Re: John has been assimilated

At 19:25 2000-02-04 -0800, you wrote:

>I have recently seen reports of such a human-neanderthal hybrid in
>reports of an excavation in Portugal. The boy died at about 12, and is
>unique, so it may be he was some kind of "mule", with developmental
>problems that led to his early demise. It is an interesting case as it
>disproves the theory that H.sapiens/neanderthal relations were only
>beligerant. The fact that they lived side by side for 12,000 years and
>that Neanderthalers adopted a Chatelperonnian culture after contact
>with the Aurignacians suggests that the relationship was more complex
>than an "us advanced" versus "them primitive" one.
>

I've seen the report too. However we shall have to await mor data before
passing judgment. I don't think the replacement was that dramatic. A
slightly higher infant survival rate or a somewhat better ability to
survive difficult years would have been quite sufficient over a millenium
or two.

>Tommy continued
>> As for pre-sapiens human species having language - sure, but probably
>not
>> language in the "modern" sense. This, I think, was invented very
>> approximately 50,000 years ago. Before this time cultural change was
>> glacially slow (the Acheulean culture lasted more than 1,000,000
>years!)
>> and there is little if any evidence of art, personal adornment, use of
>> symbols or religion, either for H. sapiens and other human species.
>
>Tommy, H.sapiens was in Australia and making art 60,000 years ago, a
>feat only possible with libguistic skills. Whilst Acheulian had lasted
>1 million years and Mousterian had lasted at least 150,000, it seems
>that there was a greater variety in non-lithic cultures than the
>uniformity that appears in Stone tools.

In my opinion most or all australian dates beyond the range of C14 dating
(> ca 30000 years) are quite uncertain. The strongest evidence for early
human presence in Australia is actually palynological, there is evidence of
a changed fire-regime (more frequent bushfires) which may indicate human
activity rather early during the last glaciation, e. g. in Lynch's Crater,
but the dating is uncertain.

Unfortunately we know nest to nothing about non-lithic culture before the
Upper Palaeolithic. Horn and bone were not much used and very few sites
have preserved wooden tools (Lehringen, Clacton and Kalambo Falls are about
the only ones I can think of).

>
>> All this changes rather abruptly about midway through the last
>glaciation,
>> and only for H. sapiens. Up to this time H. sapiens does not seem to
>have
>> been competitively superior to neandertalers (who displaced sapiens
>in the
>> Near East when climate grew colder), but by 30,000 BP neandertalers
>were
>> extinct, also cultural change became at least an order of magnitude
>faster
>> (most late Paleolithic cultures only last a few thousand years). Many
>> archaeologists think that this "change of tempo" marks the invention
>of
>> fully modern language and I must say it seems very likely.
>
>This is a little an artifact of European and Near Eastern pre-history.
>The Upper Paleolithic cultural diversification is observed in Africa
>and Australia significantly before it appears in Europe. The 40,000
>year horizon with an Aurignacian culture fully formed in Europe was
>because of a longer African period in which a number of smaller changes
>accumulated over time (eg Body ornament from 110,000 years, fishing
>from a similar horizon etc). Just because Europe managed to catchup
>bethind its long period of retardedness prior to 40,000 years we should
>avoid reading this pattern back onto the rest of the world.
>

I presume You are thinking of recent finds from Zaire, however dating is
controversial there too. The Howiesons Poort blade culture in South Africa
looks rather "Upper Paleolithic" and certainly falls quite early in the
last glacial cycle, but it is very isolated and has no obvious link to much
younger similar toolkits.
South East Asia is a great mystery since there are hardly any Paleolithic
remains of any kind known from there. Early toolkits must have been very
largely non-lithic (bamboo?) there.

>> Language may have been invented once or several times in different
>places,
>> e. g. in Greater Australia which was populated by 40,000 BP at the
>latest,
>> and which has always been rather isolated from the rest of the World.
>There
>> is really no way of telling, though it might conceivably be possible
>in the
>> future to trace the spread of Upper Paleolithic cultures in enough
>detail
>> to see if it happened from one or several centra.
>
>Australasia was in fact peopled between 75-60,000 years on latest best
>evidence. The Jinimin finds in the Northern Territory of Australia
>pushes this back to 90-100,000 years but these results have been highly
>disputed and are very controvercial.
>

The early dates for Jinmium are indeed extremely doubtful. As a matter of
fact I think it quite likely that Australia was peopled rather earlier than
40,000 BP but I don't think there is any definitive proof yet, considering
how uncertain australian Pleistocene chronology is before ca 30,000 BP. If
it was as early as 100,000 BP (rather unlikely considering the high sea
levels during OIS 5) an independent invention of complex language there
seems quite likely.

Tommy

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