Freeze "Condemned Neanderthals"

At first glance, I assumed this was just another of those single killer theories that are often proffered by headline writers when considering how this or that species, genera, the dinosaurs etc., became extinct, often suddenly and with no apparent warning.

I noted that it bore a remarkable similarity to the third in a three-part series on BBC Radio 4, named 'Origins Reconsidered', in which Aubrey Manning heads off to Forbes Cave down on Gibraltar, in search of what were believed to have been the last surviving Neanderthals living on the periphery of a Europe over which they had held domain for around 250,000 years.

Paul Mellars notes Neanderthals used wooden spears, probably used for thrusting at large prey animals, hence the unusual amount of injuries that show up on their skeletons - but they knew their environment, and also beachcombed on Gibraltar, and elsewhere around the Mediterranean - at the time it was a savannah, lots of large animals, but they lived on 'pretty much anything' - in some levels of the cave, there were exclusively the remains of mussels and limpets

The exploitation of coastal resources formerly thought to be exclusive to Homo sapiens, but 120,000 yers ago, Neanderthals were eating seals, dolphins, fish and marine molluscs - I'm not sure how they went about catching dolphins, as it's unlikely they were deep-sea fishermen, so maybe it was unfortunate creatures that beached who ended up being scavenged by opportunistic humans.

Joao Zilhao talks of inland sites at around 45,000 bp, where Neanderthal remains have been found in context with such items as pierced fox teeth, prompting him to believe that Neanderthals too were capable of modern behaviour, although Paul Mellars believes it was too much of a coincidence that after 300,000 years of being decidedly Neanderthal, that they should independently adopt modern behaviours almost simulataneously with modern human arrivals.

There is a clash over dates, with Zilao claiming EMH didn't emerge in Europe until 40 - 42,000 bp, which Zilhao takes to mean that Neanderthals were exhibiting these modern behaviours 3,000 years before the arrival of the moderns.

However, as now seems clear from Kostienki, early moderns had reached the Central Russian Plain by 45,000 bp, meaning that they could also have been in north western Europe at dates that might coincide with the seemingly precocious cultural artifacts at the centre of the debate.

The Neanderthals are described as having largely disappeared by 35,000 bp, although dating from Gibraltar indicates they may have held on there until 24,000 bp. As we see...

a climate downturn may have caused a drought, placing pressure on the last surviving Neanderthals by reducing their supplies of fresh water and killing off the animals they hunted.

Sediment cores drilled from the sea bed near the Balearic Islands show the average sea-surface temperature plunged to 8C (46F). Modern-day sea surface temperatures in the same region vary from 14C (57F) to 20C (68F).

In addition, increased amounts of sand were deposited in the sea and the amount of river water running into the sea also plummeted.

Whether or not these drought-threatened Neanderthals could have moved from that location to somewhere more salubrious isn't discussed, and normally, this is where the story would end.

However, tucked away towards the bottom of the linked article, comes this rather surprising announcement from a site elsewhere on mainland Spain...

In a study published in the journal Geobios, Jose Carrion, from the University of Murcia, Spain, and colleagues analysed pollen from soil layers at Carihuela cave to determine how vegetation had changed in the area during the past 15,000 years.

During the course of this work, they also obtained ages for sediment samples from the cave, using radiocarbon dating and uranium-thorium dating.

Sediment layers containing stone tools of a style known to have been made by Neanderthals were found to date from 45,000 years ago until 21,000 years ago.

As usual caution is advised, and as yet there are no firm dates to go by, but if true, this could be quietly sensational news indeed, as it would propel the Neanderthal species to dates, and maybe places, far beyond previous estimates, and far nearer to ourselves in time.

But it would seem that this particular question will remain unanswered for the time being, because in yet another dispute which stretches the limits of credulity, the cave containing the material is closed to excavation...

Neanderthal bones have also been excavated from these sediment units, including a male skull fragment which could potentially be very recent. But Professor Carrion is extremely reluctant to draw firm conclusions about the site based on the evidence so far.

Spanish archaeologists carried out a detailed excavation of Carihuela between 1979 and 1992. But the cave is currently closed due to a dispute between national and regional governments over rights to dig at the cave.

In such cases it is clear that the services of an independent arbiter should be employed forthwith, who if required could appoint an unaffiliated human with a trowel to get to work, whilst allowing the political antagonists to carry on arguing to their hearts' discontent, far off in the distance.

In conclusion, there is an outside possibility that Neanderthals clung on to a life dearly loved almost into the Solutrean period, and knowing how they like to live peripherally in their later years, maybe they headed further north and farther east than thought. Obviously I'm not proposing outright that some of the First Americans could also have been the Last Neanderthals, but people from right across the Palaeolithic have a habit of turning up in places and at times you least expect them to. But until someone digs up some unusually recent and robust bones somewhere south of Alaska, our Neanderthals will remain a strictly Palaeoeurasian people.

Origins Revisited - Aubrey Manning BBC Radio 4 - In 3 parts, spanning 6 million years of human development, culminating with the Neanderthals in the third edition.

Ice Age Ecology And Neanderthals vs. Moderns