. That is incorrect; the Turkana Boy skull is a typical erectus skull, differing from modern humans in many aspects other than brain size. It is

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more similar to 1470 (H. habilis), or to other erectus specimens such as the Peking Man skullcaps, than it is to modern humans. The skeleton also has a number of minor differences from those of modern humans. Many creationists have claimed that Java Man, discovered by Eugene Dubois in 1893, was "bad science". Gish (1985) says that Dubois found two human skulls at nearby Wadjak at the same level and had kept them secret; that Dubois later decided Java Man was a giant gibbon; and that the bones do not come from the same individual. Most people would find Gish's meaning of "nearby" surprising: the Wadjak skulls were found 65 miles of mountainous countryside away from Java Man. Similarly for "at the same level": the Wadjak skulls were found in cave deposits in the mountains, while Java Man was found in river deposits in a flood plain (Fezer, 1993). Dubois had briefly reported the Wadjak skulls in three separate publications around 1890, but, recognizing that they were modern, devoted all his attention to Java Man once it was found. Based on his own theories about how brains had evolved and wishful thinking, Dubois did claim that Java Man had the proportions of a giant gibbon, but never said that it was one, and never stopped believing that he had found an ancestor of modern man (Theunissen, 1989; Gould, 1993; Lubenow, 1992). Creationists are right about one thing. Most modern scientists agree that the femur is more recent than the skullcap, belonging to a modern human. Some of the teeth found nearby are now thought to be from an orang-utan, rather than Homo erectus. It is instructive to listen to Gish (1993) expounding on the apelike qualities of the skullcap: "Now we see that the skullcap is very apelike; notice that it has no

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forehead, it's very flat, very typical of the ape. Notice the massive eyebrow ridges, very typical of the ape".

Despite this, the skullcap definitely does not belong to any ape, and especially not to a gibbon. It is far too large (940 cc, compared to 97 cc for a gibbon), and is similar to other Homo members that have been found. One of these is Sangaien , also found on Java. This skull, which is never mentioned by creationists, is an almost complete cranium and is clearly human, albeit primitive If one is trying to pigeonhole Java Man as either an ape or a human, calling it a human is easily the best choice, but Lubenow (1992) seems to be the only creationist who has done so. However he attempts to disqualify Java Man as a primitive human by using faunal evidence to show that it is the same age as the Wadjak skulls. Lubenow gives the following quote from Hooijer (1951): "Tapirus indicus, supposedly extinct in Java since the Middle Pleistocene, proved to be represented in the Dubois collection from the Wadjak site, central Java, which is late - if not post Pleistocene in age."

Lubenow is saying that since this species of tapir was found in both the Trinil [the site where Java Man was found] and Wadjak faunas, these fossils may be of the same age. This conclusion is reinforced by three other quotes from Hooijer, all of which describe difficulties in using faunal methods to date Java fossils. Lubenow's argument fails for a number of reasons. Even if faunal methods were completely invalid, it would not constitute evidence that Wadjak Man and Java Man were the same age. The most that could be claimed was that the ages of both were unknown. And Hooijer never

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said that the faunal methods were useless, or that the Wadjak and Trinil faunas were the same. By far the simplest resolution of the tapir discrepancy is, as Hooijer stated, that Tapirus indicus survived longer than previously thought on Java (Lubenow does admit this possibility). This is consistent with the rest of the evidence. The Wadjak fauna is modern, and hence Wadjak Man is considered to be less than 50,000 years old, and more probably about 10,000 years old. The Trinil fauna contains many more extinct species, and is hence older. Basically, Lubenow argues that Wadjak Man and Java Man are the same age because a single species of tapir is in both faunas, ignoring that there are many other species not shared between the faunas, and that the extinct species are exclusively in the Trinil fauna. Lubenow claims that Dubois concealed the Wadjak fossils because the discrepancy of the tapir would have contradicted his claim that Java Man was far older than Wadjak. This seems implausible because Dubois was one of the earliest collectors in Java, and detailed information on the Javan faunas was not compiled until decades later (Hooijer, 1951). Incidentally, the tapir was probably not singled out for mention by Hooijer because it is an anomaly, as Lubenow seems to suspect. It was probably of interest because this species of tapir is still living in South East Asia, and is not, as Lubenow states, extinct. Hooijer only stated that it was extinct in Java, not elsewhere. Parker (Morris and Parker, 1982) expresses puzzlement that Johanson (1981) considers Java Man to be a valid fossil. It is of course a valid fossil because the skullcap had to belong to something, but Parker merely dismisses it as "bad science". (He seems to be of the opinion that it was an ape, but does not

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say so explicitly.) Peking Man is another favourite target. Creationists claim that the Peking Man fossils are the remains of apes or monkeys eaten by real humans; that the original fossils may have been disposed of to conceal the evidence of fraud; that only models of the fossils remain; and that they are distorted to fit evolutionist preconceptions. Gish (1985) discusses Peking Man extensively, drawing most of his material from Boule and Vallois (1957). This book, which was almost 30 years old when Gish wrote, was a light revision by Vallois of a book that had originally been written by Boule another 20 years or so previously (Boule died in 1942). Gish, citing the "fact" that the bases of the skulls had been bashed in so the brains could be extracted, states that "All authorities agree that every one of the Sinanthropus [Peking Man] individuals had been killed by hunters and eaten." That may have been true in 1957 (although Boule and Vallois do not say so). Boule and Vallois do discuss the claims of various evolutionists that Sinanthropus had been eaten by modern man, or by Sinanthropus himself (i.e. cannibalism). Gish ignores the latter option and declares that since humans were responsible, Sinanthropus could not have been our ancestor, and must have been a giant ape. This is of course incorrect. Both can and did coexist. Almost all recent authorities (Jia (1990) is an exception) reject as unsupported the idea that Sinanthropus was hunted. The missing skull parts are the most fragile parts which are least likely to be preserved. It is most probable that the skulls were the prey of hyenas, the bones and faeces of which were often found in the excavation. So Gish's argument fails on multiple grounds: there is no proof, or even good evidence, that the Sinanthropus skulls were eaten by anyone, let alone modern humans. Even if they were, it would still not

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disqualify Peking Man from being a primitive human. Gish's claim that the skullcaps are of apes is similarly farfetched. The largest skullcap, about 1225 cc, is twice as large as that of a large male gorilla. Any ape with a brain that size would be enormous, but no such ape has been found at Zhoukoudian or anywhere else, and the jaws of Peking Man are much smaller than those of a gorilla but larger than one of which is attached to a body that even Gish recognizes as human (the Turkana Boy). Clearly it makes more sense to assume that Peking Man belonged to the same species than to hypothesize giant apes. Gish claims that "The features of the lower jaws described by Boule and Vallois were all apelike except for the shape of the dental arcade...". In fact, Boule and Vallois list 3 apelike characteristics, and 1 humanlike characteristic, but state that there are more of both. They agree with the conclusion of Weidenreich, who said the lower jaws present "a veritable intermingling of pithecoid [apelike] and human characters". Gish similarly claims the teeth were apelike, "with very few exceptions". Boule and Vallois do state that the teeth are apelike, though not as emphatically as Gish does. They list 6 features, 3 apelike, 1 humanlike, and two others whose significance is unclear. Gish does not mention the few skeletal bones that were found, probably because Boule and Vallois' discussion shows that they were all similar or identical to the same bones in modern humans, although the limb bone fragments were very thick. Boule and Vallois suspected that they might not belong to the same creatures as the skulls, but modern finds have confirmed that Homo erectus does have a primitive skull combined with a robust but essentially modern skeleton.

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Gish's conclusion that Sinanthropus was an ape is reached by emphasizing the apelike features of the fossils, and downplaying the human features. This conclusion is not supported by Boule and Vallois, any of the other authors quoted by them, or any modern authorities. The opinions are divided as to whether Sinanthropus is advanced enough to be called human, but no one considers it an ape. Boule and Vallois state that Peking Man has "physical characters intermediate between the group of Anthropoid Apes and the group of Hominines", and that many characters of the skull "which, if they do not yet conform exactly to the human morphological type, are singularly close to it". Another claim is that only models of the fossils remain, which, because they were made by committed evolutionists, may not be accurate copies. Gish appears to be confused about the words "cast" and "model", once using them as if they were synonymous. A cast, made from a mold of the fossil, is an almost exact duplicate. Excellent casts of the Peking Man fossils were made, and are mentioned in many books, including that of the creationist author Lubenow (1992). The models of complete skulls Gish refers to may partly reflect the subjective views of their maker since missing information will have had to be guessed at, but the primary evidence of Peking Man's affinities remains the casts and extensive documentation of the original material, not reconstructed skulls. Gish's statement that "All we have available are the models fashioned by Weidenreich" is totally untrue. Gish states that a model of a Sinanthropus skull by Weidenreich, shown in Boule and Vallois, differs glaringly from their earlier text descriptions, and from a model of Java Man shown earlier in the book. Weidenreich's model (which does look more humanlike than one might expect from Boule's description) was made using parts of at least 4 different individuals. By that time all of the

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Peking Man material had been found, and almost all portions of the skull were known, so Weidenreich's reconstruction is likely to be accurate. The braincase, for example, was precisely known and is clearly far more similar to that of a modern human than any ape. The Java Man reconstruction relied on fewer and less complete fossils, so is not as reliable. Part of the difference is probably also due to the Java Man skulls having a flatter, receding forehead compared to the more convex Peking Man skulls (Burenhult, 1993) (and, in fact, a flatter forehead is the major difference between what Gish says are "glaringly" different reconstructions). If Boule was biased, as Gish claims, it was in making Sinanthropus appear more apelike than it really was. Gish, in asserting that Peking Man was an ape, is adding to Boule's bias, rather than correcting for it. Gish nowhere explains why the discrepancy between Boule's description of a creature intermediate between ape and human and Weidenreich's more humanlike reconstruction provides evidence that Peking Man was an ape. If Peking Man were an ape, Weidenreich must have been unbelievably incompetent to produce such a humanlike reconstruction. But descriptions of Weidenreich and his work often use words such as "meticulous, "compulsively careful", "detailed", and the casts he made of the Peking Man fossils are usually described as "excellent". In addition, Weidenreich produced hundreds of pages of monographs on the fossils, with photos, measurements, drawings, and even X-rays. The only way these fossils could be apes would be if Weidenreich systematically fabricated not only the skull reconstruction, but his entire body of work. Even this would not be sufficient, as some of the earlier fossils were photographed, described, and had casts made of them, before Weidenreich

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ever saw them. Many scientists also saw the original fossils. Unless there was an extraordinarily widespread conspiracy among all the people who found, worked on, photographed and saw the fossils, they are genuine. As a testimony to the accuracy of the casts, some skull parts found in 1966 fit perfectly with casts of earlier portions to make most of a skullcap. Interestingly, Gish says that if Weidenreich's model is considered accurate, Boule and Vallois' claim that Peking Man is intermediate between ape and man could hardly be rejected. Therefore, these fossils are, according to Gish's own logic, indisputable transitional forms. The other source used by Gish is "Science of Today and the Problems of Genesis" (1969) by Rev. Patrick O'Connell, a Roman Catholic priest who was in China during the 1930's. O'Connell claimed that Peking Man was a large scale fraud, which presumably would have had to involve most of the people working with the fossils, and that the fossils may have been deliberately destroyed to remove the evidence. O'Connell never visited Choukoutien, never saw the fossils, apparently had no relevant expertise, and if he had any evidence for his wild claims, Gish does not give it. Gish, while not endorsing these claims, is at least sympathetic to them. O'Connell's work appears to not have enough substance to be worth addressing. Gish also states "Boule had visited Peking and Choukoutien and had examined the originals." C. Loring Brace, in a debate with Gish in 1982, called this "pure invention". Boule never visited either place, and worked from photos and descriptions. Despite this correction, Gish has repeated the assertion in 1985, and in debates as recently as 1992. (Fezer, 1993) The effort Gish expends in discrediting Peking Man seems totally wasted, as it is all nullified by the more competent work of Lubenow (1992), another

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creationist. Lubenow accepts Peking Man as Homo erectus as a matter of course, and, although he must have been familiar with Gish's criticisms, apparently did not consider any of them worth repeating. No creationist who discusses the human fossil record avoids mentioning Piltdown Man or Nebraska Man. Piltdown Man (Eoanthropus dawsoni) was discovered in England by an amateur, Charles Dawson, between 1908 and 1912. It consisted of parts of a surprisingly modern-looking skull associated with a surprisingly apelike lower jaw. Later fragments found in 1913 and 1915 also seemed to have a mixture of ape and human characteristics, and quelled suspicion that the original bones were from two unrelated creatures. In 1953 Piltdown was discovered to be a hoax, consisting of a modern human skull and an orang-utan jaw. Well before then, Piltdown had become a puzzling anomaly when compared to all other hominid fossils, and the scientific community was relieved to be able to forget about it. The paleontological community was horribly embarrassed by the uncovering of Piltdown, and justifiably so. A number of scientists had made what were in retrospect extremely foolish statements about the skull, elaborating on its "unmistakably apelike characteristics." Piltdown's acceptance was probably helped by the fact that it conformed to prejudices about what a primitive human skull would look like. In fact a number of scientists did believe that the cranium and jaw were not from the same creature, but no-one had suspected forgery. Nebraska Man (Hesperopithecus haroldcookii) was named from two humanlike teeth found in 1922. As creationists tell it, evolutionists used one tooth to build an entire species of primitive man, complete with illustrations of him and his family, before further excavations revealed the tooth to belong to

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a pig. The true story is much more complex (Wolf and Mellett, 1984; Gould, 1991). The imaginative drawing was the work of an illustrator collaborating with an English scientist, and was done for the Illustrated London News, not for a scientific publication. Few other scientists claimed it was a human ancestor. Some, including the finders, identified it only as an ape of some kind. Many others were skeptical even of that. It is an exaggeration to claim that Nebraska Man was widely accepted as human, or even as an ape, by scientists. Identifying the tooth as belonging to a higher primate was not as foolish as it sounds; pig cheek teeth are extremely similar to those of humans, and the specimen was worn, making identification even harder. Creationists often claim that Nebraska Man was used as proof of evolution during the Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925, but this claim is apocryphal. No scientific evidence was presented at the trial. (Some evidence was read into the trial record, but even this did not refer to Nebraska Man.) Nebraska Man should not be considered an embarrassment. The scientists involved were mistaken, but not incompetent or dishonest. The whole episode was actually an excellent example of how the scientific process should work. Given a problematic identification, scientists went out, found further data which falsified their earlier ideas, and promptly abandoned them (a marked contrast to the creationist approach). Creationists often point out, correctly, that Neandertals were human, but they tend to exaggerate their similarity to modern humans: "The creationists in those days [the 1860's] responded 'Now wait a minute. Neanderthals are just plain people, some of whom suffered bone disease'"

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"Nowadays, evolutionists agree with creationists: Neanderthals were just plain people, no more different from people living today than people than one living nation is different from another" Parker in (Morris and Parker, 1982). "Nowadays, Neanderthal Man is classified as Homo sapiens, completely human" (Huse, 1983).

Actually, Neandertals are classified as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, a subspecies of man, in recognition of consistent differences such as heavy brow ridges, a long low skull, a robust skeleton, and others. (Some scientists believe the differences are large enough to justify a separate species, Homo neanderthalensis.) Evolutionists last century claimed that these were real differences between us and Neandertals, and they were right. Creationists claimed that the differences were a result of various diseases, and they were wrong. For Parker to claim that creationists won this debate is a rewriting of history. Amazingly, a century after scientists knew otherwise, most creationists still believe that Neandertals were merely modern humans, deformed by diseases such as rickets, arthritis or syphilis. Some, but by no means all, Neandertals have been found with signs of these and other health problems. But Neandertals have many distinctive features, and there is no reason why these diseases (or any others) would cause many, let alone all, of these features on even one, let alone many, individuals. Modern knowledge and experience also contradicts the idea that disease is a cause of Neanderthal features. Last century the famous pathologist Rudolf Virchow was one who claimed that the first Neanderthal fossil found was of a rickets sufferer. As Trinkaus and Shipman (1992) point out, Virchow, an expert on rickets, should have been the first to realize how ridiculous this diagnosis was. People with rickets are

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undernourished and calcium-poor, and their bones are slender and weakened. The bones of the first Neanderthal, by contrast, were about 50% thicker than those of the average modern human, and clearly belonged to an extremely athletic and muscular individual. Lubenow (1992), relying on the authority of Virchow and Ivanhoe (1970), claims that Neandertals (and H. erectus and the archaic sapiens) were caused by a post-Flood ice age: heavy cloud cover, the need to shelter, and wear heavy clothes, and a lack of vitamin D sources, would all have combined to cause rickets.This explanation fails for many reasons: Rickets does not produce a Neanderthal, or Homo erectus morphology; it is clear from many sources (Reader, 1981; Tattersall, 1995) that the original Neanderthal skeleton was unlike any previously known, even in a century in which rickets was a well-known disease. Even Virchow did not, as Lubenow implies, accept rickets as a sole cause. Virchow in 1872 decided that the Neanderthal Man had had rickets in childhood, head injuries in middle age, and chronic arthritis in old age. A whole population of such people strains credibility, to say the least. Humans could hardly have stayed in shelter all the time; food gathering would have required them to spend a lot of time outside (and probably a lot more time than most modern urban humans). The most extreme differences from modern humans (H. erectus) are mostly found in regions such as Africa and Java, which were always tropical; the reverse of what would be predicted by Lubenow's hypothesis. Creationists usually claim that most of the fossil record was laid down

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by the Flood. And yet there are hundreds of fossils of "post-Flood" humans, who supposedly lived in a period of low population and little fossilization. Why, underneath these post-Flood humans, do we not find large numbers of fossilized pre-Flood humans? Creationists sometimes imply that a paper by Straus and Cave (1957) showed that Neandertals were identical to modern humans. Straus and Cave overturned the stereotype, created by Boule, that the Neanderthals were Ape Men with a shambling gait and a divergent big toe, and showed instead that their posture was identical to ours. But they went on to add: "This is not to deny that his limbs, as well as his skull, exhibit distinctive features - features which collectively distinguish him from all groups of modern men." (Straus and Cave, 1957)

The exhibit on Neandertals at the ICR (Institute for Creation Research) Museum says (or used to say): "Many Neanderthal features are similar to those in elderly humans today. Since humans lived to great ages in the initial generations after the flood and Babel, perhaps the features are primarily due to advanced age...".

In fact, none of the distinctive features of Neandertals are similar to those of old people, least of all powerful bones and muscles. This argument is especially ridiculous because even Neanderthal children are distinctive. Whoever wrote this presumably also thinks that Neandertals are arthritic modern humans. At least two evolutionary scientists have revived the idea that Neanderthal morphology may be a result of congenital diseases such as rickets (Ivanhoe,

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1970) or syphilis (Wright, 1971). According to Day (1986), neither of these cases was adequately supported or subsequently justified. Both claims seem to have sunk without a trace, except among creationists. Gish goes even further, dishonestly implying that even the scientific community accepts these claims: "They have now concluded that these primitive features of Neanderthal people were not genetic, they were pathological." (Gish, 1985)

Straus

and

Cave

made

striking

comment

about

Neandertals:

"Notwithstanding, if he could be reincarnated and placed in a New York subway - provided that he were bathed, shaved, and dressed in modern clothing - it is doubtful whether he would attract any more attention than some of its other denizens". This may be a source of the creationist idea that Neandertals are "just plain people" (Morris and Parker, 1982). Note, though, that this is not what the quote says. Anyone who has travelled the Big Apple's subway will probably agree that Neandertals could look quite odd and still meet Straus and Cave's rather lax criterion. Gish (1985) distorts this quote by claiming that a Neanderthal in a business suit could walk down a city street and not attract more attention than any other individual, a statement that is probably false. Johanson and Edey (1981) extend the example by saying that if you put Homo erectus on a subway, "people would probably take a suspicious look at him". Put Homo habilis on the subway, and "people would probably move to the other end of the car". Berra (1990) states that "if cleaned up, shaved and dressed in business suits, [Neandertals] could probably pass for television evangelists."

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The following quote from Trinkaus and Shipman (1992) refutes claims that Neandertals differ no more from modern humans than living races do from each other: "Rare individuals among modern humans may share one, or even a few, of the anatomical characteristics of Neandertals, but not one human - much less any population - can be found that possesses the entire constellation of traits that define Neandertals" .

I found this to be true in my research in populations in Wales, Cornwall and SE Ireland and people watching in cities worldwide. If you know what you are looking for then from a genetic point of view some of the features stand out in both males and females.

A common creationist claim is that humans existed alongside or predated all of their presumed ancestors in the fossil record. Taylor (1992) contains a long list of supposed examples (with the disclaimer "Remains which some researchers have suggested as evidence that the various "missing links" were contemporaneous, or that man and these creatures were contemporaneous"). I suggest for the moment that the evidence is lacking on this but more research is needed. Many of these cases are various hominid fossils which appear in the correct position in the fossil record. Some of these have already been mentioned: the Petralona specimen, 1470, the Turkana Boy, and the Krapina specimens. Other examples are: Laetoli footprints: creationists invariably mention the close resemblance between these and modern human footprints, but often neglect to mention their extremely small size and the fact they are similar to the feet of the

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australopithecines living at the same time (exactly how similar is a matter of debate). KP 271: Lubenow (1992) states that this is indistinguishable from a human bone, Parker and Morris (1982) state that it is a human bone. Lubenow quotes a number of scientists who state that KP 271 is very humanlike, but not Feldesman (1982), who found that KP 271, "far from being more 'humanlike' than Australopithecus, clearly associates with the hyperrobust

Australopithecines from Lake Turkana". KP 271 has usually been assigned to the australopithecines (and recently to A. anamensis) because no other hominids are known from 4 million years ago.

Although Lubenow considers this conclusion "shocking", there are plausible reasons for it. The lower humerus of chimps is quite similar to that of humans, and it is reasonable to suppose that australopithecines would be even more similar, especially since the upper end of the humerus in australopithecines is known to fall within the human range. Patterson and Howell (1967) state that both KP 271 and the australopithecine upper humerus were, based on their measurements, virtually identically to some modern humans, yet Lubenow is able to conclude that KP 271 is "strikingly close" [his italics] to modern humans, while the upper humerus is only "quite similar, based on visual assessment". Because the lower humerus is poorly known in hominids, and is a poor diagnostic indicator, it is premature to claim that KP 271 cannot be an australopithecine fossil. Swanscombe Man: two cranium fragments discovered in 1935 and 1936 by Alvan Marston in England, and a third fragment, discovered in 1955, which fit with the earlier

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ones. The bones are very thick, with a mixture of primitive and modern features, and an estimated brain size of 1325 cc. They are probably from an archaic Homo sapiens, a view compatible with their estimated age of 200,000 to 300,000 years. (Day, 1986) Fontechevade Man: a skullcap fragment which is difficult to classify, and whose dating is doubtful, it is probably also an archaic H. sapiens. Vertesszollos Man: a few tooth fragments, and part of an adult cranium. The cranial fragment is very thick and broad, with a mixture of modern and primitive features. This is also considered to be probably an archaic sapiens. This would match its age, which has variously been estimated to be from 160,000 to over 350,000 years. (Day, 1986) Of the other "anomalous" hominid fossils, most are of fossil humans that have since been discovered to be intrusions, i.e. they have been buried in deposits that are older than they are. Examples are: Abbeville, or Moulin Quignon, Jaw: discovered by Jacques Boucher de Perthes in 1863 at Abbeville in France. This was a modern-looking jaw that had come from very old deposits. However because of strong evidence that it was a modern jaw that had been "planted", probably by de Perthes' workmen, who were paid for good finds, few scientists have ever accepted it as genuine. (Trinkaus and Shipman, 1992) Oldoway Man: a skull and skeleton found by Hans Reck at Olduvai Gorge in 1913. In 1932 it was shown to be a modern Homo sapiens, buried 20,000 years ago in older

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deposits that had been exposed by faulting (Johanson and Shreeve, 1989). Taylor (1992) writes "Some have suggested this skeleton is an intrusive burial", when in fact this explanation has been unanimously accepted (even by the notoriously stubborn Louis Leakey). Kanjera Man, Kanam Jaw: discovered by Louis Leakey in 1932, and claimed by him to be very old. The dating however proved to be uncertain, and both are probably modern bones. (Johanson and Shreeve, 1989; Lewin, 1987) Castenedolo Man: Morris and Parker (1982) say "Fossils of ordinary people in Mid-Tertiary rock [i.e. tens of millions of years old; the actual date is about 1.5 million years] were found in Castenedolo, Italy back in the late 1800's...". An official report on these skeletons in 1899 noted that all the fossils from the deposit were impregnated with salt, except the human ones. This implies that they are from relatively recent burials. Collagen tests in 1965 and radiocarbon dating in 1969 confirmed this. (Conrad, 1982) Guadeloupe Man: W. Cooper claimed in 1983 that a modern skeleton found on Guadeloupe in 1812 had been dated at 25 million years old, in the Miocene period. The excellent condition of the skeleton, and the fact that it had originally been found with other skeletons (all pointing in the same direction) along with a dog and some implements, indicate that it was a recent burial. In addition, it has never been claimed to be from Miocene deposits by anyone except Cooper. (Howgate and Lewis, 1984) Galley Hill Man:

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this was a modern-looking skeleton discovered in 1888 in old deposits. Even last century, many thought it was a modern human, and this was confirmed in 1948 when it was fluorine dated (Trinkaus and Shipman, 1992). Henry Morris has claimed (1974) that since 10,000 year old Homo erectus skulls were found at Kow Swamp in Australia, erectus cannot be the ancestor of modern man. The logic is faulty, since there is no reason that a population of erectus could not have survived long after Homo sapiens first appeared. Morris also has his facts wrong. Characteristics of the Kow Swamp skulls led to suggestions that some Homo erectus _features_ had survived in them, as the quote Morris gives from Thorne and Macumber (1972) clearly states. Morris' claim that they are erectus _skulls_ is incorrect. It is now thought that the most prominent such primitive feature, flattened foreheads, may have been caused by the cultural practice of head-binding (Day, 1986; Gamble, 1993). Lubenow (1992) makes a stronger case that the Kow skulls are H. erectus, claiming that the pathological or cultural causes suggested for them could equally well be applied to much older erectus skulls. Lubenow claims that the Kow skulls meet many criteria for H. erectus, but gives no documentation for this, other than showing that they are more primitive than modern skulls. It is possible that the Kow skulls are primitive by modern standards, without reaching the degree of primitiveness of archaic sapiens, or erectus, skulls, but Lubenow gives no evidence which would exclude this possibility. His claims are flatly contradicted by Gamble (1993) "There is no doubt that all the people who have ever lived on the continent [Australia] would qualify as anatomically modern humans", and Burenhult (1993) "Analysis of these skeletons has shown conclusively that all are of modern humans, Homo sapiens sapiens".

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Thorne and Macumber (1972) mention that the frontal bones of the skull are particularly archaic, being very similar to some of the Java erectus skulls. By implication, the rest of the skull is not, particularly since it is also stated that the skulls show preservation of early sapiens characteristics. In addition, Kennedy (1984) shows that the femurs of the Kow skeletons are identical to those of modern humans, and significantly distinct from those of those of Homo erectus. Some creationists point to Olduvai Gorge, where australopithecines are found contemporaneously with Homo habilis and erectus, above another layer which contains the remains of a circular stone habitation, apparently made by humans. How could australopithecines be the ancestor of habilis, or habilis of erectus, if they are all found together? And how could erectus be the ancestor of modern man, if traces of modern man are found below it? There are a number of errors in this reasoning. First, the australopithecines in question are robust, and are not considered as ancestors of Homo. Even if they were, there is no reason why they could not coexist with a descendant species. Finally, the claim that the stone circle is an artefact has been dropped. It is only a rough arrangement, and could have just as easily have been formed by water or other activity at any time in the past. Even if it was artificial, there is no reason to believe that habilis or erectus would have been incapable of making it. Brain sizes vary considerably within any species, but this variation is not usually related to intelligence. Instead, it correlates loosely with body size: large people tend to have larger brains. As a result, women on average will have smaller brains than men, and Pygmies will have smaller brains than Zulus, but the average intelligence of all these groups is, as far as we can tell,

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the same. Note: for convenience, I use the term "brain size" instead of "cranial capacity". Because the brain does not fill the cranial cavity, the brain size is smaller than the cranial capacity, but the latter value is, obviously, the only one that can be determined from a skull. Figures for the average brain size of modern humans tend to vary between sources, but a typical value is 1350 or 1400 cc. The following figures should convey a feel for the normal range of variation in human skulls. Burenhult (1993) states that the 90% of humans fit in the range 1040- 1595 cc, and that the extreme range is 900-2000 cc. S.J. Gould, in "The Mismeasure of Man", reviewed a 19th century study by Morton of 600 skulls which ranged from 950 to 1870 cc (and 25% of this sample was of small-statured Peruvians, so the figure of 950 cc is, if anything, lower than it might be for 600 randomly selected humans). Morton also catalogued his skulls by race, with the lowest average for any racial group being 1230 cc.

Various sources, some of them creationist, give lower limits for human brain size of 900 cc (twice), 855 cc, and 830 cc. Normal humans are found with values smaller than this, but they are very rare. Microcephalics, who are subnormal in intelligence, can be as low as 600 cc, but this is a pathological condition and such skulls cannot be considered normal. Compare this range with that of the 5 measurable Java Man skulls. These average 930 cc (less than the minimum of the 600 modern skulls cited above), with the smallest being 815 cc. Moreover, unlike modern humans with low brain sizes, these skulls are very robust, with flattened braincases and large brow ridges.

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These figures also show how extraordinary the Turkana Boy is. As an adult, he would have been over 183 cm (6'0") tall, large even by modern standards. Modern men of that stature could be expected to have a brain size of at least 1500 cc, but the Turkana Boy's estimated adult brain size of 910 cc is smaller than all but a fraction of 1% of modern humans of all sizes and both sexes. For comparison, 900 cc is a typical brain size for a modern child of 3 or 4 years weighing 15 kg (33 lbs). Lubenow (1992) states that the normal human range is 700-2200 cc. Part of the reason for this wide range is that we have a huge sample size, compared to any extinct species. Obviously, skulls at the extreme ends of that range will be very rare. It is clearly implausible for Lubenow to claim that ER 1470, at 750 cc, is "well within the normal human range", when it is well below what most people consider a minimum size for normal modern humans. One might equally validly claim that 4'0" (122 cm) is a normal adult height on the grounds that some people are only 3'6" (107 cm) tall. The probability of finding an adult human skull as small as ER 1470 is very remote (probably less than 1/10,000). It is far more probable that 1470 was a fairly typical member of its population, rather than an extreme case. This is what we find: other habilis fossils, very similar to 1470, are even smaller, well below Lubenow's lower limit of 700 cc. Chimpanzees have a brain size between 300 and 500 cc, with an average of 400 cc. Gorillas have an average brain size of 500 cc, with large individuals going up to 700 cc, or even 750 in one instance. Hominids are best compared with the similar-sized chimpanzees than the much larger gorillas it is said but I feel human emotion gets in the way of this data as Chimps have more human faces and therefore more likeable and would be easy excepted. Lubenow states that "the crucial element is not brain size but brain

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organization. A large gorilla brain is no closer to the human condition than is a small gorilla brain". That is true, but many of the H. habilis fossils that Lubenow, and all other creationists, claim to be apes do come close to the human condition: the insides of their skulls show that they had many modern features (Tobias, 1988). Some of them also had brain sizes between 600 and 700 cc; smaller than any human, but much larger than any chimpanzee, and a respectable size even for a gorilla. Between species, average brain size, when a corrective formula for body size is applied, is a fair indicator of relative intelligence. The results are approximate, because they depend on which formula is used, and also on brain and body size, both of which are difficult to estimate for most fossil hominids. However it seems australopithecines were roughly as smart as, or probably a bit smarter than, chimps. Homo habilis and erectus were intermediate between chimps and modern humans. Walker and Leakey (1993) and Tobias (1988) have good overviews of attempts to estimate the relative intelligence of hominid species. The major argument of Marvin Lubenow's book "Bones of Contention" is that the various species of hominid cannot form an evolutionary sequence because they overlap one another in time. I have used this book as part of my research and it well used and getting past its sell by date. Firstly, he argues that a species cannot survive once it has given rise to a new species. Unlike other creationists, he does attempt to give some justification for this. Supposedly, the newer, fitter descendant species, would, because of its superiority, drive its parent species to extinction. The argument is incorrect because members of the parent species may live in a separate region from the new species. If the species come into contact again, there may be no

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competition because they have diverged enough to occupy different ecological niches. (Many scientists would argue that even the requirement for a separate region is unnecessary.) Additionally, it is a misunderstanding of evolutionary theory to claim that a new species is "superior", in some absolute sense, to its parent species. Typically, both species will be "superior" at living in their own niches. This argument is so broad that it would not only disprove human evolution but all evolution; Lubenow is basically asserting that a species cannot split into two species. Obviously this is not the view of speciation accepted by evolutionists, since it would follow that the number of living species could never increase. The argument is also contradicted by real world examples, such as that of the 13 species of finch which live on the Galapagos Islands. There is such compelling evidence that these are descended from a common ancestor that even most creationists accept them as evidence of evolution "within a created kind". If Lubenow was correct, even such micro-evolution would be impossible. By his argument, newly-evolved finch species should drive their ancestors to extinction. This does not happen, of course, because they all live on different foods. Secondly, and more seriously, Lubenow claims that, in some cases, a descendant species existed before the species it supposedly descended from. This is I should point out, impossible under evolutionary theory. For example, Lubenow claims that Homo erectus overlaps the entire time range in which Homo habilis is found. The oldest dated habilis specimen he lists is about 1.9 million years old (with a possibility that another was as much

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as 2.35 million years old). Lubenow criticizes Klein (1989) for showing a graph in which habilis is shown preceding erectus in time, when none of the habilis fossils discussed by Klein are dated before 1.9 million years ago. In this case, Lubenow has not read Klein carefully enough. Klein does, on page 133, and in a graph on page 112, mention the presence of habilis-like fossils found at about 2.3 million years. These are a few fragmentary teeth attributed to Homo, found at Omo in Ethiopia, and dated to 2.3-2.4 million years (Howell et al.1987). They are relatively unimportant, and it is not surprising that Klein would not give them any further discussion. But there is no reason to believe that fossils have been found over the entire range of time for which habilis existed. Almost all habilis fossils have been found in the rich deposits of Olduvai Gorge and Koobi Fora (less than 2 million years old), while there is a scarcity of fossiliferous regions between 2 and 2.5 million years. One might expect further fossil finds to extend the time range in which H. habilis is known, and that is what has happened. Hill et al.(1992) have analysed a skull bone, KNM-BC 1, found in Kenya in 1967. They identified it as belong to the genus Homo (though not to erectus or sapiens), and have dated it at 2.4 million years. And Schrenk et al.(1993) have announced the discovery in Malawi of a hominid lower jaw, UR 501, that they have attributed to Homo rudolfensis (a proposed habilis-like species). This fossil has been faunally dated between 2.3 and 2.5 million years. Similarly, Lubenow claims that humans are found up to 4.5 million years ago, before any australopithecines. Before 2 million years ago, the evidence for this consists of only two fossils, the Laetoli footprints and the Kanapoi

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Hominid (since dated at 4.1 million years). This is Lubenow's strongest argument, because both fossils are, arguably, from humans. The problem is that there is not enough other evidence to exclude the possibility that both belong to australopithecines. More diagnostic fossils such as skulls, or partial skeletons, could prove the existence of humans, but so far, all such evidence points only to the existence of australopithecines past 3 million years ago. There are more fossils which Lubenow considers to be sapiens, but which are as old as the earliest erectus fossils (about 2 million years). These consist of some undoubted habilis fossils such as ER 1470, and some fossils usually assigned to erectus or habilis. These fossils are all of body parts which are difficult to classify, because other Homo species are both poorly known, and not that different below the neck, as far as we know, from modern humans. Lubenow admits the difficulty but assigns them to H. sapiens anyway. Most of Lubenow's book is devoted to documenting the overlaps which he believes falsify human evolution. Once it is realized that this argument is based on an elementary misunderstanding of evolutionary theory, there is little left of his book that needs to be refuted.

