... this time from the site that gave its name to our Midle Palaeolithic predecessors. In today's issue of Nature Science Update which can be read at:
http://www.nature.com/nsu/020909/020909-1.html mention is made of the results of recent excavation work carried out by an international team in the 1856, original Neanderthal quarry fill. Not only did the researchers recover fragments believed to be those of the original Neanderthal find, but they also discovered fragmentary remains of, at least, two new Neanderthal individuals. And to make things even more exciting, these remains were found to be "associated" (as it were) with stone tools and faunal remains, all important elements that had been never been reported at the time of the initial discovery. With (presumably) all due consideration given to the taphonomic interpretative difficulties thant can be encountered in the excavation of such badly disturbed deposits, the finds are interpreted as providing us with the first opportunity to place the 1856 discovery in its palaeoenvironmental and cultural contexts. This, it is said, is also supported by C14 a (?) date of about 40,000 BP, as well as by the results of DNA studies which -- and this is also particularly tantalizing -- suggest that that these German specimens may be most closely related to Neanderthal remains from far away in Eastern Europe and dating back to about the same period of time.
The actual reference for the scientific report on these finds is:
Schmitz, R.W. et al. The Neanderthal-type site revisited: interdisciplinary investigations of skeletal remains from the Neander Valley, Germany. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, doi: 10.1073/pnas.192464099, (2002).
I checked the PNAS site and I did not find the paper. I suppose it will show up in the next update of the online "Early Edition".
Jacques Cinq-Mars
