Re: BBC News | SCI/TECH | Taste for flesh troubled Neanderthals

From: Anne Gilbert (kebara_at_comcast.net)
Date: 06/25/04 

Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 20:11:33 -0700

Roger:

You keep complaining about "cats" and the like, but you haven't really
offered any substantive evidence to your argument. Basically you are just
attacking. Does that mean you *have* no substantive argument?
Anne G

> Now I have two "cats" on my case!
> So fun...
> They have to gang me?
> One isn't enough?
> Anne Gilbert and Su Solomon...
> Both endlessly nasty as cats can be!
> Su has even started cross posting after me!
> I went to sci.fractals
> and there her trolling self was!
> This started as my thread...
> ignorance
> on my part asked this question!
> I'm trying to learn here.
> It isn't nice to just be plain nasty
> for the sake of it.
> but Su Solomon is really into it!
> The Solomon name without any of the wisdom!
>
> Roger L. Bagula wrote:
> > Taste for flesh troubled Neanderthals
> >
> > This Croatian cave contained the remains
> > By BBC News Online's Dr Damian Carrington
> >
> > The extinction of the Neanderthals could have been caused by their
> > choosy appetites - they ate virtually nothing but meat, according to new
> > a study.
> >
> > "They were picky eaters," says Dr Paul Pettitt, at the University of
> > Oxford, UK. "And this tells me that they are really unchanging - doing
> > the same old thing year after year."
> >
> > If their prey, such as bison and deer, then became scarce, they would
> > struggle to survive.
> >
> > Neanderthals lived in Europe between about 120,000 and 30,000 years ago.
> > The cause of their extinction has been the subject of much debate and
> > speculation has included their being killed off by early humans and
> > their disappearing through interbreeding with humans.
> >
> > "Excellent hunters"
> >
> > "Neanderthals were excellent hunters," Dr Petitt told BBC News Online.
> > "But the issue that was at stake was whether they hunted every day of
> > their lives or whether it was just a summer outing."
> >
> > Now new information, derived from remains found in Croatia, suggest that
> > hunting was nearly all they did to gather food. This leads to the
> > speculation that the more versatile diets of the early humans allowed
> > them to survive when Neanderthals did not.
> >
> > The early humans themselves may have been better hunters than the
> > Neanderthals, depriving them of their kills. Or the hunted animals may
> > have been struck by disease or migrated away.
> >
> > It has been very hard to assess the variety of Neanderthal diets because
> > although animal bones are often preserved in caves, easily rotted food
> > like vegetables, fruit and grains rarely remain.
> >
> > But the scientists found a way. They measured the ratios of the
> > different types (isotopes) of carbon and nitrogen found in Neanderthal
> > bones.
> >
> > You are what you eat
> >
> > Plants and animals have contrasting isotopic ratios, so when these are
> > eaten they leave different signatures in a Neanderthal's bones. And
> > because the bones grow slowly, the signature represents a 10 to 20-year
> > average of the individual's diet, not merely the last meal.
> >
> > They "calibrated" the analyses by comparing the Neanderthal bone ratios
> > with those from contemporaneous animals at the top (bears) and bottom
> > (bison) of the animal food chain.
> >
> > The ratios showed that the Neanderthals were top-level predators,
> > getting about 90% of their protein from meat. Previous research shows
> > this sometimes included cannibalism. The rest of the protein would have
> > come from nuts and grains.
> >
> >
> > Collagen in the jaw bone was analysed
> >
> > The bones, a skull and a jaw, come from the Vindija cave site, north of
> > the Croatian capital Zagreb. These are two of the youngest Neanderthal
> > bones dated - just 28,000 years old and presumably coming from some of
> > the last Neanderthals to exist.
> >
> > Bones from bears, wolves, reindeer, and cattle or bison were also found
> > in the cave and all showed signs of having been butchered for meat.
> >
> > Isotopic analysis of Neanderthal bones has been done before in France,
> > and produced the same ratios. But the previous study did not have the
> > age dating or animal bone data to place it in context.
> >
> > Another member of the scientific team, Fred Smith, from Northern
> > Illinois University, US, said: "For several decades, archaeologists have
> > debated the importance of meat in the Neanderthal diet, but this
> > question never has been answered unequivocally.
> >
> > "Our findings provide conclusive proof that European Neanderthals were
> > top-level carnivores who lived on a diet of mainly hunted animal meat."
> >
> > The research is published in the journal Proceedings of the National
> > Academy of Sciences and was conducted by researchers from Oxford
> > University, UK, Simon Fraser University, Canada, Washington University,
> > St Louis, US, University of Bordeaux, France, Northern Illinois
> > University, US, the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts and the
> > University of Zagreb, Croatia.
> >
> >
> > http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/787918.stm
> >
>

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