When one reads creationist literature about the human fossil record, there is a definite pattern in the fossils that are selected for discussion. When I say selected that is what happened, because knowledge being what it was at the time, the more profile examples were used and therefore much may have been missed in the left out sampling of fossils of a lower order. Huse (1983), in a summary of "some of the more significant so-called fossil ape-men", discusses the insignificant Nebraska Man, Piltdown Man, Lucy, the

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Neandertals, and the original Java Man fossil, ignoring all other H. erectus fossils, H. habilis, and A. africanus. Taylor (1992), ("Each of the most famous 'missing links' is discussed") devotes only two sentences to H. habilis, mentioning no fossils by name and dismissing it as an ape. Taylor also makes misleading use of the past tense to imply that even evolutionists no longer accept habilis as a transitional form an implication which is totally incorrect. For H. erectus, only Peking Man and the original Java Man fossil are mentioned in the main text. Parker (Morris and Parker, 1982) claims that "all the candidates once proposed as our evolutionary ancestors have been knocked off the list", and then proceeds to give the list, which is inexplicably lacking H. erectus (it is lumped in with Java Man) and H. habilis, and the gracile australopithecines. (Parker then contradicts himself by admitting that the gracile

australopithecines are still possible candidates). Gish (1985) discusses Java Man, Peking Man and ER 1470, but almost totally omits mention of all other H. habilis and H. erectus fossils. Lubenow (1992) alone appears to be aware of all the fossil material, and comes closest to addressing the evidence, but he fails to discuss some of the more compelling intermediate fossils such as OH 7, OH 24 and ER 1813 (because his book is about the human fossil record, and he considers most habilis specimens to be apes). Lubenow is virtually the only creationist to avoid the absurdity of claiming that the Java Man and Peking Man fossils are apes. Creationists appear to avoid discussion of the fossils that are the best evidence for human evolution. These include superb fossils such as OH 9, ER 3733 and Sangiran 17 (human but with primitive features), Sts 5 (apelike, but

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with some modern features) and OH 7, OH 13, OH 24, and ER 1813 (so perfectly transitional that they are difficult to classify). In contrast to the above omissions, it is almost impossible to find a creationist work that does not mention Nebraska Man (Lubenow is the one exception), despite the fact that it was at best weak evidence for human evolution even during its brief heyday 70 years ago, the year of my first birthday and Piltdown Man, despite the fact that the hoax was discovered over 40 years ago. Ramapithecus, which was often claimed to be a human ancestor in the 1960's and 70's, also gets mentioned frequently.

Some transitional fossils are often mentioned in creationist literature, typically Java Man and Peking Man, and sometimes ER 1470. This is probably because most creationists, knowing little about the fossils and copying their information from another creationist source, are under the mistaken impression that these fossils have been shown to be either ape or fully human. When creationists do perform their own research, they show a surprising inability to agree on which fossils are apes and which are humans: which is exactly what one would expect if evolution had occurred. Even more surprisingly, creationists do almost no anatomical comparisons, even of the fossils they do discuss. Typically, they will flatly assert that a fossil is a human or an ape. Nor do they provide photographs, so that their readers could judge for themselves whether the fossils are transitional or not. If, as most of them claim, Java Man is an ape, a comparative photo of an ape, Java Man and a human would be an easy way to demonstrate it. If they are confident in their interpretation of the data, why do they not show the evidence to their readers?

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Another feature of creationist literature is its approach to scientific authority. Creationists appear to make no attempt to weigh evidence; they often accept uncritically any statement made by a scientist which can be used to advantage, while ignoring any contrary opinions. Scientists used in this way include Oxnard, Zuckerman, and Ivanhoe. Their results are often treated as if they were authoritative, when in reality they are very much minority opinions in the scientific community. The creationist approach of allocating all fossils to either apes or humans is inherently dishonest, because it excludes intermediates by defining them away. No creationist ever defines what would be acceptable as a valid transitional fossil, because examples could be found to fit any reasonable definition. Instead, creationists are forced to take pot-shots at irrelevant fossils, misrepresent a few carefully selected examples, and ignore the strongest evidence for human evolution. The pathology of early humans is of great interest to anyone looking at our past. Getting it right of course is much more difficult not only that we tend to forget all too easy or dismiss it out of hand the psychology and the paranormal side of such beings. Early man did have a brain but I have to question when it became activated, dreams started, and the paranormal aspect came into the picture. The brain of course would need a stimulus for such thinking and dreaming but first let us look at the modern human from the present day backwards to when the missing link was supposed to be. It all starts with the brain and within the brain of course and its function, lies hidden fears of death and the spirit world even in early man. It is easy to see that many of the above were carried or imprinted into the brains of many of our past families along at times with some forms of

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mental illness. With very early man then they would have been concerned only with the dead, basic astronomy, seasons, and rituals of a bloody nature, food, fire and shelter. There would have also been forms of mental illnesses much as we have today as well as bone disease because of the high intake of vitamin A from the livers of carnivores which they would have also killed and eaten as food. Very early man had one thing in mind at all times and that was to survive as long as he/she could before dying from disease, being killed by a wild animal, starvation, accident or killed by its own kind for food. Death was an everyday event and it was kill or be killed but whatever was killed was eaten. From a psychology point of view and early mankind things are not as easy clear-cut.

THE MIND.

CONSCIOUSNESS.

The question is of course are when early mankind from ape like mammals to upright homo mammals developing a state of consciousness and the aspects of change. There is no doubt that early man was aware of external and internal stimuli of his/her environment from the bodys sensory systems but at times unaware of the background stimuli at times unless there is a sudden change in it. We walk through the woods today with someone and a group of children and we are aware of the talk and the noise but most times unaware of birds singing unless we stop and listen or go out with a purpose of seeing birds.

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Early mans attention and ours was and is selective and all events that are important to our own survival have a top priority. Take pain in a part of our body. If it becomes severe then we block out all other awareness and lock in on the pain and all other consciousness is put on hold until we deal with the pain. All that was going on around early man on daily and from his storage and memories of past events, his attention would have been focus on only a few stimuli at any given moment and like us, he would ignore, select and reject all the time so that consciousness would be changing all of the time. In todays human, many of the memories as well as past stimuli that are not part of your consciousness at a moment in time can be brought to the now when needed or triggered off by a body stimuli. These pre- consciousness memory banks is one of the reasons from a paranormal point of view, that ghosts are seen and even possible that Alien Abduction has occurred and you have missed time even though you were awake. It is not that all the people who claim alien abduction or seeing and feeling ghosts are lying, though some do, but because of past stimuli that your mind has stored of images, colours and sounds. Someone is driving along a dark country road at night somewhere in the UK. Woods surround the road and it is raining, the headlights on, the window wipers scraping across the glass of the car and a hare runs out, stops for a moment caught in the headlights then dashes into cover as you speed by. Your mind tells you that it was a small rodent or a hare but some of you will confuse it with a rabbit. If it was a deer dashing across the road in the night rain you would see a much larger mammals and if it was lacking antlers then when it had passed out of sight you would question and wonder was it in fact

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a deer and not something else? After all where you passed there is no reports of deer in that area so why should a deer turn up and maybe on thinking on it, the grey brown body, sleek with rain may have beenYou start to question and reason as you drive on, look in the rear mirror now and then, grip the wheel tighter and wait for something else to run across in front of you. Then your car splutters to a halt. The lights stay on and you curse under your breath and try to restart the engine. It turns over but nothing. You switch off the lights and now you are in darkness and try again, this time it gives a cough but again fails to start. You dont like sitting there in the darkness alone and with wet trees all around you. There are no lights to be seen, no other cars, just darkness, rain and you alone at 9.34pm on a wet night in November in a wooded countryside. Your mind now starts to operate overtime, your heartbeat quickens, and your mobile phone is still back at the house because you forgot to bring it with you. You look out at the woods in the headlights. Something is in there watching you. Right now there are eyes on your lights from deep within the wet woods. A nose twitches, the eyes alert and it moves forward a little then stops. You can see it but they are there. Not one but a few. All watching your headlights. You fear the dark and what might be lurking there, what might harm or even kill you and you try the engine again and this time it splutters into life and you roar off burning rubber glad to be away from that place. Over the hill the lights of a village and you start to relax while the mice in the wood watch your taillights fade away into the night. Eyes can see many things but the mind does not always get it right at that moment in time. Take a look at the examples below. Your modern mind will try and work it out and more than likely come up with a number of answers until you get the correct onethat is for you!

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What we see at first is real enough to us but if we look again we see the same picture but with a different meaning in the here and the now. Come back to the pictures and again you have the same problem. Which is real and which do we want to be real? Is it possible that we humans live in two mind worlds, at times crossing over here and there? I suggest this is more likely in vivid dreams than when we are awake but sometimes what we see and hear during the day because our attention has been drawn to it suddenly is not always at first as it seems, until that is the mind deciphers the information.

Shapes and sizes all take on different meanings to us humans but with early mankind it was much the same except that it was in a much more limited form but was more true to form and understanding than we have.

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When it comes down to the unconscious mind some memories, impulses and desires are not accessible to the consciousness and painful memories and fearful ones are diverted into the unconscious storage place. These of course affect us indirect and in very disguised ways. This will happen in dreams, irrational behaviour, and mannerisms and such unconscious desires and impulses are the cause of many of the mental illnesses of today as well as brain injury or disease. Brain injury with trauma injury or disease is a common factor and much of it is not diagnosed or when discovered, diagnosed wrongly and of course a medical label put on it.

If we are dealing with early upright man we are not talking about ape like creatures because it is my view that the apes that walked upright and even the most primitive human like creatures did in fact live side by side, one a vegetarian with broad flat and chewing teeth, the ape-like ones, and the carnivore type with teeth of the cutting sort but absent of long canines like a wolf or a dog. There had to be cross breeding of that I am sure and many thousands of years down the line, the more human type of homo appeared because of gene mutation, the new DNA makeup the result that the ape like creature was bred out and replaced by homo in a more human form. With that human form came a larger brain and advanced consciousness and the unconscious thought but also hints of mental illnesses and vivid dreams. Some of these vivid dreams were drug induced in some tribes, the dream time is a common factor in some tribes of native Americans and tribes from Asia and Africa.

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Everyone dreams even if they dont know it during their REM-sleep period and those who sleep soundly do not always recall their dreams. Not everyone knows they are dreaming and it has been proved beyond doubt that those people who have lucid dreams all events in that dream seem real and normal.

When it comes to sleep walking it occurs only during the NREM periods of sleep and it happen in the first third of sleep in the night. The eyes are open but unseeing, and many teenage sleepwalking in the 1600s/ 1700s seen at night walking in the garden or on a road at night were looked on from local people as being possessed or witches and at times put to death along with their family. A sleepwalker of course does not remember what they have done or where they have been and some modern killers claim that the did so while unaware of it and asleep but because an act of violence was carried out then contact had to be made, even a struggle and the sleepwalker would have awakened with a shock and deep fear. If we look at PSI PHENOMENA then early man would have been better equipped to be in touch with it than most of todays humans because of the uncluttered mind but from a parapsychology point of view it concerns me that too many people are easy led up the garden path when it comes to ESP, Telepathy, Precognition, Psycho kinesis and Clairvoyance. The trouble is of course today is that most people who claim to be parapsychologists also consider themselves to be scientists and applying the rules of scientific enquiry to very unusual phenomena. The first rule of course is evidence that will stand up as acceptable. There has also to be controls and safeguards and inadequacies plague all of the sciences in the natural world we live in. Anyone today who claims to be a parapsychology expert needs first of all to have studied to more than a basic limited psychology, biology, physics and geology.

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With early man it was inbred in order to survive and by the time it was passed down through the family genes to man in the moment much of the powers had been badly diluted or discarded. A few people, a very few, do have some type of paranormal powers which has been passed on through the genes and with that comes fragments of past knowledge, a bit like a roll of 16 mm black and white film with a few frames along it exposed. When we talk of prehistory memory being passed on this is what is needed. [1] Some genetic link from A to Z, Z being a modern human in 2012. [2] A gene memory bank with some encoded past information. [3] A receptive uncluttered human mind. [4] Drug free brain and CNS tissue. [5] A subject and control subject of the same age and sex, born on the same day at the same time and unknown to one another. [6] Subjects not over the age of 14 years of age and living in different countries from one another.

Finding such subjects is not impossible but finding two subjects who have not been pre-exposed to todays media hype would almost be. I have been lucky. At present I am working on this research project, with one subject in Canada and one in Africa. If and it is a big IF I can link up the sent information over the next year with that of the other person then it will be possible to explain, at least in part, some link in recovered memory banks even though the two people involved will never meet or be in contact with one another.

With early mankind we always have assumed that the world as we know it was a joined mass of land with two poles. We know the mass broke up, some

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of it sinking and some drifting as todays continents. However what has not been looked at is the real possibility that a few million years ago, the earth was knocked of its rotation by a meteor strike and reversing the poles to where they are now? Early man movements before the earth tilted and a change in the Earths magnetic force field. If this was the case and I do believe there was an Earth tilt two million years ago because of some solar storm then it would help explain the lost bones of bear, wolf, hippo, crocodile, elephant and jungle like plants found in mud and coal faces, soil and rock and in sand dunes and chalk. Homos dating back 2.2 mya and 1.3 million years ago have been found in ice well above the known ice age movements and under it even as far south as the Alps on the ice fields there. Todays climbers on ice know all too well the dangers of falling into a snow covered crevasse and being lost for years but in the end the ice moves slowly downhill and gives up the dead. The same thing happens when a climber falls from a height into deep snow and is killed. He/ she may not killed outright but die from hypothermia and found in the snow and ice many years later sitting with their back to a rock or ice block. The same can be said for very early man for not only did many die from cold and buried by snow and ice but they also return to the surface many thousands of years later. Such bodies though rare do and have turned up as like the ICE MAN below.

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Though the above Iceman is Neolithic it does show that permafrost mummies can be well preserved for many years and somewhere out there in an icy wasteland is the mummies of very early man that is not ape-like in nature. Artificial mummification came about in Egypt around 3,000 BC but that was with human dead bodies and I suspect that the process was going on a long time before that with animals like cats and dogs. They and others believed that the soul re-enters the body and therefore important that the body be preserved. It was not only in Egypt that this process was carried out but also much closer to home with sun drying the bodies of the gauchos of the Canary Islands. With burial in permafrost like the bodies of the Siberian burial mounds of Pazyryk in the Altai Mountains and the bodies lay in ice filled wooden grave chambers. Even horses were found entombed with the dead and this Scythian nomadic group who came there in 500 BC. Bodies found in the ice in Greenland were also well preserved with no sign of grave wax because of the cold.

If I look at the ICEMAN and his culture above I find that he lived sometime between 8M BC and 3M BC, used tools, cultivated plants, and kept cattle and sheep. He was also armed with a bow and a small cutting knife, wore clothes that he made or was made for him and walked a lot on foot. The bow was made of yew; the knife handle of ash and the shoots of the Wayfaring tree were the arrow shafts. There is no doubt in my mind that he lived on the low lands of where he was found but what took him so high in the mountains where he died?

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If he was hunting there then it could have been Red deer but only in summer above the tree line, Elk but also in summer, Chamois and found in the mountains up to 3500 M, Alpine Ibex, and the Mouflon, a type of goat. I doubt very much if he went that high in search of small game like members of the grouse family or hares. No matter what we tend to discover about the ICEMAN we know that he is modern man from an archaeology point of dating. Nothing can change that or his features and he had a thinking culture. Which brings us to what lay before him as a Homo and the missing link. Enter on stage Homo neanderthalensis, NEANDERTHALERS, with a large brain, massive brow ridge, receding chin and of a heavy muscular build and how they were in time replaced by anatomically modern Homo sapiens. Somewhere is old ice field there are remains to be discovered. In years we are talking 150,000 to 30,000 years ago and sometime around 30,000 years ago or a few thousand years before, Homo sapiens turned up but from where? First let me make it clear that no Alien spacecraft arrived with modern Homo clones that were left on Earth to breed with their own kind and also cross breed with the Neanderthals. There is not the slightest bit of evidence anywhere in the world that this was indeed the case. If modern man were an Alien then they would have been more advanced with their technology and their culture than Homo sapiens of that time and today. Remember we are talking only 30,000 to 35,000 years ago before the Neanderthals started to die back as a race and even now there are anatomically features turning up in some of todays modern humans through a flawed genetic link. In my research I had to first of all look closely at the culture of the

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Neanderthals in order to find some of the answers to many of the questions. First off I have to disregard the entire ape like creatures that walked upright as human like or human thinking. They were not human in any form though they did have some human traits like the use of tools but even todays chimps and apes use tools in their everyday lives. Chimps can be taught to use tools and press buttons for a reward; they have family groups, leaders of groups, aggression and in some cases, even murder of another member or baby of that group. They also kill and eat small mammals as well as feeding on berries and fruit but they dont do artwork in caves or on rocks, nor do they build homes to live in. They build nests in the trees each evening in order to sleep off the ground but they do not or ever will have a thinking culture. They are not human.

The link between them all is the size of the brain, the long bones and the height as well as posture when standing upright. Mating for early man took place from the back, as is still the case in some tribal areas of the Earth but this did not take place at random as is the case today. The sex drive of males was driven on by stimuli, be it smell, body posture and of course most times a bond between male and female. Today we use the word Love or I should say misuse because the whole point of the exercise is to produce children or off-spring but with bonding as a family unit. Todays humans also enjoy sex if there is a bond. Also humans have sex when and if they want it. It is a fun thing for most, a power thing for males and females and is used at times as a form of control of the other person. In many cases there is no real life long bond to one partner and others are sought out for the dual purpose of sex only. This today is showing up by 40

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million cases of AIDS reported and also STDs, HIV/AIDS worse of the deadly disease spread by sexual contact with a carrier and the percentage in Africa, the place where it is said the first upright Homo came from, though I feel that is wrong or mistaken. Mankind with his uncontrolled sexual drive may in fact destroy his race with a virus rather than by a war and by the year 4000 cease to exist as a human being as we know today. It should be noted that HIV/AIDS like viruses have been recorded in Chimps and other African primates but the question is who passed on to what and when?

Chimp.

Ape skull.

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With the family groups and possible tribes of Neanderthal Man roaming parts of the Earth there had to be some forms of communication between groups. There was a developing culture and it is here that we must look at what evidence there is that Neanderthal was stocky, not an ape and had a brain that functioned as a thinking brain as well as a creative brain. It was their main survival tool ever. There were also the use of tools and it may well be that this first early man was more in tune with nature and the afterlife than we care to give credit for. The paranormal events were in the mind and in their everyday lives, the moon and sun also played an important part of their culture and they believed that the dead, if a family member went to that other world. That is unless they were needed for food. I write here of Neanderthal Man, a human type creature that roamed parts of Europe, Africa and SE Asia. In file three you will see why I know that this early man species was important to us and may also have passed down the genetic line fragments, even if small of past memory events. We tend to ignore the genetic mind funnel of our past because our minds are cluttered with todays noise, stimuli and we block out any idea that we were once part of the Neanderthal group of people.

If early man, and by Man I mean a Homo who looks, walks and thinks like a man/ woman, then they migrated from Asia into Europe and North America

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and not the ape like groups from Africa as is often put forward as our direct ancestor. It is more than likely that there were two groups of Ape like creatures but the ones in Asia were more advanced and progressed faster as a survival species and with a culture.

AL 129-1a/b Species: Australopithecus afarensis Age: 3.0-3.2 years Date of 1976 million

Discovery: Location: Hadar, Ethiopia Johanson

Discovered D. by:

and M. Taieb

A complete knee joint (AL 129-1), minus the knee cap (patella), from a single individual was found at Hadar, which showed that the species Australopithecus afarensis made a habit of walking bipedally.

AL 129-1 is a complete knee joint, consisting of the distal femur (lower end of the thigh bone, at the top of the photo) and proximal tibia (upper end of the shin bone, at the bottom of the photo) from a single individual. This

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discovery was conclusive proof of bipedal walking in early humans as old as 3 million years ago. (More recent finds push that benchmark of human evolution back to at least 4 million years ago.)

The Hadar knee shows several characteristics that reflect adaptation to bipedal locomotion. First, the end of the femur has an area of bone (called the lateral condyle, on the left side of the photo) that is elliptically shaped, as in humans, rather than spherical like a chimp's lateral condyle. This shows that the movement of the femur on the tibia was like that of a bipedal human. Second, the patellar groove, which is a depression in the femur that allows space for the kneecap (patella), is deep and had a high lip on the outside. This is important because bipedal legs have to lock straight when walking.

Finally, look at the angle of the femoral shaft, the part of the top bone that rises above the knee. There is a definite angle, relative to the tibia. This oblique femoral shaft is an adaptation that allowed early humans to walk upright by placing the foot under the centre of the body when walking. A chimpanzee knee shows both bones lining up in a straight line.

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AL 200-1

Species:

Australopithecus afarensis

Age:

3.0-3.2 years

million

Date Discovery: Location: Discovered by:

of 1975

Hadar, Ethiopia D. Johanson and M. Taieb

The Afar Depression of Ethiopia has provided the majority of fossils of the early human species Australopithecus afarensis. These fossils include the famous "Lucy" skeleton, the most complete A. afarensis known. Locality 200 in the Afar provided the undistorted palate to the right, with a complete dentition.

This palate shows that the dentition of early humans was essentially ape-like. It had broad "spatulate" incisors -- wide front teeth that are spatula-like in appearance, visible in the frontal view at the top -- and

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the cheek teeth were arranged in sub-parallel rows, giving the dental arcade a distinct "U-shape" (visible in the inferior view, bottom). Notice also the presence of a diastema, or gap, between the canine teeth and the outside incisors, again similar to apes and not humans. In the lateral view (middle photo), we can see the protruding premaxilla, the bone between the teeth and the nose. The protruding, or prognathic, lower portion of the face, which sticks out beyond the nose and eyes, is a similarity to the apes.

Cro-Magnon 1

Species: Age: Date Discovery: Location:

Homo sapiens ~30,000 years of March 1868

Les

Eyzies,

Dordongne,

France Discovered by: Louis Lartet

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During construction for a rail road in 1868, a rock shelter in a limestone cliff was uncovered. Near the back of the shelter, an occupation floor was recognized, and when excavated, it revealed the remains of four adult skeletons, one infant, and some fragmentary bones. The condition and placement of ornaments, including pieces of shell and animal tooth in what appears to have been pendants or necklaces, led the researchers to think that the skeletons were intentionally buried in a single grave in the shelter.

Cro-Magnon 1 preserved the skeleton of an adult male. The individual was probably middle-aged (less than 50 years old) at his death on the basis of the pattern of closure of cranial sutures. The bones in his face are noticeably pitted (see top photograph) from a fungal infection. The skull was complete except for the teeth, which are reconstructed in the cast photographed here.

While the Cro-Magnon remains are representative of the earliest anatomically modern human beings to appear in western Europe, this population was not the earliest anatomically modern humans to evolve. The skull of Cro-Magnon 1 does, however, show the traits that are unique to modern humans, including the high rounded cranial vault with a near vertical forehead. The orbits are no longer topped by a large brow ridge. There is no prominent prognathism of the face.

Analysis of the pathology of the skeletons found at the Les Eyzies rock shelter indicates that the humans of this time period led a physically tough

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life. In addition to the infection noted above, several of the individuals found at the shelter had fused vertebrae in their necks indicating traumatic injury, and the adult female found at the shelter had survived for some time with a skull fracture. The survival of the individuals with such ailments is indicative of community support of individuals, which allowed them to convalesce.

Associated tools and fragments of fossil animal bone date the site to the uppermost Pleistocene, probably between 32,000 and 30,000 years old.

BONES; A QUESTION OF MATHS

ARCHEOLOGY RESEARCH

The trouble with past archaeology is that it was a closed field of study to many and very few people were experts or claimed to be experts and that left the few that were to rule the roost without question. Thankfully that now has changed and such people who have been blinked are dragged into 2011. For

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their own survival they either had to look at archaeology in the new light or live in the dark with fixed ideas of their subject, or be left alone and alone with little or no progress. In my own research I had to and still do embrace the subjects of archaeology, biology, physics, some maths, chemistry, astrophysics and geology. Add to that a sprinkling of myth, and religion, some history of the earth and the Universe, pathology and common sense and you have the whole canvas. My field of study in the main has been early human kind. That is not to say that all other fields of archaeology are not linked because they are but the study of bones and the main bone, the skull offer me a larger scope into what makes human beings and where indeed did we come from? When it comes down to searching and with evidence of that all elusive missing link I have to say that in the beginning of my work thirty years ago I did not believe there was one. That thinking has now changed because I have opened and closed doors of the past and in my research found that if we look carefully enough and keep an open mind, some of the answers are there. Even at that I am left with many un-answered questions for the moment and I may never find all the answers. The good news is that I have made progress even though it has been a slow haul up a massive hill of knowledge and of course facts by others being misinterpreted as fact. This spiders web had to be fought through and fame and fortune cast aside for unlike many others working in my field I have no grand ideas of every being hailed as a progressive paleoanthropologist. Nor do I care if others reject or accept my own findings. I know my bones and the shape of bones and I also know that if early human like creatures are to be

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accepted as a link between todays humans then what also must kept in mind is when they got the power of thought and speech. Once we establish that factor then we can say without doubt when they walked into the world of the paranormal and religion! The grand search for THE MISSING LINK has went on for well over 200 years with claims and counter claims by archaeologists worldwide but with very little evidence that supports any of the finds as nothing more than wishful thinking. A few people have come close. Many were off the mark and published papers of their findings, sending them to places of learning for approval and of course worldwide acceptance. Much depended on such acceptance, future funding for more research, fame in the University of choice and of course ego. All could be lost at the simple word written or spoken. REJECTION. There were many rejections of papers when it came to the study and findings of early man but even more when it came to finding or claiming to have found the missing link. This Missing Link was proving to be just as hard to find as an Alien being in a flying spacecraft or evidence of The lost City of Atlantis as fact. Then there is the theory that Aliens came from deep space and started to interbreed with the local half human females which means they had to deal with unwashed and lice ridden females, not to mention aggressive behaviour towards them from the half human males. We can rule out that myth right away. We are not the by-product of a per history female and a big brained Alien being from deep space. That does not mean that we could not have been the by product of a mutation, the trigger being some virus or chemical that did get to some parts of our planet a few million years ago and that a gene was the reason of what we

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know today as the human race. But more on that later. When it comes to skulls and parts of skulls of human like beings and apes 3 to 8 million years ago we only have fragments to work on that had to be glued together and filled in to give us a rough shape of that the face was like but also the amount of brain tissue held within the skull cap. The mismeasurement of mankind when it comes down to what we term as intelligence has gone on for many years and it is all to do with our skull and brain.

Creative interpretation in science and more so in the study of early man is well known but it also happens today when it comes down to the myth of Alien UFOs, Alien abduction, Alien cross breeding with humans, Alien buildings and ley-lines and so on. It is the interpretation that is at fault and to put a name to our theory of visits from deep space, many of us become very creative indeed but without evidence or facts that will stand up in the cold light of day. Many of the people who claim such visits from deep space and the abduction of human females for implants do not seem to grasp that in their interpretation are trapped by their own rhetoric. Let us say that in the near future a blood sample from me and tagged Ronnie Carleton Born 5th Jan 41 then the sample placed into a computer and a few instructions typed on the keyboard to start DNA testing

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into my own family history and where that family first came from. We now type in DNA 50,000 years. Press RETURN and the screen comes up with WAIT then starts the process which takes about an hour to download and would read something like this; + past history going back to 30,000 years or even

Grandfather = Irish = Celt x Norse = Viking. ? Grandmother = Scot = Celt x =? Great Grandmother = French = Celt = x India =? Great Great Grandmother = India x? = Homo sapiens.

Homo erectus = world wide, Asia/ Africa. Human.

Missing link? Human.

Homo erectus erectus. Human like.

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Homo erectus sinensis. Human like.

Australopithecus, robustus. + Pithecanthropus. Human like. + Sinanthropus. + Atlanthtopus.

Homo habilis, Plesianthropus. Ape like. + Human like.

A. africanus. Ape like

Ramapithecus / kenyapithecus. Ape.

Lateral view of the skull of Peking Man H. Erectus. 500,000 years ago.

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BELOW Mandibles of H Erectus.

With skull size also comes brain size and it is here that we can get into a maze with a built in mine field and no map of where they really are. It is of course the map of the brain inside any of the skulls from early man to the present day that gives us the clue to parts of what is termed as the Missing Link but we have modern brains trying to deal with what we think early man brains were like.

Brain showing left side Bocas area.

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This area is believed to be the speech generating area but I have found that it does not always function during linguistic use and may not in fact be linked. (Carleton 1980) What made early man human? We know that he/she used tools of a very primitive form but so do apes in Africa and India today. We know that once fire was discovered to be useful that it was put to good use but apes today dont use fire as a tool and when did early man become a thinking mammal and using knowledge as well as real language? The owner of the skull below may have been a thinking mammal in the past for its own basic survival but its reasoning was more than limited and it would have used all its natural senses when alive. There would have been no language but grunts may have been emitted and communication between such mammals would have been by smell, sight and body language.

It was rash of many people in the field to conclude, wrongly, that the owner of this skull found in Africa may have had speech even though it would have been limited speech. This is not the case but there had to be a form of communication. Future generations of the same mammal species may have begun to use a form of mouth communication but we are talking 500,000 years down the line and just after basic art work on rocks and cave walls. Such art work would not

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have been as advanced as the cave and rock drawings that we know of today and without doubt in my mind the creature above would have been more carnivore and cannibalistic than even early upright man that was not ape like in shape and size. That does not mean that early man was not cannibalistic and ate his own kin and kind. He/she was and would have eaten dying or dead members of their own tribe rather than waste the meat. To them there was nothing moralistic or psychological damaging in eating their off spring and great grandmother. It was nothing more than a food source. That X factor, the Missing Link lies between Homo erectus, Neanderthal/ CroMagnon Man and as for the rest of the early ape like creatures in my mind have now no place to play in the debate on such a missing link except for themselves in cross breeding and inbreeding with one another. Inbreeding in some species produces hybrids and mutants as seen in modern man in some societies. Researching the skulls below it was easy to see that they were of different shapes and sizes and therefore a crossover by breeding had to take place.

Left to right. Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon and Australopithecus africanus.

Somewhere in between and after A. africanus came Homo erectus but it does

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not explain that even today we tend to get throwbacks in a genetic form in some modern humans who have the skull shape and features of Homo erectus.

In my research I have found human beings in todays society that show throwback features of early man and though it is claimed to be rare, it may not be as rare as we are laid to believe. I have come across it in the UK and Ireland, parts if India and if you know what you are looking for or at then it jumps out at you. The brow ridges, forehead, hair and shape of the face like the illustration below.

In many cases of such a condition in modern humans it is sometimes diagnosed as Acromegaly wrongly because todays medicine and its study misses the point that it could in fact be a genetic throw back which I believe strongly it is. It is these human beings that carry the past with them into our future and somehow many people missed the link. With DNA tracing and

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recording with the permission of such people with the condition as well as family history backgrounds I know we will learn more of the changeover between early man and todays human being. If we look closely at Acromegaly as the condition then there will be an enlargement of the bones, hypertrophy of connective tissue, noted changes in the hair and skin. The face will be large with heavy features, prognathous jaw and course thick hair sometimes over mostly of the lower body and back. The frontal sinuses are prominent with the eyes deeply set and if the mouth is examined the lower teeth and jaw project beyond the upper ones. I have seen many human beings like this but what I also noted that the feet are large and sometimes clumsy, the back slightly bent and the hands reaching almost to the top of the knees. The lips I found were also large in nature and on examination of the scalp it will be found that the skin is furrowed or corrugated. At seasonal times of the year there may well be increased sexual excitement and the chances in the basal metabolic rate are not constant but during the active stage it will be increased and the appetite can well be voracious. Seasonal sunlight hours may well have something to do with this increased sexually activity and in early man I feel that mating took place in order that children were born in a warmer time of the year and that food was more plentiful. If we look at the gestation period of humans we get around from the time of conception to birth, 9 months with a child being born between 6 lbs. and 7 lbs. Early mankind would be much the same except for the time of conception and more so in the ape-like women and man. In part two I will look at the bones of contention that exist between our own human origins and those of apes. Because of the infighting and sometimes-

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public battles, those people working in the field of palaeoanthropology were more at odds with themselves than with the subject matter that should have concerned them. There has been lost opportunities because of this in Africa and as it is an unstable continent some of the known sites of early man are surrounded by politics with research being slowed down. The eyes now must be turned to the SW Far East and the native peoples there as well as from where they came from because it is from here, not Africa or India that the final answer may be found of what was human-kind and the missing link. The human fossil record of early man supports the special creation of man and the account given in the book of Genesis. This includes the fossils of Homo sapiens, archaic Homo sapiens, Homo neanderthalensis or

Neanderthal man, Homo erectus, and Australopithecus (extinct apes). Many people believe that the fossils that have been found support the evolution of man and his ascent from the primates. This is not correct. What the anthropologists have done is interpret the fossils so that they seem to show the correctness of evolution. But the fossils can be interpreted another way a way that shows that the evolutionary theory of early man is bankrupt and that early men have all descended from Adam. The problem in the evolutionary fossil record is not the fossils themselves but the incorrect interpretation that is placed on these fossils. A correct interpretation is harmonious with the Biblical record. If Human Evolution were TrueWhat Would the Fossil Record Indicate? If human evolution were true we could expect to see its workings in the fossil record of humans. The fossil record if it supported evolution would show the following: A gradual blending of all the fossils in the line that leads to modern human

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it would be difficult to tell when one species died out and when the other began. There would be many transitional human fossils. As species became better adapted the old ancestral lines would die outold fossils and young fossil would not coexist. Fossils of early man would not show long periods of stability. For evolution to have occurred the fossil record of early man would show great change and transition over time. In the beginning of the last 4.5 million years the evolutionary record should show no modern humans in the fossil record. As evolutionary history progressed a gradual blending of the fossil into a modern human morphology would occur. There would also be many and varied transitional fossils. If Special Creation were TrueWhat Would the Fossil Record Indicate? If H. sapiens, H. erectus, and Neanderthals were products of creation and descendants of Adam the fossil record would have certain characteristics. There is no evidence of this. This would also suggest that Adam and Eve were ape like and not human if they came before the Neanderthals and very human if they came later. These would include: No blending of fossilsFossil would be excavated that would be easily categorized with allowances made for variety. There would be no transitional fossilssince Adam was independently created there would be distinct breaks between the human line and the animal line (primates). The fossil men such as H. erectus, Neanderthal and archaic H. sapiens would all coexist at the same time since they are merely variation of the created kind.

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Fossils of early humans would exist in very old strata. (No evidence of this) Fossils of early man would appear abruptly in the geologic record.

What Does the Overall Fossil Record Reveal? The fossils of early man when looked at as an overall category all support special creation. They appear fully formed and fully human in the fossil record. They appear in the earliest strata as would be expected if they were created. The various fossil men all were contemporaries of each other for long periods of time, sometimes the older fossil, from an evolutionary point of view, appears in the fossil record at a younger time period. Human fossils (KP 271) that are indistinguishable (McHenry 1975 & Patterson 1967) from those of modern skeletons have been found in stratum that is more than 4.5 million years old. (remember the author does not agree with these evolutionary dates).

