The Neanderthal Legacy by Paul Mellars

[Laura]

also I found this very amusing
_http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/august97/0277.html

The Jews are Neanderthals. Advanced in this decade by heretic
anthropologist Stan Gooch, who has also argued that the original,
full-blooded Neanderthals were telepathic. The thesis was taken up last
year by Canadian Michael Bradley in his incoherent book Chosen People
Iceman Inheritance, which identifies the origins of white racial evil in
prehistoric psychosexual tensions of some sort. Chosen People is an
extension of his ideas: Biblical evidence that Jews are Neanderthals
includes the Esau incident (Esau is hairy, remember?). The reason Jews
have an injunction against portraying God is that Neanderthals cannot
draw. However, Bradley adduces evidence that they were quite good with
numbers and were overly sentimental about their mothers. Interestingly,
Bradley also believes that modern European Jews are Khazars, which means
he must argue not only that biblical Hebrews were Neanderthals, but that
so were Khazars. He actually does so. News that Neanderthals have
little in common with modern humankind should be welcome to admirers of
Bradley's work. Among his blurbists, by the way, is Dr. Leonard
Jeffries, of New York's City College.

Yeah. I've read both of them and while they raise interesting questions, their simplistic reasoning and lack of effort digging for the facts, made their conclusions ridiculous.

However, if one thinks about it, it very well might be that "Semitic" actually means half of one race and half of another. And in this sense, the only other race we know of that existed alongside modern humans that could have fit this bill would have been Neanderthal since they were clearly a different species.

 

[Z...]

A few other items:

The Neanderthal had a low forehead even though it had about the same (or even slightly larger) brain volume. The frontal lobes of the brain are associated with creativity so a low forehead might means little or no creativity. It is also the frontal lobes of the brain that show problems/lack of development in psychopaths.

This reminded me of frontal characteropathy, something that Lobaczewski said in Ponerology about Stalin:

Comparative considerations also led the author to conclude that Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, also known as Stalin, should be included in the list of this particular ponerogenic characteropathy, which developed against the backdrop of perinatal damage to his brain's prefrontal fields. Literature and news about him abounds in indications: brutal, charismatic snake-charming; issuing of irrevocable decisions; inhuman ruthlessness, pathologic revengefulness directed at anyone who got in his way; and egotistical belief in his own genius on the part of a person whose mind was in fact average. This state explains as well his psychological dependence on a psychopath like Beria. Some photographs reveal the typical deformation of his forehead which appears in people who suffered very early damage to the areas mentioned above.

I had a look to his photographs, and the only thing that striked my attention is that it looked like it had a small forehead to me:

According to the skull models the whole head would be more flat and slightly more elongated toward backwards , it is hard to say because of his hair on this photo but if I draw imaginary line from forehead to where occipit appears to be , the shoe fits

 

[Z...]

However, if one thinks about it, it very well might be that "Semitic" actually means half of one race and half of another. And in this sense, the only other race we know of that existed alongside modern humans that could have fit this bill would have been Neanderthal since they were clearly a different species.

In fact that would make a lot of sense.
Semitic languages have a lot of guttural sounds - it is almost impossible to pronounce them - this could be explained with neanderthal hypothesis - just thinking aloud

 

[Laura]

Then, there is this: _http://www.eutimes.net/2010/06/king-tuts-dna-is-western-european/ from another thread. "King Tut’s DNA is Western European"

Well, the same gang behind Sorcha Faal is behind the EU Times site but still, this is interesting. I theorized that Tut was the son of Akhenaten and Nefertiti and that Nefertiti and her brother, Ay, were Hittites. I've also drawn a tenuous connection between the Hittites and the Chatti and the Bible says that Abraham, who I believe was Moses/Ay was a Hittite. This all becomes more interesting when reading about artificial Cranial Deformation and genital mutilation. If anybody wants a copy of this impossible to get book, I have a scan of it.

 

[Andromeda]

If the Neanderthals were used as vehicles for souls, then it can't be "a society consisting entirely of psychopaths".

Wrong conclusion. You don't know how what kind, how many, where or when any "souls were put into Neanderthal bodies for incubation." For all you know, it was a dozen instances very late in a 300KY history.

The way that I understood it was that the Neanderthals weren't necessarily psychopaths but were non 'human' humanoids with what we would consider psychopathic tendencies. Sort of like from the animal kingdom. Then when they mixed with Cro-magnon man who seems to have been characterized by many of the traits that we view as human, the vast contradiction of essences created what we now know as the psychopath. Or at least one variety!

