NEANDERTHAL “TREKKERS”

[Charlie Hatchett]

“…PS - you're thinking man comes out of Africa in waves, with neandertalensis making it to the Americas, but I don't think that's what happened. Sapiens evolves in a coastal area (no fur), either Africa or Asia. My suspicion is that it was Asia, with dispersal back to Africa from there.

Neanderthal evolves from habilis on the other side of the Zamashan impact, and then migrates just a little ways to the east, but not all the way to Beringia.

Worked bone tools must certainly have been a part of the hss kit.

Ed…”

Just my two cents, but I think Archaic Sapiens and Neanderthals were direct ancestors of Ergaster/ Erectus. Differing pressures from the different geographic regions to which Ergaster/ Erectus migrated encouraged the  selection of advantageous traits, all which were included, but not necessarily expressed, in the original, more diverse Ergaster/ Erectus “DNA package”. For all we know, Habilis may not even fit in the human tree:

http://anthropology.si.edu/humanorigins/ha/a_tree.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6937476.stm

Charlie

[lagarvelho]

Charlie:

Well, I don't think Neandertals ever made it to the Americas(although I sometimes indulge in wishful thinking along these lines).  As far as H.erectus and Neandertals being "ancestral" to ergaster, that kind of reminds me of people who think australopiths evolved into great apes.  Don't worry, Charlie, I  know you didn't come up with that idea.  Whoever did had better go back to their textbooks.
Anne G

[Charlie Hatchett]

Thanks for catching that, Anne.

I meant to write: "I think Archaic Sapiens and Neanderthals were direct descendents of Ergaster/ Erectus".

Not sure where my brain was at the time.

Charlie

[lagarvelho]

Charlie:

Glad to hear that you did not mean to seriously propose such a thing!
Anne G

[Charlie Hatchett]

Lol!!

Thanks again for catching the error, Anne.

Charlie

[E.P. Grondine]

“…PS - you're thinking man comes out of Africa in waves, with neandertalensis making it to the Americas, but I don't think that's what happened. Sapiens evolves in a coastal area (no fur), either Africa or Asia. My suspicion is that it was Asia, with dispersal back to Africa from there.

Neanderthal evolves from habilis on the other side of the Zamashan impact, and then migrates just a little ways to the east, but not all the way to Beringia.

Worked bone tools must certainly have been a part of the hss kit.

Ed…”

Hi Charlie, Anne -

Speaking of mistakes, I meant to write that neanderthal evolves from Heidelbergensis on the other side of the Zamanshan impact. My guess is that Sapiens evolves from Heidelbergensis in the coastal areas of Asia after the Zamanshan impact, and disperses from there. (I.L. So what separated sapiens from the neanderthalensis? A million years worth of change.)

There are smaller local impacts in Africa at Aouelloul and Talmazane around 2.7 million years ago which likely account for the emergence of Paranthropus. (Since an impact could blow modern man back to the stone age, what happened to the stone age folks when they were hit? Easy - they forgot how to use stones.)

Parnathropus Bolsei ends about the time of the Bosumthwi Impact 1.3 million years ago, and Parnthropus robustus comes to an end after the Zamanshan impact.  My guess is that this is probably not simply coincidental.

E.P. Grondine
Man and Impact in the Americas - which is really a pretty good book, despite all its typos and errors, if I do say so myself
and my latest work, "Amazing Stories", a guide inside today's lunatic archaeology - email me for a free electronic copy and 3 hours of good laughs

[Charlie Hatchett]

> Hi Charlie, Anne -

> Speaking of mistakes, I meant to write that neanderthal evolves from Heidelbergensis
>on the other side of the Zamanshan impact. My guess is that Sapiens evolves from
>Heidelbergensis in the coastal areas of Asia after the Zamanshan impact, and disperses
>from there. (I.L. So what separated sapiens from the neanderthalensis? A million years
>worth of change.)

I’m trying to follow you here, Ed. Heidelbergensis is recorded as early as 800,000 B.P. and as late as the appearance of Hss. The earliest recorded Hss fossil material dates ca. 130,000 B.P.-160,000 B.P., depending on your stance on Idaltu. The earliest recorded fossil material for Hns dates to ca. 200,000 B.P.  Molecular studies point to 200,000 B.P. for the appearance of Hss. I’m seeing a ca. 70,000-year to basically 0-year difference here, not 1,000,000 years.

>Parnathropus Bolsei ends about the time of the Bosumthwi Impact 1.3 million years
>ago, and Parnthropus robustus comes to an end after the Zamanshan impact.  My guess
>is that this is probably not simply coincidental.