This shows that true humans have a lineage that extends at least that far back in the evolutionary timetable. There may be older fossils of H. sapiens that have not yet been discovered. In other words, fossils that are the identical to modern humans have been found that are older than the australopithecines. Which indicates that the Australopithecus line could not be the evolutionary ancestral line leading to modern man and never was. Homo erectus fossils have been excavated that range in age from a very recent 30,000 (Swisher 1996) years ago to more than 1.6 million years. The H. erectus line has remained virtually unchanged for almost 1.6 million years. H. erectus have not evolved into anything during this time period, they have remained unchanged. If evolution were true then H. erectus should be in a

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state of evolutionary changethe fact that it has remained unchanged supports the creation account. Another concept that falsifies the evolutionary concept is that modern H. sapiens, Neanderthals, and H. erectus have all lived together as contemporaries at one point in time or another. None of them have evolved from a more primitive type into a more modern type. In some cases H. erectus fossils are younger than H. sapiens and Neanderthal fossils. This cannot be correct if evolution is correct; because evolutionary theory states that H. erectus gave rise to H. sapiens and/or Neanderthal. Since the creation account is correct they are simply variations and they would all coexist at the same time. There are no fossils of the primitive primates at the correct time to give rise to the human ancestral line. These primitive primates would include A. afarensis, A. africanus, Kenyanthropus platyops (Leakey 2001) and others. The fossil record indicates that when these primates existed that humans were already on the scene. The Laetoli Footprints (Leakey 1979), said to be made by a modern shaped human foot, and the Kanapoi humerus (KP 271), all predate these fossils. Therefore these extinct primates could not have given rise to the human line since humans were already in existence. Interestingly there exist today primates that are very similar to the Australopithecus line. The pygmy chimp (Pan paniscus), called Bonobo by the locals is found in the jungles of Zaire, Africa. This is only a few hundred miles away from where many of the A. afarensis and A. africanus fossils are being unearthed today. It has the same body type and is the same size as the Australopithecines it also can walk bipedally for short distances. In my opinion here, that does not mean that it is human and never would be. The overall fossil record reveals that even when we use the evolutionists

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dates (which are incorrect in my opinion (Carleton 2011) and arrange the fossil according to these dates that no human evolution has taken place. When it is said that humans appear in the fossil record more than 4 million years ago, according to some evolutionary dates, they appear fully formed, already human and they appear abruptly. This did not happen because in my opinion being human and a thinking human at that came around 50,000 years ago supports creation and not evolution. But created from what? Bias in the Interpretation of the Fossil Record The science of human anthropology is full of circular reasoning, and philosophical bias. Anthropologists only focus on the fossils that seemingly support their contention that man has evolved from apelike ancestors. When evolutionists draw family trees of these relationships they do not include all the pertinent data. Past examples, and many others like it, supposedly shows A. afarensis giving rise to H. erectus and then H. erectus giving rise to H. sapiens. The total fossil picture is not shown in these types of "family trees." If the total fossil record is used a drawing of a family tree is not possible because the fossil do not fit the evolutionary scenario. In reality the evolutionists only use the fossils that support their preconceived bias. There are many human fossils that do not fit in with these biases. If all the fossils are used in the interpretation of the early human record then the answer is obvious, man was createdhe did not evolve. This is fully supported by the correctly interpreted fossil record of early man. RESEARCH DATA AND MENTION FOR THIS PART OF MY RESEARCH. Carleton 2012 Johanson DC. Lucy, the Beginnings of Humankind. Touchstone Pub. New York. 1990.

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Leakey MG. Spoor F. Brown FH. Gathogo P. Kiarie C. Leakey LN. McDougall. New hominine genus from eastern Africa shows diverse middle Pliocene

lineages. Nature. 410:433-440, 2001. Leakey MD. Footprints in the ashes of time. National Geographic. April 1979. McHenry H. Fossils and the mosaic nature of human evolution. Science 190:425-431. 1975. Patterson B. Howells WW. Hominid humeral fragment from early Pleistocene of North-western Kenya. Science. 156:64-66. 1967. Swisher CC. Homo erectus of Java: potential contemporaneity with Homo sapiens in Southeast Asia. Science. 274:1870-74. 1996. Much of the research by the authors above needed to be mentioned because of the complexity of dating early apes and early humans with spot on solid evidence that would stand up to close scrutiny. As many will know there are in some cases major gaps in such dating and because of this I needed to carry out cross reference on such data. From the 1950s to 2011 much of such dating is now in doubt and I suggest here that it needs to be revised. There is also, in my opinion that inbreeding took place in some of the early groups of early humans and cross breeding with Neanderthals as well. Until we carry out DNA comparisons of Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon human bones then the data is still lacking and this needs to be treated as a major research project by someone in the future and in depth. We do have part of the jigsaw but many pieces are missing and they need to be found but without guess work coming into play in the research. Researchers into DNA profiling of the two human subjects that I mention above, is subject to funding of course and this comes in the way of grants if it ever happens in the future. Once evidence has been established that there was cross breeding and interbreeding by the two groups we can then expand

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this DNA family tree which I have outlined below for my research. Carleton 2012

DNA AND RNA CROSSOVERS. EARLY MAN AND GENETICS. Ronnie Carleton (c) 2012

AFRICA. From an archaeology point of view we have been informed and except that early mankind started in Africa then in time though a process of evolution moved into Europe as first Neanderthal Man then Cro-Magnon today we are said to be the end result. With each Species and generations comes of course the genetic make-up which is passed on again and again through DNA and RNA. I am of the opinion therefore that it is a mistake to classify the Neanderthal as 'brutish' and was never human in thinking or deed. It would also be a mistake to assume, as is now often the case, that all present day humans came from away back in time, from Africa. Though there may well be an African linkage ,as I believe there is for many humans today, there is also

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a vital link between Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon Man due to crossbreeding in the later stages of the worlds history and the genes of such a relationship passed onto some modern humans today. From my own research and in order to understand it and put forward the real possibilities of such a union I have publish my research below for debate, if any, or rejection I'm sure by many established archaeologists who may well have to bite the bullet in the future, revise all their dating processes and look at the species list much closer. As for the people who made such claims about early humans and early ape data and are now dead there can be no redress by them but still their data should be re-examined and addressed if the need should arise. If we indeed believe that mankind or humankind started its' thinking 'life in Africa then we also know that all human beings in Europe today have a very close Genetic heritage to Africa and that DNA, RNA and Chromosome type have all been passed on and will continue to do so. With the DNA information also come chromosome information of genetic illnesses. Putting this data together did take a long time but I feel the end results were well worth it then It keeps it all in the Human Family so to speak. I start with Neanderthal man and what set me off on this trail was a question that bothered me for some time, left-handed humans of today. Being left handed is not an illness but it is a genetic trait and is passed down through families. 30% of left handed people go back many generations as in the Kerr family in the UK, Ireland and the USA. As this is the case with many left handed families throughout Europe I then thought that Neanderthal family members as well as the Cro-Magnon family would also show this trait and pass it on. As I stated early on, being left handed is not any form of illness but all to do with chromosomes that was passed to generation to another. If we could back track from one left handed family here in the UK and Europe, from

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2005 back to 50,000 years ago then it would be through the Cro-Magnon part of that family unit and still back or running side by side, with the Neanderthal x Cro-Magnon group. From here we could go back almost anywhere except to the standing apes. ( Research of left hand use IN APES carried out in Borneo, India, Africa and the zoos of the UK) Carleton 2000 to 2005 (c) ) Of course the tracking of around 50,000 to 100,000 genes is impossible but genes do play a very complex part but if one parent possess a gene of being left handed, colour blind or have a good musical ear there is a 50/50 chance that some of their off spring will also. When it comes down to some inherent diseases then there is a good chance that it will be passed onto any off-spring of the parent or parents. Unless they breed outside their genetic circle of course as many are doing today and which I will call outbreeding We know that 30%of Europeans cannot taste the chemical PTC (phenylthiocarbamide), the other 70% have an unpleasant taste in their mouths. Bitter is not the word for it. In other words if the parents of children cannot taste PTC then neither will any children. One parent can taste it then half the children in that family will also be able to taste it too. When genes' go wrong' or show damage then they show as inherited disease and if you consider that there are around 4,000 known, some of them rare conditions while others are common in families.( cystic fibrosis in 1 of 2,000 births in the west, muscular dystrophy which affects 1 in 5,000 male children.) Haemophilia is another example in the Royal Families of England and Europe. Rheumatoid arthritis, a very painful immune disorder affects 1 in 20 females in the west by the time they are aged 65 to 70 years of age. The victims do have a genetic makeup and can be revealed in a simple blood test . We know today that all human type blood is not alike and can be classified into groups as

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listed below. A, B,O BLOOD CLUMPING BSERUM O A B AB ASERUM O A B AB There are 3 groups which read like this; mixed together, O serum clumps A and B blood cells but not O cells. B serum clumps A cells but not B or O A serum clumps B cells but A and O O, B, and A serum clumps AB blood. This clumping is caused by anti-bodies known as anti-body A and anti-body B. As this research is dealing with the possible genetic make-up from early man to the present day and the gene links carried forward, even mutant genes then I had to look at any and all genetic interpretation from that past into the present. A = A and B Not A or O not A or O AB B = A Not B or O O A and B Not O There are 3 versions of 1 gene, A-determining version, B-determining version and O for neither. Simple in fact. Human mating by AB to OO would show up in half the children who were A (AO) and one half children B (BO).

Samples taken in the south of the UK showed up like this, Group O 44% Group A 45% Group B 8%

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Group AB 4% These differ between different populations with type B three times more common in Asian populations than with Europeans as an example. With type A it increases from south to the north of England into Scotland. X and Y CHROMOSOMES. 1 to 22

+ X = 23 female 1 to 22 + XY =23 male. one sperm will carry x and a y chromosome. Female will carry one copy of X chromosome. X SPERM -FEMALE EGG X = XX = FEMALE CHILD BORN. Y SPERM -FEMALE EGG X =XY = MALE CHILD BORN. Males therefore determines the sex of offspring, not females. It is chromosome9 that determines the ABO blood groups in Human Kind and that started away back around1.2 million years ago. As each human mammal has 2 chromosome 9, one from our father and one from the mother and if someone gets a paternal chromosome 9 with an A blood group gene and his maternal chromosome 9 with the B version this means they will be themselves blood group AB. If it is a female who has the AB blood she will produce eggs that will either have the gene responsible for A group or B blood. The partner may have type O then he contributes via his sperm, chromosome 9 with the O gene. The children therefore will end up with a genetic A O and

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have type A blood or will have the genetic constitution BO = type B blood. There is no relation between the sex of any child and its blood group because the sex-determining X and Y chromosomes that are separate entities determining chromosome9.This is not of course true for all chromosomes nor is it true for two genes on the same chromosome, colour blindness and haemophilia are good examples. They both are found on the X chromosome but not inherited together. Blood groups therefore track through generations so if a husband who is type O and the wife is A and they ended up with an AB child then the wife has been having sex with another man, not the husband. So far then it should be possible to get DNA samples from bones and body material if any f rom the early standing apes and early thinking humans giving us a starting point where we ourselves came from. If we came out of Africa as claimed by most working in archaeology then all of us should be carrying a hint or suggestion of Sickle Cell Disease but this is not the case except in many black people in the UK and the USA where in Africa, the Gold Coast and Gambia, it was uncommon in the black population there. In the north and south of Africa it is uncommon but the Sickle Cell gene is found in middle west Africa and very common in the west of Africa. Those that carry the gene rarely get Malaria because the parasite grows inside red blood cells and anyone who has the Sickle cell gene does not offer this parasite a good environment in which to live. Yet in present day white people in Europe there is no records of sickle cell gene which is odd because it is passed on through generations. To understand this better I have laid out a chart below. AS. AS. MALE FEMALE.

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SPERM A SPERM S A S AA AS AS SS A carrier father has 2 genes, one for sickle Haemoglobin(S) and one for normal Haemoglobin (A) The carrier mother has the same layout. One child will be born without sickle cell but all others will have it but have only one sickle cell gene each but will be carriers and one who will have full blown sickle cell disease. The survival of early humans in east Africa was in fact a hard road because not only had they to survive the harshness of day to day living ,attacks by wild animals but also a number of diseases, some that were passed on down through a family unit. What should be noted is that such groups were small and they would have little or no knowledge or taboo's about who mated with who. In breeding would have been a common factor and the average life span for any adult would have been30 years only. This is often overlooked in archaeology as is in a few cases evidence of bone disease and height. When it comes down to genetic features of the face of early man too few studies have been carried out. Europeans have large noses and this was passed down to us from Homo erectus and the deep brow ridge and stocky body still found today in some humans across Europe suggest a pass on from Neanderthal Man. Yet in my research I discovered that both features can be found in today's humans, male and female and a few even show the almost hidden features of a face that could well be mistaken for Neanderthal Man. This face feature is not as uncommon as many think and across Europe into the UK and Ireland. This does not explain the very modern skulls found in Israel and South Africa in 1980 in caves and datedat100,000 years old because if the dating is correct then all the data on early humans listed is wrong as well as the dating of other

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early apes and humans. It also suggests that if a modern type human was around100,000 years ago, living in caves then they must have been more advanced than any other early humans, or ape like humans. This of course creates a genetic nightmare for researchers because for the moment it is not known where these humans came from. We are told, and wrongly in my view, that modern humans as we are, only put in an appearance 40,000 years ago. The 100,000 year old remains found dispute that finding and suggests that a tribe or tribes of modern humans did function, though in small groups from Israel and the north of Africa down to the tip of South Africa. Blood grouping of course is the way forward in such research and gives clues in some cases to where the human being of today had past family linkage. The B blood group of true gypsies in Europe can be linked to India where it is 50% as with only 10% in northern Europe. The DNA from African chimps show that the genomes differ from humans by only 1.6% yet chimps are not human, though I do suggest that humans did and do have a close relationship in Africa and elsewhere, that goes beyond the pale. Human male x female chimp=?This could well explain in Africa two things. A genetic link to humans and chimps in the past and a HIV type disease found in chimps in the present. Who passed what genetic material as well as a virus type is for the moment unclear but I suggest modern humans started it all off and are still doing so in controlled conditions today in many parts of our world behind very closed doors.

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CHIMP DNA DATA. REF RESEARCH ARCHAEOLOGY Researcher Ronnie Carleton 2012

Chimp and Human DNA

FORENSIC ARCHAEOLOGY Scientists have decoded the chimp genome and compared it with that of humans, a major step toward defining what makes people human and developing a deep insight into the evolution of human sexual behaviour. The comparison pinpoints the genetic differences that have arisen in WILDLIFE AFRICA the two species since they split from a common ancestor some six million years ago. The realization that chimpanzees hold a trove of information about human evolution and nature comes at a time when they and other great apes are under harsh pressures in their native habitat. Their populations are dwindling fast as forests are cut down and people shoot them for meat. They may soon disappear from the wild altogether, primatologists fear, except in the few sanctuaries that have been established. Chimpanzees and people possess almost identical sets of genes, so the genes that have changed down the human lineage should hold the key to what makes people human. Chimps are not human however. Biologists suspect that only a handful of genes are responsible for the major changes that reshaped the apelike ancestor of both species into a human and that these genes should be identifiable by having evolved at a particularly rapid rate. The comparison of the human and chimp genomes, reported in an issue of Nature, takes a first step in this direction but has not yet tracked down the

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critical handful of genes responsible for human evolution. One problem is the vast number of differences -some 40 million in the sequence of DNA units in the chimp and human genomes. Most are caused by a random process known as genetic drift and have little effect. For now, their large numbers make it difficult for scientists to find the changes caused by natural selection if indeed there ever was such a process. But another aspect of the comparison has yielded insights into a different question, the evolution of the human Y chromosome. The new finding implies that Apes have led sexually virtuous lives for the last six million years, at least in comparison with the flamboyant promiscuity of chimpanzees. Some 300 million years ago, the Y chromosome used to carry the same 1,000 or so genes as its partner, the X chromosome. But because the Y cannot exchange DNA with the X and update its genes, in humans it has lost all but 16 of its X-related genes through mutation or failure to stay relevant to their owner's survival. However, the Y has gained some genes from other chromosomes because it is a safe haven for genes that benefit only men, since it never enters a woman's body. These added genes, not surprisingly, all have functions involved in making sperm. The scientific world's leading student of the Y chromosome, David Page of the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Mass., has been seeking to understand whether the Y will lose yet more genes and lapse into terminal decay, taking men with it. The idea of the Y's extinction "was so delicious from the perspective of gender politics," Dr. Page said. "But many of my colleagues became confused with this blending of gender politics with scientific predictions." Six years ago, he discovered a surprising mechanism that protects the spermmaking genes. Those genes exist in pairs, arranged so that when the DNA of

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the chromosome is folded back on itself, the two copies of the gene are aligned. If one copy of the gene has been hit by a mutation, the cell can repair it by correcting the mismatch in DNA units. That is all well and fine but when I give this more thought (2011) it is possible that gene mutation may be the reason why we are human. The 16 X-related genes are present in only single copies. Dr. Page and his colleagues thought the chimpanzee genome might show how they were protected. To their surprise, they report in Nature, the protection was not there. The chimp Y chromosome has lost the use of 5 of its 16 X-related genes. The genes are there, but have been inactivated by mutation. The explanation, in his view, lies in the chimpanzee's high-spirited sexual behaviour. Female chimps mate with all males around, so as to make each refrain from killing a child that might be his. The alpha male nonetheless scores most of the paternities, according to DNA tests. This must be because of sperm competition, primatologists believe -the alpha male produces more and better sperm, which out compete those of rival males. This mating system puts such intense pressure on the sperm-making genes that any improved version will be favoured by natural selection. All the other genes will be dragged along with it, Dr. Page believes, even if an Xrelated gene has been inactivated. If chimps have lost five of their X-related genes in the last six million years because of sperm competition, and humans have lost none, humans presumably had a much less promiscuous mating system. But experts who study fossil human remains believe that the human mating system of long-term bonds between a man and woman evolved only some 1.7 million years ago. I suggest that it was much later than this. Males in the human lineage became much smaller at this time, a sign of

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reduced competition. The new result implies that even before that time, during the first four million years after the chimp-human split, the human mating system did not rely on sperm competition. Dr. Page said his finding did not reach to the nature of the joint chimp-human ancestor, but that "it's a reasonable inference" that the ancestor might have been gorilla like rather than chimp like, as supposed by some primatologists. The gorilla mating system has no sperm competition because the silverback maintains exclusive access to his harem. Frans B. M. de Waal of the Yerkes National Primate Research Centre in Atlanta said he agreed with fossil experts that the human pair bonding system probably evolved 1.7 million years ago but that the joint ancestor could have resembled a chimp, a bonobo, a gorilla, or something else entirely. It is this something else that throws the spanner in the works of ape/human evolution and in my opinion humans like we see today are not the result of all or any of the early upright apes cross breeding or gene manipulation by nature. In fact I would go as far to say that humans today are the result of mutation where apes and chimps never moved onto the next plane to become human and never likely to do so. The scientists who have compared the whole genomes of the two species say they have found 35 million sites on the aligned genomes where there are different DNA units, and another five million where units have been added or deleted. Each genome is about three billion units in length. The chimp genome was completed in draft form in December 2003 by the Broad Institute in Cambridge and Washington University in St. Louis. Statistical tests for accelerated evolution are not yet powerful enough to identify the major genes that have shaped humans. "We knew that this was only a beginning, but from a general standpoint we have captured the vast

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majority of the differences between human and chimps," said Robert H. Waterston of the University of Washington, Seattle, the senior author of the report. The genome of a third primate, the orang-utan, is now in progress and will help identify the genes special to human evolution, he said. Somehow I feel that such research has gone down the wrong biological road and linking a rain forest ape with humans would put humans coming out of Asia and not Africa if this is correct. That would in fact put the lid on all ape/human past history that would have to be re-written again which in my opinion it should be. At the level of the whole animal, primatologists have uncovered copious similarities between the social behaviour of chimpanzees, bonobos and humans, some of which may eventually be linked to genes. But this rich vein of discovery may be choked off if the great apes can no longer be studied in the wild. "The situation is very bad, and our feeling is that by 2040 most of the habitat will be gone, except for those little regions we have set aside," Dr. de Waal said.

Author Ronnie Carleton

Dr de Waal may well be right in the case of habitat but there are good conservation projects in progress to address this problem and governments

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are aware of them, more so in 2012 than ever before. There is little point in beating the breast and waving the hands in the air because besides apes the human being today is hell bent on his/her own destruction and that will come because of population numbers. We are like voles and when vole numbers get too high then there is a crash due to disease and this is fact. Natural disasters to humans are all part of the cycle and for some reason, with the best of intentions, the human beings elsewhere jump in with aid and money but little do they understand that they are not doing human kind any favours when it comes down to world survival for the rest. If five million people died next month from a disease, hunger and drought this only makes a small hole in the human population and nature takes them. Keeping human populations down this way is Natures way of controlling the human mammal when it gets too high. Not allowing it will result in a much massive problem in the near future, even into extinction because of a major virus mutation happening and because of high human population numbers, the deadly spread will be rapid across our planet. Unlike the Neanderthals who died out because of invaders or small pockets of disease their world population was not in any way large so they did not all die out at the same time and were well scattered in family groups. Human nature today as well as religious beliefs tend to border on the sentimental and compassion levels and we jump in and want to fix it which if we were honest we do not succeed in saving the world, or a tribe of people, only some of them. Such natural disasters in a mammal species in normal events is sad but when it is a major disaster there is only a certain amount we can do because of the political involvement by the country concerned and their need to try and take control of it all, including cash donations sent by well-meaning people. Unless someone or a group of people look at this virus/disease problem much

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closer now the risk is great to the human mammal because of population growths and immigration as well and major famines which I forecast due to another round of the Earth climate changes still to come within the next twenty years. Climate change and species has been going on for millions of years and no doubt will continue to do so in the future. We have already lost many species due to natural causes but also due to human neglect and habitat destruction. We the human mammal will in fact destroy human kind and we know that chimpanzees cannot record that event in writing when it happens because they are not that intelligent to do so.

THE NEANDERTHAL DAWN.

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It has been stated, with some conviction that the Neanderthals evolved from the late form of Homo erectus that had been in Europe during that timeline or from a descendant of that species. The Neanderthal face, skull bones and mandible had occurred by the end of the middle PleistoceneFrance 125,000 years ago. Seven sets of bones found in Germany including one child have been dated as even older, 230,000 years ago, on the prime site of Ehringsdorf and this I feel was a split from the linkage of what I now term as modern humans. A fragmentary specimen found at Pontnewydd, Wales and dated the same age which suggests to me on the evidence that the Neanderthals were around in the middle Pleistocene here. This is reflected in some of the skulls and skull fragments we know about. These are of course the fossil records like Swanscombe in England, Steinheim in Germany, Arago and Montmaurin in France, Atapuerca in Spain and Petralona in Greece. My forensic research

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into these suggested a number of things and a few questions, and I have laid this out below. One of course has to remember that fossils like these are subjected to damage, either by nature and then their removal. Parts of the skull bones may well be reshaped over many thousands of years, earth movements, ice, water and soil chemistry all will have played a part. Not everything that is seen can be used in evidence as fact or true shape. Swanscombe skull.

It should be kept in mind that the skull above was found in three parts or at least three parts of a skull were found on site and over the years they fitted together. My concern here is that they almost fitted perfectly as others have stated but given the time factor from finding part one and finding parts two and

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three it is possible that the fragments were not all from the same skull. The dates for the above is 1935, 1936 and then a great jump to 1955. STEINHEIM SKULL.

Found in a gravel pit near Stuttgart in 1933 and has a much smaller brain size than Swanscombe skull and was 1100 ml where the skull from Swanscombe was 1325 ml. This skull is much more round and thinner but narrower in the forehead part which is low and narrow, a very strong brow ridge while the upper jaw is flat with a present day cheek hollow though I suggest from a forensics point of view due to the process of fossilization. The back of this skull almost matches that of Swanscombe which I am of the opinion and the evidence presented was a primitive early Neanderthal and may well be also female. It is in my view much older than the Swanscombe skull and falls in with the timelines data known or suggested of fossil hominids from Tautavel, France which could be 400,500 years old. Here was found sixty two specimens. A hip bone, two jaw bones and a front face with right side of a skull but seem to me to point at H. erectus X Neanderthal. The primitive showing in the French remains, Arago is distorted before it was reconstructed which tended to blend in of the thinking of H. erectus when I feel that it is in fact more Neanderthal.

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Arago skull 1200ml THE PETRALONA CRANIUM. GREECE.

The skull discovered in the cave is very large and strong looking and at first tends to lean towards H.erectus but a closer look it is Neanderthal because the brow ridges have a double arch shape above the orbits. The cheek bones are inflated and the nose bones suggest also Neanderthal rather than erectus. It is suggested by others that the brain case is 1,220 ml and the cast inside the brain case is much smaller, less flattened at the front than that of erectus. What I did discover in this skull and the data surrounding it is that it sends out conflicting messages because the front is Neanderthal, the back looks erectus. What we have so far in my research is that there is much confusion with past data to archaeology timelines as the human fossils discovered in Ehringsdorf in 1908 and onwards from that were dated as last interglacial age, around 120,000 years ago but they have to be twice as old or even 100,000 years earlier than that. There is little doubt that the remains from this site show Neanderthal characteristics and more so at the back of the skull and most of all thick skull bones. Of course if we look at the data from the long cold period,

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stage 6 in fact these early Neanderthals were around 180,000 130,000 years ago which now includes the two Biache skull fragments which are made up from a upper jaw and back of a female skull. It would seem from my research that more females are discovered than males for reasons unknown to me. The front of a possible male was also discovered but the French teams disagree with the sex of the skull so anything they put forward has to be veiwed as heresay rather than factual evidence. 70,000 years ago across Europe the land was in the grip of the last Ice Age that is if people have done their maths right. Even with the ice and snow here the area was inhabited by Neanderthals only and did so for the next 30,000 years. Cro-Magnon Man had not yet entered the archaeology stage of Europe.

There is little point in taking on board the models presented by others on the Neanderthals and their thnking on evolution because such data is more than obscure but has very conflicting ideas which in the end becomes frustating. We all know what a brush is, we know what a hand brush is and we are very aware that there is many types of brushes but not always aware what their use is. It could be said the same for the Neanderthals and that is where we are today because this human species over many years came in shapes and sizes, depending where they lived and we are still gathering data and I hope that we are also interpeting the data correctly as it presents itself. There is of course that some young bloods, wanting to make a name for themselves, and juggle the data to suit their own needs rather than for the Archaeology

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Community on the whole. With the Neanderthals what needs to be looked at much more closely is the reason why they had such larger noses across Europe and what was the linkage to others not in Europe? Nor does it explain why the native peoples of South East Asia as far down as New Zealand then to show the same face profile even today. The Neanderthal gene is in there somewhere and it could be we missed the boat of an African / Europe link. There is, sometimes un-noticed, great change in the fossil records from around 120,000 years ago and it is only after this time the almost complete skeltons were preserved for later discovery. Here I am dealing with the Neanderthals and not yet so called modren humans and suggest that for the first time some from of death ritual took place such as burial in the ground in the form of a pit. Yet bodies not buried were left in caves such as in Spain. Such cave disposal would have attracted the wolf, bear and big cats and it is very likely if this was the case then full skeltons would not be found. I should point out from my research world wide the samples of Neanderthal remains is not large with around 20 skulls, almost complete, and bones of men, women and children. In Kebara in a cave in Israel a trunk and upper limb skeleton was discovered. If we put all the finds together we know what these people would have looked like when alive, what diseases showed and they were exposed to during their life, and from a forensic point of view, possible cause of death.

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Of course natural deaths were also happening but it is unlikley that more than 20% of such deaths were due to natural causes. Jig-jaw bone fragments tell us little but the skull tells us a lot of these humans who lived on Earth from 120,000 to 35,000 years ago and such skulls may be long but flat on top but it is also worth noting that H.erectus also showed such a flat skull as well as the bar of bone above the eye sockets which both species have except that in the Nenderthals are two arches with large air spaces called the frontal sinuses. Such eyebrows were strong also in the females as in their children from ten years onwards. I would state that the Nenderthal browridges were not as important to the them as they were to early apes as reflected in the frontal sinuses. When and if you have a Nenderthal skull in your hand you know what you are looking at and should not be confused with any other species. I have placed a number of skulls below and skull fragments for comparrsion.

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The mtDNA data is also below and should be considered also.

If the mtDNA data is correct then it should show in samples of skulls from Europe and elsewhere and site conditions, diet as well as climate, should be a consideration for future research. Like humans today, and we leave out fab diets and religion, not all the groups of living Neanderthals had the same diet due to site locations.

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Such Nenderthal sites are placed now into two main categories; Caves and Rock shelters that had remains; Open sites and Rock shelters that produce tools and evidence of use. What should be noted is that the main areas where skeletons and stone tools were found were in South West France and the Middle East. In the west at major sites (Rock shelters) at La Ferrassie, La moustier and La Quina. Combe Grenal in south west France also produced good data. Other sites included in Europe are, Bockstein in Germany, Hungary, Russian and Ukrainian plains but not as rich for finds as the others but if we are going to link Nenderthals with the Mousterian culture then I have to include Iberian peninsula, Italy,Croatia and Greece. Other clues on site are stone tools and other artifacts some of which I have placed below as an example.

The Middle East caves of Mount Carmel outside Haifa, the Shanidar Cave in Iraq produced much useful information.

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Without doubt such tools were made, as above, by humans and not upright apes. To make and shape such tools required a thinking brain with purpose, something todays apes or Chimps cannot do is make and use such tools as above. The evidence therefore points to Neanderthals as fully human. I have already covered the Neanderthal nose and the very possible links to other tribes in SE Asia down to New Zealand.We also know a little about the teeth which I have outlined below. The front teeth were large and well worn which suggests as part of a cutting or vice like tool that is not used as much by apes or early Homo species and it is the large size of these front teeth, more so than the other teeth. Micoscope examanation of such teeth tend to show scratch marks going outwards, in other words something was gripped in the teeth, pulled away from the mouth and cut with a stone or flint tool and the direction of the outward marks suggested that the Neanderthals were mainly right handed when they held the cutting tool. In time with much use the teeth became shovelled shaped and the back teeth had extra cusps. Back teeth of the Neanderthals had bull roots and the same has been found in some Inuit populations today. Any female with an extra X chromosomes no matter who they are will also produce this root condition.

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Nenderthal teeth are in a forward position but there is a few other features in the mandible that I feel need to be mentioned such as the hole or foraman which lies in the rear upright part of the ascending ramus. The nerve concerned here runs to the front of the jaw and I found odd that the bony lip is only found in two out of three jaws examined and rare in ape jaws and the modren humans. I should point out that it was very rare in early upright apes fossils. In a quarter of known Cro-Magnon jaws it is also present and I suggest that the function of the bony lip may well be related to a strong pull on the mandibular ligament which runs from the ear down to the mandibular foraman. This may well have something to do with holding the jaw steady when used as a tool but as time moved forwards there came in some of the Nenderthals a slight chin development and more so in the much later ones.There is no evidence of a simian shelf which apes have in the front base of the jaw but there is evidence in that the chin on the outside, has a bony ridge on the lower jaw that serves as reinforcement and gives that extra strenght needed.

THE NENDERTHAL BRAIN.

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In the data I have researched it is said that the Neanderthals had a much larger brain than Cro-Magnon = N 1400cc and CM 1370cc but I should point out a larger brain is not always a smarter brain and I suggest not all the Neanderthals had a brain at 1400cc if you look at the world population at the time. There is conflict with the brain data and more so what seems to be pushed time and again that the shape of the Neanderthal brain and that it had some effect on their thinking and actions.

Evidence of course is lacking from many sources that this was in fact the case and in my research I will show that the Neanderthal brain was fully active as what is termed a modren man brain would be. They may well have had thick

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skull bone structure but this does not mean that they were thick in their thinking. The brain case of course is directly related to the shape of the brain, much the same as if hot jelly is poured into a mould and left to cool, and this brain was long, low and somewhat flattened in comparison to a human brain today. Knowledge of brain functions sixty years ago was rather limited and as far as the Neanderthal brain is concerned great errors of interpretation occurred and tended to show today the ignorance of learned men of the time. The larger brain with Neanderthals was not due to evolution as such but more to do with climate, cold areas in which they lived, sometimes extreme cold. There is evidence to show that even today human populations living in higher and much colder conditions tend to show a large brain mass as well as a larger body mass. Those people that live across Asia in hot climates show a lower brain mass yet both climate brains function the same. No one living today has yet to show the unknown significance between the Neanderthal and Modern brains and that is the rub here. We need to find out if there was or is one. We must never forget that the Neanderthals and ourselves are mammals and belong to the animal kingdom like all land mammals. Organs such as todays humans have were the same but bone structure did differ in some ways. Diet also must be taken into consideration because the diet of the Neanderthals was based on hunter gatherers mode and rather limited to what was on offer or found. If food become scarce in an area then a small group would have to expand their area until they found enough food. This may mean that the hunting group may be away for a few days while some of the women, children and aged stayed at the base camp. POSSIBLE DNA RESEARCH ACROSS EUROPE.

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Wednesday, 24 August 2011

Carleton 2012

Most people with any education knows a little or more about what DNA is and sometimes how it fits into forensics and linking humans to a match. In case you are reading this or want to skip this part please dont because it is not Rocket Science. I suggest therefore you read on as this part of my research also deals with the possible projects that could be undertaken within the confines of Neanderthal Man or women and their relations to modern humans across Europe today.

In this brief but I hope informative outline of the chemical deoxyribonucleic acid =DNA it will through some light on the research I would like to see moving forwards and giving us more information on possible links to that early first human, Neanderthal Man and some of us. DNA is found within the nucleus of every cell and it twists and turns upwards in spirals and very tightly when it does so which are in fact chromosomes. This DNA is the major key to all life, a Master and complex structure that can kick start the making of proteins which are needed in the development of an animal, organs and structure. What is more interesting is for this research on the Neanderthals ,it forms the major basis for inheritance and passed down through all the generations with some or many characteristics carried by genes which are made from DNA. Proteins in part that are in the body make up the structure of skin as an example. Messenger ribonucleic acid = mRNA assembles amino acids which

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are relayed by the DNA Translation = ribosome which moves along the strand of mRNA three bases at a time and this ribosome attaches amino acids in sequence in the mRNA triplets. Body cells in time divide continuously during their periods of growth and to make up for any cell damage but before a new cell is made the DNA must be copied or replicated which suggests that the DNA strands unzip along their length. There are three stages to this. Mitochondrial DNA is the energy production structures in cells, contain only a small amount of DNA but the cell nucleus which is inherited from both parents is DNA while Mitochondrial DNA is only inherited from the mother. Any mistakes made in copying Mitochondrial DNA results, I should point out, in genetic disorders. Each human has his or her unique appearance but will have also inherited some very obvious features such as eye colour, height, chin shape from one or both parents. The Neanderthals also had this inherited factor which rules put the archaeology myth of the past that they all looked the same. Once a full set of Chromosomes with its genetic material intact is established, half from the mother and half from the father and at once the new cell will start to copy itself and replicate the genetic information. Therefore, physical characteristics, many medical disorders and behaviour are partly determined by genes that are passed from parents to children or off-spring. A quarter of each childs genes are inherited from each grandparent.

With this DNA information we at least have a people canvas to work with when it comes to possible DNA research and Neanderthal blood and genetic

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lines across Europe, maybe parts of Russia and Asia and down to parts of North Africa.

THE GENETIC TRAIL PROJECT.

OUTLINE FOR NEANDERTAL LINKS.

BONE RESEARCH AND SKULL FEATURES.

FACE AND BONE FEATURES MODREN HUMANS.

DNA SAMPLING FROM BONES OF NEANDERTHALS.

DNA SAMPLING FROM PICKED POPULATIONS IN EUROPE, RUSSIA AND CANADA.

DNA DATABASE SET UP FOR PROJECT.

LENGTH OF STUDY. 5 YEARS.

GENETIC FEATURES AND LINKS.

FUNDING FOR PROJECT.

POSSIBLE GENETIC LINKS TO NEANDERTHALS.

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Yupik. 21,000 of a population. Locations; NW Canada, NE Siberia. Not related to the Inuit tribes but related to the Yuit at Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea. Possible link for research.

Inuit. Population in Canada, and Greenland; 100,000. Possible link.

Haida. Population now only 3,600 on the Gwaii Islands Canada. Possible link but not strong.

Innu. Population in Labrador, Canada now 13,000. Weak link.

South America. No possible links. USA Iceland. No possible links. No possible links.

Sweden. Population 9. Million. Scattered possible links.

Norway. Population 5. Million. Scattered possible links. Weak.

Nordic Countries.

5 Million. Scattered possible links.

Ensonians in Baltic States. 1.4 million. Strong possible links.

