Humans Ate Neanderthals

[Beorn]

How the Neanderthals met their grisly end 30,000 years ago...we ate them

The mysterious disappearance of Neanderthals about 30,000 years ago has baffled scientists for centuries.
But now, according to a leading fossil expert, it seems the race may have met a rather grisly end. They were eaten by our ancestors, the modern humans.

The basis for the claim is the markings on a Neanderthal jawbone found in Les Rois, south-west France during a study conducted by the Journal of Anthropological Sciences.

The cuts to the bone are similar to those left on those of deer and other animals butchered by humans in the Stone Age. It is believed that the flesh was eaten by humans and the teeth used to make a necklace.


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Grisly end: Neanderthals, believed to have looked similar to this pair, may have been devoured by humans who then used their teeth to make necklaces

Leader of the research team, Fernando Rozzi, of Paris's Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, said: 'Neanderthals met a violent end at our hands and in some cases we ate them.
'For years, people have tried to hide away from the evidence of cannibalism, but I think we have to accept it took place.'
Mr Rozzi believes the jawbone provides evidence that Neanderthals were attacked and sometimes killed by humans, who then brought their bodies back to caves to eat or used their teeth and skulls as trophies.

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Victims? Neanderthals lived 300,000 years ago. They managed to survive several ice ages before dying out around 30,000 years ago, around the same time as human beings arrived on the continent

Neanderthals lived across Europe around 300,000 years ago. They managed to survive several ice ages before dying out around 30,000 years ago, around the same time as human beings arrived on the continent from Africa.
They had a jutting nose set in a large face with massive brow ridges and no chin.
One theory for the Neanderthals disappearance is that they couldn't compete with humans, who had better brains and more sophisticated tools, for scarce resources such as food.
Other scientists believe they were more susceptible to the impact of climate change.

The controversial cannibalism claim is sure to divide opinion within the science community.
Francesco d'Errico, of the Institute of Prehistory in Bordeaux, disagrees with the theory. He said: 'One set of cut marks does not make a complete case for cannibalism.'
He added that humans could have found the bone and used its teeth as a necklace.
Professor Christ Stringer, of the Natural History Museum, London, said: 'This is a very important investigation.
'We do need more evidence, but this could indicate modern humans and Neanderthals were living in the same area of Europe at the same time, that they were interacting, and that some of these interactions may have been hostile.

'This does not prove we systematically eradicated the Neanderthals or that we regularly ate their flesh.
'But it does add to the evidence that competition from modern humans probably contributed to Neanderthal extinction.'


Source (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1183600/How-Neanderthals-met-grisly-end--ate-them.html)

...or it could simply be the signs of a Neanderthal being dragged back to an animals lair and consumed.

[Lenny]

The mysterious disappearance of Neanderthals about 30,000 years ago has baffled scientists for centuries.
Ehh, "centuries"?
Wasn't the first Neanderthal skeleton only discovered in the 1860s?
Centuries means at least two centuries (200 yrs). 2009-1860=149 yrs. :p


They managed to survive several ice ages before dying out around 30,000 years ago, around the same time as human beings arrived on the continent from Africa.There seems to me to be less evidence that humans arrived "from Africa" 30-50kya than there is for this cannibalism claim. Yet it [OutofAfrica] is accepted uncritically, while the cannibalism issue is treated as an open question. Why?


'But it does add to the evidence that competition from modern humans probably contributed to Neanderthal extinction.'
Well, that much does seem so obvious it need not even be stated.

The most compelling grand-narrative for why Cro-Magnon replaced Neanderthal as the masters of Europe is the "Population Cycles of Human History" argument. Basically: Take a group of humans anywhere that is subject to climate change. When hard times come around (say, an ice age), most people die off but the toughest, cleverest, smartest, (etc) survive, driving the quality of the genepool way up. When easy times come again, quality slowly declines as the bottom half of the genepool has the majority of babies each generation (as is always naturally the case; the higher elements of a society always have and always will have lower TFRs in normal circumstances), and since it is easy times (a warm interglacial period) no culling effect through a harsh climate is achieved. The group eventually declines to a low ebb, and they may die off if their quality gets too low. But then another ice age comes (or some other "hard times" scenario), and quality is driven way up again. Ice ages came regularly for the Neanderthal, perhaps scores of them over their 500,000-year-plus existence. The problem was, when Cro-Magnon arrived, the Neanderthal race was at one of its low ebbs in quality, as many, many millennia of easy living had just passed. This simple fact had a multiplier effect on all the Cro-Magnon advantages, allowing them to win out quickly.

(This is my summary from memory of the argument I remember from one of the best books I've ever read: "Why Civilizations Self-Destruct", a wonderful little book I highly recommend).

The Neanderthals just had back luck... if the Cro-Magnon race had showed up at one of the high-water-marks of Neanderthal "quality"--say right after an ice age--then Cro-Magnon would not have won out. (It is quite possible that Caucasoids or other human types did try to migrate in to Europe at earlier times but were beaten back, as the Neanderthals were at a high-water-mark of quality. The tiny numbers involved probably would not even have left skeletons behind, if they were wiped out by Neanderthal in their first waves!).