 

[Laura]

A couple more possible clues:

http://globalfire.tv/nj/03en/jews/schizo.htm
Physician Claims Jews are Schizo Carriers
Subtitle: "Is Mental Illness the Jewish Disease?"

It is NOT posted on the Internet. It's from Psychiatric News, published by the American Psychiatric Association. Date of publication: Oct. 25, 1972. Go to your local library.

Evidence that Jews are carriers of schizophrenia is disclosed in a paper prepared for the American Journal of Psychiatry by Dr. Arnold A. Hutschnecker, the New York psychiatrist who once treated President Nixon.

In a study entitled "Mental Illness: The Jewish Disease" Dr. Hutschnecker said that although all Jews are not mentally ill, mental illness is highly contagious and Jews are the principal sources of infection.

Dr. Hutschnecker stated that every Jew is born with the seeds of schizophrenia and it is this fact that accounts for the world-wide persecution of Jews.

"The world would be more compassionate toward the Jews if it was generally realized that Jews are not responsible for their condition." Dr. Hutschnecker said. "Schizophrenia is the fact that creates in Jews a compulsive desire for persecution."

Dr. Hutschnecker pointed out that mental illness peculiar to Jews is manifested by their inability to differentiate between right and wrong. He said that, although Jewish canonical law recognizes the virtues of patience, humility and integrity, Jews are aggressive, vindictive and dishonest.

"While Jews attack non-Jewish Americans for racism, Israel is the most racist country in the world," Dr. Hutschnecker said.

Jews, according to Dr. Hutschnecker, display their mental illness through their paranoia. He explained that the paranoiac not only imagines that he is being persecuted but deliberately creates situations which will make persecution a reality.

Dr. Hutschnecker said that all a person need do to see Jewish paranoia in action is to ride on the New York subway. Nine times out of ten, he said, the one who pushes you out of the way will be a Jew.

"The Jew hopes you will retaliate in kind and when you do he can tell himself you are anti-Semitic."

During World War II, Dr. Hutschnecker said, Jewish leaders in England and the United States knew about the terrible massacre of the Jews by the Nazis. But, he stated, when State Department officials wanted to speak out against the massacre, they were silenced by organized Jewry. Organized Jewry, he said, wanted the massacre to continue in order to arouse the world's sympathy.

Dr. Hutschnecker likened the Jewish need to be persecuted to the kind of insanity where the afflicted person mutilates himself. He said that those who mutilate themselves do so because they want sympathy for themselves. But, he added, such persons reveal their insanity by disfiguring themselves in such a way as to arouse revulsion rather than sympathy.

Dr. Hutschnecker noted that the incidence of mental illness has increased in the United States in direct proportion to the increase in the Jewish population.

"The great Jewish migration to the United States began at the end of the nineteenth century," Dr. Hutschnecker said. "In 1900 there were 1,058,135 Jews in the United States; in 1970 there were 5,868,555; an increase of 454.8%. In 1900 there were 62,112 persons confined in public mental hospitals in the United States; in 1970 there were 339,027, in increase of 445.7%. In the same period the U.S. population rose from 76,212,368 to 203,211,926, an increase of 166.6%. Prior to the influx of Jews from Europe the United States was a mentally healthy nation. But this is no longer true."

Dr. Hutschnecker substantiated his claim that the United States was no longer a mentally healthy nation by quoting Dr. David Rosenthal, chief of the laboratory of psychology at the National Institute of Mental Health, who recently estimated that more than 60,000,000 people in the United States suffer from some form of "schizophrenic spectrum disorder." Noting that Dr. Rosenthal is Jewish, Dr. Hutschnecker said that Jews seem to take a perverse pride in the spread of mental illness.

Dr. Hutschnecker said that the word "schizophrenia" was given to mental disease by dr. Eugen Blueler, a Swiss psychiatrist, in 1911. Prior to that time it had been known as "dementia praecox," the name used by its discoverer, Dr. Emil Kraepelin. Later, according to Dr. Hutschnecker, the same disease was given the name "neurosis" by Dr. Sigmund Freud.

"The symptoms of schizophrenia were recognized almost simultaneously by Bleuler, Kraepelin and Freud at a time when Jews were moving into the affluent middle class," Dr. Hutschnecker said. "Previously they had been ignored as a social and racial entity by the physicians of that era. They became clinically important when they began to intermingle with non-Jews."