Lapland. Population for the Sami. Strong possible links.

Latvians, Baltic States. Population 2.4 million weak possibility.

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Wales UK. Population 1.85 million. Evidence of throwback features. Possibility of link

Bretons. Population 600,000. Possible links.

Catalans Spain. Andorra in France. Population 10 million. Possible links.

Portuguese. NW, possibility of links.

Dutch. Weak possibility.

Austrians. Possibility of weak links population 8.million

Swiss. Weak possibility.

Sorbs. 60,000 of a population. No possible links.

Poles. 38 million of a population. Strong possible links.

Germans. 100 million. Strong possible links in N and NE

Italians. 58 Million. Weak links.

Roma. 12 million of a population. Very Strong links.

Slovacks. 4. Million. Strong possibilities.

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Slovenes. 2 million. Very strong possibilities.

Ukrainians 36 million of a population. Very Strong possibilities.

Ashkenazim 10 million. Some possible links.

Romanians. 20 million. Strong possibilities.

Bulgarians. Very strong possibilities.

Greeks. Some island possibilities.

Croats. 4.00 million. Possible links in NE

Serbs. 8 million. NE populations possible links.

Komi Russians.400,000. Urals, Russia. Possible links.

Udmurts.750,000. Udmurtia Russia. High possibility of links.

Mari 600,000 of a population. Isolated, Russian. Possible strong link.

Tartars. 6,000,000. Strong possibilities of links.

Kalmyks, Russian.177,000 population. Volga area. Possible links.

Avers. 600,000of a population. SW Russia. Possible strong links.

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Tribes of Borneo high possibility.

The tribes of the Motu, Dani, Abelam, Huli, Ni-Vanuatu of Melanesia are all high possibilities.

Warlpira tribe of Australia high possibility. Arrernte tribe of Australia high possibility.

From this list above I am confident that with the right team and funding this proposed project would open up many doors into the gene spread of the Neanderthals across Europe and parts of Asia. At least one University would need to be involved, a teaching medical University even better and I see no reason why the Neanderthal Gene Project could not be up and running by 2013 if there was funding.

There are of course risks in the present data gathered to be taken as fact when it comes to fossil dating of all Neanderthal artefacts so far discovered and this must not happen to any new finds. Therefore I suggest that a new fossil record database be set up as I have in my place of work on both computers and all data entered checked and cross referenced. There is very little point in having any database for the work and research that I envisage with massive gaps in a timeline of early man or the wrong data put in the wrong place. I have therefore now set up a database called Neanderthal

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Codex which will be maintained and added to. It is running on the Ubuntu/Linux programmes and not Windows because I found that it is a good platform for this type of research and holding data. Conversion is easy to do from Open Office or Libre Office or covert to PDF however the data may not show as it should.

SOME NEANDERTHAL PROBLEMS WITH INTERPETATION OF FINDS AND BONES.

Sadly this has been going on since I was a boy and for some reason is still going on in the circles of academic intuitions and some Universities are the worst offenders. By offenders I mean staff who work in the field and will not listen to reason or advice because like most people with a degree or PhD in the subject that my research is based on they have only three ways of interpretation and follow it to the rule this being I observed; the right interpretation, the wrong interpretation and their own interpretation which they never give ground or even when deep down they know more investigative work is needed. It is only after they are dead are their mistakes uncovered but by then the damage is done by the data that they have submitted fast to be published and beat the decaying body clock. Such farcical episodes in Palaeoanthropology research is just as bad today as it was fifty years ago I should point out the search is still going on for those Missing Links that they seek here and there and everywhere, a little like the UFO- brigade who still seek lights in the skies, aliens who carry out abductions, and head-bangers who claim that an Alien Force came to Earth 2.5 million years ago and mated with apes, thus, we are the result of that great union between Ape and Aliens.

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Not only that, the off-spring of such a Union then went on to build the Egyptian pyramids and then shot over to South America and taught the local natives to do the same. This of course in 2012 is what some people still think and what Early Humans Researchers think when they talk about that Missing Link. The Missing Link myth is running close second now to the hunt for the Holy Grail and common sense does not enter into some academic minds that is so full of chaff and self-importance that they fail to grasp the archaeology nettle.

The Palaeontologist, no matter who she or he is, is always faced with such dilemmas when it comes to fossil human remains and ape fossils and I should point out that there are many good ones out there in the field and in our Universities but no four put together in a padded room will agree to what the fossil is and what did it belong to man or ape? Conclusive evidence, one way or the other on the real timelines of the Neanderthals in Europe and parts of Asia is very hard to find and as an example of what happens when you jump the gun and dont do your research right, double check it and then check it again with someone else, you end up with more than egg on your face. This is what happened to the Swiss Naturalist, Johann Scheuchzer, 16721733 found a long vertebral column with some other parts and all were in that advanced fossil state. He of course claimed that it belonged to the remains of a man before the Flood. He was so happy about his find and broadcast it to many people only to find out later that it was a large Salamander and not human in any form of his imagination. But Scheuchzer was not alone in his fool thinking because later a skeleton from Guadeloupe was found aboard a French Ship being searched by the Royal Navy in the early 1900s and was said to be, the bones of a man in a

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fossil state. It proved later to be no more than 200 years old and not what could be termed as a fossil as we know them. A headache of course for anyone who makes claims first before checking out dates and possible dates of remains found. Real fossils, be they animals or humans have to go through a process of fossilization and because after death remains are not broken down by now known chemical components, such bones have been hidden away from the many agents of decomposition then infiltrated by minerals and leaving us with a stone like form of the human or animal shape when in life.

HOW DO WE KNOW WHAT IS A BONE FOSSIL AND WHAT IS MORE RECENT.?

In the bad old days of hit and miss bone research the tongue test was used and this was in the early to middle 19th century. If a bone stuck to your tongue then it was called a fossil because of the amount of collagen it contained. Sadly once the use of hydrochloric acid came into use for testing bone fossils it was discovered that tongue stick bone in fact contained large amounts of collagen when in fact it should have been very little if it were a real bone fossil. Sadly what went before the acid test and slipped through the archaeology net of possibility was already labelled as fossil and today such items now lie hidden away in shoe boxes in some dusty vault or have been tossed on a rubbish pit, the collectors name removed from the find, Today there is a simple field test. Was the fossil found above, below or in with other bones of long extinct animals? Even then, the evidence of early man was viewed with suspicion by many in case they were in fact much younger

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than the local geology on site suggested. Such archaeology suspicion resulted in the very first fossil remains known to have been found in the year 1700 at Cannstadt in the south of Germany being rejected as human and a fossil at that. Through the find was a skull fragment it lay in a small box for a 136 years afterwards in the Stuttgart Museum until it was rediscovered in 1882 and turned out to be a real fossil but got very little attention afterwards by people who claimed to be hot on the bones. This was a sign of the times of course and when fossil human remains were discovered by Baron von Schottheim in 1820 at Koestritz, upper Saxony they were also treated with distain. No one who had any knowledge of bones and fossils were going to stick their German necks out in public and claim human fossil remains. This is understandable because of the mistakes made in the past and confidence took a hard knock in many establishments in places of learning across Europe. Paul Schmerling, 1791-1836 who was the founder of the first Palaeontology study in Belgium had the same reaction from the public and Universities when he discovered seven human skulls and other linked artefacts in caves at Engis The skulls in question were mixed in with the remains of mammoth and rhino bones which suggests strongly that they were in fact fossils. His claims, which were in fact right, were rejected by the experts of the day. It was a hard blow for him at the time but later it was Charles Lyell, an Englishman, who did comment on their importance yet it was twenty five years before the experts at the University of Liege passed the find at true and with evidence of such. Evidence of such finds that were passed over by experts of the day did not just happen in Europe but in England. Experts were not really interested and if a few were they kept their mouths shut and their self-build reputations intact.

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Kents Cavern, near Torquay is a good example of English thinking at that time and the evidence of flint working tools with the fossils of very extinct animals in 1829 and was dismissed. A few years later, a skull discovered in Gibraltar in 1846 was also dismissed by the archaeology community but I will comment on this later.

Much of this could not care less attitude in the west may have had something to do with Christian thinking at that time of debate on the thorny subject of Evolution and I have no doubt at all that this was one reason why such finds were dismissed, and even hide evidence of anything that looked human but different. God you see, it is said, made Man in his image and the whole idea that God had brow ridges, a larger un-shapely body and the remains looked deformed was at this time a non-runner for upstanding Christians. What nailed the whole thing was that the remains suggested strongly that this thing was around before Adam and Eve ever came on the scene as humans, like us. An example of such thinking I give here and it all started with a man hunting rabbits with nets over the holes, went to get a rabbit out of the net which had been carried deep into the hole by the fleeing animal. This was on a hillside outside Aurignac, France and his hand touched something that was not a rabbit but a large bone. He pulled out the bone, followed by the rabbit in the net which he dispatched then dug deeper into the hole. This suggests he had nets, ferrets and a small digging spade and he used the spade to good effect because he found a cave that was littered with human bones. As this happened in 1852 the local mayor, who it turns out was also the local doctor for the area, Dr.Amiel no less, he confirmed that there was the remains belonged to seventeen humans of both sexes and all ages. Being a good Christian, the mayor and a doctor he had the power to order a

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quick Christian burial down in the parish churchyard and as far as he and everyone else was concerned that was the end of the matter. Alas that was not to be because eight years later in 1860 when a palaeontologist; Edouard Lartet asked the Church Sexton about the burial of the bones, the man shrugged and said he knew nothing of any such burial and if it happened he would have known. I suggest that he did know and did not want the matter brought up again or the bones in the mass grave. In 1844 and in 1858 two books were published that in time tended to throw a spanner in the works of Early Human Research, such as it was at this time. The first book Vestiges had to be published anonymously to protect the author; Robert Chambers 1802-1844 and its full working title was called; Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, and the second and better known book today was published fifteen years later by Charles Darwin; The Origin Of Species and both caused uproar in many quarters across the reading world. Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection was almost beaten to the post as an unpublished MMs by an Englishman by the name of Alfred Russel Wallace, fourteen years younger than Darwin and a poor man at that, who came up on the same track as Darwin. Wallace did write his book but made the mistake of sending it to Darwin to read who was now living in Down House, Down in Kent. The MMs from Wallace arrived with Darwin on the 26 th of June 1852. When Darwin opened and read the book he must have been shocked because his own baby was still in stage five and both books, still unpublished seemed to him to be almost replicas of one another. The rub for both men is that their books had to be read and looked at closely by the committee of the Linnean Society of London and read. The readings took place on the 1 st July 1858. It could well be that Darwin had friends on the committee where

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Wallace was not as well-known so it is possible that a nod and a wink was given to Darwin and was told to prepare for publication and worked on stage six as we today know it and the book, his book, was published on the 24th November 1859. Whatever happened to Wallaces book I dont know. In all from my research there were in fact three such books, published or unpublished all on the same trail of evolution and all in a hurry to get there first in the public eye. Darwin of course read Vestiges then slagged it off and as the author of Vestiges was taking all the public and professional doubts about content this took the focus of Darwin though he did have his critics. The relations between Darwin, the public, Church and the apes soured and science looked like it was in fact opposing religion, the Bible looked like just a book and read in quotes and even some of the learned people of the day also condemned Darwin and his book. Darwin had kicked hard, a wasps nest of objection and his views on Evolution of human kind which I should point out still lingers today. Soon the debate raged for and against Darwins theory of Evolution across the world and before anyone could say, Ape Man the Neanderthals were dragged into the hot debate and for many, classified in the science world as a gorilla from Africa. No one at that time could of course explain how a gorilla entered Europe, a small part of Asia and lived in caves with burning fires?

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Above are two skulls form an African gorilla and in comparison to any Neanderthal skulls the difference could not be missed even by the small number of so called experts in the 1800s

Above is the Neanderthal skull (left) and a modern skull (right) so how anyone could get it wrong even in those far off days is beyond me, unless of course they had their own agenda? Any past finds and new ones of Neanderthal skulls should show in part or whole the larger brain case and of course the brow ridges that cannot be missed and there is nothing ape like with it.

The first official Neanderthal Man was discovered by limestone workers clearing a deep cave and very narrow ravine in the Neander Valley and where the Dussel River flows and just a short distance from the Rhine at Dusseldorf. Though this cave was large getting into it was difficult because it was 20m up a steep cliff-side with the entrance around a meter. All the bones discovered where down almost two meters in mud and it was likely that the whole

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skeleton when found but because they were looked on as modern bones or animal bones to the quarry men they were dumped with other rocks and mud into the quarry below. It was around seven weeks that a few of the bones were discovered by a school teacher as well as a skull cap and no evidence of any fossil animals found with the few shattered bones left. This would mean that the remains could not be placed in a geology time-lines bracket so ID was done by sight only. Hermann Schaaffhausen, Professor of Anatomy at the University of Bonn who could confirm the remains were human but very old and also he presented his facts in Bonn on the 4th February, 1857 and three years before Darwins book was in fact published. The professor was also able to establish that the limb bones were thick with strong muscle attachments which suggested to him that whoever the man was he was strong and used to heavy manual work and exercise. The strange shape of the skull got more attention from him and he was able to say that it was a normal shape but very different from modern day humans and not from any race of skulls he had known. His comments on the large brow ridges at first suggested large ape but he knew that what he looked at was not an ape but from some primate human from NW Europe that had even confronted the Romans when they invaded. His dating of the timelines is wrong of course but what is important is that he classified it as an ugly and strong human when living.

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So what we had then was the first Neanderthal uncovered and classified as such but most of all, excepted as such. From where had this early human come from and when?

New Genetic Phylogeny

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I can only suggest that DNA and RNA do give some of the answers where we come from, but where the Neanderthals came from and where they went is still in debate. Current animal and plant classification models are fairly subjective in how they are set up and scientists had hoped that the newer science of molecular biology would provide more objectivity to classification systems. It was hoped that comparisons of the nucleotides of DNA or RNA sequences or of amino acid sequences in proteins would yield more consistent results that could be used to classify organisms with a high degree of accuracy. However, according to an article in the January 1998 issue of Science: hit this on the head and a bit of a blow to those that wanted it and those that needed it to be true

Animal relationship derived from these new molecular data sometimes are very different from those implied by older, classical evaluations of morphology. Reconciling these differences is a central challenge for evolutionary biologists at present. Growing evidence suggests that phylogenies of animal phyla constructed by the analysis of 18S rRNA sequences may not be as accurate as originally thought. Inaccuracies may occur in molecular phylogenies for a variety of reasons.

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Prior to analysis, the sequences of corresponding genes from each animal must be placed in register (aligned) with each other so that homologous sites within each sequence can be compared. However, sequence divergences may be sufficiently large that unambiguous alignments cannot be achieved, and different alignments may lead to different inferred relationships. Additionally, the data are often sufficiently noisy that there may be a lack of strong statistical support for important groupings.

I therefore needed to discusses a figure detailed similarities and differences in 18s rRNA sequences which show that molluscs (scallops) are more closely related to sea urchins than arthropods (brine shrimp). Of course, this is not too surprising. Intuitively, a scallop seems more like a sea urchin than a shrimp but a Neanderthal seems more human than an ape, even upright ones from Africa. So, the 82% correlation between the scallop and sea urchin is not surprising or that past and modern apes still look like apes not human Here we have two different arthropods, a shrimp and an scallop. How can a scallop be much more related to one type of arthropod

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and much less related to the other type of arthropod? Such a troubling thought led the authors of the Science article to remark:

Different representative species, in this case brine shrimp or tarantula for the arthropods, yield wildly different inferred relationships among phyla. Both trees have strong bootstrap support (percentage at node). . . The critical question is whether current models of 18S rRNA evolution are sufficiently accurate to successfully compensate for long branch attraction between the animal phyla. Without knowing the correct tree ahead of time, this question will be hard to answer. However, current models of DNA substitution usually fit the data poorly .

Cytochrome C and other Proteins

There are many other interesting little problems concerning commonly used phytogenic tracing genes and proteins. An example, mammalian and amphibian "luteinizing hormone releasing hormone (LHRH) is identical. However, birds, reptiles, and certain fish have a different type of LHRH. If this were the case are humans therefore more closely related to frogs than to birds? Not according to standard evolutionary phylogeny trees. Again, the data does not match the classical theory in this particular situation so what do we have left? Calcitonin (lowers blood calcium levels in animals) is another protein commonly used to determine phylogenies. Though humans differ from pigs by 18 of 32 amino acids, but by only 15 of 32 amino acids from the salmon. Are we therefore more closely related to fish than to other mammals like the pig?

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Cytochrome c is another famous phytogenic marker protein used to determine evolutionary relationships. There is only a single amino acid difference between human and chimp cytochrome c. and because of this, many assume that the evolutionary link is obvious. It is not I say because if it was re-worked with many other animals, this link is not so obvious. Cytochrome c protein of a turtle is closer to a bird than it is to a snake and a snake is closer to a human (14 variations) than it is to a turtle (22 variations). Humans and horses, both being placental mammals, are presumed to have shared a common ancestor with each other more recently than they shared a common ancestor with a kangaroo (a marsupial). So the evolutionist would expect the cytochrome c of a human to be more similar to that of a horse than to that of a kangaroo. Yet, the cytochrome c of the human varies in 12 places from that of a horse but only in 10 places from that of a kangaroo.5 Such discrepancies between traditional phylogenies and those based on cytochrome c are well known. If that has got you confused as it did me when I read this data you are not alone.

Ayala commented that:

"The cytochrome c phylogeny disagrees with the traditional one in several instances, including the following: the chicken appears to be related more closely to the penguin than to ducks and pigeons; the turtle, a reptile, appears to be related more closely to birds than to the rattlesnake, and man and monkeys diverge from the

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mammals before the marsupial kangaroo separates from the placental mammals."

Even so, cytochrome c does seem to generally match the predictions of common decent. However, there are some who think that the general cytochrome c data presents some puzzles from a neo-Darwinian perspective. First, the cytochromes of all the higher organisms (yeasts, plants, insects, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals) exhibit an almost equal degree of sequence divergence from the cytochrome of the bacteria Rhodospirillum. The degree of divergence does not increase as one moves up the scale of evolution but remains essentially uniform The following data chart that compares the % homogeny of cytochrome c among various creatures:

Chi

Neu S.

Tetra Eugl pom ena be hyme na

Hum mp- Hor Donk Mou Ca Lamp Mai roan anze se e 88. Human -100 5 Chimpan 100 -zee 5 88. 89.4 91.3 6 81. Horse 88.5 88.5 -99.0 94.2 6 84.6 7 89.4 91.3 6 78. 80.8 7 63. 78. 80.8 7 66. 66. ey se rp rey ze spor a

63.7 67.3 56.6 47.5

63.7 67.3 56.6 47.5

65.7 71.2 58.6 46.5

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99. Donkey 89.4 89.4 0 94. Mouse 91.3 91.3 2 81. Carp 78.6 78.6 6 84. Lamprey 80.8 80.8 6 63. Maize 66.7 66.7 7 Neurosp 63.7 63.7 ora S. 67.3 67.3 pombe 2 58. Euglena 56.6 56.6 6 Tetrahy 47.5 47.5 mena 5 46. 46.5 48.5 58.6 56.6 7 71. 72.1 71.2 65. 65.7 65.7 64.7 66.7 85.6 84.6 95.2 --95.2

82. 85.6 5 83. 84.6 5

64. 65.7 72.1 58.6 46.5 7 66. 65.7 71.2 56.6 48.5 7 59.

82.5 83.5 --

81.6 2

57.3 64.1 52.0 44.0

81. -6 59. 59.2 2 57. 59.2 3 64. 68.3 1 52. 55.6 0 44. 48.5 0

59. 59.2 68.3 55.6 48.5 2

--

58.1 57.1 51.5 42.6

58. -1 57. 70.8 -1 51. 57.6 54.5 -5 42. 45.5 48.5 48.0 -6 48.0 54.5 48.5 70.8 57.6 45.5

In reviewing this chart, pay particular attention to the tetrahymena. Tetrahymena are unicellular ciliated protozoans. According to the theory of common decent, all creatures living today are equally separated in time from their first common ancestor (i.e.: single celled bacteria).

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Even the bacteria that remain alive today have sustained mutations over time as they maintained their similar morphology. There is no reason not to suggest that the Neanderthals also had a number of mutations thus producing something like Homo sapiens or to put a finer point on it; modern humans of today because we should expect and not be surprised when there is equal divergence between "simple" and "complex". If we think of it as spokes on a wheel with the central hub being the common ancestor and the tips of each spoke representing a different creature. The tip of each spoke is equally distant from the wheel hub as well as many of the other spoke tips on the wheel. So obviously then, even if the tip of one of the spokes was a single celled creature, like tetrahymena, this creature would be expected to be equally distant from almost every other creature on that wheel to include other single celled creatures as well as multi-celled creatures like fish, corn, rabbits and humans. Higher organisms, on the other hand, might be more similar to each other due to a more recent separation from a common ancestor between them. For example, humans and chimps are both equally different from bacteria, but when compared with each other, their cytochrome c proteins are almost identical but only one is human. Thus, a more recent common ancestor seems quite logical as humans and chimps simply share the same wheel spoke except that this spoke splits at the very tip with humans and chimps sharing different tips.

Maximum Differences and Time

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The data put forward by others does seem to generally match the theory even if specific anomalies may be encountered on relatively "rare" occasions in such cases as cytochrome c phylogenies. There are a few problems with this scenario supporting the theory of common decent. The problem might arise when one considers that mutation rates are calculated on a per generation average and if we consider that the average mutation rate for a given gene in all creatures, is about 1 x 10 mutations per gene per generation. That would mean that a given gene will mutate only one time in one million generations on average. As that single celled organisms have a much shorter generation time than multi-celled organisms on average. A fair example, the bacteria E. coli have a minimum generation time of 20 minutes compared to the generation time of humans of around 20 years. With a gene being mutated every 1 to 10 million generations in E. coli, one might think this would be a long time. Each and every gene in an E. coli lineage will get mutated once every 40 to 80 years. So, in one million years, each gene will have suffered at least 10,000 mutations. Therefore if we work out the data for the Neanderthals from 100,000 years to 30,000 years as a single human example there has to be some evidence somewhere that matches the other suggested data from elsewhere for or against? Cytochrome c phylogenies are generally based on analysis of certain subunits of cytochrome c which range in number of amino acids up to a maximum of about 600 or so. This would translate into a minimum of at least 1,800 nucleic acids in DNA coding for this sub-unit of cytochrome c protein (3bp per codon). Note that in the table above, the tetrahymena species are about 50% different from all other creatures on the table. It seems then that all the creatures would have experienced at least a 25% change in their genetic

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codes from the time of common ancestor. So how many generations would it take to achieve this 25% difference? Taking 25% of 1,800 give us 450 mutations so let us say that the average mutation rate is one mutation per 1,800 nucleic acids per one million generations. For a steady state population of just one individual in each generation it would take about 450 million generations to get a 25% difference from the common ancestor. With a generation time of 20 minutes (i.e.: E. coli), that works out to be about 342,000 years. So, for bacteria, the 25% difference from the common ancestor cytochrome c, might have been achieved relatively rapidly given the evolutionary time frame. Unless something speeded up the mutations of the Neanderthals?

Functional Differences

The question is then, if bacteria can achieve such relatively rapid neutral genetic drift, why are they not more wide ranging in their cytochrome c sequences? It seems that if these cytochrome c sequence differences were really neutral differences, that various bacterial groups, colonies, and species, would cover a rather large range of possible cytochrome c sequences potentially to include that of mammals.

Why are they then so uniformly separated from all other "higher" species unless the cytochrome sequences are functionally based and therefore statically different due to the various functional needs of creatures that inhabit different environments? Questions on Questions if you try to work it out and

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the answers I discovered are not simple, some doubtful. Bacteria are thought to share a common ancestor with creatures as diverse as snails, sponges, and fishes and this split from the common ancestry of the creatures is said to have happened over 3 billion years ago. About 600 million years ago there was the Cambrian explosion where all the major phyla of living things are thought to have suddenly evolved but as far as I am concerned the jury is still out on this one. All of these creatures have all been around long enough and are diverse enough to exhibit quite a range in cytochrome c variation. If this was the case why then are their cytochrome c sequences so clustered and arranged in such an orderly hierarchy and why don't bacteria, snails, fish, and sponges cover a more random range of cytochrome c sequence variation if these variation possibilities are in fact neutral? I am going to suggest that the clustered differences that are seen in genes and protein sequences, such cytochrome c, are the result of differences in function that actually benefit the various organisms according to their different individual needs. If the differences were in fact neutral differences, there could be a vast overlap by now with complete blurring of species' cytochrome c boundaries and even between species as obviously different as humans and bacteria. Sequence differences may not be so much the result of differences due to random mutation over time as they are due to differences in the functional needs of different creatures. Much the same can be said of most if not all phylogenies that are based on genotypic differences between all living things but evidence of such is lacking as fact. I have considered that if either humans or bacteria would be better served by

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a different sequence for a particular function this different sequence would be rapidly evolved - especially in bacteria but if the human sequence for cytochrome c would better serve E. coli bacteria than their current fairly similar type of cytochrome c, how can an evolutionist say that E. coli would have very much trouble at all evolving the human sequence? Sequences remain consistently different over a significant real time line, observation (over a million generations for bacteria at least) is very good evidence that the differences in DNA character sequencing are based in differences of functional need, not evolutionary heritage, unless something happened to change this 30,000 years ago in Europe.

Nested Hierarchical Patterns and Common Descent

Then, there is also the argument that the nested hierarchical pattern, by itself, supports the theory of common descent - even if it is known that intelligent design had to have been involved. Regardless of the involvement of intelligent design or not, the simple presence of the pattern is argument enough to support the theory of common descent - or is it?

Parts of the Tree of Life

Another interesting question concerns the notion that a nested hierarchical pattern is present throughout the tree of life. This doesn't seem to be the case. It seems as though the roots of the tree do not show a nested pattern. This means that the evolutionary theory has to be able to explain both nested and non-nested patterns in the tree of life.

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In this line consider the fairly recent comments from Elizabeth Pennisi in a 1999 Science article entitled, "Is it Time to Uproot the Tree of Life?"

"A year ago, biologists looking over newly sequenced genomes from more than a dozen microorganisms thought these data might support the accepted plot lines of life's early history. But what they saw confounded them. Comparisons of the genomes then available not only didn't clarify the picture of how life's major groupings evolved, they confused it. And now, with an additional eight microbial sequences in hand, the situation has gotten even more confusing . . . Many evolutionary biologists had thought they could roughly see the beginnings of life's three kingdoms . . . When full DNA sequences opened the way to comparing other kinds of genes, researchers expected that they would simply add detail to this tree. But "nothing could be further from the truth," says Claire Fraser, head of The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) in Rockville, Maryland. Instead, the comparisons have yielded many versions of the tree of life that differ from the rRNA tree and conflict with each other as well .

Such problems were not completely unexpected. Earlier, in 1993,

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Patterson, Williams, and Humphries, scientists with the British Museum, reached the following conclusion in their review of the congruence between molecular and morphologic phylogenies:

As morphologists with high hopes of molecular systematics, we end this survey with our hopes dampened. Congruence between molecular phylogenies is as elusive as it is in morphology and as it is between molecules and morphology. Partly because of morphologys long history, congruence between morphological phylogenies is the exception rather than the rule. With molecular phylogenies, all generated within the last couple of decades, the situation is little better. Many cases of incongruence between molecular phylogenies are documented above; and when a consensus of all trees within 1% of the shortest in a parsimony analysis is published structure or resolution tends to evaporate.

In 1998 biologist Carl Woese, who was an early pioneer in producing rRNA-based phylogenetic trees, concluded:

"No consistent organismal phylogeny has emerged from the many individual protein phylogenies so far produced.

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Phylogenetic incongruities can be seen everywhere in the universal tree, from its root to the major branchings within and among the various taxa to the makeup of the primary groupings themselves. Yet there is no consistent alternative to the rRNA phylogeny, and that phylogeny is supported by a number of fundamental genes... For example... different (related) aaRSs root that tree differently... Exceptions to the topology of the rRNA tree such as these are sufficiently frequent and statistically solid that they can be neither overlooked nor trivially dismissed on methodological grounds. Collectively, these conflicting gene histories are so convoluted that lateral gene transfer is their only reasonable explanation.

In 1999, Michael Lynch noted in "The Age and Relationships of the Major Animal Phyla" that:

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Clarification of the phylogenetic relationships of the major animal phyla has been an elusive problem, with analyses based on different genes and even different analyses based on the same genes yielding a diversity of phylogenetic trees.

In 1999 Philippe and Forterre wrote an article entitled, "The rooting of the universal tree of life is not reliable" in which they made the following comments:

"The addition of new sequences to data sets has often turned apparently reasonable phylogenies into confused ones. . . In general, the two prokaryotic domains were not monophyletic with several aberrant groupings at different levels of the tree. Furthermore, the respective phylogenies contradicted each others, so that various ad hoc scenarios (paralogy or lateral gene transfer) must be proposed in order to obtain the traditional Archaebacteria-

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Eukaryota sisterhood."

Another 1999 Science article by Stiller and Hall:

"A precipitous acceptance of such widespread LGT places evolutionary biologists in the untenable position of adopting an falsifiable hypothesis, at least in terms of the techniques of comparative sequence analyses that currently dominate the field of molecular evolution. Any phylogenetic pattern inferred from any given gene can be fit to some suitable mix of conventional interspecies gene transmission and interorganismal genetic promiscuity. Thus, unless more reliable evidence is uncovered, the scientific method requires that we invoke the idea of ubiquitous LGT only as a last resort." And another 1999 Science article by Doolittle:

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"Each new prokaryotic genome that appears contains dozens, if not hundreds, of genes not found in the genomes of its nearest sequenced relatives but found elsewhere among Bacteria or Archaea."

Just one more 1999 paper by Ann Miller, from the Yale Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, entitle, "The Evolution of Phylogenetic Classification: From 16S rRNA to the Genomic Tree."

"The 16S rRNA tree is not an organismal phylogenetic tree; it is a gene tree. To move towards organismal phylogeny, scientists began creating trees based on other proteins. In many cases, the other phylogenies do confirm the rRNA tree, but no one consistent phylogeny has emerged."

More recently Kechris, wrote:

"Phylogenies constructed on nitrogen fixation genes are not in agreement with the tree-of-life based

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on 16S rRNA but do not conclusively distinguish between gene loss and LGT hypotheses. Using a series of analyses on a set of complete genomes, our results distinguish two structurally distinct classes of MoFe nitrogenises whose distribution cuts across lines of vertical inheritance and makes us believe that a conclusive case for LGT has been made."

There is even suggestion that lateral gene transfer (LGT) may be fairly common between single-celled organisms and multicellular creatures. In a 2007 paper published in Science, Hotopp et. al., argue that there has been "widespread lateral gene transfer" between endosymbiosis bacteria and insects, and nematodes.

Consistent hierarchies, at least for the earliest branches of the supposed "Tree of Life", are falling apart with additional evidence and I suggest almost like a bad human post mortem being performed but unlike some researchers still has a brain before removal. When a given organism has hundreds of genes which none of its supposed nearest evolutionary relatives have, evolutionists are left in a very perplexing position even though they have some of the bones and hard guesses at dating a timeline.

In order to maintain their theory they must propose, in an ad hoc non-

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falsifiable manner, that these differences were not the result of evolution from a common ancestor over time, but were in fact the result of lateral transfer of pre-evolved sequences. This comment as far as I am concerned is bad research without good cross reference with the notion of being a "science". It is not science since it is not falsifiable.

It is nothing more than "just so" storytelling and those people, at least some of them who work in genetics, tend to blind other researchers with their advanced science jargon I have observed over the years. There is little purpose to this when working with genetics and early humans because it does not come across to me as people with knowledge of the subject but of people who love quoting text book jargon to try and impress others. It fails badly of course and even Neanderthals, if they were around today, would come to the same conclusion that the writer of such data, from a biology point of view knew little of his/her subject and a complete dip stick when it came down to the study of the Neanderthal data. They quote what they have read and not from what they should know.

So, evolutionary mechanisms are used to explain both hierarchical and non-hierarchical patterns. No matter how high up the tree this lack of hierarchy goes, the theory of evolution would still be used to explain the origin of such patterns. But why? For focal problems in the tree between branches at higher levels, a change in mutation rate, or notions like convergence, divergence, or even lateral gene transfer are used. This messes everything up. Evolutionists would have a much stronger case if the sequences in question were actually neutral with regard to phenotypic function, but they aren't. That is why the notion of maybe was so popular for such a long time - until recently when

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pseudo genes were actually found to be functional. Some argue that this doesn't happen because the different sequences are equally beneficial or "optimal" if applied to the same organism. That is basically arguing that the differences are not in fact functional different, but are actually neutral with respect to a functional optimum. Again, that makes no sense in light of the evidence that the differences, in addition to the similarities, are maintained over time. If this neutral argument were correct, then the distribution of sequences would be more randomly distributed. In other words, it would not be so neatly nested or filed away as research data that is truth. The evidence of functional maintenance over time is very strong evidence that the nested differences are not so much the result of common ancestry as they are the result of various functional needs of different organisms in different environments. And, this is very much what we find in real life. Even modern humans, when occupying different environments, will evolve different genetic sequences for various protein products that are actually functionally maintained over time due to various advantages that the differences provide in the different environments. There are many examples of this. And yet, when placed in the same environment, the differences quickly disappear in the offspring over time. Why? Because, there are indeed different optimal sequences when different overall phenotypes interact with different environments. The significant majority of differences between the cytochrome c of bacteria and humans are functional. They are not neutral. If the human sequence were put in a bacterium, it might survive ok, but it would not do as well. Over time, its offspring would rapidly evolve back the original more optimum sequence.

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Hominid/Primate D-loop Sequence Analysis

A "few million years" might also be a problem for the resolution of mitochondrial D-loop sequences. Consider that the sequences used (two of them) to estimate the time of the most recent common ancestor (MRCA) between modern humans, Neandertals, and chimpanzees where each less than 400 base pairs in length (333bp and 340bp respectively). The mutation rate used by Krings et. al. was based on the a priori assumption that modern humans split off from chimps some "4-5 million years" ago. Based on this perhaps plausible, but indirect assumption, a substitution rate of 0.94 x 10-7 substitutions per site per year per lineage, was determined. Using this rate, the MRCA between humans and Neandertals was calculated to have lived about 465,000 years ago. The MRCA of modern humans was calculated to have lived around 163,000 years ago. And, the MRCA of chimps and bonobos was calculated to have lived around 2,844,000 years ago. 3, 11, 13 Krings' figures are all fine and good except if we happen to come across a more direct measurement of mtDNA. The following work by Thomas Parsons published in the journal Nature Genetics:

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"The rate and pattern of sequence substitutions in the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) control region (CR) is of central importance to studies of human evolution and to forensic identity testing. Here, we report a direct measurement of the intergenerational substitution rate in the human CR. We compared DNA sequences of two CR hyper variable segments from close maternal relatives, from 134 independent mtDNA lineages spanning 327 generational events. Ten substitutions were observed, resulting in an empirical rate of 1/33 generations, or 2.5/site/ Myr. This is roughly twenty-fold higher than estimates derived from phylogenetic analyses. This disparity cannot be accounted for simply by substitutions at mutational hot spots, suggesting additional factors that produce the discrepancy between very near-term and long-term apparent rates of sequence divergence. The data also indicate that extremely rapid

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segregation of CR sequence variants between generations is common in humans, with a very small mtDNA bottleneck. These results have implications for forensic applications and studies of human evolution . . . The observed substitution rate reported here is very high compared to rates inferred from evolutionary studies. A wide range of CR substitution rates have been derived from phylogenetic studies, spanning roughly 0.025-0.26/site/Myr, including confidence intervals. A study yielding one of the faster estimates gave the substitution rate of the CR hyper variable regions as 0.118 +- 0.031/site/Myr. Assuming a generation time of 20 years, this corresponds to ~1/600 generations and an age for the mtDNA MRCA of 133,000 y.a. Thus, our observation of the substitution rate, 2.5/site/Myr, is roughly 20-fold higher than would be predicted from phylogenetic analyses. Using our empirical rate to calibrate

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the mtDNA molecular clock would result in an age of the mtDNA MRCA of only ~6,500 y.a., clearly incompatible with the known age of modern humans. Even acknowledging that the MRCA of mtDNA may be younger than the MRCA of modern humans, it remains implausible to explain the known geographic distribution of mtDNA sequence variation by human migration that occurred only in the last ~6,500 years."

Several other more real time studies dealing with historical families have backed up Parson's findings. So, it seems as though more direct real-time measurements of mtDNA mutation rates show as much as a 20-fold higher mutation rate than that which was used by Krings et al. Now what does this mean - besides the obvious? The sequences studied by Krings totaled 673 base pairs in length. According to the rate determined by Parsons, every single one of these base pairs would have changed more than twice in one million years and at least once in 400,000 years.

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Half of the base pairs would have mutated at least once in 200,000 years. And yet, humans are separated by only about 95 or so substitution differences from chimps? What is wrong with this picture? Each substitution difference (in a sequence some 673 base pairs in length) takes an average of 600 years to achieve. Taking into account that each lineage would build up substitution differences separately, in 600 years there would be around two substitution difference between two lineages. This seems to indicate that the common ancestor of humans and chimps lived some 30,000 years ago (not 4 to 8 million years ago as Krings et al., suggest - based on indirect methods). Modern humans, being separated from each other by an average of only 10 substitutions (according to Krings), appear to have a common ancestor living some 3,000 years ago. Modern Humans and Neandertals are separated by an average of only 35 substitution which to me seems to indicate a common ancestor living only some 10,000 years ago.!

Reasonable Explanation?

"It should be noted that molecular phylogenies are constructed on the basis of certain evolutionary assumptions. The tree that is presented is chosen from a forest of alternatives, typically on the assumption of maximum parsimony. That is, the tree that is selected is the one that reflects the least amount of presumed evolutionary change. But, if the assumption of maximum parsimony fails to fit the data, it can be jettisoned in favour of another."

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In other words, any result can be accommodated by the theory by revising one or more of the underlying assumptions but not proven. Even if a morphological phylogeny was matched closely by multiple molecular phylogenies, that would not prove that the groups in question descended from a common ancestor. The molecular differences could be linked to the morphological differences for some other reason. For example, all of the living organisms on this planet live in a relatively similar environment. All use the same water, breathe the same air, and eat the same basic foods for building blocks and energy. Is it not reasonable to assume that a similar environment requires at least some similarities in the creatures that utilize it for survival? Nothing lives to itself. All living things are dependent upon other living things. If they were not molecularly and thus genetically compatible, nothing would survive very long. The "cycle of life" is dependent upon this fact. There would be no cycle if the basic building blocks of the creatures involved were not interchangeable with each other. Considering this need, it seems reasonable to assume that those creatures that share the most similar environments, body plans, and physiology would also have the most similar needs and thus the most similar genetic and molecular machineries. Biologist Leonard Brand makes this point quite eloquently in the following excerpt:

"Anatomy is not independent of biochemistry. Creatures similar anatomically are likely to be similar physiologically. Those similar in physiology are, in general, likely to be similar in biochemistry,

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whether they evolved or were designed. An alternate, interventionist hypothesis is that the cytochrome c molecules in various groups of organisms are different (and always have been different) for functional reasons. Not enough mutations have occurred in these molecules to blur the distinct grouping evident. If we do not base our conclusions on the a priori assumption of mega evolution, all the data really tell us is that the organisms fall into nested groups without any indication of intermediates or overlapping of groups, and without indicating ancestor/descendant relationships."

So, classification models of living things that are based on molecular similarities and differences are quite limited as far as their use as evidence of common ancestry beyond very recent times. Many differences that are maintained seem to be function based. Because of this, certain differences in sequences cannot be used as a "molecular clock" since natural selection fixes certain sequences based on functional needs so that random drift is not allowed. Beyond this, very different phylogenetic relationships can be hypothesized depending upon which sequence is subjectively chosen for analysis. These different trees are often outright incompatible with each other or, at best, inconclusive and that means no matter how good the genetic research has been when it comes down to the DNA of Neanderthal Man and what is called modern humans today there is room for doubt

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because I am off the opinion that they are one in the same, only one mutated big time.

It seems that in the case of Neanderthal Man there is differences of opinion but before I go into that I want to go over what we know or think we know about the Neanderthals in Europe.

- Sima de los Huesos, near Atapuerca, Spain

A cave full of bones, including at least 24 near-humans and this was a deep crack, not a comfortable shelter which does not appear to be an animal den, or the bodies may have been put there intentionally. These first group of bones dated about 0.3 mya (300,000 ya) with a mixture of features of (1) H. heidelbergensis. (2) and of Neanderthals. The bones were very variable from individual to individual with different features mixed in different individuals and at first suggest that the Neanderthals evolved from H. heidelbergensis rather than being a distinctly different population.

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However I should point out similarly intermediate, hard-to-classify individuals have been found elsewhere around Europe during this general period

By about 127,000, these early humans with a fairly consistent suite of physical traits lived all over Europe but in small groups and numbers. For the benefit of this research I call them, Neanderthals after the German name of the Neander valley, where the first one was found so enter Homo neanderthalensis. Neanderthals are found only in Europe and my research does show that H. heidelbergensis continued in Africa and Asia without developing the Neanderthal features thus again suggesting that the Neanderthals came from another source and place. It has been suggested by others over the years through some recent genetic work indicates that there are few or no Neanderthal genes in modern Europeans ,instead, all modern humans apparently descend from a fairly small population of H. heidelbergensis in Africa. I have to disagree strongly with the view and believe the evidence points at Neanderthals being the first modern human followed by Cro-Magnon Man but l will get to this later during the first early Cro-Magnon timeline. The European Neanderthals, the Asian H. erectus, and probably the Asian H. heidelbergensis all eventually went extinct only about 30,000 years ago dead branches on our family tree but it was Homo Neanderthals that lived longer in Europe that eithers H.erectus or Heidelbergensis.

Thankfully we happen to know a something about the Neanderthals because they lived relatively recently and in Europe, where lots of paleoanthropologists have been working since the field work began.

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Some features of Neanderthals - cranial features, large brains, larger on average than modern humans .1245 to 1740 cc, averaging 1520 cc H. heidelbergensis at 1200-1300 cc and modern H. sapiens at 1000 to 2000 cc, averaging 1400 cc Some researchers think maybe Neanderthals' larger brains simply reflect greater overall body mass than modern humans? Yes there was a rounded, more inflated braincase but shape is still longer and lower than modern H. sapiens. Occipital bun, rather than occipital torus unlike the occipital torus, the occipital bun is not a thickening of the bone, instead, it is just a part of the braincase that bulges out - gives a rounder shape to the lower back of the cranium, compared to the more sharply angled shape of H. heidelbergensis Low forehead of course thin cranial bones, unlike H. heidelbergensis. Facial features Large, heavily-built face - Face is pulled forward relative to braincase this and the massive face itself leave space for larger sinuses separating the brain a bit from the path of cold air entering the nose thought to be an adaptation to cold climate in Europe yet so far the evidence is weak.

The massive brow ridges but hollow, containing sinuses, rather than solid bone matter and again, may be an adaptation to lose less heat from the brain.

Huge, beaky nose wide nasal opening nasal bones approach horizontal, indicating a high, projecting curve at the top of the nose again one other research claims that it may be an adaptation to cold, with more tissue to warm incoming air before it blows by the brain and into the lungs

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Receding chin.

Dental formula features. Small back teeth, especially the molars - molars (upper parts of the roots are merged together into one big, tubular root) - Retro molar gap probably just reflects the more forward position of the teeth relative to the hinge of the jaw due to pulling the whole face forward - Relatively large incisors with usually with very heavy, angled wear from working hides by pulling or scraping with the front teeth. There is often evidence of diagonal scratches on the front of the incisors from cutting off meat or hide held in the front teeth but such scratches are mostly from the individuals own upper left to lower right - just as expected if a right-handed person were cutting something held in their front teeth, cutting close to the teeth.

Body features; Stocky, robust, very muscular bodies with leg bone shafts are thicker-walled than modern H. sapiens and knee and hip joints larger than modern H. sapiens. This may have been to spread weight, shocks, wear over a larger area should withstand heavy use better with more muscular scapulae (shoulder joints) than H. sapiens and strong arms.

Barrel-chested: deep, round torso - typical of modern populations that are adapted to cold

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climates and/or high elevations - increases lung capacity, thus oxygen intake, thus ability to support lots of muscle and heavy activity and conserves heat by reducing surface area relative to volume of tissue in the torso. Short extremities in particular, low index length of tibia divided by length of femur that is, lower leg is short relative to upper leg. In modern humans, lower crural indices are strongly correlated to populations that have long lived in cold climates - stumpy limbs conserve more heat; long limbs radiate more heat - Neanderthals crural indices are like the most extreme known for modern humans: Laps, who live in the arctic Overall, many Neanderthal features seem to reflect selection pressures from very cold environments and this thinking is not surprising, given that Neanderthals appeared as the Pleistocene ice ages were beginning and persisted almost until they ended The timeline during which Neanderthals evolved averaged much colder than today, with drastic swings in global climate - by, say, 110,000 years ago, Europe and North America were partially covered by glaciers and exposed land would have been frigid, nearly Arctic grassland which supporting herds of large animals from reindeer to woolly mammoths. Climate change is nothing new to us or in fact to the first early humans and our current climate in the last 10,000 years or so has been both unusually warm and unusually stable. At one time there were wild global temperature swings that went from high to low in a matter of centuries - from relatively brief periods that were substantially warmer than today - to longer periods that averaged much colder than today and European data now suggest that some shifts from temperate to subarctic climates occurred within as little as 25 years!

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Neanderthal culture;

Again debate of what is culture and I do not believe as others do and broadcast it off the top of their heads that that the Neanderthals ever had a working culture. One must not forget that H. ergaster and early H. heidelbergensis made mode 2 Acheulean style of stone tools - 1.6 0.3 mya - This is referred to as the Old Stone Age in Africa, or the Lower Paleolithic period in Europe but you could not call it a culture as such. A timeline or period yes, culture no. Late H. heidelbergensis in both Africa and Europe, as well as the Neanderthals in Europe, made better stone tools than before - starting around 0.3 mya - emphasizing flake tools, typically with the shape of the flake controlled by preparing the core, as in the Levalloisian technique This is referred to as the Middle Stone Age (MSA) in Africa, or the Middle Paleolithic period in Europe the European style of mode 3 tools that Neanderthals made is called Mousterian

Features of Mousterian stone technology

It is based on carefully made flakes, rather than the cores from which the flakes were removed with the classic technique of the Mousterian style is the "Levalloisian technique" ,the shape of the flake is predetermined and controlled by carefully preparing the core and the flake is then used as it is, or slightly modified to make a projectile point, scraper, knife, drill, or other tool. Some cores were then reshaped and another flake tool is struck off

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unlike the repetitive Acheulean style, in which just a couple of main forms were made, the Mousterian style includes a wide variety of identifiably different forms - this presumably means that some more complex thinking was involved in making and using them. Some Mousterian tools were apparently hafted (mounted in handles or on shafts, probably of wood) - this is based on studies of wear on the stone parts and it goes along with the finding that many of the tools have edges that show wear typical of cutting wood ,later used that would be for making handles, shafts, clubs, digging sticks, etc. Stone use only would up to a few kilometres from its source, maybe an afternoon's walk at most . Other aspects of Neanderthal culture;

In almost all Neanderthal sites - no bone tools ,no decoration on tools no beads, pendants, figurines, cave art, etc. There is one known exception, a cave at Arcy-sur-Cure, France lower levels contained one fragment of a cranium that has been identified as Neanderthal dated very late for Neanderthals: about 33,000 ya the artefacts included bone awls which included one that broke while it was being made and was never finished. This suggests that the Neanderthal residents of the cave made these tools, rather than getting them from possible modern humans nearby - also bone beads and pendants, with similar evidence of being made in the cave shows that Neanderthals were biologically capable of this human-like behaviour that is, working bone and most of all, the symbolic thinking involved in making and using personal ornaments.

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Most groups of Neanderthals very rarely did it and this raises the question, why not? Of course the late date means that there could have been modern humans sharing the region with these Neanderthals , small groups of Cro-Magnons and some sort of commutations in force as well as sharing goods, food and skins. I suggest that some evidence does point at the Arcy-sur-Cure Neanderthals coming into contact with more modern humans and picked up some of their customs. Neanderthals probably hunted large and small game - at least up to antelope size with some regularity ,probably sometimes larger animals, including bison, wild ox, etc.

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The evidence scant as it is at Neanderthal sites, was that there is a high proportion of just one or a few large animal species - scavenging or opportunistically killing old or weak animals would give a mix of species more like the mix of live animals in the environment and in many sites, there are many bones of mature animals

There would also have been scavenging or opportunistic killing would produce more emphasis on young and old animals, which are more likely to have been carnivore prey or to have died of other causes and several sites with Mousterian tools seem to be places where herds of large animals (including mammoths) were driven off cliffs and then butchered. Other sites have unusually high proportions of meaty limb bones suggesting that the Neanderthals hunted the animals cut off the best, most portable parts, and brought only those back to a camp. Even so they still did not apparently build shelters - many sites are inside caves - but this is probably just because cave sites happen to be better preserved and are easier to find than open-air sites that would feel safe and much easier to defend. Search the data as you will but I have found no evidence of postholes from huts, hearths, or other constructed features, so if they didnt build huts or hearths in the mouths of caves, maybe they didnt build them outside of caves. From the known bone data Neanderthals tended to die young, often after having survived multiple injuries in their lifetime, the oldest Neanderthal skeletons were 40-45 years old at death yet they often show serious arthritis, loss of teeth, etc., one from Shanidar (Iraq) had had the side of his face crushed by a serious blow that healed, but probably left him blind in one eye and paralyzed on one side (the arm and leg bones were atrophied) and there

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are many other Neanderthals with healed fractures, bone infections probably caused by bad wounds, etc. - It has often suggested that all these healed injuries and decrepit old people indicate that Neanderthals cared for their old and sick. Boyd and Silk suggest point out that non-human primates often survive serious injuries without help from others but still, this does not explain why so many injuries? One study suggests that the mix of injuries is similar to that found in rodeo competitors but I doubt it so Neanderthals may have frequently had hostile encounters with cow and horse-sized animals in herds while involved in a major hunt. They would if they hunted the sorts of animals found at many of their sites and used weapons that required them to get close, like spears. Neanderthals sometimes buried their dead evidence is scanty to say the least but in contrast to any previous homos, we suddenly have numerous finds of whole bodies - not just scattered parts or very rare whole individuals and I find that the only reasonable explanation for such a improvement in preservation is that they began burying their dead. The data on such bodies suggest they have been cared for post death and found flexed, on their side not in random positions or as left by predators or scavengers When the archaeology community dont know the answer they always suggest possible ritual treatments? This is some seem to have been buried with stone tools and in one case (Shanidar, Iraq), pollen in the soil of the burial suggested that the body was buried with flowers but this could suggest that the smell of a decaying body was the reason for the flowers. In another case, a set of mountain goat horns were found over the head but these cases are all debatable because the said objects might have already been in the soil - or maybe they got into the burial accidentally at the time. We

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just dont know in this case.

In Africa the fossil record for this period is not nearly as good as it is for Europe because in Europe: by 100,000 ya, some populations of H. heidelbergensis were developing Neanderthal traits - by 90,000 ya, Neanderthals were a clearly distinctive variety (maybe species) in Europe by contrast, in Africa. - from about 300,000 to 200,000 ya, there were still populations similar to Homo heidelbergensis - none developed the distinctive Neanderthal-like traits - this makes sense if the Neanderthal traits were adaptations to the extreme cold of Pleistocene Europe - from about 200,000 to 100,000 ya, African populations began looking more like modern humans: Homo sapiens - higher, more rounded cranium in side view - reduced browridges - more on this next time - About 50,000 ya, anatomically modern Homo sapiens, with modern, humanlike culture, began spreading out of Africa - again, more on this next time they may have shared parts of Europe and the Middle East with the latest Neanderthals - from about 40,000 to 30,000 ya - remaining physically distinct - and mostly culturally distinct - Arcy-sur-Cure around 33,000 ya may be a rare exception - with Neanderthals maybe in contact with modern Homo sapiens - and maybe adopting some of their cultural practices

- by 30,000 ya, the Neanderthals were gone - What happened to the Neanderthals? - genetic studies indicate that they

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made little or no contribution to modern human populations - they probably co-existed with distinctly different modern humans for a while in the Middle East and Europe - but apparently did not interbreed with them much or at all - so Homo sapiens apparently simply replaced them in Europe - out-competed them? - drove them to extinction?

- something similar happened in Asia - H. heidelbergensis (or the Asian equivalent) disappeared - also apparently making little or no genetic contribution to modern Homo sapiens in Asia - H. erectus in Asia disappeared around the same time - coincidence? - so, by about 30,000 ya, the only hominin left standing in Africa, Europe, or Asia was Homo sapiens - Next time we will look at the origins of these Homo sapiens in Africa, and their spread over the rest of the world.

When I researched Huxleys work I was again taken by surprise because he presented in detail his own research and most of it I tend to agree with. In honour of the man I have included it below.

Huxleys research is worthwhile and not in any way is it a that far out from what I am trying to do a cross reference on. The two skulls images I have inserted and are in colour. Ronnie Carleton 2012

FOSSIL REMAINS OF MAN

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Thomas Huxley I HAVE endeavored to show, in the preceding Essay, that the ANTHROPINI, or Man Family, form a very well defined group of the Primates, between which and the immediately following Family, the CATARHINI, there is, in the existing world, the same entire absence of any transitional form or connecting link, as between the CATARHINI and PLATYRHINI.

It is a commonly received doctrine, however, that the structural intervals between the various existing modifications of organic beings may be diminished, or even obliterated, if we take into account the long and varied succession of animals and plants which have preceded those now living and which are known to us only by their fossilized remains. How far this doctrine is well based, how far, on the other hand, as our knowledge at present stands, it is an overstatement of the real facts of the case, and an exaggeration of the conclusions fairly deducible from them, are points of grave importance, but into the discussion of which I do not, at present, propose to enter. It is enough that such a view of the relations of extinct to living beings has been propounded, to lead us to inquire, with anxiety, how far the recent discoveries of human remains in a fossil state bear out, or oppose, that view.

I shall confine myself, in discussing this question, to those fragmentary Human skulls from the caves of Engis in the valley of the Meuse, in Belgium, and of the Neanderthal near Dusseldorf, the geological relations of which have been examined with so much care by Sir Charles Lyell; upon whose high authority I shall take it for granted, that the Engis skull belonged to a contemporary of the Mammoth ('Elephas primigenius') and of the woolly Rhinoceros ('Rhinoceros tichorhinus'), with the bones of which it was found

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associated; and that the Neanderthal skull is of great, though uncertain, antiquity. Whatever be the geological age of the latter skull, I conceive it is quite safe (on the ordinary principles of paleontological reasoning) to assume that the former takes us to, at least, the further side of the vague biological limit, which separates the present geological epoch from that which immediately preceded it. And there can be no doubt that the physical geography of Europe has changed wonderfully, since the bones of Men and Mammoths, Hyenas and Rhinoceroses were washed pell-mell into the cave of Engis.

The skull from the cave of Engis was originally discovered by Professor Schmerling, and was described by him, together with other human remains disinterred at the same time, in his valuable work, 'Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles decouverts dans les cavernes de la Province de Liege', published in 1833 (p. 59, 'et seq.'), from which the following paragraphs are extracted, the precise expressions of the author being, as far as possible, preserved.

"In the first place, I must remark that these human remains, which are in my possession, are characterized like thousands of bones which I have lately been disinterring, by the extent of the decomposition which they have undergone, which is precisely the same as that of the extinct species: all, with a few exceptions, are broken; some few are rounded, as is frequently found to be the case in fossil remains of other species. The fractures are vertical or oblique; none of them are eroded; their colour does not differ from that of other fossil bones, and varies from whitish yellow to blackish. All are lighter than recent bones, with the exception of those which have a calcareous incrustation, and the cavities of which are filled with such matter.

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"The cranium which I have caused to be figured, Plate I., Figs. 1, 2, is that of an old person. The sutures are beginning to be effaced: all the facial bones are wanting, and of the temporal bones only a fragment of that of the right side is preserved.

"The face and the base of the cranium had been detached before the skull was deposited in the cave, for we were unable to find those parts, though the whole cavern was regularly searched. The cranium was met with at a depth of a metre and a half [five feet nearly], hidden under an osseous breccia, composed of the remains of small animals, and containing one rhinoceros tusk, with several teeth of horses and of ruminants. This breccia, which has been spoken of above (p. 30), was a metre [3 1/4 feet about] wide, and rose to the height of a metre and a half above the floor of the cavern, to the walls of which it adhered strongly.

"The earth which contained this human skull exhibited no trace of disturbance: teeth of rhinoceros, horse, hyaena, and bear, surrounded it on all sides.

"The famous Blumenbach 1 has directed attention to the differences presented by the form and the dimensions of human crania of different races. This important work would have assisted us greatly, if the face, a part essential for the determination of race, with more or less accuracy, had not been wanting in our fossil cranium.

"We are convinced that even if the skull had been complete, it would not have been possible to pronounce, with certainty, upon a single specimen; for individual variations are so numerous in the crania of one and the same race,

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that one cannot, without laying oneself open to large chances of error, draw any inference from a single fragment of a cranium to the general form of the head to which it belonged.

"Nevertheless, in order to neglect no point respecting the form of this fossil skull, we may observe that, from the first, the elongated and narrow form of the forehead attracted our attention.

"In fact, the slight elevation of the frontal, its narrowness, and the form of the orbit, approximate it more nearly to the cranium of an Ethiopian than to that of an European: the elongated form and the produced occiput are also characters which we believe to be observable in our fossil cranium; but to remove all doubt upon that subject I have caused the contours of the cranium of an European and of an Ethiopian to be drawn and the foreheads represented. Plate II., Figs. 1 and 2, and, in the same plate, Figs. 3 and 4, will render the differences easily distinguishable; and a single glance at the figures will be more instructive than a long and wearisome description.

"At whatever conclusion we may arrive as to the origin of the man from whence this fossil skull proceeded, we may express an opinion without exposing ourselves to a fruitless controversy. Each may adopt the hypothesis which seems to him most probable: for my own part, I hold it to be demonstrated that this cranium has belonged to a person of limited intellectual faculties, and we conclude thence that it belonged to a man of a low degree of civilization: a deduction which is borne out by contrasting the capacity of the frontal with that of the occipital region.

"Another cranium of a young individual was discovered in the floor of the cavern beside the tooth of an elephant; the skull was entire when found, but

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the moment it was lifted it fell into pieces, which I have not, as yet, been able to put together again. But I have represented the bones of the upper jaw, Plate I., Fig. 5. The state of the alveoli and the teeth, shows that the molars had not yet pierced the gum. Detached milk molars and some fragments of a human skull proceed from this same place. The Figure 3 represents a human superior incisor tooth, the size of which is truly remarkable. 2

"Figure 4 is a fragment of a superior maxillary bone, the molar teeth of which are worn down to the roots.

"I possess two vertebrae, a first and last dorsal.

"A clavicle of the left side (see Plate III., Fig. 1); although it belonged to a young individual, this bone shows that he must have been of great stature. 3

"Two fragments of the radius, badly preserved, do not indicate that the height of the man, to whom they belonged, exceeded five feet and a half.

"As to the remains of the upper extremities, those which are in my possession consist merely of a fragment of an ulna and of a radius (Plate III., Figs. 5 and 6).

"Figure 2, Plate IV., represents a metacarpal bone, contained in the breccia, of which we have spoken; it was found in the lower part above the cranium: add to this some metacarpal bones, found at very different distances, half-adozen metatarsals, three phalanges of the hand, and one of the foot.

"This is a brief enumeration of the remains of human bones collected in the cavern of Engis, which has preserved for us the remains of three individuals,

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surrounded by those of the Elephant, of the Rhinoceros, and of Carnivora of species unknown in the present creation."

From the cave of Engihoul, opposite that of Engis, on the right bank of the Meuse, Schmerling obtained the remains of three other individuals of Man, among which were only two fragments of parietal bones, but many bones of the extremities. In one case a broken fragment of an ulna was soldered to a like fragment of a radius by stalagmite, a condition frequently observed among the bones of the Cave Bear ('Ursus spelaeus'), found in the Belgian caverns.

It was in the cavern of Engis that Professor Schmerling found, incrusted with stalagmite and joined to a stone, the pointed bone implement, which he has figured in Fig. 7 of his Plate XXXVI., and worked flints were found by him in all those Belgian caves, which contained an abundance of fossil bones.

A short letter from M. Geoffrey St. Hilaire, published in the 'Comptes Rendus' of the Academy of Sciences of Paris, for July 2nd, 1838, speaks of a visit (and apparently a very hasty one) paid to the collection of Professor 'Schmidt' (which is presumably a misprint for Schmerling) at Liege. The writer briefly criticizes the drawings which illustrate Schmerling's work, and affirms that the "human cranium is a little longer than it is represented" in Schmerling's figure. The only other remark worth quoting is this:"The aspect of the human bones differs little from that of the cave bones, with which we are familiar, and of which there is a considerable collection in the same place. With respect to their special forms, compared with those of the varieties of recent human crania, few 'certain' conclusions can be put forward; for much greater differences exist between the different specimens of well-characterized

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varieties, than between the fossil cranium of Liege and that of one of those varieties selected as a term of comparison."

Geoffrey St. Hilaire's remarks are, it will be observed, little but an echo of the philosophic doubts of the describer and discoverer of the remains. As to the critique upon Schmerling's figures, I find that the side view given by the latter is really about 3/10ths of an inch shorter than the original, and that the front view is diminished to about the same extent. Otherwise the representation is not, in any way, inaccurate, but corresponds very well with the cast which is in my possession.

A piece of the occipital bone, which Schmerling seems to have missed, has since been fitted on to the rest of the cranium by an accomplished anatomist, Dr. Spring, of Liege, under whose direction an excellent plaster cast was made for Sir Charles Lyell. It is upon and from a duplicate of that cast that my own observations and the accompanying figures, the outlines of which are copied from very accurate Camera lucida drawings, by my friend Mr. Busk, reduced to one-half of the natural size, are made.

As Professor Schmerling observes, the base of the skull is destroyed, and the facial bones are entirely absent; but the roof of the cranium, consisting of the frontal, parietal, and the greater part of the occipital bones, as far as the middle of the occipital foramen, is entire or nearly so. The left temporal bone is wanting. Of the right temporal, the parts in the immediate neighbourhood of the auditory foramen, the mastoid process, and a considerable portion of the squamous element of the temporal are well preserved (Fig. 23).

The lines of fracture which remain between the coadjusted pieces of the skull, and are faithfully displayed in Schmerling's figure, are readily traceable in the

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cast. The sutures are also discernible, but the complex disposition of their serrations, shown in the figure, is not obvious in the cast. Though the ridges which give attachment to muscles are not excessively prominent, they are well marked, and taken together with the apparently well developed frontal sinuses, and the condition of the sutures, leave no doubt on my mind that the skull is that of an adult, if not middle-aged man.

The extreme length of the skull is 7.7 inches. Its extreme breadth, which corresponds very nearly with the interval between the parietal protuberances, is not more than 5.4 inches. The proportion of the length to the breadth is therefore very nearly as 100 to 70. If a line be drawn from the point at which the brow curves in towards the root of the nose, and which is called the 'glabella' ('a') (Fig. 23), to the occipital protuberance ('b'), and the distance to the highest point of the arch of the skull be measured perpendicularly from this line, it will be found to be 4.75 inches. Viewed from above, A, the forehead presents an evenly rounded curve, and passes into the contour of the sides and back of the skull, which describes a tolerably regular elliptical curve.

The front view shows that the roof of the skull was very regularly and elegantly arched in the transverse direction, and that the transverse diameter was a little less below the parietal protuberances, than above them. The forehead cannot be called narrow in relation to the rest of the skull, nor can it be called a retreating forehead; on the contrary, the anterior-posterior contour of the skull is well arched, so that the distance along that contour, from the nasal depression to the occipital protuberance, measures about 13.75 inches. The transverse arc of the skull, measured from one auditory foramen to the

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other, across the middle of the sagittal suture, is about 13 inches. The sagittal suture itself is 5.5 inches long.

The supraciliary prominences or brow-ridges (on each side of 'a', Fig. 23) are well, but not excessively, developed, and are separated by a median depression. Their principal elevation is disposed so obliquely that I judge them to be due to large frontal sinuses.

If a line joining the glabella and the occipital protuberance ('a', 'b', Fig. 23) be made horizontal, no part of the occipital region projects more than 1/10th of an inch behind the posterior extremity of that line, and the upper edge of the auditory foramen ('c') is almost in contact with a line drawn parallel with this upon the outer surface of the skull.

A transverse line drawn from one auditory foramen to the other traverses, as usual, the forepart of the occipital foramen. The capacity of the interior of this fragmentary skull has not been ascertained.

The history of the Human remains from the cavern in the Neanderthal may best be given in the words of their original describer, Dr Schaaffhausen 4, as translated by Mr. Busk.

"In the early part of the year 1857, a human skeleton was discovered in a limestone cave in the Neanderthal, near Hochdal, between Dusseldorf and Elberfeld. Of this, however, I was unable to procure more than a plaster cast of the cranium, taken at Elberfeld, from which I drew up an account of its remarkable conformation, which was, in the first instance, read on the 4th of February, 1857, at the meeting of the Lower Rhine Medical and Natural History Society, at Bonn.

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Subsequently Dr. Fuhlrott, to whom science is indebted for the preservation of these bones, which were not at first regarded as human, and into whose possession they afterwards came, brought the cranium from Elberfeld to Bonn, and entrusted it to me for more accurate anatomical examination. At the General Meeting of the Natural History Society of Prussian Rhineland and Westphalia, at Bonn, on the 2nd of June, 1857, Dr. Fuhlrott himself gave a full account of the locality, and of the circumstances under which the discovery was made.

He was of opinion that the bones might be regarded as fossil; and in coming to this conclusion, he laid especial stress upon the existence of dendritic deposits, with which their surface was covered, and which were first noticed upon them by Professor Meyer. To this communication I appended a brief report on the results of my anatomical examination of the bones. The conclusions at which I arrived were:1st. That the extraordinary form of the skull was due to a natural conformation hitherto not known to exist, even in the most barbarous races. 2nd. That these remarkable human remains belonged to a period antecedent to the time of the Celts and Germans, and were in all probability derived from one of the wild races of North-western Europe, spoken of by Latin writers; and which were encountered as autochthones by the German immigrants. And 3rdly. That it was beyond doubt that these human relics were traceable to a period at which the latest animals of the diluvium still existed; but that no proof of this assumption, nor consequently of their so-termed 'fossil' condition, was afforded by the circumstances under which the bones were discovered.

"As Dr. Fuhlrott has not yet published his description of these circumstances, I borrow the following account of them from one of his letters. 'A small cave or

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grotto, high enough to admit a man, and about 15 feet deep from the entrance, which is 7 or 8 feet wide, exists in the southern wall of the gorge of the Neanderthal, as it is termed, at a distance of about 100 feet from the Dussel, and about 60 feet above the bottom of the valley. In its earlier and uninjured condition, this cavern opened upon a narrow plateau lying in front of it, and from which the rocky wall descended almost perpendicularly into the river. It could be reached, though with difficulty, from above. The uneven floor was covered to a thickness of 4 or 5 feet with a deposit of mud, sparingly intermixed with rounded fragments of chert. In the removing of this deposit, the bones were discovered. The skull was first noticed, placed nearest to the entrance of the cavern; and further in, the other bones, lying in the same horizontal plane. Of this I was assured, in the most positive terms, by two laborers who were employed to clear out the grotto, and who were questioned by me on the spot. At first no idea was entertained of the bones being human; and it was not till several weeks after their discovery that they were recognized as such by me, and placed in security. But, as the importance of the discovery was not at the time perceived, the labourers were very careless in the collecting, and secured chiefly only the larger bones; and to this circumstance it may be attributed that fragments merely of the probably perfect skeleton came into my possession.'

"My anatomical examination of these bones afforded the following results:

"The cranium is of unusual size, and of a long elliptical form. A most remarkable peculiarity is at once obvious in the extraordinary development of the frontal sinuses, owing to which the supraciliary ridges, which coalesce completely in the middle, are rendered so prominent, that the frontal bone exhibits a considerable hollow or depression above, or rather behind them,

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whilst a deep depression is also formed in the situation of the root of the nose. The forehead is narrow and low, though the middle and hinder portions of the cranial arch are well developed. Unfortunately, the fragment of the skull that has been preserved consists only of the portion situated above the roof of the orbits and the superior occipital ridges, which are greatly developed, and almost conjoined so as to form a horizontal eminence. It includes almost the whole of the frontal bone, both parietals, a small part of the squamous and the upper-third of the occipital. The recently fractured surfaces show that the skull was broken at the time of its disinterment. The cavity holds 16,876 grains of water, whence its cubical contents may be estimated at 57.64 inches, or 1033.24 cubic centimeters. In making this estimation, the water is supposed to stand on a level with the orbital plate of the frontal, with the deepest notch in the squamous margin of the parietal, and with the superior semicircular ridges of the occipital. Estimated in dried millet-seed, the contents equaled 31 ounces, Prussian Apothecaries' weight. The semicircular line indicating the upper boundary of the attachment of the temporal muscle, though not very strongly marked, ascends nevertheless to more than half the height of the parietal bone. On the right supraciliary ridge is observable an oblique furrow or depression, indicative of an injury received during life. 7

mm. 8

The length of the skull from the nasal process of the frontal over the vertex to the superior semicircular lines of the occipital 12.0". measures.............................303 (300) =

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Circumference over the orbital ridges and the superior semicircular lines of the occipital......................................590 (590) = 23.37" or 23". Width of the frontal from the middle of the temporal line on one side to the same point on the opposite.....................104 (114) = 4.1"4.5". Length of the frontal from the nasal. process to the coronal suture..................133 (125) = 5.25"5". Extreme width of the frontal sinuses...........25 (23) = 1.0"0.9". Vertical height above a line joining the deepest notches in the squamous border of the parietals...............................70 Width of hinder part of skull from one parietal protuberance to the other.............138 (150) = 5.4"5.9" Distance from the upper angle of the occipital to the superior semicircular lines..........................................51 (60) = 1.9"2.4". Thickness of the bone at the parietal protuberance...................................8. at the angle of the occipital................9. at the superior semicircular line of the occipital..................................10 = 0.3" = 2.75".

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"Besides the cranium, the following bones have been secured:

"1. Both thigh-bones, perfect. These, like the skull, and all the other bones, are characterized by their unusual thickness, and the great development of all the elevations and depressions for the attachment of muscles. In the Anatomical Museum at Bonn, under the designation of 'Giant's-bones,' are some recent thigh-bones, with which in thickness the foregoing pretty nearly correspond, although they are shorter.

Giant's bones. bones. mm.

Fossil

mm.

Length.....................................542 = 21.4"......438 = 17.4" Diameter of head of femur.................. 54 = 2.14"..... 53 = 2.0" " of lower articular end, from

one condyle to the other................ 89 = 3.5"....... 87 = 3.4" Diameter of femur in the middle............ 33 = 1.2"....... 30 = 1.1" "2. A perfect right humerus, whose size shows that it belongs to the thigh-bones. Length.....................................312 = 12.3" Thickness in the middle.................... 26 = 1.0" Diameter of head........................... 49 = 1.9" mm.

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"Also a perfect right radius of corresponding dimensions, and the upper-third of a right ulna corresponding to the humerus and radius.

"3. A left humerus of which the upper-third is wanting, and which is so much slenderer than the right as apparently to belong to a distinct individual; a left 'ulna', which, though complete, is pathologically deformed, the coronoid process being so much enlarged by bony growth, that flexure of the elbow beyond a right angle must have been impossible; the anterior fossa of the humerus for the reception of the coronoid process being also filled up with a similar bony growth. At the same time, the olecranon is curved strongly downwards. As the bone presents no sign of rachitic degeneration, it may be supposed that an injury sustained during life was the cause of the anchylosis. When the left ulna is compared with the right radius, it might at first sight be concluded that the bones respectively belonged to different individuals, the ulna being more than half an inch too short for articulation with a corresponding radius. But it is clear that this shortening, as well as the attenuation of the left humerus, are both consequent upon the pathological condition above described.

"4. A left 'ilium', almost perfect, and belonging to the femur: a fragment of the right 'scapula'; the anterior extremity of a rib of the right side; and the same part of a rib of the left side; the hinder part of a rib of the right side; and lastly, two hinder portions and one middle portion of ribs, which from their unusually rounded shape, and abrupt curvature, more resemble the ribs of a carnivorous animal than those of a man. Dr. H. v. Meyer, however, to whose judgment I defer, will not venture to declare them to be ribs of any animal; and it only remains to suppose that this abnormal condition has arisen from an unusually powerful development of the thoracic muscles.

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"The bones adhere strongly to the tongue, although, as proved by the use of hydrochloric acid, the greater part of the cartilage is still retained in them, which appears, however, to have undergone that transformation into gelatin which has been observed by v. Bibra in fossil bones. The surface of all the bones is in many spots covered with minute black specks, which, more especially under a lens, are seen to be formed of very delicate 'dendrites'. These deposits, which were first observed on the bones by Dr. Meyer, are most distinct on the inner surface of the cranial bones. They consist of a ferruginous compound, and, from their black colour, may be supposed to contain manganese. Similar dendritic formations also occur, not infrequently, on laminated rocks, and are usually found in minute fissures and cracks. At the meeting of the Lower Rhine Society at Bonn, on the 1st April, 1857, Prof. Meyer stated that he had noticed in the museum of Poppelsdorf similar dendritic crystallizations on several fossil bones of animals, and particularly on those of 'Ursus spelaeus', but still more abundantly and beautifully displayed on the fossil bones and teeth of 'Equus adamiticus', 'Elephas primigenius', etc., from the caves of Bolve and Sundwig. Faint indications of similar 'dendrites' were visible in a Roman skull from Siegburg; whilst other ancient skulls, which had lain for centuries in the earth, presented no trace of them. 9

"The incipient formation of dendritic deposits, which were formerly regarded as a sign of a truly fossil condition, is interesting. It has even been supposed that in diluvial deposits the presence of 'dendrites' might be regarded as affording a certain mark of distinction between bones mixed with the diluvium at a somewhat later period and the true diluvial relics, to which alone it was supposed that these deposits were confined. But I have long been convinced that neither can the absence of 'dendrites' be regarded as indicative of recent

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age, nor their presence as sufficient to establish the great antiquity of the objects upon which they occur. I have myself noticed upon paper, which could scarcely be more than a year old, dendritic deposits, which could not be distinguished from those on fossil bones. Thus I possess a dog's skull from the Roman colony of the neighboring Heddersheim, 'Castrum Hadrianum', which is in no way distinguishable from the fossil bones from the Frankish caves; it presents the same colour, and adheres to the tongue just as they do; so that this character also, which, at a former meeting of German naturalists at Bonn, gave rise to amusing scenes between Buckland and Schmerling, is no longer of any value. In disputed cases, therefore, the condition of the bone can scarcely afford the means for determining with certainty whether it be fossil, that is to say, whether it belong to geological antiquity or to the historical period.'

"As we cannot now look upon the primitive world as representing a wholly different condition of things, from which no transition exists to the organic life of the present time, the designation of 'fossil', as applied to 'a bone', has no longer the sense it conveyed in the time of Cuvier. Sufficient grounds exist for the assumption that man coexisted with the animals found in the 'diluvium'; and many a barbarous race may, before all historical time, have disappeared, together with the animals of the ancient world, whilst the races whose organization is improved have continued the genus. The bones which form the subject of this paper present characters which, although not decisive as regards a geological epoch, are, nevertheless, such as indicate a very high antiquity. It may also be remarked that, common as is the occurrence of diluvial animal bones in the muddy deposits of caverns, such remains have not hitherto been met with in the caves of the Neanderthal; and that the

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bones, which were covered by a deposit of mud not more than four or five feet thick, and without any protective covering of stalagmite, have retained the greatest part of their organic substance.

"These circumstances might be adduced against the probability of a geological antiquity. Nor should we be justified in regarding the cranial conformation as perhaps representing the most savage primitive type of the human race, since crania exist among living savages, which, though not exhibiting, such a remarkable conformation of the forehead, which gives the skull somewhat the aspect of that of the large apes, still in other respects, as for instance in the greater depth of the temporal fossae, the crest-like, prominent temporal ridges, and a generally less capacious cranial cavity, exhibit an equally low stage of development. There is no reason for supposing that the deep frontal hollow is due to any artificial flattening, such as is practiced in various modes by barbarous nations in the Old and New World. The skull is quite symmetrical, and shows no indication of counter-pressure at the occiput, whilst, according to Morton, in the Flat-heads of the Columbia, the frontal and parietal bones are always unsymmetrical. Its conformation exhibits the sparing development of the anterior part of the head which has been so often observed in very ancient crania, and affords one of the most striking proofs of the influence of culture and civilization on the form of the human skull."

In a subsequent passage, Dr. Schaaffhausen remarks:

"There is no reason whatever for regarding the unusual development of the frontal sinuses in the remarkable skull from the Neanderthal as an individual or pathological deformity; it is unquestionably a typical race-character, and is

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physiologically connected with the uncommon thickness of the other bones of the skeleton, which exceeds by about one-half the usual proportions. This expansion of the frontal sinuses, which are appendages of the air-passages, also indicates an unusual force and power of endurance in the movements of the body, as may be concluded from the size of all the ridges and processes for the attachment of the muscles or bones. That this conclusion may be drawn from the existence of large frontal sinuses, and a prominence of the lower frontal region, is confirmed in many ways by other observations. By the same characters, according to Pallas, the wild horse is distinguished from the domesticated, and, according to Cuvier, the fossil cave-bear from every recent species of bear, whilst, according to Roulin, the pig, which has become wild in America, and regained a resemblance to the wild boar, is thus distinguished from the same animal in the domesticated state, as is the chamois from the goat; and, lastly, the bull-dog, which is characterized by its large bones and strongly-developed muscles from every other kind of dog. The estimation of the facial angle, the determination of which, according to Professor Owen, is also difficult in the great apes, owing to the very prominent supra-orbital ridges, in the present case is rendered still more difficult from the absence both of the auditory opening and of the nasal spine. But if the proper horizontal position of the skull be taken from the remaining portions of the orbital plates, and the ascending line made to touch the surface of the frontal bone behind the prominent supra-orbital ridges, the facial angle is not found to exceed 56 degrees. Unfortunately, no portions of the facial bones, whose conformation is so decisive as regards the form and expression of the head, have been preserved. The cranial capacity, compared with the uncommon strength of the corporeal frame, would seem to indicate a small cerebral development. The skull, as it is, holds about 31 ounces of millet-seed; and as,

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from the proportionate size of the wanting bones, the whole cranial cavity should have about 6 ounces more added, the contents, were it perfect, may be taken at 37 ounces. Tiedemann assigns, as the cranial contents in the Negro, 40, 38, and 35 ounces. The cranium holds rather more than 36 ounces of water, which corresponds to a capacity of 1033.24 cubic centimeters. Huschke estimates the cranial contents of a Negress at 1127 cubic centimeters; of an old Negro at 1146 cubic centimeters. The capacity of the Malay skulls, estimated by water, equaled 36, 33 ounces, whilst in the diminutive Hindus it falls to as little as 27 ounces."

After comparing the Neanderthal cranium with many others, ancient and modern, Professor Schaaffhausen concludes thus:

"But the human bones and cranium from the Neanderthal exceed all the rest in those peculiarities of conformation which lead to the conclusion of their belonging to a barbarous and savage race. Whether the cavern in which they were found, unaccompanied with any trace of human art, were the place of their interment, or whether, like the bones of extinct animals elsewhere, they had been washed into it, they may still be regarded as the most ancient memorial of the early inhabitants of Europe."

Mr. Busk, the translator of Dr. Schaaffhausen's paper, has enabled us to form a very vivid conception of the degraded character of the Neanderthal skull, by placing side by side with its outline, that of the skull of a Chimpanzee, drawn to the same absolute size.

Sometime after the publication of the translation of Professor Schaaffhausen's Memoir, I was led to study the cast of the Neanderthal cranium with more attention than I had previously bestowed upon it, in consequence of wishing to

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supply Sir Charles Lyell with a diagram, exhibiting the special peculiarities of this skull, as compared with other human skulls. In order to do this it was necessary to identify, with precision, those points in the skulls compared which corresponded anatomically. Of these points, the glabella was obvious enough; but when I had distinguished another, defined by the occipital protuberance and superior semicircular line, and had placed the outline of the Neanderthal skull against that of the Engis skull, in such a position that the glabella and occipital protuberance of both were intersected by the same straight line, the difference was so vast and the flattening of the Neanderthal skull so prodigious that I at first imagined I must have fallen into some error. And I was the more inclined to suspect this, as, in ordinary human skulls, the occipital protuberance and superior semicircular curved line on the exterior of the occiput correspond pretty closely with the 'lateral sinuses' and the line of attachment of the tentorium internally. But on the tentorium rests, as I have said in the preceding Essay, the posterior lobe of the brain; and hence, the occipital protuberance, and the curved line in question, indicate,

approximately, the lower limits of that lobe. Was it possible for a human being to have the brain thus flattened and depressed; or, on the other hand, had the muscular ridges shifted their position? In order to solve these doubts, and to decide the question whether the great supraciliary projections did, or did not, arise from the development of the frontal sinuses, I requested Sir Charles Lyell to be so good as to obtain for me from Dr. Fuhlrott, the possessor of the skull, answers to certain queries, and if possible a cast, or at any rate drawings, or photographs, of the interior of the skull.

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Carleton 2012

Dr. Fuhlrott replied with a courtesy and readiness for which I am infinitely indebted to him, to my inquiries, and furthermore sent three excellent photographs. One of these gives a side view of the skull, and from it Fig. 25, A. has been shaded. The second (Fig. 26, A.) exhibits the wide openings of the frontal sinuses upon the inferior surface of the frontal part of the skull, into which, Dr. Fuhlrott writes, "a probe may be introduced to the depth of an inch," and demonstrates the great extension of the thickened supraciliary ridges beyond the cerebral cavity. The third, lastly (Fig. 26, B.) exhibits the edge and the interior of the posterior, or occipital, part of the skull, and shows very clearly the two depressions for the lateral sinuses, sweeping inwards towards the middle line of the roof of the skull, to form the longitudinal sinus. It was clear, therefore, that I had not erred in my interpretation, and that the posterior lobe of the brain of the Neanderthal man must have been as much flattened as I suspected it to be.

In truth, the Neanderthal cranium has most extraordinary characters. It has an extreme length of 8 inches, while its breadth is only 5.75 inches, or, in other words, its length is to its breadth as 100:72. It is exceedingly depressed, measuring only about 3.4 inches from the glabella-occipital line to the vertex.

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The longitudinal arc, measured in the same way as in the Engis skull, is 12 inches; the transverse arc cannot be exactly ascertained, in consequence of the absence of the temporal bones, but was probably about the same, and certainly exceeded 10 1/4 inches. The horizontal circumference is 23 inches. But this great circumference arises largely from the vast development of the supraciliary ridges, though the perimeter of the brain case itself is not small. The large supraciliary ridges give the forehead a far more retreating appearance than its internal contour would bear out.

To an anatomical eye the posterior part of the skull is even more striking than the anterior. The occipital protuberance occupies the extreme posterior end of the skull, when the glabella-occipital line is made horizontal, and so far from any part of the occipital region extending beyond it, this region of the skull slopes obliquely upward and forward, so that the lambdoidal suture is situated well upon the upper surface of the cranium. At the same time, notwithstanding the great length of the skull, the sagittal suture is remarkably short (4 1/2 inches), and the squamosal suture is very straight.

In reply to my questions Dr. Fuhlrott writes that the occipital bone "is in a state of perfect preservation as far as the upper semicircular line, which is a very strong ridge, linear at its extremities, but enlarging towards the middle, where it forms two ridges (bourrelets), united by a linear continuation, which is slightly depressed in the middle."

"Below the left ridge the bone exhibits an obliquely inclined surface, six lines (French) long, and twelve lines wide."

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This last must be the surface, the contour of which is shown in Fig. 25, A., below 'b'. It is particularly interesting, as it suggests that, notwithstanding the flattened condition of the occiput, the posterior cerebral lobes must have projected considerably beyond the cerebellum, and as it constitutes one among several points of similarity between the Neanderthal cranium and certain Australian skulls.

Such are the two best known forms of human cranium, which have been found in what may be fairly termed a fossil state. Can either be shown to fill up or diminish, to any appreciable extent, the structural interval which exists between Man and the man-like apes? Or, on the other hand, does neither depart more widely from the average structure of the human cranium, than normally formed skulls of men are known to do at the present day?

It is impossible to form any opinion on these questions, without some preliminary acquaintance with the range of variation exhibited by human structure in generala subject which has been but imperfectly studied, while even of what is known, my limits will necessarily allow me to give only a very imperfect sketch.

The student of anatomy is perfectly well aware that there is not a single organ of the human body the structure of which does not vary, to a greater or less extent, in different individuals. The skeleton varies in the proportions, and even to a certain extent in the connexions, of its constituent bones. The muscles which move the bones vary largely in their attachments. The varieties in the mode of distribution of the arteries are carefully classified, on account of the practical importance of a knowledge of their shifting to the surgeon. The characters of the brain vary immensely, nothing being less constant than the

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form and size of the cerebral hemispheres, and the richness of the convolutions upon their surface, while the most changeable structures of all in the human brain, are exactly those on which the unwise attempt has been made to base the distinctive characters of humanity, viz. the posterior cornu of the lateral ventricle, the hippocampus minor, and the degree of projection of the posterior lobe beyond the cerebellum. Finally, as all the world knows, the hair and skin of human beings may present the most extraordinary diversities in colour and in texture.

So far as our present knowledge goes, the majority of the structural varieties to which allusion is here made, are individual. The ape-like arrangement of certain muscles which is occasionally met with in the white races of mankind, is not known to be more common among Negroes or Australians: nor because the brain of the Hottentot Venus was found to be smoother, to have its convolutions more symmetrically disposed, and to be, so far, more ape-like than that of ordinary Europeans, are we justified in concluding a like condition of the brain to prevail universally among the lower races of mankind, however probable that conclusion may be.

We are, in fact, sadly wanting in information respecting the disposition of the soft and destructible organs of every Race of Mankind but our own; and even of the skeleton, our Museums are lamentably deficient in every part but the cranium. Skulls enough there are, and since the time when Blumenbach and Camper first called attention to the marked and singular differences which they exhibit, skull collecting and skull measuring has been a zealously pursued branch of Natural History, and the results obtained have been arranged and classified by various writers, among whom the late active and able Retzius must always be the first named.

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Human skulls have been found to differ from one another, not merely in their absolute size and in the absolute capacity of the brain case, but in the proportions which the diameters of the latter bear to one another; in the relative size of the bones of the face (and more particularly of the jaws and teeth) as compared with those of the skull; in the degree to which the upper jaw (which is of course followed by the lower) is thrown backwards and downwards under the fore-part of the brain case, or forwards and upward in front of and beyond it. They differ further in the relations of the transverse diameter of the face, taken through the cheek bones, to the transverse diameter of the skull; in the more rounded or more gable-like form of the roof of the skull, and in the degree to which the hinder part of the skull is flattened or projects beyond the ridge, into and below which, the muscles of the neck are inserted.

In some skulls the brain case may be said to be 'round,' the extreme length not exceeding the extreme breadth by a greater proportion than 100 to 80, while the difference may be much less. Men possessing such skulls were termed by Retzius 'brachycephalic,' and the skull of a Calmuck, of which a front and side view are depicted by Von Baer in his excellent, "Crania selecta," affords a very admirable example of that kind of skull. Other skulls, such as that of a Negro copied in Fig. 28 from Mr. Busk's 'Crania typical,' have a very different, greatly elongated form, and may be termed 'oblong.' In this skull the extreme length is to the extreme breadth as 100 to not more than 67, and the transverse diameter of the human skull may fall below even this proportion. People having such skulls were called by Retzius

'dolichocephalic.'

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The most cursory glance at the side views of these two skulls will suffice to prove that they differ, in another respect, to a very striking extent. The profile of the face of the Calmuck is almost vertical, the facial bones being thrown downwards and under the forepart of the skull. The profile of the face of the Negro, on the other hand, is singularly inclined, the front part of the jaws projecting far forward beyond the level of the fore part of the skull. In the former case the skull is said to be 'orthognathous' or straight-jawed; in the latter, it is called 'prognathous,' a term which has been rendered, with more force than elegance, by the Saxon equivalent,'snouty.'

Various methods have been devised in order to express with some accuracy the degree of prognathism or orthognathous of any given skull; most of these methods being essentially modifications of that devised by Peter Camper, in order to attain what he called the 'facial angle.'

But a little consideration will show that any 'facial angle' that has been devised, can be competent to express the structural modifications involved in prognathism and orthognathous, only in a rough and general sort of way. For the lines, the intersection of which forms the facial angle, are drawn through points of the skull, the position of each of which is modified by a number of circumstances, so that the angle obtained is a complex resultant of all these circumstances, and is not the expression of any one definite organic relation of the parts of the skull.

I have arrived at the conviction that no comparison of crania is worth very much, that is not founded upon the establishment of a relatively fixed base line, to which the measurements, in all cases, must be referred. Nor do I think it is a very difficult matter to decide what that base line should be. The parts of

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the skull, like those of the rest of the animal framework, are developed in succession the base of the skull is formed before its sides and roof; it is converted into cartilage earlier and more completely than the sides and roof: and the cartilaginous base ossifies, and becomes soldered into one piece long before the roof. I conceive then that the base of the skull may be demonstrated developmentally to be its relatively fixed part, the roof and sides being relatively moveable.

The same truth is exemplified by the study of the modifications which the skull undergoes in ascending from the lower animals up to man.

In such a mammal as a Beaver a line ('a b'.) drawn through the bones, termed basioccipital, basisphenoid, and presphenoid, is very long in proportion to the extreme length of the cavity which contains the cerebral hemispheres ('g h'.). The plane of the occipital foramen ('b c'.) forms a slightly acute angle with this 'basicranial axis,' while the plane of the tentorium ('i T'.) is inclined at rather more than 90 degrees to the 'basicranial axis'; and so is the plane of the perforated plate ('a d'.), by which the filaments of the olfactory nerve leave the skull. Again, a line drawn through the axis of the face, between the bones called ethmoid and vomerthe "bifacial axis" ('f e'.) forms an exceedingly obtuse angle, where, when produced, it cuts the 'basicranial axis.'

If the angle made by the line 'b c'. with 'a b'., be called the 'occipital angle,' and the angle made by the line 'a d'. with 'a b'. be termed the 'olfactory angle,' and that made by 'i T'. with 'a b'. the 'tentoria angle,' then all these, in the mammal in question, are nearly right angles, varying between 80 degrees and 110 degrees. the angle 'e f b'., or that made by the cranial with the facial axis,

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and which may be termed the 'cranium-facial angle,' is extremely obtuse, amounting, in the case of the Beaver, to at least 150 degrees.

But if a series of sections of mammalian skulls, intermediate between a Rodent and a Man (Fig. 29), be examined, it will be found that in the higher crania the basicranial axis becomes shorter relatively to the cerebral length; that the 'olfactory angle' and 'occipital angle' become more obtuse; and that the 'cranium-facial angle' becomes more acute by the bending down, as it were, of the facial axis upon the cranial axis. At the same time, the roof of the cranium becomes more and more arched, to allow of the increasing height of the cerebral hemispheres, which is eminently characteristic of man, as well as of that backward extension, beyond the cerebellum, which reaches its maximum in the South America Monkeys. So that, at last, in the human skull (Fig. 30), the cerebral length is between twice and thrice as great as the length of the basicranial axis; the olfactory plane is 20 degrees or 30 degrees on the 'under' side of that axis; the occipital angle, instead of being less than 90 degrees, is as much as 150 degrees or 160 degrees; the cranio-facial angle may be 90 degrees or less, and the vertical height of the skull may have a large proportion to its length.

It will be obvious, from an inspection of the diagrams, that the basicranial axis is, in the ascending series of Mammalia, a relatively fixed line, on which the bones of the sides and roof of the cranial cavity, and of the face, may be said to revolve downwards and forwards or backwards, according to their position. The arc described by any one bone or plane, however, is not by any means always in proportion to the arc described by another.

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Now comes the important question, can we discern, between the lowest and the highest forms of the human cranium anything answering, in however slight a degree, to this revolution of the side and roof bones of the skull upon the basicranial axis observed upon so great a scale in the mammalian series? Numerous observations lead me to believe that we must answer this question in the affirmative.

The diagrams in Figure 30 are reduced from very carefully made diagrams of sections of four skulls, two round and orthognathous, two long and prognathous, taken longitudinally and vertically, through the middle. The sectional diagrams have then been superimposed, in such a manner, that the basal axes of the skulls coincide by their anterior ends, and in their direction. The deviations of the rest of the contours (which represent the interior of the skulls only) show the differences of the skulls from one another, when these axes are regarded as relatively fixed lines.

The dark contours are those of an Australian and of a Negro skull: the light contours are those of a Tartar skull, in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons; and of a well-developed round skull from a cemetery in Constantinople, of uncertain race, in my own possession.

It appears, at once, from these views, that the prognathous skulls, so far as their jaws are concerned, do really differ from the orthognathous in much the same way as, though to a far less degree than, the skulls of the lower mammals differ from those of Man. Furthermore, the plane of the occipital foramen ('b c') forms a somewhat smaller angle with the axis in these particular prognathous skulls than in the orthognathous; and the like may be slightly true of the perforated plate of the ethmoidthough this point is not so

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clear. But it is singular to remark that, in another respect, the prognathous skulls are less ape-like than the orthognathous, the cerebral cavity projecting decidedly more beyond the anterior end of the axis in the prognathous, than in the orthognathous, skulls.

It will be observed that these diagrams reveal an immense range of variation in the capacity and relative proportion to the cranial axis, of the different regions of the cavity which contains the brain, in the different skulls. Nor is the difference in the extent to which the cerebral overlaps the cerebellar cavity less singular. A round skull (Fig. 30, 'Const'.) may have a greater posterior cerebral projection than a long one (Fig. 30, 'Negro').

Until human crania have been largely worked out in a manner similar to that here suggesteduntil it shall be an opprobrium to an ethnological collection to possess a single skull which is not bisected longitudinallyuntil the angles and measurements here mentioned, together with a number of others of which I cannot speak in this place, are determined, and tabulated with reference to the basicranial axis as unity, for large numbers of skulls of the different races of Mankind, I do not think we shall have any very safe basis for that ethnological craniology which aspires to give the anatomical characters of the crania of the different Races of Mankind.

At present, I believe that the general outlines of what may be safely said upon that subject may be summed up in a very few words. Draw a line on a globe from the Gold Coast in Western Africa to the steppes of Tartary. At the southern and western end of that line there live the most dolichocephalic, prognathous, curly-haired, dark-skinned of menthe true Negroes. At the northern and eastern end of the same line there live the most brachycephalic,

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orthognathous, straight-haired, yellow-skinned of menthe Tartars and Calmucks. The two ends of this imaginary line are indeed, so to speak, ethnological antipodes. A line drawn at right angles, or nearly so, to this polar line through Europe and Southern Asia to Hindustan, would give us a sort of equator, around which round-headed, oval-headed, and oblong-headed, prognathous and orthognathous, fair and dark racesbut none possessing the excessively marked characters of Calmuck or Negrogroup themselves. It is worthy of notice that the regions of the antipodal races are antipodal in climate, the greatest contrast the world affords, perhaps, being that between the damp, hot, steaming, alluvial coast plains of the West Coast of Africa and the arid, elevated steppes and plateau of Central Asia, bitterly cold in winter, and as far from the sea as any part of the world can be.

From Central Asia eastward to the Pacific Islands and subcontinents on the one hand, and to America on the other, brachycephalic and orthognathism gradually diminish, and are replaced by dolichocephalism and prognathism, less, however, on the American Continent (throughout the whole length of which a rounded type of skull prevails largely, but not exclusively) 13 than in the Pacific region, where, at length, on the Australian Continent and in the adjacent islands, the oblong skull, the projecting jaws, and the dark skin reappear; with so much departure, in other respects, from the Negro type, that ethnologists assign to these people the special title of 'Negritoes.'

The Australian skull is remarkable for its narrowness and for the thickness of its walls, especially in the region of the supraciliary ridge, which is frequently, though not by any means invariably, solid throughout, the frontal sinuses remaining undeveloped. The nasal depression, again, is extremely sudden, so that the brows overhang and give the countenance a particularly lowering,

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threatening expression. The occipital region of the skull, also, not unfrequently becomes less prominent; so that it not only fails to project beyond a line drawn perpendicular to the hinder extremity of the glabello-occipital line, but even, in some cases, begins to shelve away from it, forwards, almost immediately. In consequence of this circumstance, the parts of the occipital bone which lie above and below the tuberosity make a much more acute angle with one another than is usual, whereby the hinder part of the base of the skull appears obliquely truncated. Many Australian skulls have a considerable height, quite equal to that of the average of any other race, but there are others in which the cranial roof becomes remarkably depressed, the skull, at the same time, elongating so much that, probably, its capacity is not diminished. The majority of skulls possessing these characters, which I have seen, are from the neighborhood of Port Adelaide in South Australia, and have been used by the natives as water vessels; to which end the face has been knocked away, and a string passed through the vacuity and the occipital foramen, so that the skull was suspended by the greater part of its basis.

The contour of a skull of this kind from Western Port, with the jaw attached, and of the Neanderthal skull, both reduced to one-third of the size of nature. A small additional amount of flattening and lengthening, with a corresponding increase of the supraciliary ridge, would convert the Australian brain case into a form identical with that of the aberrant fossil.

And now, to return to the fossil skulls, and to the rank which they occupy among, or beyond, these existing varieties of cranial conformation. In the first place, I must remark, that, as Professor Schmerling well observed ('supra', p. 300) in commenting upon the Engis skull, the formation of a safe judgment upon the question is greatly hindered by the absence of the jaws from both

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the crania, so that there is no means of deciding with certainty, whether they were more or less prognathous than the lower existing races of mankind. And yet, as we have seen, it is more in this respect than any other, that human skulls vary, towards and from, the brutal typethe brain case of an average dolichocephalic European differing far less from that of a Negro, for example, than his jaws do. In the absence of the jaws, then, any judgment on the relations of the fossil skulls to recent Races must be accepted with a certain reservation.

But taking the evidence as it stands, and turning first to the Engis skull, I confess I can find no character in the remains of that cranium which, if it were a recent skull, would give any trustworthy clue as to the Race to which it might appertain. Its contours and measurements agree very well with those of some Australian skulls which I have examinedand especially has it a tendency towards that occipital flattening, to the great extent of which, in some Australian skulls, I have alluded. But all Australian skulls do not present this flattening, and the supraciliary ridge of the Engis skull is quite unlike that of the typical Australians.

On the other hand, its measurements agree equally well with those of some European skulls. And assuredly, there is no mark of degradation about any part of its structure. It is, in fact, a fair average human skull, which might have belonged to a philosopher, or might have contained the thoughtless brains of a savage.

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The case of the Neanderthal skull is very different. Under whatever aspect we view this cranium, whether we regard its vertical depression, the enormous thickness of its supraciliary ridges, its sloped occiput, or its long and straight squamosal suture, we meet with ape-like characters, stamping it as the most pithecoid of human crania yet discovered. But Professor Schaaffhausen states ('supra', p. 308), that the cranium, in its present condition, holds 1033.24 cubic centimeters of water, or about 63 cubic inches, and as the entire skull could hardly have held less than an additional 12 cubic inches, its capacity may be estimated at about 75 cubic inches, which is the average capacity given by Morton for Polynesian and Hottentot skulls.

So large a mass of brain as this, would alone suggest that the pithecoid tendencies, indicated by this skull, did not extend deep into the organization; and this conclusion is borne out by the dimensions of the other bones of the skeleton given by Professor Schaaffhausen, which show that the absolute height and relative proportions of the limbs were quite those of an European of middle stature. The bones are indeed stouter, but this and the great development of the muscular ridges noted by Dr. Schaaffhausen, are

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characters to be expected in savages. The Patagonians, exposed without shelter or protection to a climate possibly not very dissimilar from that of Europe at the time during which the Neanderthal man lived, are remarkable for the stoutness of their limb bones.

In no sense, then, can the Neanderthal bones be regarded as the remains of a human being intermediate between Men and Apes. At most, they demonstrate the existence of a man whose skull may be said to revert somewhat towards the pithecoid typejust as a Carrier, or a Pouter, or a Tumbler, may sometimes put on the plumage of its primitive stock, the 'Columba livia'. And indeed, though truly the most pithecoid of known human skulls, the Neanderthal cranium is by no means so isolated as it appears to be at first, but forms, in reality, the extreme term of a series leading gradually from it to the highest and best developed of human crania. On the one hand, it is closely approached by the flattened Australian skulls, of which I have spoken, from which other Australian forms lead us gradually up to skulls having very much the type of the Engis cranium. And, on the other hand, it is even more closely affined to the skulls of certain ancient people who inhabited Denmark during the 'stone period,' and were probably either

contemporaneous with, or later than, the makers of the 'refuse heaps,' or 'Kjokken moddings' of that country.

The correspondence between the longitudinal contour of the Neanderthal skull and that of some of those skulls from the tumuli at Borreby, very accurate drawings of which have been made by Mr. Busk, is very close. The occiput is quite as retreating, the supraciliary ridges are nearly as prominent, and the skull is as low. Furthermore, the Borreby skull resembles the Neanderthal form more closely than any of the Australian skulls do, by the

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much more rapid retrocession of the forehead. On the other hand, the Borreby skulls are all somewhat broader, in proportion to their length, than the Neanderthal skull, while some attain that proportion of breadth to length (80:100) which constitutes brachycephalic.

In conclusion, I may say, that the fossil remains of Man hitherto discovered do not seem to me to take us appreciably nearer to that lower pithecoid form, by the modification of which he has, probably, become what he is. And considering what is now known of the most ancient races of men; seeing that they fashioned flint axes and flint knives and bone-skewers, of much the same pattern as those fabricated by the lowest savages at the present day, and that we have every reason to believe the habits and modes of living of such people to have remained the same from the time of the Mammoth and the tichorhine Rhinoceros till now, I do not know that this result is other than might be expected.

Where, then, must we look for primeval Man? Was the oldest 'Homo sapiens' Pliocene or Miocene, or yet more ancient? In still older strata do the fossilized bones of an Ape more anthropoid, or a Man more pithecoid, than any yet known await the researches of some unborn paleontologist?

Time will show. But, in the meanwhile, if any form of the doctrine of progressive development is correct, we must extend by long epochs the most liberal estimate that has yet been made of the antiquity of Man.

Thomas Huxley was no ones fool but he did not suffer fools gladly and was well known as a major champion of the evolutionists and was prone to attack people if they got it wrong, as some did no doubt. He totally dismissed

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Mayers conclusions as a research work, laden with numerous jocosities of small size, but great ponderosity, directed at Charles Darwin and his doctrine.

Thomas Huxley also picked up on forensics very quickly when Professor Mayer failed to explain how a dying man had managed to climb twenty meters high, bury himself nude, after removing all his clothes and any equipment and head for the spirit world if known? But he also made mistakes and for a while linked the Neanderthal remains with the lower apes, a mistake that cost him dearly in years to come. His saving grace was of course was the Neanderthal skull and though he commented as ape like he was quick to add, it showed some reversion from a modern human skull towards an ape like ancestor.

Huxley 1864.

This may be all well and good in those far off days but Thomas Huxley would not fare well in todays Archaeology circles of learned men and women and without doubt would have been taken to task by them.

A NEW LOOK AND AN OLD PROBLEM.

I again looked at the data on early apes and the two human species, Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon Man and of course the old problem of dating the early apes and humans.

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I have outlined the data below that so far has been put forward by others.

The data presented by some other researchers, now seems in doubt when it comes down to the timeline of the Neanderthals. Granted, there may be large gaps in some timelines of early apes and of course the Neanderthals. In order to look at this data I had to research a number of sources and in the end I was more than a little surprised at the amount of guesswork and maybes that came up with reference to the Neanderthals appearance on the Archaeology canvas. Though expected by me, I was not prepared for gaps in their life timeline, sometimes as much as a few thousand years. Some data suggested that the Neanderthal features appeared as far back as 100,000 years ago during the warm interglacial period that is said to have lasted from 130,000 70,000 years ago. Something was wrong with this first part of the data so again research from many areas give me at least a blank canvas to work on and dealing with the Neanderthals and their lifetime on our planet as we know it today.

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The data that suggested the interglacial period is what is termed as a warm climate episode between Glacial episodes and all ice ages recorded or suggested and 40,000 years ago the UK and Ireland as well as parts of Europe were not ice free. Which suggests that the Neanderthals of Europe did have a very cold environment to contend with both for living in and hunting food. As I am dealing here with the Neanderthals of Europe then the data on M-isotope stages and climate stratigraphy suggest strongly that the last Glaciation was in fact between 50 -30 thousand years in Europe when Chatelperronian and H. Neanderthals were still around. Before that and in the last suggested last interglacial period on the M-isotope new evidence, 120,000 60,000 years, = Mousterian and H. Neanderthal, the timeline data therefore should be the start of the Neanderthals ( very early) at 90,000 to 35,000 years in Europe while the suggested timeline for Western Asia at 70,000 40,000 years. This would suggest strongly that some of the Neanderthals did live in an area of an Ice Age or at least part of it and other groups lived in ice free zones when we consider the scanty remains discovered from western Europe, through the Near East and into Western Asia. What we dont know yet, is if any of the migrations during the interglacial period 120,000-60,000 years, went north into Russia and as far north as they could go in small groups? On the evidence I would suggest that the only humans in Europe between 100,000 40,000 years ago were Neanderthals only. Again I had to take another hard look at Climate change across Europe but go much further back in time, through and just past the Neanderthal timelines.

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Oxygen isotopes in deep sea cores show that in the first 1.8 million years of the Pleistocene suggested glacial inter-glacial cycles of every 41,000 years and during the last 700.000 years the most dominant cycle is about 100,000 years which includes I should point out, interglacial timeline lasting about 10,000 and 15,000 years. If we take this as far as we know then I have to place the last Ice Age at around 115,000 years ago and ended 10,000 years ago and we are now in the very present interglacial period. This I should point out does not match my own research data above as such but close. The big thaw that came did so around 15,000 years ago and the seas around Europe rose to a high point, flooding land bridges. 11,000 years ago there was a setback in Europe and some parts of North America which brought back the ice and known now as the Younger Dryas Period. This did last 500 years and the North Atlantic polar front migrated down from Iceland to the Bay of Biscay with summer temperatures dropping as much as 10 degrees C and any ice sheets that had started to melt began to form again and advance. Animals and plants as well as some of the Neanderthal groups in Europe. The event ended 10,000 years ago. The idea that Homo Erectus had its part to play, but only as a control factor and possible comparison in passing. It would be, I suggest, that the features of early Neanderthals was to do with a cold and bitter climate but only in part and it would be a mistake to say that this was the main reason for face and body features. Something else caused the genetic change and to date no one has yet found it or even suggested it. All they have in the bag is Cold Climate at the moment and that I fear is not enough because something changed the DNA makeup of the Neanderthals and it was not God.

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Cro-Magnon Man did not come onto the archaeology canvas till around 40,000 years ago in Europe at the Les Eyzies site in the Dordogne. Given the location as the data excepted what is not explained is how did they get there and from where? The only possible theory is that they crossed from North Africa into Spain as this was the only narrow crossing or they came in small migrations from Asia? I will come back to this data later for a comparisons of evidence, such as it is.

