This will not work, because in Europe the oldest burials are ONLY
Neanderthal with NO anatomically modern humans found at all. The earliest
burials were those of Neanderthals (Trinkaus and Shipman). Thus your
hypothesis would require that modern men buried their pets but not
themselves. Interesting.
The earliest european Neanderthal burial dates before 70,000 years probably
closer to 76,000 years ago (Mellars). The earliest European burial of an
anatomically modern man is 33,000 years ago. There were no anatomically
modern men to bury the Neanderthal. It seems your hypothesis has a pet but
no master.
The fact is that the oldest, dated, unquestioned, anatomically modern human in
Europe is 33,850 years ago (Smith 1982, p. 680)
Reference
Trinkaus and Shipman, The Neandertals, Vintage Books, 1994, p. 418
Paul Mellars, The neanderthal Legacy (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1996), p. 404.
Smith, Fred H., 1982. "Upper Pleistocene Hominid Evolution in South-Central
Europe: A Review of the Evidence and Analysis of Trends," Current
Anthropology, 23(1982):6:667-703.
glenn
Adam, Apes, and Anthropology: Finding the Soul of Fossil Man
and
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm