Are The Neanderthals Still Among Us?
By James Donahue
One
of the big mysteries among archaeologists has been what caused the extinction of Neanderthal man after successfully existing
on Earth for nearly 100,000 years.
This big-boned, coarse primate demonstrated some
degree of awareness in that he used primitive tools, buried and even left flowers at the graves of the dead, and developed
some degree of social life.
Evidence of the Neanderthals died out about 27,000
years ago at about the time it is believed modern man arrived on the scene.
The big
questions have been where the Homo sapiens came from so suddenly in the historical record and why the Neanderthals disappeared
so soon after we arrived. Did we have something to do with the demise of the Neanderthal?
Now
an Austrian-led team of researchers, working on a famous site of 31,000-year-old humanoid bones found in the Mladec Caves
in the Czech Republic, suggest in an article in Nature that the bones show evidence of interbreeding.
The
bones of six individuals found in the caves are generally regarded as “modern” but some of the skulls show Neanderthal
features including heavy brow ridges and a protruding bone in the back of the head. Yet the skeletal remains are found with
stone and bone tools, ornaments and other artifacts showing aesthetic artful design, something the primitive Neanderthal did
not do.
“These characteristics could be explained by interbreeding, or seen
as Neanderthal ancestry,” team leader Eva Maria Wild of the University of Vienna was quoted as saying in one article.
Some
people would apparently like to reject the idea of modern humans having sex with hairy, smelly and animal-brained humanoids
that may have seemed more like apes than humans.
But team member Erik Trinkaus
of Washington University, St. Louis, suggests it should not be written off.
“Either
there’s been an evolutionary leveling, or there has been some level of interbreeding, and we will never know how much,”
Trinkaus said. “My answer is, why not? They were all dirty and smelly, and didn’t have much opportunity for social
activity.”
Indeed, contemporary humans are known to have sex with the animal
world. It is a common joke among folks in rural farming communities that certain men are sometimes caught in the barn having
sex with sheep, cows and even chickens.
One theory as to the origin of the AIDS epidemic
is that it sprang from a human that had sexual contact with an ape somewhere on this planet.
If
some humans can stoop to these levels in their quest for sexual gratification in modern times, why should we think that early
Homo sapiens saw themselves as so high on the social ladder they could not be sexually attracted to other humanoid types that
looked almost like them? Wouldn’t it be somewhat akin to racial mixing in contemporary society?
There
is an ancient story half in and half removed from the Book of Genesis about Adam’s first wife, Lilith, who he turned
away from. It was said that Adam preferred Eve, who was fair. Is this not a picture of the changes going on among the humans
at that time. Lilith was an ape, while Eve was hairless. In the story, Adam was attracted to the hairless woman.
The
new genetic line appears then to have been mixed with the old in the most natural way possible, through interbreeding of the
new with the old.