Dr. Hutschnecker said that research by Dr. Jacques S. Gottlieb of Wayne State University indicates that schizophrenia is caused by deformity in the alpha-two-globulin protein, which in schizophrenics is corkscrew-shaped. The deformed protein is apparently caused by a virus which, Dr. Hutschnecker believes, Jews transmit to non-Jews with whom they come in contact. He said that because those descended from Western European peoples have not built up an immunity to the virus they are particularly vulnerable to the disease.

"There is no doubt in my mind," Dr. Hutschnecker said, "that Jews have infected the American people with schizophrenia. Jews are carriers of the disease and it will reach epidemic proportions unless science develops a vaccine to counteract it."

A Jew learns as part of his sacred Bible and Talmud studies that crimes against Gentiles, such as genocide, mass murder, child abuse etc. are considered holy services to God. The Bible and the Talmud, the holy books of hate, mandating innocent Jewish youngsters to hate, to murder, to deceit, to expel, to rob non-Jews in the name of God. This leaves not only a dent on their mental structure, but turns their soul into a festering spiritual deformity.

They live and work together with non-Jews in communities throughout the world, liking their Gentile neighbours, enjoying their culture and even at times falling in love with members of the Goyim opposite sex. However, because of the strict law and restrictions (based on racial purity) imposed upon them, they are forced to grow up and develop in a world in which they learn the skills of obeying one command and living a double life. The dilemma the ordinary Jew faces, is that he has to obey the Rabbis' interpretation of God's laws. They educated the young minds of the Jewish nation to despise, to subjugate, to look down upon and even to hate the non-Jewish world. Failing to follow these holy commands results, as they are taught, in severe punishment by God. This must result naturally in mental aberration amongst the Jewish community.

Loathsome example-patients of this serious mental illness, that befalls Jews, are America's neo-conservatives who seem to take joy in waging wars in the Middle East.

And:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7973467
Schizophr Bull. 1994;20(3):507-17.
Medical conditions in Ashkenazi schizophrenic pedigrees.

Goodman AB.

Epidemiology and Health Services Research Laboratory, Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, Orangeburg, NY 10962.
Abstract

To limit the genetic heterogeneity of schizophrenia, this study focused on the widely extended pedigrees of Ashkenazi Jewish schizophrenia probands. The hypothesis posed is that the increased prevalence among the Ashkenazim of the rare lysosomal enzyme disorders, Tay Sachs disease (TDS), caused by low levels of hexosaminidase A, and Gaucher's disease (GD), caused by low levels of glucocerebrosidase, might contribute to the demonstrated increased vulnerability to schizophrenia in this ethnic group. Signs and symptoms characterizing the candidate illnesses were systematically queried by the family history method. Rates and relative risks for symptoms characterizing these disorders and for several nonautosomal illnesses associated with TSD and/or GD (i.e., amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and Hodgkin's disease, leukemia and lymphoma) are significantly elevated in the schizophrenia pedigrees, compared to controls. The conditions with elevated rates and risks have been associated with chromosomal regions 1q21 and 15q23-q24. These areas are suggested as candidate regions for future targeted deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) research in schizophrenia.

PMID: 7973467 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

 

[shijing]

I've also drawn a tenuous connection between the Hittites and the Chatti and the Bible says that Abraham, who I believe was Moses/Ay was a Hittite.

By "Chatti", do you mean the Hattians? The whole Hittite issue is interesting, since linguistically, the Anatolian branch (to which Hittite belongs) is the first to split off of Common Indo-European -- possibly indicating that they could have been a group that was culled from the rest of the Indo-European population and "tweaked", to what specific end I'm not exactly sure. I'm interested to see how you pursue this particular thread, including how it relates to Nefertiti's family's infamous cranial morphology.

If anybody wants a copy of this impossible to get book, I have a scan of it.

I'd like one, whenever you have a chance, Laura -- thanks for offering :)

 

[Mr. Premise]

I think 'Chatti' refers to a Germanic tribe from the upper Weser river area in Germany: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatti

I've also drawn a tenuous connection between the Hittites and the Chatti and the Bible says that Abraham, who I believe was Moses/Ay was a Hittite.

By "Chatti", do you mean the Hattians? The whole Hittite issue is interesting, since linguistically, the Anatolian branch (to which Hittite belongs) is the first to split off of Common Indo-European -- possibly indicating that they could have been a group that was culled from the rest of the Indo-European population and "tweaked", to what specific end I'm not exactly sure. I'm interested to see how you pursue this particular thread, including how it relates to Nefertiti's family's infamous cranial morphology.

If anybody wants a copy of this impossible to get book, I have a scan of it.

I'd like one, whenever you have a chance, Laura -- thanks for offering :)

 

[shijing]

I think 'Chatti' refers to a Germanic tribe from the upper Weser river area in Germany: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatti

Gotcha -- thanks Mr. Premise!

 

[Al Today]

There are many types of people that come & go within this forum. Continually kracks me up. Learning can be entertaining. I gotta thank rofo6850. If it were not for those postings, I would not have seen the concise synopsis that Laura has written. I mean... How much information must be processed to come up with the following theory?

So far, the facts are that Europe was a VERY peaceful place for 25,000 years until war-mongering types came up from the Levant bringing agriculture and land ownership with them. The first archaeological evidence for war (not saying there wasn't other evidence, but I'm dealing with facts here), was in Africa right about the area where certain modern type humans and neanderthals are proposed to have mixed. There is a central core there, where cranial deformation, genital mutilation, and anti-woman, child attitudes prevail and spread. So, believe me, it didn't start in Europe with the Cro-Magnon people. Being creative and innovative does not mean being rapacious.

You need to study psychopathy for a very long time in order to understand exactly how parasitic, dull, non-creative, and mechanical it is. And then you need to study creativity and conscience and the will to do and be good. Then, you need to imagine how the drive and will of the latter, mixed with the mechanicalness and parasitism can become rapaciousness.

Thank you for getting right to the point... Funny thing is to me, one has gotta do some work to agree, or disagree. And others just can't get off their soapbox. And yet others just know it all and feel superior. And others, just wanna learn & have fun. For learning is fun when one experiences the thrill of debate and discovery, not being spoon fed.

 

[brainwave]

Neanderthals were already rapidly declining in number by 80,000 years ago no matter where they were. This may be because they probably lacked some critical cro-magnon genetic material that gave them the behavioral flexibility to survive in large numbers during environmental shifts---remember high testosterone, hormonal differences.

So Africans and some Neanderthals mixed in the middle east (semi...semites?) they then spread to Europe as per the link you posted Laura. The 45,000 to 80,000, date is interesting though. It provides time for the genetic mix to become more stable frequency wise in the overall population. Since the population was facing environmental pressure and declining, the mixed dudes began to settle further west and north to reach more critical numbers by 45,000 years ago as their full cousins were dying there and everywhere. The mixed dudes were also encountering unmixed modern humans who were migrating due to environmental pressure or there previously as well. Mellers is only one of a few researchers who think environmental changes exerted selective pressure and influenced migration out of Africa, so that fits. There were multiple migrations too, it seems.

Sott may have had this article a few years back.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/06/060612-africa_2.html

Rapid climate change may have enabled early humans to venture out of Africa and colonize the rest of the world, according to a new study.

The research suggests that modern humans first moved out of Africa about 60,000 years ago, after some populations experienced major advances in culture and brainpower.

One likely trigger for these advances was rapid climate change, according to Paul Mellars, professor of prehistory and human evolution at the University of Cambridge in England.

Evidence indicates that modern humans originated in Africa between 150,000 and 200,000 years ago.

But it wasn't until some 100,000 years later that modern humans expanded into Europe and Asia, eventually replacing already established populations such as those of the Neandertals.
Research of modern African populations, including studies of their mitochondrial DNA—a genetic marker passed down from mothers to daughters—point to a major population expansion about 80,000 years ago.

Peter Forster, a University of Cambridge geneticist who was not involved with Mellars' study, says a "remarkable expansion" of distinctive DNA lineages took place between 80,000 and 60,000 years ago.

Mellars says such DNA evidence points to an expansion centered initially in one small region of Africa, probably in eastern or southern Africa.

Meanwhile, archaeological evidence shows signs of major cultural advances during this same key period, he adds.

Important clues come from finds at sites such as Blombos Cave in South Africa.

Tools and decorative objects discovered there suggest an advanced culture that was closer to those of the first modern humans in Europe and western Asia than to earlier African groups.

Then one of the articles Laura linked.


It was
http://news.discovery.com/human/neanderthal-human-interbreed-dna.html

One of the first determinations concerned the point at which humans diverged from their common ancestor with Neanderthals, who lived in much of Europe and western Asia before they went extinct.

"According to our results, the ancestors of Neanderthals and modern humans went their separate ways about 400,000 years ago," said co-author Jim Mullikin, a computational geneticist at the National Human Genome Research Institute.

The new data, however, also supports that Neanderthals and humans encountered each other again around 45,000 to 80,000 years ago in the Middle East, when humans migrating out of Africa likely met Neanderthals who were already living there.

The meeting must not have been too unpleasant, since the researchers believe the interbreeding happened at this place and estimated time.

Supporting that conclusion is the fact that the Neanderthal DNA more closely matched that of the China, France and Papua New Guinea individuals in their study. All had the one to four percent Neanderthal contribution to their DNA, so the interbreeding must have first occurred before the humans migrating out of Africa colonized other, more distant regions in Europe, Asia and elsewhere.

Reich said humans and Neanderthals might have continued to mate with each other later, "because their populations overlapped in Europe and remains have been found for human individuals with Neanderthal-type features," but the genetic data cannot pinpoint when and where these later couplings might have taken place.

brainwave

 

[brainwave]

If you mean that, based on this thread's discussion, you imagine the Neanderthals themselves to be the evil and ruthless psychopaths constantly at each other's throats, then may be indeed it's not very accurate. As you said, they did exist for 200,000 years, and while they practiced anti-social things like cannibalism, they also took care of their young and buried their dead in collective rituals, throwing flowers on their graves, so they did have some social fabric and continuity.

But if you picture a uniform society of basically boring, uncreative people who have poor understanding of how others feel, whose energies are all invested in daily survival, and who live in small isolated groups -- such species can exist for a long time as long as any change in conditions is within their reaction capabilities, just look at the animal world.

fwiw

Yes, somewhat like the few isolated warlike tribes in South America described in Hierarchy in the Forest and other works. Mellars' work seems to provide evidence for the conditions of how these behavioral traits would spread. Now I really want to read more Mellars

The population of each band of neanderthals was probably very small and were focused on survival in a rough environment. So I should qualify and say neanderthals were psychopath like, since the behavioral traits described certainly sounds like it. Something was lacking in neanderthals however, the intelligence and adaptability to manipulate in large groups?. I imagine that any significant population comprised only of essential psychopaths would be evolutionarily unstable. Maybe that is why they died out. They were too psychopath like but lacked adaptable traits? The survival of neanderthal genes including those that makes one prone to violence, aggression and lack of empathy would then require an infusion of genes from a more evolutionary stable population- one with traits of higher intelligence and adaptability in its genetic pool. This is what would seem more conducive to essential psychopathy as we understand it, hence it begins-with mixing. Before that it was just a seed comprising aggression and lack of empathy but that is not all that makes an essential psychopath, right? The intelligence to do something with those traits i.e., ability to manipulate in various social situations is more like it. So the cro-magnon population with just a little or no neanderthal genes would also be more or less stable for a long period of time even in a changing environment, while neanderthals could be stable as long as the environment was relatively stable. As this population of cro-magnons grew, the regionally scattered small bands of neanderthals were stably declining. So the cro-magnons that were not essential psychopaths neither were neanderthals, though the latter were to some degree psychopath like.

According to Richard Bloom in Evolutionary Psychology of violence- a book that I do not necessarily agree with in toto,- even without an individual's motivation to spread their genes in the short term, groups do so in the long term. It would be even more imperative for small bands of aggressive types dealing with environmental disruption and population decline to rape females from a more stable and increasing population. It's probably why is rape more rampant during invasions and general upheaval. There are numerous documentation of primitive societies that raided for women. In essence, invaders would be more motivated to rape females precisely because of the increased probability that they may not survive the battle. Their genes are more likely to do so in offspring created by the deed.

While I do not take the bible as absolute fact, it is quite possibly based on some commonly known stories and facts in the area at the time it was being written. May not be good research material but the passage below describes theft and rape of out group women. The fact that there are more passages in the "good book" that touch on the topic suggests the practice may have been common in the very area we suspect the seeds of essential psychopathy may have been sown.

From Judges 21.

Now the men of Israel had sworn in Mizpeh, saying, There shall not any of us give his daughter unto Benjamin to wife.(because they did not originally join the fight?)

21:2 And the people came to the house of God, and abode there till even before God, and lifted up their voices, and wept sore; 21:3 And said, O LORD God of Israel, why is this come to pass in Israel, that there should be to day one tribe lacking in Israel? 21:4 And it came to pass on the morrow, that the people rose early, and built there an altar, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings.

21:5 And the children of Israel said, Who is there among all the tribes of Israel that came not up with the congregation unto the LORD? For they had made a great oath concerning him that came not up to the LORD to Mizpeh, saying, He shall surely be put to death.

21:6 And the children of Israel repented them for Benjamin their brother, and said, There is one tribe cut off from Israel this day.

21:7 How shall we do for wives for them that remain, seeing we have sworn by the LORD that we will not give them of our daughters to wives? 21:8 And they said, What one is there of the tribes of Israel that came not up to Mizpeh to the LORD? And, behold, there came none to the camp from Jabeshgilead to the assembly.

21:9 For the people were numbered, and, behold, there were none of the inhabitants of Jabeshgilead there.

21:10 And the congregation sent thither twelve thousand men of the valiantest, and commanded them, saying, Go and smite the inhabitants of Jabeshgilead with the edge of the sword, with the women and the children.

21:11 And this is the thing that ye shall do, Ye shall utterly destroy every male, and every woman that hath lain by man.

21:12 And they found among the inhabitants of Jabeshgilead four hundred young virgins, that had known no man by lying with any male: and they brought them unto the camp to Shiloh, which is in the land of Canaan.

21:13 And the whole congregation sent some to speak to the children of Benjamin that were in the rock Rimmon, and to call peaceably unto them.

21:14 And Benjamin came again at that time; and they gave them wives which they had saved alive of the women of Jabeshgilead: and yet so they sufficed them not.

21:15 And the people repented them for Benjamin, because that the LORD had made a breach in the tribes of Israel.

21:16 Then the elders of the congregation said, How shall we do for wives for them that remain, seeing the women are destroyed out of Benjamin? 21:17 And they said, There must be an inheritance for them that be escaped of Benjamin, that a tribe be not destroyed out of Israel.

21:18 Howbeit we may not give them wives of our daughters: for the children of Israel have sworn, saying, Cursed be he that giveth a wife to Benjamin.

21:19 Then they said, Behold, there is a feast of the LORD in Shiloh yearly in a place which is on the north side of Bethel, on the east side of the highway that goeth up from Bethel to Shechem, and on the south of Lebonah.

21:20 Therefore they commanded the children of Benjamin, saying, Go and lie in wait in the vineyards; 21:21 And see, and, behold, if the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in dances, then come ye out of the vineyards, and catch you every man his wife of the daughters of Shiloh, and go to the land of Benjamin.

21:22 And it shall be, when their fathers or their brethren come unto us to complain, that we will say unto them, Be favourable unto them for our sakes: because we reserved not to each man his wife in the war: for ye did not give unto them at this time, that ye should be guilty.

21:23 And the children of Benjamin did so, and took them wives, according to their number, of them that danced, whom they caught: and they went and returned unto their inheritance, and repaired the cities, and dwelt in them.

21:24 And the children of Israel departed thence at that time, every man to his tribe and to his family, and they went out from thence every man to his inheritance.

21:25 In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.

brainwave

 

[Z...]

Peter Forster, a University of Cambridge geneticist who was not involved with Mellars' study, says a "remarkable expansion" of distinctive DNA lineages took place between 80,000 and 60,000 years ago.

Mellars says such DNA evidence points to an expansion centered initially in one small region of Africa, probably in eastern or southern Africa.

Meanwhile, archaeological evidence shows signs of major cultural advances during this same key period, he adds.

Important clues come from finds at sites such as Blombos Cave in South Africa.

Tools and decorative objects discovered there suggest an advanced culture that was closer to those of the first modern humans in Europe and western Asia than to earlier African groups.

Interesting, or confusing.
It doesn't fit into the results of research of neanderthal genome from science mag paper I quoted on the first page of this thread.
According to these mixing with neanderthals occurred when Euro-Asian population ancestors already split from African population ancestors.
Seems there is more then one piece missing in this puzzle, or am I missing something?

 

[Hildegarda]

The survival of neanderthal genes including those that makes one prone to violence, aggression and lack of empathy would then require an infusion of genes from a more evolutionary stable population- one with traits of higher intelligence and adaptability in its genetic pool. This is what would seem more conducive to essential psychopathy as we understand it, hence it begins-with mixing. Before that it was just a seed comprising aggression and lack of empathy but that is not all that makes an essential psychopath, right? The intelligence to do something with those traits i.e., ability to manipulate in various social situations is more like it. So the cro-magnon population with just a little or no neanderthal genes would also be more or less stable for a long period of time even in a changing environment, while neanderthals could be stable as long as the environment was relatively stable. As this population of cro-magnons grew, the regionally scattered small bands of neanderthals were stably declining. So the cro-magnons that were not essential psychopaths neither were neanderthals, though the latter were to some degree psychopath like.

this is exactly how I understood it as well, thank you very much for the summary

 

[Laura]

Peter Forster, a University of Cambridge geneticist who was not involved with Mellars' study, says a "remarkable expansion" of distinctive DNA lineages took place between 80,000 and 60,000 years ago.

Mellars says such DNA evidence points to an expansion centered initially in one small region of Africa, probably in eastern or southern Africa.

Meanwhile, archaeological evidence shows signs of major cultural advances during this same key period, he adds.

Important clues come from finds at sites such as Blombos Cave in South Africa.

Tools and decorative objects discovered there suggest an advanced culture that was closer to those of the first modern humans in Europe and western Asia than to earlier African groups.

Interesting, or confusing.
It doesn't fit into the results of research of neanderthal genome from science mag paper I quoted on the first page of this thread.
According to these mixing with neanderthals occurred when Euro-Asian population ancestors already split from African population ancestors.
Seems there is more then one piece missing in this puzzle, or am I missing something?

Well, that's the problem, there are pieces missing. The experts are not coming up with really good theories because most of them are looking at just a limited set of facts. I liked Mellars' book because he tried to look at all the relevant things, and considered and examined the various theories. In the end, he was still forced to express this bafflement at the new type of human being that Cro-Magnon was.

I also notice that Cro-Magnon is distinguished, more or less, from the early modern humans of Africa even in terms of tools and industry. There are early homo sapiens found in the Mousterian context. That, of course, leads the workers to theorize that this is where they "evolved".

Ian Tattersall has this to say about the matter:

{there was} a prevailing bias that the West was civilized and the rest of the world was not...

Scholarly interest in the emergence of "civilized" humans has had a long and also checkered history. ...the Greeks and early Romans wrestled with questions about the origin of their particular state of civilization. One scenario held that the history of civilization paralleled the life cycle of an individual. The best and healthiest days are in one's youth, after which one declines into old age and then death. Likewise, the heyday of healthy and vigorous human civilization had occurred in the good old days of yesteryear. Since then, everything had gone to pot...

The alternative view of the history of human civilization was much more optimistic. It held that in the beginning, everyday life had been more primitive and simpler than today's. Over a long period of time humans developed technology. As technology improved, so, too, did the human condition, which eventually resulted in the high level of civilization enjoyed by the Greeks and Romans. ...The overall theme of this view of civilization was that there was a continuum of progress from primitive to advanced humans.

Of these two themes, the general idea of degeneration would be co-opted and reconfigured into their depiction of the origin of human races by eighteenth-century naturalists such as the Comte de Buffon and by the father of physical anthropology(and also, we suggest, paleoanthropology), Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. These scholars claimed that the longest continuous record of "high" civilization was to be found in Asia, and concluded that Asia was where humans must have originated. From there, humans migrated west, to the Caucasus Mountains. The Caucasians (those immigrants who stayed in the region of the Caucasus) and those others who migrated into Africa became the "white" and "black" races, respectively, through a process of degeneration from the original stock.

It is interesting that, in their speculations on the demise of the Neanderthals, archeologists and physical anthropologists of the twentieth century have kept alive the notion of an invasion from the East of an overpowering, more sophisticated "race" of humans.

But it would be the theme of progress that would later pervade evolutionary thought. ...The comparative anatomists and taxonomists of the Dark Ages had kept alive Aristotle's "Scala Naturae" by infusing it with a Christian creation motif. This produced a taxonomic hierarchy of life's forms with humans being the closest to the image of a divine creator. This arrangement of life from the supposedly lowest to highest became known as the Great Chain of Being. When evolutionary ideas were eventually infused into paleontology, the Great Chain of Being was itself transformed into an evolutionary succession of life, from the simplest to the most complex.

Darwin devoted the first volume of "The Descent of Man" entirely to a discussion of how progression had played out in human evolution. Incorporating countless comments on how primitive humans differed physically and intellectually from those more civilized, Darwin spent chapter after chapter in this work detailing how one could follow the transformation of humans from something apelike in body and mind, through the "savages" and "barbaric" humans, to the most sophisticated of the "races," the Europeans. It is not surprising that this vision of evolutionary progress was not derived from study of the fossil record. For, by 1871, when "the Descent" was published, little more than the original Neanderthal skull from the Feldhofer Grotto in Germany had been presented to the scientific world in publication.