NEANDERTHAL TOOLS. The devil is in the detail they say in my home in Ireland, and the detail and data on tool making and tools linked to the Neanderthals has to be part of any research. To do this I had to look hard at the Mousterian timeline.

and This was a new form of stone tool technology and very closely linked with the Neaderthals, known as the Mousterian name after a cave in the Dordogne (Le Moustier). The design of these tools found there was a massive improvement from that of the Acheulean period. In the case of the links between the tools and the Neanderthals it in fact produced sixty items from points,knives, scrapers, and all made and trimmed for a purpose. These tools

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were much more previous known cultures for want of a better word. This suggests from the workmanship and refined Levallois flaked technique developed to a very high degree was not the work of an ape or anything close to such.The control of the tool makers hands, and a good eye and working brain suggests good evidence that the Neaderthals were advanced thinkers. Bone tools were also made and such bone again needs very careful handling by the tool maker. There was however evidence of different styles in the Mousterian cultures and I suggest here that from the reserch evidence I have looked at, four very different cultures but realted in Europe. These were the Typical, Denticulate Mousterian, Acheulean type, and Charentian. That could well mean that in Europe and West Asia there were four different tribes of Neanderthal Man and at times living close to one another. Then if the Typical tools were from and linked to Combe-Grenal in the Dordogne and ten to twenty kilometers away from them who were from the Denticulate culture then at times much have met, mixed and at time bred with one another. We do know that reindeer was the prey or main prey of the Dordogne group and horses the main prey of the Denticilate group. I have no doubt at all that some geographical tribal drift took place over a number of generations and that it is possible of course that one tribe may well have taken over a much older site of another and thus causing confusion in the tool finds. With such development in tools other factors in time came into play such as burial.

NEANDERTHAL BURIALS

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As I stated early on in my research I mentioned that what was taken as early neanderthal rutual burial was nothing more than getting rid of a body and any flowers thrown on it rather than placed were more than likely to kill the smell. From a forensic point of view, flowers are found in spring and summer so if a Neanderthal was to die it had to be during this time and it would have been less than 24 hours before blue and green blowflies would have laid their eggs on the decaying flesh, in forty eight hours if the body was above ground it would be moving with maggots due to the high temperatures if it was a warm phase and the smell would have attracted all sorts of animals that were a risk to man. So if flowers and herbs were discovered with remains then the victim died during a warm phase and not during a cold phase therefore giving us a dating tool from a seasonal point of view. This therefore could not be classed as a ritual burial as such.

Ritual burial guidelines I suggest should be; Body placed in a pit on its side. Flints under the head. Stone axe or other tool close to the hands. Bones of food animals also buried. Flowers or shells placed on the body.

I have given some examples of this here. At Le Moustier, a young teenage boy was placed in a pit on his right side, his head placed on his forarms and below the arms and head a pile of flints, stone axe near the hand and the bones of wild cattle around him, Central Asia at a place called Teshik Tash in Uzbekistan, the bones of a child lies beside the bones of Ibex arranged around the remains, the bones having

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the cut marks of tools on them that suggests two things, one the flesh was stripped away but I suggest does not suggest a ritual but a need for meat and eaten by the living at that time. However the ritual part comes from six pairs of ibex horns around the head forming a rough ring. La Ferrassle rock shelter very near the town of le Bugue in the Dordogne the headless remains of a young child was found lying in a flexed position at the bottom of a shallow pit. A few feet up in the pit the discovery of a jawless skull of a child lying on a limestone slab and evidence of red ochre on the underside of the slab as well as small pit markings on the top of it. A cave in Shandidar in the Zagros Mountains of Iraq has produced a number of Neanderthal remains and one dated as far back as 60,000 years known now as Shanider IV and many flower pollen grains discovered around the bones. The victim must therefore have died sometime in June or July, the flowers and herbs, some of them medical herbs known today was used also as a bed that the body had been placed. I have listed the flowers and plants that the pollen came from for reference. Oak, pine,juniper,ash, yarrow,cornflower,St Barnabys thistle,ragwort, grape hyacinth,hollyhock,woody horsetail. To carry out such a ritual suggests strongly that this Neanderthal group at Shanider did show emotion and even an understanding of the underworld, could be called spiritual because the soul or spirit as we know it would not have been named as such 60,000 years ago. There was no religion as we know it but the evidence does suggest the understanding of life and death however we may never know what the Neanderthal thinking was on such matters then. Religion is a mind process, nothing more and nothing less and could mean nothing to research or mean everything in the long term.

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THE PREY ANIMALS OF THE NEANDERTHALS IN EUROPE.

If we take the end of the last Ice Age and during it, the prey animals that the Neanderthals hunted for food and were hunted by as well, is a long list which I have outlined below. Middle Europe to the Urals had formed a large Tundra and known as the mammoth steppe. It was the land that time forgot and mostly bog and grasses. I have not put in the scientific name of any of the species just the common names.

Wooly mammoth.. Survived in Europe till the end of the last Glacial but in North Asia at least 1000 years more.

Cave Bear. It took survived in Europe at the beginning of the last Glacial but near its end the Cave bear vanished also.

Wild Horse. A small horse species and was hunted hard by the Neanderthal groups for food and skins.

The Wolf. Still survives in the wilder part of Europe and Asia. Was at times a risk factor to the Neanderthal groups in winter.

Cave lion. Much larger than the present day African and Asian lions. Vanished from Europe at the end of the last Glacial.

Wolverine. Hunted for its skin and a smaller species now lives in north Europe and Asia.

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The Steppe Bison. Hunted for meat and skins by the Neanderthal groups and may have a genetic link to the modren bison in Europe today.

Musk ox. Vanished from Europe at the end of the last Glacial and found now only in Canada and parts of Greenland. Hunted for food and skins.

Woolly Rhino. Vanished from Europe 12,000 years ago. Had two large horns.

Cave hyena. A large hyena and vanished almost at the end of the last Glacial.

Giant Deer or Irish Elk. Hunted for food and skins and died out last Glacial.

Suslik. Possible food and still lives in South Europe.

Saiga Antelope. Hunted for food and skins. Now lives in South Russia.

Ibex. Hunted for food and horns. BIRDS. All species including ducks and willow grouse for food.

Fish. All species for food.

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FOSSIL EVIDENCE SO FAR OF NEANDERTHALS . SPECIES. TIME LINE SITE. NOTES.

Early Pre Neanderthals. More than 300,000 years. Sima de Los Huesos Spain. Arago,Tautavel, France. Petralona, Greece.

Late Pre Neanderthals. 300,000 -150,000 years.

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Bilzingsleben, Steinheim, Masur, Germany. Swanscombe,UK. La Chaise, Biache-Saint-Vaast,France.

Early Neanderthals. 150,000-70,000 years. Ehringsdorf,Germany. Saccopastore,Italy. Krapina,Croatia. La Chaise,France. Classic Neanderthals. 70,000-30,000 years. Saint-Cesaire, La Ferrassie, La Chapell aux-Saints, France.

Important fossil sites of Neanderthals in Europe. PLACE YEARS AGO. FOSSILS.

Engis Belgium Spy, Belgium.

Not known. Not known.

Child, Skull fragments and teeth. Adult bones of upper body. Adult part of a skeleton. Child,two teeth, right tibia.

Krapina, Croatia. Vindija,Croatia. Grotte du Renne,

120,000 years.

Remains of 13 bodies.

40,000-28,000 years. Part remains of bodies.

Arcy-sur-Cure, France, 34,000 years.

Cranial fragment (Temporal)

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La-Chapelle-aux-Saints, France.60,000-50,000 years. Part of a skeleton. La Ferrassie France. 70,000 years. Adult,skeletons 2 Child, upper skeleton. Foetus humerus and femur. Neonate, part of a skeleton. Foetus, part of a skeleton. Child, part of a skeleton. LHortus,France. 70,000 years. 38 sets of human remains. Young adult and one child Part of skeletons. La Quina,France. Marillac,France. 50,000 years. 45,000 years. Fragments of skulls 11. 1 adult mandible, skull fragments. Adult part of a skeleton. Child part of a skeleton. Adult part of a skeleton. 1 Adult skull fragments.

La Moustier,France. 40,000 years.

Regourdou, France. Not known. Roc de Marsal,France. 70,000 years. Saint-Cesaire, France. 34,000 years.

Ehringsdor, (Weimar) Germany. 100,000 years.

Feldhoffer Cave, Nenaderthal,Germany. 40,000 years. 1 adult part of Skeleton. Adult right humerus.

DISTRIBUTION of Neanderthal sites in Eurasia. France,Germany,Spain,Italy,Greece,Black Sea area,North Africa, Turkey, Shandidar, Teshik Tash.

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A FULL SUMMERY OF MY RESEARCH, NEANDERTHAL DAWN.

Ronnie Carleton 2012

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This research study on the Neanderthals of Europe came about because of my doubts on the dating of bones from an archaeology point of view and also what part this Homo had to play in modren Human advancment. When I first started my research I was more than a little surprised in this day and age of how much has been left out in other data, great gaps of no knowledge and then some of the data mentioned somehow got their timelines wrong. It was easy to be critical of other researchers mistakes and even more so of my own but in time I turned that around to constructive critical comment, something that we all need so that we are aware of our failings as a human mammal. I of course had to focus on the Neanderthals but in doing so I could not ignore the good work carried out of many years by others researchers on the very early Homo species because I also had to take a closer look at them for comparrison. For a while it become confusing because of all the many views on the first early Homo species people had and published on. At times the Neanderthal research had to be put to oneside as I waded through the data on any links from early Homo and found out very quickly when it came down to the archaeology wire I had to either except or reject data for one reason or another. Before I proceeded with this research, I double checked, I pondered on the many problems and questions that arise and I have done my best to solve most of them. Then I write up what I know and what I have gained from research of this kind and trust it is as honest and focused as I wanted it to be. In this part of the research I want to thank everyone who has been of help.

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The Author, bone hunting in Borneo.

THE MISSING LINK FROM AFRICA. One of the problems that I encountered is why the Neanderthals have not been found in many parts of Africa? The second problem I came across was the DNA data on the Neanderthals and any links with modren humans across Europe. In my research on the DNA I came across many conflicts of ongoing research as well as published data. Some of this I have had to include here for possible debate and improve it possible.

THE DNA CONFLICT

All the DNA samples it seems came from recovered material from Neanderthal bones and the samples examined in a number of DNA sampling labs. However I have to question how the samples were taken and how much cross contamanation happened during the processes.

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I have no doubt at all that in some cases, slap happy sampling did take place and that modern DNA from living humans was mixed in with that of the Neanderthals DNA. In contrast to previous efforts to obtain ancient sequences by direct analysis of Sequencing and Analysis of extracts met genomic libraries allow the immortalization of DNA isolated from precious ancient samples, obviating the need for repeated Neanderthal Genomic DNA. The Researchers for this data I have named below;
James P. Noonan,1,2 Graham Coop,3 Sridhar Kudaravalli,3 Doug Smith,1 Johannes Krause,4 Joe Alessi,1 Feng Chen,1 Darren Platt,1 Svante Pbo,4 Jonathan K. Pritchard,3 Edward M. Rubin1,2*

Our knowledge of Neanderthals is based on a limited number of remains and artefacts from which we must make inferences about their biology, behaviour, and relationship to ourselves. Here, we describe the characterization of these extinct hominids from a new perspective, based on the development of a Neanderthal metagenomic library and its high-throughput sequencing and analysis. Several lines of evidence indicate that the 65,250 base pairs of hominid sequence so far identified in the library are of Neanderthal origin, the strongest being the ascertainment of sequence identities between Neanderthal and chimpanzee at sites where the human genomic sequence is different. These results enabled us to calculate the human-Neanderthal divergence time based on multiple randomly distributed autosomal loci. Our analyses suggest that on average the Neanderthal genomic sequence we obtained and the reference human genome sequence share a most recent common

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ancestor ~706,000 years ago, and that the human and Neanderthal ancestral populations split ~370,000 years ago, before the emergence of anatomically modern humans. Our finding that the Neanderthal and human genomes are at least 99.5% identical led us to develop and successfully implement a targeted method for recovering specific ancient DNA sequences from metagenomic libraries. This initial analysis of the Neanderthal genome advances our understanding of the evolutionary relationship of Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis and signifies the dawn of Neanderthal genomics .(The dates and the comment seem wrong but needs checking. Carleton 2012) Neanderthals are the closest hominid rela-tives of modern humans (1). As late as 30,000 years ago, humans and Neander-thals coexisted in Europe and western Asia (2). Since that time, our species has spread across Earth, far surpassing any previous hominid or primate species in numbers, technological development, and environmental impact, while Neanderthals have vanished. Molecular studies of Neanderthals have been exclusively constrained to the comparison of human and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplified Neanderthal mitochondrial sequences, which suggest that the most recent common ancestor of humans and Neanderthals existed. ~500,000 years ago, well before the emergence of modern humans. Further analyses of mito-chondrial data, including the comparison of mito-chondrial sequences obtained from several Neanderthals and early modern humans, suggest little or no admixture between Neanderthal and modern human populations in Europe. However, a major limitation of all prior molecular studies of Neanderthals is that mitochondrial sequences reflect only maternal inheritance of a single locus.

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Accordingly, in the absence of Neanderthal autosomal and Y-chromosome sequences, the assessment of human-Neanderthal admixture remains incomplete. Mitochondrial data also pro-vide no access to the gene and gene regulatory sequence differences between humans and Nean-derthals that would help to reveal biological features unique to each. These insights await the recovery of Neanderthal genomic sequences. The introduction of high-throughput sequencing technologies and recent advances in metagenomic analysis of complex DNA mixtures now provide a strategy to recover genomic sequences from ancient destructive extractions. In addition, once an ancient DNA fragment is cloned into a metagenomic library, it can be distinguished from contamination that might be introduced during subsequent PCR amplification or sequencing by the vector sequences linked to each library-derived insert. Recovery of Neanderthal nuclear DNA sequences using a metagenomic approach. In this study, we applied an amplification-independent direct cloning method to construct a Neanderthal metagenomic library, designated NE1, using DNA extracted from a 38,000-year-old specimen from Vindija, Croatia. We have recovered 65,250 base pairs ( BP) of Neanderthal genome sequence from this library through a combination of Sanger sequencing and massively parallel pyro sequencing. We have also used the metagenomic library as a substrate to isolate specific Neanderthal sequences by direct genomic selection. Several lines of evidence indicated that the hominid sequences in this library were largely Neanderthal, rather than modern human contamination . Mitochondrial PCR analysis of the extract used to build the library, using an

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amplicon of similar size as the average hominid sequence identified in the library, revealed that only ~2% of the products were from contaminating modern human DNA, whereas the remaining 98% were Neanderthal . Signatures of damage in the hominid sequences that are characteristic of ancient DNA also suggested that they were ancient. Finally and most importantly, comparison of hominid sequences from the library to orthologous human and chimpanzee genomic sequences identified human-specific substitutions at sites where the hominid sequence was identical to that of the chimpanzees, enabling us to make estimates of the human-Neanderthal divergence time. We initially assessed the Neanderthal genomic sequence content of library NE1 by Sanger se-quencing of individual clones, which allowed individual library inserts to be completely sequenced and thus provided a direct measure of hominid insert size that could not be obtained from the ~100-bp pyro sequencing reads. We identified hominid sequences in the library by BLAST comparison to the reference human genome sequence. In many cases, the human BLAST hit covered only part of the insert, because the direct cloning method we employed produces chimeric inserts consisting of smaller fragments ligated into larger concatemers. The small average size of these putatively ancient Neanderthal fragments (bp) is similar to results we previously obtained from two Pleistocene cave bear libraries, in which the average library insert size was between 100 and 200 bp, whereas BLAST hits to reference carnivore genome sequences were on average 69 bp. The small BLAST hit sizes and insert sizes in both cave bear and Neanderthal metage-nomic libraries are consistent with the degradation of ancient genomic DNA into small fragments over tens of thousands of years, illustrating the general condition of nuclear DNA in ancient remains.

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Sanger sequencing of individual clones from library NE1 suggested that it contained sufficient amounts of Neanderthal sequence to conduct a random sequence survey of the Neanderthal genome. However, the small percentage of clones we identified as containing hominid sequences indicated that we would have to sequence a very large number of clones to obtain enough Neanderthal genome sequence for this analysis. We therefore carried out deep sequencing of pooled inserts from library NE1 using massively parallel pyro sequencing. To obtain pooled inserts, we amplified transformed NE1 library DNA in liquid batch culture and recovered library inserts from purified plasmid DNA by PCR We generated 1.47 million pyrosequencing reads, compared each to the human genome sequence with MEGABLAST, and obtained 7880 hits. Assembly of these reads and re-analysis of the resulting scaffolds by BLASTN produced 1126 unique Neanderthal loci, yielding 54,302 bp of Neanderthal genomic sequence. Assessment of pyrosequencing data qual-ity by comparison to Sanger sequence data. The pyrosequencing approach generates significant amounts of sequence but does so with a higher error rate than Sanger sequencing. To assess the quality of Neanderthal pyrosequencing data, we generated consensus sequences from pyrosequencing reads overlapping the same Neanderthal genomic locus and filtered out low-quality positions in the resulting contigs (quality score < 15). To determine whether these contigs contained additional errors not detectable by quality-score filtering, we also used Sanger sequencing to analyse, 19,200 clones from the same batch culture used to generate the pyrosequencing data. This sequencing yielded 130 loci (6.2 kb) that were also represented in the pyrosequencing data.

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Sanger sequencing and pyro-sequencing results for these 130 Neanderthal loci agreed at 99.89% of un-gapped positions. In addition, Sanger sequencing and pyrosequencing yielded Neanderthal sequences that were nearly equally divergent from the human reference sequence (pyrosequencing = 0.47% divergence, Sanger sequencing = 0.49%). These results indicate that the frequency of single-base errors is probably no greater in Neanderthal genomic sequence obtained from assembled qualityfiltered pyrosequencing data than in sequence obtained from Sanger sequencing. The low complexity of library NE1 made these analyses possible, because it resulted in a limited number of clones in the library that were amplified by batch culture and PCR and then sequenced in depth. We estimated that the coverage obtained in library NE1 (~0.002%) is significantly lower than that previously obtained in cave bear metagenomic libraries prepared from samples of similar age as the Neanderthal sample used here. The low coverage in library NE1 is more likely due to the quality of this particular library rather than being a general feature of ancient DNA. Nevertheless, we were able to obtain substantial amounts of authentic Neanderthal genomic sequence from the library by deep sequencing. Comparison of orthologous Neanderthal, human, and chimpanzee genomic sequences. To ascertain whether the library NE1 hominid sequence we obtained was a representative sampling of the Neanderthal genome, we identified each NE1 library sequence for which the bit score of the best BLASTN hit in the human genome was higher than the bit scores of all other hits for that sequence. We then determined the distribution of all such best BLASTN hits across human chromosomes [43,946 bp in 1,039 loci.

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The amount of Neanderthal sequence aligned to each human chromosome was highly correlated with sequenced chromosome length, indicating that the Neanderthal sequences we obtained were randomly drawn from all chromosomes (Pearson correlation coefficient = 0.904, ). The hominid hits included Y-chromosome sequences, demonstrating that our sample was derived from a Neanderthal male. We annotated each Neanderthal locus according to the annotations (known genes, conserved noncoding sequences, and repeats) associated with the aligned human sequence. Neanderthal sequences obtained by both Sanger sequencing and pyro-sequencing showed a distribution of sequence features consistent with the known distribution of these features in the human genome. These sequences are therefore likely to represent a random sampling of the Neanderthal genome. Comparison of authentic Neanderthal sequence with orthologous human and chimpanzee genomic sequences will reveal sites at which Neanderthal is identical to chimpanzee but at which the human sequence has undergone a mutation since the human-Neanderthal divergence. Determining the number of human-specific mutations is critical to dating the humanNeanderthal split. To identify these events, we constructed alignments of orthologous human, Neanderthal, and chimpanzee sequences and identified mutations specific to each lineage by parsimony. We identified 34 human-specific substitutions in 37,636 human, Neanderthal, and chimpanzee aligned positions, including substitutions on chromosomes X and Y that were not considered in subsequent analyses. We also identified 171 sites with Neanderthal-specific substitutions relative to human and chim-panzee.

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It has been shown that nucleotides in genuine ancient DNA are occasionally chemically damaged, most frequently because of the deamination of cytosine to uracil, resulting in the incorpora-tion of incorrect bases during PCR and sequencing. This results in an apparent excess of C-to-T and G-to-A mismatches (which are equivalent events) between the ancient sequence and the modern genomic reference sequence. We observe a significant excess of C-to-T and G-to-A mismatches (relative to T-to-C and A-to-G mismatches) between human and NE1 hominid sequences obtained by both Sanger sequencing and pyrosequencing [P << 0.0005, Fisher). This accounts for the large number of Neanderthal-specific substitutions we observe and further supports the supposition that the hominid sequences are Neanderthal in origin. Despite the bias toward C- to-T and G-to-A events in Neanderthal genomic sequence, the overall frequency of these events is low (~0.37% of all sites), indicating that the vast majority of humanNeanderthal-chimpanzee aligned positions are not likely to be significantly affected by mis-incorporation errors. The length distribution of ancient DNA fragments, when combined with the sequence signatures of ancient DNA described above, offers another metric for assessing the degree of modern human contamination in our library. Based on the assumption that modern contaminating DNA fragments would be longer than authentic ancient DNAs, which is supported by the observation that contaminating modern human DNA fragments in the cave bear libraries were on average much longer than the cave bear sequences (116 versus 69 bp), we examined the distribution of human-Neanderthal mismatches in our data set as a function of alignment length.

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If a substantial fraction of the hominid sequence recovered from the Neanderthal sample were actually modern human DNA, we would expect to see a lower human-Neanderthal sequence divergence in the longer BLASTN alignments than we observe in the entire data set, because the longer hominid sequences would be enriched in modern human contaminants. The excess of damage-induced Neanderthal-specific mismatches described above would also be expected to decrease as alignment length increases, because individual bases in the longer modern human fragments would show relatively few chemical modifications. However, we did not observe these trends in our Neanderthal sequence. The human-Neanderthal sequence divergence in all autosomal alignments greater than 52 bp was similar to the divergence obtained from the whole data set (0.59% versus 0.52%). The excess of C-to-T and G-to-A mismatches was also maintained in the longer alignments. These results further support the supposition that the hominid sequence we obtained is predominantly Neanderthal in origin.

Coalescence time of human and Neander-thal genomic sequences.

This data allowed us to examine for the first time the genetic relationship between humans and Neanderthals using nuclear genomic sequences. We first considered the average coalescence time for the autosomes between the Neanderthal genomic sequence that we obtained and the reference human genome sequence. We observed 502 human-chimpanzee autosomal differences in the human-Neanderthal-chimpanzee sequence alignments we constructed. Based on comparison to the Neanderthal sequence, 27 of these differences were human-specific and therefore postdate the most recent common ancestor (MRCA) of the human and Neanderthal sequences.

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Using this information, our maximum likelihood estimate of the average time to the MRCA of these sequences is 706,000 years, with a 95% confidence interval (CI) of 468,000 to 1,015,000 years. Amount of unique Neanderthal sequence obtained from library NE1 by Sanger sequencing of individual clones, as well as Sanger sequencing and pyrosequencing of clones in batch culture. (N A.,) Individual clones Batch culture Sequencing chemistry Sanger Pyrosequencing Reads 9984 19,200 1,474,910 Average insert 134 bp 196 bp (N A ) Average BLAST hit 52 bp 52 bp 48 bp Unique loci 131 69 1126 Total unique hominid 6845 bp 4103 bp 54,302 bp sequence This calculation does not make use of Neanderthal specific changes, because many of those events are due to DNA damage as described above. In addition, we restricted our analysis to autosomal data, because these represent 97% of our total data set and population genetic parameters are likely to differ between the autosomes and sex chromosomes. Our estimate uses a mutation rate obtained by setting the average coalescence time for human and chimpan-zee autosomes to 6.5 million years ago, a value that falls within the range suggested by recent studies Inaccuracies in the human-chimpanzee divergence time would shift all the time estimates and CIs presented here in proportion to the error.

Split time of ancestral human and Neanderthal populations.

Our estimate of the average common ancestor time reflects the average time at which the Neanderthal and human reference sequences began to diverge

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in the common ancestral population, not the actual split time of the ancestral populations that gave rise to Neanderthals and modern humans. To estimate the actual split time of the ancestral human and Neanderthal populations, we developed a method that incorporated data from the human and Neanderthal reference sequences, as well as genotypes from 210 individuals with genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data collected by the International Hap Map Consortium . We included the HapMap data because they indicate what proportion of sites in the Neanderthal sequence fall within the spectrum of modern human variation. For example, if the ancestral human and Neanderthal populations split long ago, before the rise of most modern human genetic diversity captured by the HapMap data, then Neanderthal sequence would almost never carry the derived allele, relative to the orthologous chimpanzee sequence, for a human SNP. Conversely, a more recent population split would result in Neanderthal sequence frequently carrying the derived allele for human SNPs. To formalize this idea, we considered an explicit population model for the relationship between Nean-derthals and each HapMap population (East Asians, (A) Representation of each Neanderthal chromosome in 43.9 kb amount of Neanderthal sequence aligned to each. Chromosomes X and Y of NE1 hominid sequences displaying a statistically unambiguous best are shown at half their total length to correct for their haploid state in BLAST hit to the human genome, relative to the total sequenced length of males relative to the autosomes. (B) Representation of sequence features each human chromosome minus gaps. Chromosomes are ranked by the in the NE1 hominid sequence shown in (A). (Europeans, and Yoruba) separately.

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We assumed that Neanderthals and modern humans evolved from a single ancestral population of 10,000 individuals and that the Neanderthal population split away from the human ancestral population instan-taneously at a time in the past, with no subsequent gene flow. In order to model the demographic histories of the HapMap populations, we made use of models and parameters estimated by Voight et al. based on re sequencing data from 50 unlinked, noncoding regions. Frequency distribution of 171 Neanderthal-specific substitutions observed in 37,636 bp of aligned human, Neanderthal, and chimpanzee genomic sequence. Complementary substitutions (such as C to T and G to A) are considered equivalent events. . (A) Log-likelihood curve of the time to the MRCA of the Neanderthal and human reference sequences. (B) Smoothed relative log-likelihood estimates of the split times between different human pop-ulations and the Nean-derthal population. (C) Impact of changes in the ancient population size on split time estimates for five models that are consistent with modern polymorphism data. KY, thousand years. Each curve is the smoothed log likelihood relative to the maximum over all five models. For each model, the text on the plot indicates the degree of expan-sion or contraction and the time before the present at which the size change occurred. The expansion models are less likely as compared to either constant population size or the contraction modest bottlenecks for East Asians and Europeans and modest exponential growth for Yoruba. We then constructed a simulation-based composite likelihood framework to estimate the time of the human-Neanderthal population split.

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At each site in the human-Neanderthal-chimpanzee alignments we constructed, we recorded the Neanderthal and human reference alleles relative to chimpanzee. We also determined, separately for each population, whether each site was a HapMap SNP in that population and if so, the allele frequency. We used simulations to estimate the probability of each possible data configuration at a single site as a function of the human-Neanderthal split time. The simulations used the estimated population demography for each HapMap population and a probabilistic model of SNP ascertainment to match the overall density and frequency spectrum of HapMap Phase II SNPs. Likelihood curves for the split time were computed by multiplying likelihoods across sites as though they were independent. In practice, this is an excellent approximation for our data because the Neanderthal sequence reads are very short and just 1 out of 905 aligned fragments contains more than one humanspecific allele or SNP. Bootstrap simulations confirmed that our composite likelihood method yields appropriate CIs for the split time. Using this approach, the maximum likelihood estimates for the split time of the ancestral human and Neanderthal populations are 440,000 years (95% CI of 170,000 to 620,000 years) based on the European data, 390,000 years (170,000 to 670,000 years) for East Asians, and 290,000 years (120,000 to 570,000 years) for Yoruba. (These values predate the earliest known appearance of anatomically modern humans in Africa ~195,000 years ago ). Because these split times are before the migration of modern humans out of Africa, the three populationspecific estimates should all be estimates of the same actual split time. The average of these estimates, ~370,000 years, is thus a sensible point estimate for the split time.

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Substantial contamination with modern human DNA would cause these estimates to be artificially low, but 2% contamination, the rate suggested by mitochondrial PCR analysis of the primary extract used to construct the library, would have essentially no impact . Our estimates of the human-Neanderthal split time might depend heavily on the assumption that the ancestral effective population size of humans was 10,000 individuals. To address this, we explored a set of models in which the ancestral human population expanded or contracted at least 200,000 years ago. We found that much of the parameter space, though not the original model, could be excluded on the basis of modern human polymorphism data from Voight et al.. We repeated our likelihood analysis of the Neanderthal data using models incorporating ancient expansion or contraction that are consistent with modern data and found that these did not substantially change our population split time estimates. Our data include three sites at which Neanderthal carries the derived allele for a polymorphic HapMap SNP. These sites are unlikely to represent modern contamination because for two of the SNPs, the derived allele is found only in Yoruba; also, one of the SNPs lies on a fragment that contains a C-to-T transition in Neanderthals that is characteristic of chemical damage to DNA. These observations indicate that the Neanderthal sequence may often coalesce within the human ancestral tree. Based on simulations of our best-fit model for Yoruba, we estimate that Neanderthal is a true out group for approximately 14% (assuming a split time of 290,000 years, the Yoruba estimate) to 26% (assuming a split time of 440,000 years, the European estimate) of the autosomal genome of modern humans, although more data will be required to achieve a precise estimate.

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Lack of evidence for admixture between humans and Neanderthals.

Because Neanderthals coexisted with modern humans in Europe, there has long been interest in whether Neanderthals might have contributed to the European gene pool. Previous studies comparing human and Neanderthal mitochondrial sequences did not find evidence of a Neanderthal genetic contribution to modern humans. However, the utility of mitochondrial data in addressing this question is limited in that it is restricted to a single locus and, due to the maternal inheritance of mitochondrial DNA, is informative only about admixture between Neanderthal females and modern human males . Moreover, it has been argued that some aspects of modern human autosomal data may be the result of modest levels of Neanderthal admixture. If Neanderthal admixture did indeed occur, then this could manifest in our data as an abundance of low-frequency derived alleles in Europeans where the derived allele matches Neanderthal. No site in the data set appears to be of this type. In order to formally evaluate this hypothesis, we extended our composite likelihood simulations to include a single admixture event 40,000 years ago in which a fraction part of the European gene pool was derived from Neanderthals. We fixed the humanNeanderthal split at 440,000 years ago (the split time estimate for Europeans). With these assumptions, the maximum likelihood estimate for the Neanderthal contribution to modern genetic diversity is zero. However, the 95% CI for this estimate ranges from 0 to 20%, so a definitive answer to the admixture question will require additional Neanderthal sequence data.

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Targeted recovery of specific Neanderthal sequences by direct genomic Selection

. Although we have recovered significant amounts of Neanderthal genome sequence using a metagenomic approach, hundreds of gigabases of sequence would be required to achieve reasonable coverage of a single Neanderthal genome by this method. Moreover, our results indicate that at least 99.5% of the Neanderthal sequence that would be obtained would be identical to the modern human sequence. The human-Neanderthal sequence differences that would yield great insight into human biology and evolution are thus rare events in an overwhelming background of uninformative sequence. We therefore explored the potential of metagenomic libraries to serve as substrates to recover specific Neanderthal sequences of interest by targeted methods. To this end, we developed a direct genomic selection approach to recover known and unknown sequences from metagenomic ancient DNA libraries. We first attempted to recover specific sequences from a Pleistocene cave bear metagenomic library we previously constructed and designed PCR probes corresponding to 96 sequences highly conserved among mammals but not previously shown to be present in the cave bear library. We amplified these sequences from the human genome and hybridized the resulting probes to PCR-amplified cave bear library inserts produced as described above. Recovered library DNAs were amplified by PCR and sequenced. We successfully recovered five targets consisting of a known enhancer of Sox9 and conserved sequences near Tbx3, Shh, Msx2,and Gdf6. In principle, these sequences could be derived from contaminating DNA rather than the cave bear library. Critically, the captured cave bear sequences were flanked by library vector sequence, directly demonstrating that these

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sequences were derived from a cloned library insert and not from contaminating DNA introduced during direct selection. Based on these results, we attempted to recover specific Neanderthal sequences from library NE1. We focused on recovering sequences that we had previously identified by shotgun sequencing because of the low complexity of library NE1, and were able to recover 29 of 35 sequences we targeted. The authenticity of these sequences was confirmed by the presence of library vector sequences in the reads. Our success in recovering both previously unknown cave bear and known Neanderthal genomic sequences using direct genomic selection indicates that this is a feasible strategy for purifying specific cloned Neanderthal sequences out of a high background of Neanderthal and contaminating microbial DNA. This raises the possibility that, should multiple Neanderthal metagenomic libraries be constructed from independent samples, direct selection could be used to recover Neander-thal sequences from several individuals to obtain and confirm important human-specific and Neanderthal specific substitutions.

Conclusions. The current state of our knowledge concerning Neanderthals and their relationship to modern humans is largely inference and speculation based on archaeological data and a limited number of hominid remains. In this study, we have demonstrated that Neanderthal genomic sequences can be recovered using a metagenomic library-based approach and that specific Neanderthal sequences can be obtained from such libraries by direct selection. Our study thus provides a framework for the rapid recovery of Neanderthal sequences of interest from multiple independent specimens, without the need for whole-genome re sequencing.

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Such a collection of targeted Neanderthal sequences would be of immense value for understanding human and Neanderthal biology and evolution. Future Neanderthal genomic studies, including targeted and whole-genome shotgun sequencing, will provide insight into the profound phenotypic divergence of humans both from the great apes and from our extinct hominid relatives, and will allow us to explore aspects of Neanderthal biology not evident from artefacts and fossils. As you can see from the above research all the data provided tends to point to some confusion in its interpretation and this is high risk if taken on board as fact when more research may well be needed, in fact I will go as far to state that it should be on-going and the results published. On saying that I have placed another DNA research project here below. Such research in important but only when it relates directly to the Neanderthals and this Research on the Neanderthals.

Neandertals and Moderns Mixed, and It Matters JOA O ZILHA O

Twenty-.ve years ago, the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition in Europe could be represented as a straightforward process subsuming both the emergence of symbolic behaviour and the replacement of Neandertals by modern humans. The Aurignacian was a proxy for the latter, during which enhanced cognitive capabilities explained ornaments and art. The few instances of Neanderthal symbolism were deemed too long postdate contact and dismissed as imitation without understanding, if not geological contamination.

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Such views were strengthened by the recent finding that, in southern Africa, several features of the European Upper Paleolithic, including bone tools, ornaments, and microliths, emerged much earlier. Coupled with genetic suggestions of a recent African origin for extant humans, fossil discoveries bridging the transition between archaic and moderns in the realm of anatomy seemingly closed the case. Over the last decade, however, taphonomic critiques of the archaeology of the transition have made it clear that, in Europe, fully symbolic sapiens behaviour predates both the Aurignacian and moderns. And, in line with evidence from the nuclear genome rejecting strict replacement models based on mtDNA alone, the small number of early modern specimens that passed the test of direct dating present archaic features unknown in the African lineage, suggesting admixture at the time of contact. In the realm of culture, the archaeological evidence also supports a Neanderthal contribution to Europes earliest modern human societies, which feature personal ornaments completely unknown before immigration and are characteristic of such Neanderthal-associated archaeological entities as the Cha telperronian and the Uluzzian. The chronometric data suggest that, north of the Ebro divide, the entire interaction process may have been resolved within the millennium centred around 42,000 calendar years ago. Such a rapid absorption of the Neandertals is consistent with the size imbalance between the two gene reservoirs and further supports signi.cant levels of admixture. This review uses a calibrated time production rendered calibration imscale. Suggestions that spikes in 14C possible in the period of the Middle-toUpper Paleolithic transition in Europe1,2 are now superseded, and the different calibration tools available.

