robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

A Book that ties birds to "Neanderthals"

A lot of us on the UHH photograph and study birds so I thought some might like to try this book.
This book shows a different side of studying birds as part of another subject. The author explains in the book how he and others have learned more about Neanderthals by studying feathers, bones etc in dig sites. The trapping of birds, the use of feathers in decoration etc helped change the picture of how smart Neanderthals were.

Written by: Prof. Clive Finlayson MBE FLS a Gibraltarian zoologist, paleoanthropologist and paleontologist. He is the incumbent Director of the Gibraltar Museum.

The book: The Smart Neanderthal. In the book he explains how his study of birds led to insight into Neanderthals and their intelligence. In fact he had studied birds at what later became Neanderthal dig sites.

Keen

Neanderthal brains were 40% larger than ours. They survived in the harshest regions for hundreds of thousands of years. They had Social Security. Aged / Handicapped tribe members stayed in the caves, while more able types went out hunting, and scavenging, and bringing back food, and herbal medicines, to the aged / disabled in need. By contrast, more modern Aleuts (Eskimos)-even until quite recently-put their old / crippled out on ice flows to freeze, and starve, to death, rather than 'waste' resources caring for them.

Ched49 Loc: Pittsburgh, Pa.

If the neanderthal was so smart, why did they die off?

KenW Loc: Portland OR

I believe a lot of them were assimilated into our modern ancestors as they migrated north into Asia and Europe from out of Africa. Geneticist have discovered that modern humans have around 3% to 4% of Neanderthal DNA in their genetic makeup. I have about 3% in my DNA profile. I also am going to read the book for additional details about these early humans.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

First sentence of Chapter 2: "This book is about Neanderthals and birds and the way they interacted with each other."

The author contends that catching/hunting birds on a regular basis is a good test of intelligence/hunting skills and Neanderthals used feathers etc at least as much as Homo Sapiens.

He spends a bit of time on what or why scientists have named the other types of humans but can't settle on a name for modern humans. When I was a kid the books used "Cro Magnon" but that seems to have fallen out of favor.
He also points out that in some areas there is evidence that modern man was around as long as 280,000 years ago. Long before the Neanderthals vanished as a group aprx 40,000 years ago.

Modern reconstructive science fleshes out Neanderthal skeletons and skulls as not looking that much different than some modern humans.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I thought maybe you meant that the Neanderthals tried to fly by tying birds to themselves.

I see that they went out to catch them. Did they build cages for them, and if so, what did they put on the bottom of the cage in pre-newspaper days? (Sorry. I'm in a silly mood.)

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

I skimmed the book and am now into a complete reading (in Ch3 now) and so far I will speculate that from the mention of bones found around fire pits in dig sites they stored them in their stomachs and used the feathers for decoration.

Also he goes into modern people and being told or shown how to catch certain types of birds. And since the bird bones are mostly species that live in the taiga or even tundra areas it shows how far south the cold areas came and that Neanderthals were indeed cold climate adapted.

I haven't gotten there but I will speculate that this cold adaptation is a large part of why Neanderthals died off. As the Ice Age ended and the cold climate zone became smaller and retreated north the Neanderthals followed. South of them modern humans moved in and since the warmer areas had much more food their populations far exceeded the Neanderthals so along the border of their territories where they met and either interbred or competed for resources numbers alone gave modern humans an advantage so they eventually absorbed the Neanderthal population.

Hmmm? Sounds like "climate change" but that can't be since a few hundred thousand humans of all types in the entire world couldn't build enough camp fires to cause that. And of course cycles of the sun doesn't cause it, right?

Ched49 Loc: Pittsburgh, Pa.

Don't really understand how studying bird feathers can teach us more about Neanderthals but I was always under the impression that most birds are desendants of Theropods, the most famous being Tyrannosaurus Rex.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

The feathers and bones at Neanderthal dig sites show they caught and utilized birds on a regular basis and the main stream paleoanthropologists contend that hunting these "high speed" prey shows intelligence and modernity. But they contend that only "modern humans/Cro Magnon/ what ever the current term is" hunted high speed prey. The numbers of bird bones in Neanderthal dig sites shows they did hunt high speed prey. Therefore they must have been more intelligent than has been contended in the past.

Oh, modern cultures, primitive or otherwise are often studied by a study of how they make use of available resources. I once participated on a field school in SW Mexico where the two professors, one Geography, one Anthropology did studies of the local people in the forested mountain area based on their use of the forest resources - ie they were known masters of many different type of wood working and production of products from the wood of their forests. These products ranged from furniture to musical instruments, both hand and machine made.

Keen

Neanderthals did not die off. They are with us today....in part. YOU are part Neanderthal. Most modern humans get most of their modern disease fighting capability from Neanderthal ancestors. Cro-Mags killed off many Neanderthals....and interbred with the rest.