Thus Darwin essentially followed the precedent of the Great Chain of Being in perceiving the ascendancy of humans through a sequence of living forms that went from monkeys to apes, to the most primitive and uncivilized humans, and on up to the most advanced and civilized humans. Having established to his satisfaction that one could trace such a transformation series through living apes and humans, Darwin could turn this horizontal comparison ninety degrees and imbue it with the element of evolutionary and geological time.

But there were few fossils known that could support his contention. The only potential candidates for such a human-ape ancestor were from deposits in France and were no more than a few broken jaws - which didn't help at all. Nevertheless, Darwin speculated with supreme assuredness that, were the fossils known, a similar evolutionary transformation - from monkey through ape to primitive and then civilized human - would certainly be played out. ....

Although documenting the Great Chain of Being may have been the motivating force behind the works of these early taxonomists, the implications of such a Chain were not also uniformly shared. For some taxonomists the simple, straightforward biblical creation story encompassed all life. ... no matter how many different races a taxonomist carved out, they all shared the same history... all descendants of Adam. ... But there was a dangerous and less attractive side. The flip side of monogenesis was polygenesis; and from the polygenists' point of view, the differences between races were simply too great for all to be traceable to the same Adam. Different races, therefore, had to have arisen from different Adams. ...

Even Darwin who used the device of a transition from identifiably primitive to civilized "man" in The Descent of Man" , was committed to the membership of all humans in the same species. One cannot but wonder if a latent resurgence of belief in poly genesis has not been unconsciously behind the tendency among post-World War II paleoanthropologists to keep the number of extinct hominid species to a minimum. For, by grouping ourselves and such wildly different hominids as Neanderthals and a host of other fossil humans in the same species, the difference between groups of living humans become even further diminished by comparison.

Notice above how Judao-Christian thinking was driving the process even if unconsciously.

Tattersall then goes on to explain that early taxonomists sought to avoid placing man in the "creature taxonomy" despite the fact that virtually all taxonomists agreed that humans were anatomically similar to primates. This was, of course, before Darwin. It was Linnaeus who placed humans in their own genus and species along with other animals.

Getting to there wasn't easy as it was only in 1632 that Joannes Jonstonus discussed humans in comparison with other animals though he refrained from classifying them as such. Humans were "set apart" because of their ability to reason. Humans continued to be placed "next to the creator". Yes, they were like other animals, but because of their ability to reason and because of language, they were always set apart from other primates.

Although evidence has always existed of the presence of different kinds of past humans, its significance was long in being recognized and was misinterpreted well into the Renaissance. For instance, large megalithic structures, such as Stonehenge, were thought to have been the work of giants of superhuman strength who had once roamed the face of Earth. Stone artifacts ... were interpreted in one of two ways: either they came from the heavens... or they were formed in the bowels of earth... for centuries fossils, stone tools, and everything else geological were often illustrated in the same plates by one scientist or another who lumped them all together as "things that had been dug up."

The odd thing is that, by the sixteenth century, Europeans were aware of the existence of humans elsewhere in the world who actually used stone instead of metal tools. ... Michele Mercati made the proper connection... he had suggested that people in the past had also made stone tools... [his treatise] was not published until the eighteenth century. ...

In 1686, the English natural historian Robert Plot became the first to publish a work on the manufacture of stone tools by earlier humans. ... Stone tools from the past had become an accepted reality. ...

English natural historian, John Woodward, had emphatically stated in 1728 that if you made stone tools, you were not only technologically unsophisticated, you were nothing more than a barbarian and savage. Stone tools that were dug up in the fields had to have been made by earlier humans who, of course, had been barbaric and savage compared with eighteenth-century Englishmen. ...the course of human history had been away from the barbaric to the civilized, away from stone tools to the advanced technology of metallurgy. Truly civilized humans of the eighteenth century had followed this path of progress. The consequence of adhering to this simple-minded chain of thought, however, was that if you were to find any living humans who still made stone tools, they had to be savages.... If you belonged to a western society, this simple dichotomy - metal-tool use equals civilized, non-metal tool use equals savage - gave justification to conquest and subjugation. ...

...only non-human animals were allowed by Scripture to be older than the general time of the Great Flood.

And so on. Repeatedly, we see the pattern of the influence of biblical training/thinking on the development of science and this continues to this very day, I think. Even if the individual is an athiest, they are still imbued with the type of thinking that dominates Western culture, which is that "the western man is civilized, no one else is as civilized, therefore our way is TRUE civilization."

This book by Tattersall is a very good adjunct to Mellars meticulous cataloging of the data. I'll pull out some additional quotes when I have time.