Paranthropus boisei dies off and Ergaster continues on? They’ve been found in the same geological/ time context. Makes one wonder if they’re even related, directly. Reminds me of the Habilis issue.

Charlie

[E.P. Grondine]

> Hi Charlie, Anne -

> Speaking of mistakes, I meant to write that neanderthal evolves from Heidelbergensis
>on the other side of the Zamanshan impact. My guess is that Sapiens evolves from
>Heidelbergensis in the coastal areas of Asia after the Zamanshan impact, and disperses
>from there. (I.L. So what separated sapiens from the neanderthalensis? A million years
>worth of change.)

I’m trying to follow you here, Ed. Heidelbergensis is recorded as early as 800,000 B.P. and as late as the appearance of Hss. The earliest recorded Hss fossil material dates ca. 130,000 B.P.-160,000 B.P., depending on your stance on Idaltu. The earliest recorded fossil material for Hns dates to ca. 200,000 B.P.  Molecular studies point to 200,000 B.P. for the appearance of Hss. I’m seeing a ca. 70,000-year to basically 0-year difference here, not 1,000,000 years.

>Parnathropus Bolsei ends about the time of the Bosumthwi Impact 1.3 million years
>ago, and Parnthropus robustus comes to an end after the Zamanshan impact.  My >guess is that this is probably not simply coincidental.

Paranthropus boisei dies off and Ergaster continues on? They’ve been found in the same geological/ time context. Makes one wonder if they’re even related, directly. Reminds me of the Habilis issue.

Charlie

Hi Charlie -

My book is about man and impact, and I am (was) a space journalist.

I wish that human evolution was better documented by fossil remains, and the field better developed, as it would have made my book much easier to write. If those involved had of been able to reach some kind of agreements on taxonomy it also would have greatly helped. Finally, and naturally, everyone one in the field had no knowledge of the massive impact events and climate collapses which are known occurred as man evolved. Evolutionary specialists knew about volcanoes, but not impact events.

So I was had to work my way through what was there as best I could by myself. And now that person is not even around anymore, but I'm left here to try to explain his thinking the best I can now.

The way I understood it was that the features found in Heidelbergensis were specific adaptations to big game hunting.  For me the key here was big game hunting technologies. Also, I seem to remember that heidelbergensis  range was near neanderthal, and they bore similar features. However you  name them, the difference was big game hunting, and they followed the proboscidea
(elephants), so to find the range of the one to estimate the range of the other.

Another problem I faced was that China had been in chaos through the period of the development of physical anthropology, and limited field data had been recovered  from there during the development of the field. Thus remains were simply not available from the region, other than a few isolated samples (Peking, Java).

What I did have is a big big hole in the ground at Zhamanshan, well dated at 1,000,000 years ago, which everyone was whistling past in the dark.

For me, functionally, sapiens arrives with the addition of marine technologies to the big game hunting repetoire, and this is either coastal africa or asia, with dispersal. We have sapiens in Australia via boat by 60,000 BCE, but nothing similar for Madacasgar.

Given the state of the fossil record, I don't know that the estimates of  the rates of DNA changes are all that good yet.

My guess is that Bolsei lacked the tools to get it through an impact caused climate collapse.

E.P. Grondine
Man and Impact in the Americas
(Human evolution  was covered in 18 pages, out of 468.)

[Charlie Hatchett]

> Hi Charlie, Anne -

> Speaking of mistakes, I meant to write that neanderthal evolves from Heidelbergensis
>on the other side of the Zamanshan impact. My guess is that Sapiens evolves from
>Heidelbergensis in the coastal areas of Asia after the Zamanshan impact, and disperses
>from there. (I.L. So what separated sapiens from the neanderthalensis? A million years
>worth of change.)

I’m trying to follow you here, Ed. Heidelbergensis is recorded as early as 800,000 B.P. and as late as the appearance of Hss. The earliest recorded Hss fossil material dates ca. 130,000 B.P.-160,000 B.P., depending on your stance on Idaltu. The earliest recorded fossil material for Hns dates to ca. 200,000 B.P.  Molecular studies point to 200,000 B.P. for the appearance of Hss. I’m seeing a ca. 70,000-year to basically 0-year difference here, not 1,000,000 years.

>Parnathropus Bolsei ends about the time of the Bosumthwi Impact 1.3 million years
>ago, and Parnthropus robustus comes to an end after the Zamanshan impact.  My
>guess is that this is probably not simply coincidental.

Paranthropus boisei dies off and Ergaster continues on? They’ve been found in the same geological/ time context. Makes one wonder if they’re even related, directly. Reminds me of the Habilis issue.