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The notion that the patterns of variability in extant humans mtDNA indi-Key words: Neandertals, modern humans, orna-cate a recent African ancestry has Cha telperronian, Aurignacian been central to complete replacement models of modern human origins however, does not represent the full history of a population, much less that of an entire species and, when the nuclear genome is considered, the picture changes. For instance, a unique pattern of nucleotide polymor-phism is now known that roots in East Asia and has an estimated time of co-alescence of ca. 2 Myr.11 If such ancient, non-African parts of the human genome are still extant, the implica-tion is that the early Upper Pleisto-cene expansion of modern humans in-volved some level of admixture with contemporary archaic groups. Based on a standard phylogeo-graphic technique, the multilocus nested-clade analysis, the most recent review of the evidence from 25 non-recombining parts of the human genome9,10 concludes that ever since the Out-of-Africa event ca. at 1.5 Myr ago, human evolution has been characterized by a gene . with isolation by distance, and that the complete re-placement model is rejected with a P-value of <10-17. This study, however, does not exclude the possibility that total replacement occurred in restricted areas; conceivably, the Neandertals, in particular, could well have become extinct without descent even if, at a global scale, the general pattern was one of admixture or hybridization. The fact that the mtDNA ex-tracted from many Neanderthal fossils over the last decade has revealed polymorphisms unknown among todays humans and undetected in early modern European1214 has been used to support precisely such notions of the Neandertals fundamental separate-ness from the human tree. However, because of several unresolved technical and methodological problems, such DNA studies must be taken with great caution.

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For instance, DNA degrades with time, a process that can generate mutational artefacts. The production of such artefacts in the extraction chain has also been observed in controlled experi-ments; some loci in particular seem to be repeatedly, non-randomly affected, and among them are those where Neanderthal divergence has been ob-served.15,16 Contamination is another unresolved issue, particularly where the a DNA of early moderns is concerned. As Paabo pointed out, Cro-Magnon DNA is so similar to modern human DNA that there is no way to say whether what has been seen is real. Thus, failure to identify Neanderthal mtDNA in a given early modern hu-man fossil may simply result from the fact that the extracted DNA is entirely modern contamination, not from the fact that no Neanderthal mtDNA originally existed in that specimen. When such a failure occurs with material that, on paleontological grounds, is clearly Neanderthal, current criteria of authentication dictate rejection of the results, not the conclusion that the material belonged to a genetically modern Neanderthal. The logical implications are, .first, that early modern DNA data cannot at present be considered and, second, that current perceptions of Neanderthal aDNA variability may well be constrained. Given these problems, it is clear that the current framework of aDNA research is inherently biased against admixture, which makes it all the more signi.cant that the combined fossil and extant genetic evidence is consis-tent with levels of Neanderthal contribution to Europes earliest modern humans as high as 73.8%.14,2023 A re-cent simulation study suggests that such levels must have been negligible if not nil (at most, 0.1%),24 but this conclusion is already contained in the anthropologically premises of the tested admixture model.25 Genetics, therefore, does not reject Neanderthal-modern admixture.

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But is there any positive evidence that it oc-curred? Arguably, that is exactly what the most recent developments in the field of human palaeontology suggest. Over the last few years, direct dating of the remains has demonstrated that the large majority of Europes purported early modern human data were instead of Holocene age. Their marked morphological modernity and contrast with even such late Neandertals as Saint-Cesaire supported suggestions of major physical anthropological discontinuity and hence, complete population replacement at the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition. The illusory nature of such a contrast is now apparent. Moreover, the data forecast shows that it sufficiently complete to be taxonomically diagnostic and, in the process of that determination were shown to date to within a few millennia of the time of contact, feature a diverse array of anatomically archaic, often specially Neanderthal traits unknown in the Middle and early Upper Pleistocene of Africa. These fossils .nds are Oase (Roma-nia), Mladec. (Czech Republic) and Lagar Velho (Portugal), the latter being of relevance here despite its significantly later chronology, because Neandertals survived in Iberia for much longer than elsewhere in Europe. Where the Mladec. crania are concerned, the existence of traits such as prominent occipital buns, broad inter-orbital breadths, and juxtamastoid eminences is well known. In the Lagar Velho child skeleton the list includes, among others, a low crural index and arctic body proportions, a retreating symphyseal prole, and the presence of a suprainiac fossa. In the Oase fossils, the list includes lingual bridging of the mandibular foramen, a parietal/frontal curvature fully in the Neanderthal range, and third molars that display a complex cusp morphology, are larger than the second molars, and more than two standard deviations above the average for the Middle Pleistocene.

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Since these features relate to aspects of skeletal morphology that are not susceptible to change during the ontogenetic cycle, they must resect inheritance, the persistence in these overall modern individuals of genes transmitted by archaic ancestorsin Europe, the Neandertals. Although this proposition initially faced a certain level of inevitable scepticism, the body of data and arguments subsequently brought to support it remain unchallenged. In sum, nothing in the genetic and fossil evidence reviewed here suggests the existence of fundamental biological barriers preventing fruitful interaction between Neandertals and moderns at the time of contact. At least, most now agree that the issue should be approached with no pre-conceptions, and that it is up to the empirical record to decide whether such admixture actually occurred. How can archaeology contribute to this debate? Because the transmission of cultural traits follows different rules (it depends on human volition, not natural selection), detecting a biological contribution from the Neandertals to later populations does not necessarily entail that an equivalent signature must exist in the realm of culture. However, if such a signature is found to exist, then the case for admixture is strengthened. Throughout the 1990s, any assessment of this issue was bound to be controversial because there was no consensus on the chronology of the archaeological entities providing a cultural background for the relevant human fossils. CULTURES The Oase fossils are of particular importance in this context because, at ca. 40.5 kyr calBP, they are Europes oldest modern human remains and likely represent the first such people to enter the continent.

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Under a model of admixture, the notion that the Oase people are very close to the time of contact is consistent with their ar-chaic traits, and .nds additional support in the patterns of spatio-temporal distribution of the latest Neanderthal remains. In fact, nowhere north of the Ebro divide, from El Sidron, Spain, in the west to Lakonis, Greece, in the east, do Neandertal remains or cultural manifestations that can be securely associated with them, such as the Chatelperronian of France, the Uluzzian of Italy, or the Micoquian of Germany, postdate the 42nd millennium calBP. The two putative exceptions are no more. That the ca. 29-28 kyr 14Cbp results for the Neanderthal material in level G1 of Vindija could only be minimum ages has now been vindicated by reanalysis of the samples. This gives further credence to the notion that the ca. 29 kyr 14Cbp result for the Mezmaiskaya cave infant must also be a vast underestimation of its true age; this burial, in fact, was covered by intact Mousterian deposits with multiple reliable dates in excess of 36 kyr 14Cbp. The notion that the Chatelperronian and the Uluzzian survived for many millennia after moderns are first recorded in Europe was based, in turn, on the radiocarbon dating of bone samples having a geological context and chemical characteristics that indicated incomplete decontamination. The impact of such factors on the chronology of samples from this period is now widely accepted. Radiocarbon results for the Klisoura 1 cave in Greece place the Uluz-zian at ca. 44 kyr calBP. Because the transmission of cultural traits follows different rules (it depends on human volition, not natural selection), detecting a biological contribution from the Neandertals to later populations does not necessarily entail that an equivalent signature must exist in the realm of culture.

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However, if such a signature is found to exist, then the case for admixture is strengthened. cave sites the Uluzzian stratigraphic ally underlies a regionwide chronos-tratigraphic marker, the Campanian Ignimbrite, consistently dated by 39A/ 40A to ca. 39 kyr calBP, and is further separated from that marker by Aurignacian levels or by levels with a mix of Uluzzian and Aurignacian material. Where the Chatelperronian is concerned, all accelerator mass spectrometry results recently obtained for the sites of Brassempouy, Caune de Belvis, Grotte XVI, La Quina, Roc-de-Combe and Chatelperron, place it before ca. 42 kyr calBP. In the light of these results, it is clear that the key site of the Grotte du Renne can be no exception . Moreover, the notion that a very late Chatelperronian would be demonstrated by the pat-terns of interstrati.cation observed at El Pendo, Roc-de-Combe, Le Piage, and Chatelperron is now all but abandoned. Careful geological and taphonomic analysis of these sites, coupled with some re-excavation, showed that the El Pendo sequence is entirely re-deposited; that the putative Chatelperronian lens sandwiched between Aurignacian deposits at Le Piage is in fact a mixed deposit in secondary position; and that excavation error and faulty intra site correlations lay behind the Roc-deCombe pattern. At Chatelperron itself, the study of the museum collections and associated documentation shows that the Chatelperronian levels putatively situated above a lens of Aurignacian material are no more than back dirt from the nineteenth-century excavations. In western Europe, the Chatelperronian and the Uluzzian are followed by the Aurignacian, associated with diag-nostic modern human remains at La Quina and Les Rois.

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The features of the lithic and bone assemblages and the radiocarbon dates obtained for the La Quina sequence indicate that these remains can be no older than ca. 38 kyr calBP. The dental material from the Aurignacian of Brassem-pouy, dated to ca. 37 kyr calBP, is also of modern human, although the issue remains controversial. On the basis of cultural continuity, it is in any case reasonable to assume that the same people who manufactured the Aurignacian ca. 38-37 kyr calBP were also responsible for earlier manifestations of the techno complex. This inference is certainly consistent with the fact that the Oase .nds place people of overall modern anatomy in Europe during the earlier part of the Aurignacian, and with the traditional view of the latter as a long-lasting archaeological entity united by strong elements of cultural continuity. New excavations and in-depth technological studies have now vindicated this view and the validity of the tripar-tite Aurignacian I, II, and IIIIV succession.

Among the sites that yielded Chatelperronian ornaments, the Grotte du Renne stands out. Following recognition that the human remains from the corresponding levels were of Neandertals, it was suggested that the ornaments re-ected trade with or scavenging from abandoned sites of contemporary Aurignacian modern humans, if not simply intrusion from an overlying Aurignacian level. Because most ornaments come from basal level X, not from level VIII, which is in direct contact with the Aurignacian, these interpretations are inconsistent with the stratigraphic distribution of the .nds and with the manufacture by products indicative of the in-situ production of ornaments, bone tools, and decorated bird bone tubes. Moreover, the often-quoted ca. 32-33 kyr 14Cbp dates are clearly rejuvenated.

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As indicated by the discrepancy between results for outside and inside areas of the same levels at Fumane (Italy) and Sesselfels (Germany), the cause is bone digenesis after occupation, when collapse of the roof transformed the Rennes inhabited cave porch into an open air site. The ca. 43 kyr calBP result for level Xb is consistent with the chronology of the Cha telperronian elsewhere in France and provides the most reliable indicator of its age here. Recent developments have strength-ened the view that we are not dealing with an epigonical Aurignacian-impacted phenomenon restricted to a peripheral region inhabited by residual Neanderthal survivors. The notion that incomplete decontamination systematically rejuvenates bone samples from this time range, especially in the examples given, is now accepted even by those who most vocally opposed it. Study of the human teeth confirmed their Neanderthal affinities. Publication of the lithic assem-blages yielded quantitative data that greatly strengthen the inconsistency of the hypothesis that the ornaments are intrusive. The conclusion that these pierced and grooved teeth, bones, and fossils stand for the emergence of symbolic behaviour among Neandertals before modern human immigration is further supported by similar .nds from Quinc ay,where contamination from later occupations can be completely excluded because none exists. Vertical Distribution of the Archaeological Finds in the Grotte du Renne. Neanderthal. Level Culture Lithics % Ornaments % Bone Awls % Teeth % VII VIII IX X Aurignacian Chatelperronian 11,901 8763 11,856 62,684 12.50 9.20 12.45 65.84 7 4 4 25 17.50 10.00 10.00 62.50 8 4 5 36 15.09 7.55 9.43 67.92 1 3 25 3.45 10.34 86.21 thus giving a Total of

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95,204 40 53 29 This work has also made it clear that the so-called Proto Aurignacian, characterized by large numbers of Font-Yves points and Dufour blade-lets of the long, slender Dufour sub-type, both made on blanks extracted from unidirectional prismatic cores in the framework of a single, continuous reduction sequence , previ-ously considered to be a Mediterranean variant of the classical Aurignacian, is instead a chronological phase. The recent re-excavation of the key cave site of Isturitz and the revision of the stratigraphy of Le Pi-age show that, in France, as in Italy or Spain, this Proto Aurignacian stratigraphic ally precedes the Aurignacian I with splitbased bone points and carinated scrapers. These developments, combined with detailed critiques of the available corpus of radiocarbon results, eliminated the apparent discrepancy between stratigraphic and chronometric patterns: At ca. 42-41 kyr calBP , the Proto-Aurignacian postdates the Chatelperronian and the Uluzzian. The Aurig-nacian I is nowhere earlier than ca. 40.5 kyr calBP. Suggestions that at least some Aurignacian occurrences could actually predate the Neanderthal-associated early Upper Paleolithic cultures of Europe are based on four sites only. At Chatelperron, the claim is that spit B4 of Delportes 1950s excavations places the Aurignacian beyond 43 kyr calBP. However, that level contained both Chatelperronian and Aurignacian material and yielded two dates, ca. 41 and ca. 44 kyr calBP. The only reasonable interpretation of this evidence is that the earlier relates to the Chatelperronian component and the later to the Aurignacian one. At Willendorf II, Austria, the evidence comes from level 3, which yielded a small assemblage of artefacts in secondary position sitting on an eroded surface that yielded selected charcoal dated to ca. 43 kyr calBP.

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However, as recently acknowledged by the sites researchers, dating small charcoal fragments dispersed in soli.ucted layers must be avoided because of the lateral supply of older charcoal fragments. Such a supply clearly explains the anomalous results, which simply provide a terminus post quem for the Lithics, the af.nities of which lie with the Aurignacian I. A related situation exists at Keilberg-Kirche, Germany, where most .nds come from surface collections and displaced deposits. The mixed lithic assemblage contains Middle Paleolithic and early Upper Paleolithic items (blattspitzen). The charcoal dated to ca. 43 kyr calBP likely relates to one of these components, as further indicated by the fact that the Aurignacian diagnostics are carinated burins characteristic of the Evolved Aurignacian (II-IV), every-where else dated to <ca. 37.5 kyr calBP. Where the Geissenklosterle is concerned, the controversies2,40 surrounding the denition and age of its lower Aurignacian level are now settled, with all parties involved agreeing that the level dates to ca. 40.5 kyr calBP, in good accord with the Au-rignacian I af.nities of the Lithics. A recent proposition is that the pre-Aurignacian Upper Paleolithic entities of central and eastern Europe, such as the Bachokirian of Bulgaria or the Bohunician of Moravia and Poland, which are dated to the ca. 44-42 kyr calBP interval, represent a precocious extension of the modern human range into the Danubian basin. This scenario is based on perceived similarities with a Levantine entity, the Emirian or Initial Upper Paleo-lithic (IUP), assumed to be a product of modern human culture. The assumption is reasonable, but the link with the Danube is extremely weak. It rests on the observation that Levallois blade production is unknown in Moravia before the Bohunician, and that the latters reduction

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strategy of aiming at the extraction of morpho-logically Levallois points via non-Le-vallois prismatic methods is akin to that in the basal levels of Boker Tachtit, Israel. These arguments assume that the technological transition observed at Boker Tachtit is a unique event, but the independent emergence and disappearance of prismatic blade technologies is recorded at different moments in time and space over the last 200,000 years. Moreover, the diffusion of technologies can occur with no migration being involved. In fact, the apparently intrusive nature of the Bohunician in Moravia simply rejects the large time gap currently separating it from the local Micoquian. In nearby southern Poland, the sites of Piekary IIa and Ksiecia Jozefa document the in-situ development of volumetric Upper Paleolithic methods of blade debitage out of Levallois .

. The latest evidence of Neandertals north of the Ebro divide and the IUP Bohunician hypothesis of a Danubian wedge of modern human settlement ca. 45 ka calBP. The cultural continuity between the Bohunician and the regional Middle Paleolithic contradicts the hypothesis, but the issue remains open due to the lack of associated human remains. Parsimony dictates that there is no need to look into the Middle East for the source of the Bohunician if a better local alternative is available. Given the lack of associated human remains, the authorship of the Bohunician must remain an open issue, but the evidence for cultural continuity with the regional Middle Paleolithic suggests that it relates to Neandertals

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. The same reasoning pertains to the Bachokirian of Bulgaria. Although aspects of size, shape, and crown morphology align the dental material from the type-site with modern humans, this conclusion only applies to the Aurignacian levels, the single human remain from the Bachokirian ones being a taxonomically un-diagnostic left mandibular fragment with deciduous 1.rst molar. Moreover, the recent review of the relevant collections fully confirmed previous reservations concerning the diagnosis of the relevant assemblages from Bacho Kiro and Temnata as Aurignacian or preAurignacian. In fact, technologically, these are Middle Paleolithic assemblages where, in contrast with the IUP and the Bohunician, blade production is fully within the Levallois concept. This evidence indicates that Europe remained entirely a Neanderthal continent until ca. 43 kyr calBP and that, south western Iberia excluded contact was established and subsequent interaction was resolved within the one or two millennia centred around 42 kyr cal B .,broadly coinciding with the onset of Greenland Interstadial (GIS). In terms of archaeological entities, these conclusions have two corollaries of crucial importance: 1. Any manifestations of human behaviour predating the 43rd millennium BP must be attributed to Neandertals, who were therefore the authors of the Chatelperronian, the Uluzzian, the Bohunician, and equivalent early Upper Paleolithic cultures of Europe dis-playing features of regional continuity with the preceding Middle Paleolithic.

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2. Any manifestations of human behaviour postdating the 41st millennium BP must be attributed to modern humans, who were therefore the authors of the Aurignacian I and the Aurigna-cian II, including at Vindija, where level G1 is a palimpsest covering an extended interval of time. The Neanderthal remains are in all likelihood associated with that levels Szeletian material, not with the split-based point also found there. INTERACTION Given the preceding, ambiguity is now restricted to the particular archaeological entity that available dates place in the exact interval during which, by whatever mechanism, Ne-andertals were replaced by modern humans, the Proto Aurignacian. In fact, depending on potentially regionally variable patterns of interbreeding (extensive, negligible, or non-existent), manifestations of human behaviour from the time of contact may relate to modern humans, Neandertals, or variously mixed populations. That the dispersal of modern humans into Europe is clearly involved in the emergence of the ProtoAurignacian, is suggested by several lines of evidence: 1. Technologically and typologi-cally, the ProtoAurignacian is virtually indistinguishable from the Early Ah-marian of the Levant. Its Font-Yves points, for instance, are exactly the same thing as the latters El-Wad points. 2. Chronologically, the two entities are broadly contemporary. At Ksar Akil, in Lebanon, the Early Ahmarian is undated but lies between the Aurignacian and the IUP; U cag.izli, in southern Turkey, provides a solid chronological framework for the IUP66 and thus, indirectly, a terminus post quem of ca. 4341 kyr calBP for the Early Ahmarian that is consistent with the single reliable date for Kebara (ca. 40.5 kyr calBP, on hearth charcoal).

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3. The now lost juvenile skeleton from the Early Ahmarian of Ksar Akil (Egbert) is modern and, given the preceding, of the same age as the Oase fossils. 4. In marked contrast with the geographical fragmentation of the immediately preceding Neandertal-associated techno complexes, the ProtoAurignacian extends uniformly across Europe, from Romania (Trinova) and Austria (Krems-Hundsteig) in the east to Cantabrian Spain (Morin) in the west. A further point of cultural similarity resides in the fact that the two entities feature marine shell beads as orna-ments. One species in particular, Nassarius ( Arcularia) gibbosula, represents 40% of all beads in the Early Ahmarian of Ksar Akil and is also well represented among ProtoAurignacian marine shell ornaments; the latters range of taxa is broader, but all are of pretty much the same size and shape. Nassarius beads are also about 90% of the several hundred ornaments now known from the IUP of U cag.izli, suggesting cultural continuity between the two. In fact, the earliest African ornaments, those from the ca. 75,000-year-old Still Bay levels of Blombos, are marine shell beads. Since the single species used, Nassarius kraussianus, is very similar to Nassarius gibbosula, it is not unreasonable to speculate that the IUP, the Early Ahmarian, and the ProtoAurignacian are lithic technological expressions of a single deeply rooted cultural tradition extending all the way back into the Middle Stone Age of southern Africa and, therefore, modern human-related. Such speculations are in any case fully consistent with the evidence of the long-term stability of traditions of personal ornamentation, which, throughout

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the Upper Paleolithic, often remain unchanged for tens of millennia.70 Both the ProtoAurignacian and the subsequent Aurignacian I however, also have other types of personal ornaments, ones that are as completely unknown in the Early Ahmarian and the IUP of the Levant as in the Middle Stone Age of Africa, which, besides the perforated Nassarius, only contains ostrich eggshell beads. The novelties are Dentalium tubes, pierced and grooved animal teeth, and beads made of bone, ivory, soft stone, or fossils. Their absence from any modern human cultural complex of preceding times obviously cannot be attributed to raw-material availability, and can only relate to cultural preference. It is thus of great significance that those ProtoAurignacian novelties correspond precisely to the only kinds of personal ornaments recorded in the Bachokirian, the Uluzzian, and the Chatelperronian; that is, to the kinds of personal ornaments in use among the Neanderthal societies that immigrating modern humans encountered in Europe. The conclusion that the ProtoAurignacian represents the blending of two separate traditions of personal ornamentation thus seems inescapable. In any other archaeological or anthropological context, few would question it. Clearly, the alternative view that, after 30,000 years of total and absolute conservatism, moderns would have suddenly decided to adopt such kinds of ornaments at precisely the time of contact with the Neandertals, but in-dependently of any influence from them, amounts to a virtually impossible coincidence. COGNITION A corollary of the chronological patterns I have reviewed is that fully symbolic sapiens behaviour, as measured by exactly the same standards currently used to assess the African evidence, emerged in Europe when the continent

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was still exclusively inhabited by Neandertals. Many have attempted to suggest specially modern human behaviour as opposed to a specially Neanderthal behaviour, and all have met with a similar result: No such evidence exists that does not end up with data that some modern humans as behaviourally Neanderthal and some Neanderthal groups as behaviourally modern. In the realm of subsistence, for in-stance, early OIS-3 Neandertals were logistically organized hunters at Sal-zgitter-Lebenstedt, in northern Ger-many, where they exploited reindeer in exactly the same manner as the Ahrensbourgians who recolonized the area 40,000 years later. In the Le-vant, however, they had a broad-spectrum economy, including signi.cant . Many have attempted to de.ne a specially modern human behaviour as opposed to a specially Neanderthal behaviour, and all have met with a similar result: No such de.nition exists that does not end up de.ning some modern humans as behaviourally Neanderthal and some Neanderthal groups as behaviourally modern. Exploitation of small mammals and plant foods, as revealed by recent studies of phytoliths and macro plant remains from Kebara, Amud, and Tor Faraj. In areas of the Iberian Peninsula where the present-day coastline is sufficiently close to theirs, such as the Bay of Malaga, late OIS-3 Neanderthal groups left sites featuring shell-midden accumulations that differ from those of the Late Upper Paleo-lithic and Mesolithic only in that their lithic component is Mousterian. In sum, Neanderthal adaptations ranged through the entire gamut of ethno-graphically documented settlement-subsistence strategies. There is no such thing as Neanderthal behaviour.

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It has been argued that modern cognition depended on the acquisition of enhanced working memory (EWM), a cognitive feature associated with the emergence of language and related to the ability to hold in mind representations currently not held in view. This feature is apparent in paleotechnic systems reacting remote action and contingency planning, such as the production of artificial raw materials requiring procurement in disparate sources and careful control of chemical variables throughout a complex chain of technical operations. Although the proponents of this view claim that such evidence does not ap-pear in the archaeological record until about 5,000 years ago, the birchbark pitch found in the Micoquian site of Konigsaue, in Germany, fully matches their requirements for EWM in the archaeological record: It was produced through a several-hour smouldering process that required a strict manufacture protocol under exclusion of oxygen and at a tightly controlled temperature between 340C and 400C.80. One can hardly imagine how such Pleistocene high-tech could have been developed, transmitted, and maintained in the absence of symbolic thinking and language as we know them. In a nutshell, when only technological systems are considered, the hallmark of cognitive modernity is documented among Neandertals 40,000 years before comparable examples are offered by modern human societies. In this regard, one must also note that the widespread notion that the first modern humans in Europe were in fact astonishingly precocious artists mis-represents the facts. After 150 years of intensive archaeological research, evidence to that effect is actually non-existent. Where both mobiliary and parietal art are concerned, the earliest anywhere in the world are the .gurines of the German

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Aurigna-cian82 and the Chauvet cave paint-ings. In good agreement with the nature of the associated lithics, the range of dates falls, in both cases, entirely within the Aurignacian II and thus postdates by some 5,000 years the arrival of moderns in Europe. This art, therefore, holds the same relevance for the explanation of patterns of cultural interaction at the time of Neanderthal-modern human contact as do PowerPoint presentations for the explanation of the rise of Sumerian civilization. DEMOGRAPHY Even if a certain level of long-distance stimulus generated by contacts along the frontier with contemporary, presumably modern human societies of the Levant was involved in these processes, the conclusion is obvious: Neandertals and moderns featured similar levels of cognitive development and behavioural modernity. Such issues can thus be effectively re-moved from any further consideration as potential barriers to admixture. But if the eventual disappearance of anatomically archaic but behaviourally modern Neandertals was not due to a putative biologically based competitive disadvantage, how do we then explain it? That no Neanderthal mtDNA survives today simply indicates that a particular maternal lineage that existed 50,000 years ago is no more, but tells us little about when and why it disappeared. In fact, given that founder analysis places the actual immigration of the most ancient European groups of today only after 30 kyr calBP,84 accepting the premises and conclusions of extant mtDNA studies carries the implication that the lineages to which the earliest European moderns belonged are as extinct as the Neandertals.

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That this may well be the case should come as no surprise. Although much attention has been paid to the environmental impact of the frequent and dramatic climatic oscillations recorded in the climate proxies of Oxygen Isotope Stage 3 (OIS-3), their demographic corollaries are often overlooked. Most assessments of mtDNA histories through the critical period before and after the time of contact only consider two population scenarios, stability and expansion. It is clear, however, that contractions must also have occurred, producing bottlenecks that must go a long way toward explaining patterns of lineage loss and survival. A case in point with major implications for the issues at stake here is the environmental crisis associated with the emergence of the Aurignacian I in the archaeological record, soon after moderns are .first documented in Europe . At this timeHeinrich Event 4, ca. 40-39 kyr calBPextremely cold conditions prevailed, imposing on human populations the highest level of climatic stress recorded in the entire Upper Pleistocene. Its effects must have been compounded by the catastrophic explosion, ca. kyr calBP, of the Phlegraean Fields caldera. As a result, the area available for human settlement in Europe must have contracted by as much as 30%, implying a major population crash. No modelling of the genetic history of OIS-3 Europe and of the role that Neandertals played in it can be considered realistic if it does not account for a demographic crisis of such significance. The population crash, however, does not explain why it was those particular lineages that went extinct, whereas others that existed at the same time in Africa and western Asia are still extant; nor does it explain why the biological contribution of Neandertals, still visible in skeletal traits of people dated to within 5,000 years of contact, seemingly all but vanished by ca. 30 kyr calBP.

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Selection and contingency may well have played a role in the process, but the most parsimo-nious explanation is demography, which suffices to propose a broad his-torical reconstruction of the process. Europe is one-third of Africas size, and during glacial times only a narrow belt of the continent south of 53 N was available for settlement, the loss to mountain glaciation compensated for by the exposure of extended areas of the present-day continental platform. Moreover, as in todays subarctic areas, European territories would have had lower carrying capacities than the subtropical savannahs of Africa, with attendant implications for human population density. In sum, because modern humans were African and Neandertals European, the modern human gene reservoir must have been many times larger than the Neanderthal one. As long as the two reservoirs remained largely isolated, Neanderthalensis could be and was maintained. But once populations expanded in the two continents as a result of technological im-provements that led to major gains in the inefficiency of resource exploitation, signi.cant contact and interaction would have begun along what previously had been a largely impermeable frontier. At that time, the two reservoirs effectively merged. In such a situation, even a minor edge of moderns in demographic parameters other than simple numbers, such as fertility, would, in less than one millennium, suffice to bring about the demise of the Neandertals, especially if inter-breeding was common. One millennium is the empirically observed interval during which the interaction game was resolved. As different authors have discussed the technic innovations is best explained by population growth requiring increased levels of inter-group and intragroup social interaction eventually resulting in the emergence of systems of personal

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and ethnic identification. The ornaments from Blombos show the mechanism in action in southern Africa ca. 75 kyr ago. The lack of evidence for the next 30,000 years suggests that the system may have subsequently collapsed, but by 45,000 calBP we see it again in eastern Africa as well as, for the first time, in the Near East and Europe. The marked differences in the choice of emblems and the biological evidence of reduced contact between Europe and Africa provided by the very fact of Neanderthalensis suggest that the European process was largely independent, and there is no reason to suppose that it was not dictated by similar underlying causes. In fact, vast areas deserted during OIS-4 times, including southern England, Belgium, Germany, and Poland, feature a relatively dense network of OIS-3 sites that, in central Europe, are clearly related to each other by a shared, very particular technology, the Micoquian. This simultaneous emergence or re-emergence of personal ornamentation can thus be taken as a proxy for levels of population increase leading to the crossing of a demographic threshold and precipitating contact, followed by admixture and, eventually, absorption of the smaller population by the larger one. CONCLUSION When modern humans entered Europe, they encountered people with the same cognitive capabilities and featuring identical levels of cultural achievement. In such a situation, the entire gamut of interaction situations, from contact to mutual avoidance and full admixture, must have ensued at the local and regional level. But the overall result in the long-term continental perspective was that of biological and cultural blending, the imbalance in the size of the gene reservoirs involved explaining the eventual loss of Neanderthal mtDNA lineages among later and extant humans.

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It could be argued that such losses are of little or no consequence to the heart of the matter, in that they do not change the basic conclusions derived from genetic studies that a contribution of Neandertals to present Europeans is currently undetectable and, therefore, must be negligible, and that patterns of extant humans ancestry are essentially related to the recent Out-of-Africa dispersal of anatomically modern people. The European evidence, however, does have a major implication for studies of modern human origins where issues of symbolism, language, and cognition are concerned. The Blombos cave .nds effectively refuted the notion that the appearance of ornaments and art could be explained by cognitive developments precipitated by a genetic mutation occurring ca. 50 kyr calBP. By the same token, if Neanderthal-associated archaeological cultures featuring all elements of behavioural modernity existed in Europe many millennia before the arrival of modern humans, and if contact entailed significant levels of interaction and admixture, then the acquisition of fully sapiens behaviour cannot be construed as the outcome of an genetic bio cultural process restricted to the African Homo heidelbergensis lineage. The ultimate implication of the European evidence, thus, is that the hardware requirements for symbolic thinking must have been in place before the Middle Pleistocene divergence of the Neanderthal lineage. This conclusion has three corollaries: .first, that the much later appearance of personal ornaments and art represents a qualitative leap in culture, the operation of demographic and social factors triggered by technological improvements and adaptive success; second, that it is highly unlikely that the Neanderthal-sapiens split involved differentiation at the bio-species level; and third, that the search for the genetic and cognitive processes underly-ing the emergence of language and symbolism in the human lineage needs to be refocused on aspects of the

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Lower Pleistocene emergence and evolution of Homo erectus people.

It is easy to see that the above research is more in depth than the first example and as far as I am concerned accurate and presents the evidence well. Below I have placed some of the mentioned artefacts for reference linked to the second part of the example research above.

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Note the small shells used for decoration.

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I am not concerned that I have not been able to include all the photographic material connected to the Neanderthals of Europe because not only would it take up many page spaces but there is always the risk that some of the photographic data may be wrong. I have therefore included only a small selection that I feel is more related to this research of mine.

Skull from France

Tools from France

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A TABLE FOR GUIDENCE NEANDERTHAL MAN.

THE KNOWN BONES OF THE NEANDERTHALS. This of course includes skulls and at times locations but as an end to my research I needed to include many of the graphics for comparison and reference. Where possible I have left a comment on a graphic that I feel is important and interesting for the reader to follow up on as desired. My thanks here for all the people who helped with the research and also made constructive comments.

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BONES AND MORE BONES.

Fossil Hominids from Kenya dating 1 and 2 million years ago H. habilis, H.erectus (Early) and robust Paranthropus. The above is from Africa and is shown just for reference to the shapes of skulls and bones from there. It is not possible that what we see above and what we know of the Neanderthals in Europe that Neanderthals were ever in Africa as such, the close locations would be Turkey and Iraq then north into Europe.

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Found in the Arago cave in France and dated at 400,000 years old. The fragments are made up of front of a skull, two lower jaws and a left hip bone.

This skull is from Steinheim in Germany and shows a very prominent brow ridge. However I need to point out that this skull is small if I compare it with other Neanderthal skulls. The sunken cheek is I am sure of, is due to distortion and not a natural feature but damage during the fossilization process.

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The Saccopastore skull from Italy. 120,000 years old. Small brain.

Petralona skull Greece 300,000 years. Looks like a Neanderthal.

The skull at the back however H.erectus.

The Saint-Cesaire skeleton in a rock shelter. France.

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From the French sites of La Chapelle-aux Saints.

Gibraltar

Croatia

Two female Neanderthal skulls is from Krapina in Croatia and on left is the Gibraltar skull. The data is in the research file above.

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St. Cesaire French skull. 36,0000 years Neanderthal hand

Modern human pelvis

Neanderthal pelvis

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As many of the remains of the Neanderthals are found in caves, sometimes at a depth of a metre or more, the bones may be just a heap all thrown together or in some cases laid out as in a ritual form though may not in fact be this. What is also needed is consideration of bones being brought to a cave by wild animals of the time, carnivores of all types, and a skull or bone found on its own points directly to this possibility. Damage to Neanderthal remains may be post mortem and therefore care needs to be taken in interpretation of damage to bones or skull. Mistakes are and can be made when bones are recovered and show damage and this includes missing bones. All bones found should be examined closely before and after cleaning otherwise good evidence can be lost. Any soil or mud around and on the remains should also be checked for pollen grains and insect casings as well. The person who examines the bones and skulls must be confident in his or her identification of Neanderthal bones because this would beyond the scope

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of a student or archaeology field worker unless they have had training in such.

Skull major points modern human.

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The above is a guide what you should be looking for either in part or a full Skeleton. A little or fragments of bones is much better than none at all. Bone disease must also be looked for and this is more than likely in the case of the Neanderthals but again I should stress needs to come under the scope of someone with good Osteology knowledge and practice. Fractures may also be present and if before death and the victim lived then there should be evidence of bone hardening at where the fracture took place and more so with the long bones. Such fractures therefore could be the result of falls and tumbles onto a hard surface, a large animal attack like a bear or other large carnivore, fights between groups, or a type of brittle bone disease. All the evidence gathered from bones can then be logged and filed for later reference.

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To finish of this research I have placed here suggested timelines by others .

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THE READING LIST AND RESEARCH BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR THIS RESEARCH. 2012 In Search Of The Neanderthals; Stringer and Gamble. Collins Archaeology Dictionary. Archaeology; Renfrew and Bahn. Origins Reconsidered; Leakey and Lewin. The Human Past, Thames and Hudson publishers. Open University Library. Study of Man; J.Z Young. Mismeasurement Of Man; Gold. Wisdom Of Bones; Walker and Shipman. OTHER READING RESEARCH SOURCES. Biblical Archaeology. K.Kris Hirst, Archaeology on line. World Atlas Of Archaeology.

MY THANKS TO; Mangala, Mandala Yoga Ashram Wales. For Guidance. Swami Krishnalpremananda, For putting up with me. Swami Shiva Priya, for being a good listener, her library and researcher. Swami G, for his kindness, the room to work and his cheese. The people involved in the Gnome Neanderthal Project and data. Staff at the University of England Library for their kindness. Open University Library Staff for directions to data. PDF data from Queens University of Belfast, Galway University, Co Galway Ireland, Ulster University Belfast, Lampeter University, Wales and many others who kept me on my toes over the years.

Ronnie Carlton 2011

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