Charlie

>The way I understood it was that the features found in Heidelbergensis were specific
>adaptations to big game hunting.  For me the key here was big game hunting
>technologies. Also, I seem to remember that heidelbergensis  range was near
>neanderthal, and they bore similar features. However you  name them, the difference
>was big game hunting, and they followed the proboscidea (elephants), so to find the
>range of the one to estimate the range of the other.

So, if I’m following you correctly, you propose Heidelbergensis as the direct ancestor to Neanderthal, whereas Hss direct ancestor might be Homo sapiens idaltu, further to the south. From where do you figure Idaltu descended: directly from Erectus?

>What I did have is a big big hole in the ground at Zhamanshan, well dated at 1,000,000
>years ago, which everyone was whistling past in the dark.

But the only people around at that point were Ergaster/ Erectus. They seemed to make it through this impact and go on to be the ancestors of Neanderthal and Hss.

>For me, functionally, sapiens arrives with the addition of marine technologies to the big
>game hunting repetoire, and this is either coastal africa or asia, with dispersal. We have
>sapiens in Australia via boat by 60,000 BCE, but nothing similar for Madacasgar.

What about the 800,000 B.P. tools in Flores? How the heck did those get there:

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20031018/bob8.asp

http://mc2.vicnet.net.au/home/mariners/web/mariners.html

Charlie

[E.P. Grondine]

Hi Charlie -

This is an example of what I think happened: homo wushan

http://www.china.org.cn/english/culture/231787.htm

More field results will come from China in the future. My GUESS, and let me emphasize "guess" again, was that after the initial evolution in Africa, h.s.s. evolved in coastal asia, and dispersed from there, including back to Africa. Only more field excavations will tell if this guess was correct, or if h.s.s evolved in riverine systems on the east coast of Africa, and dispersed from there.

I have no opinion on H. floriensis, and in my current condition I am unlikely to ever form one.

What I do want to here is to make a record of is a concept  which has occurred to me in the last few days. In "Man and Impact in the Americas" I mistakenly dated the end clovis impact  event (now known to have occured at 10,900 BCE) to end paleo (8,350 BCE).  My opinion then was the nothing other than an impact event could explain such a massive die off, and it is possible there was another hit somewhere at 8,350 BCE which led to that population collapse.

But clearly, Norse diseases ended Dorset.  Thus it is also possible that the X DNA group (i.l. Canadian maritime archaic, red paint people) may have brought with them entirely new disease vectors which caused a massive die off of the paleo populations which up until then had been living in isolation in the Americas.

In opposition to this hypothesis, no traditions exist as to such a general plague to my knowledge, but then I was not looking for them when I wrote my book.

E.P. Grondine
Man and Impact in the Americas,
and "Amazing Stories", a guide inside today's lunatic archaeology

[Charlie Hatchett]

>Hi Charlie -

>This is an example of what I think happened: homo wushan

>http://www.china.org.cn/english/culture/231787.htm

Wushan sounds like Erectus.



>More field results will come from China in the future. My GUESS, and let me
>emphasize "guess" again, was that after the initial evolution in Africa, h.s.s. evolved in
>coastal asia, and dispersed from there, including back to Africa. Only more field
>excavations will tell if this guess was correct, or if h.s.s evolved in riverine systems on
>the east coast of Africa, and dispersed from there.

>I have no opinion on H. floriensis, and in my current condition I am unlikely to ever
>form one.

I was actually referring to Erectus. The tools on Flores are dated to ca. 800,000 B.P. The only way the tools could have gotten there is Erectus had boats or rode swimming elephants to Flores:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeVc8xDOxc0

I bet on boats. In other words there appears to have been a maritime adaptation in Asia/ Indonesia well before Hss.

[E.P. Grondine]

Hi Charlie -

>Wushan sounds like Erectus.

Tough to tell from one tooth and jawbone fragment - but I suppose the rest may be along shortly - look at that floor - that is one hell of a site.

>I have no opinion on H. floriensis, and in my current condition I am unlikely to ever
>form one.

>>I was actually referring to Erectus. The tools on Flores are dated to ca. 800,000 B.P. >>The only way the tools could have gotten there is Erectus had boats or rode >>swimming elephants to Flores:

>>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeVc8xDOxc0

>>I bet on boats. In other words there appears to have been a maritime adaptation in >>Asia/ Indonesia well before Hss.

My thinking would be to take a really hard look at the dating technologies and their application, before making that jump. I'll still go with ocean going boats at 60,000 BCE until that flores date is really, really firm - but this was an ongoing process.

I suppose that once we get travel from quarry distributions from Asia, then we'll know exactly when heidelbergensis (again, my guess, known as erectus to many) got into boats. There was a really slick presentation at SEAC using this technique, which showed exactly when and where the Iroquoians were able to cross the Mississippi River here in North America.