>Thanks for this info. I would appreciate a reference to this report.
I gave one Stephen. Look at my original report.
>But even if it was cannibalism, it was not necessarily ritual
>cannibalism. Life was tough for Neandertals in ice-age Europe and
>they may have eaten their own kind as a source of protein. Even
>among some modern day peoples (eg. Melanesia), cannibalism was just
>for food:
That is certainly an issue but in Melanesia it is not soley for food that
they eat enemies. In some cases it is a ritual so that the person will
serve them in the afterlife. Given the widespread evidence of cannibalism
among all ancient peoples, most authorities do not think that it is due to
protein need. Campbell notes
"Some paleoanthropologists feel that the cannibalism at
Krapina and Hortus was dietary cannibalism--motivated by nothing
more than hunger. They suggest that a band of Neandertals,
having run short of other game, decided that in such an emergency
their neighbors would make a life-saving meal. This idea does
not get much support from a study by physical anthropologists
Stanley M. Garn and Walter D. Block, who looked at the problem of
cannibalism from the viewpoint of practical dietetics. According
to the arithmetic of the two anthropologists, the edible muscle
mass of a 110-pound man skillfully butchered would yield about 10
pounds of useful protein--not much food compared to the meat of a
mammoth or a bison. Furthermore, as we have see, contemporary
peoples who practice cannibalism are not driven simply by hunger
or blind ferocity. Members of some societies cannibalize as part
of a ritual, believing that they acquire strength and courage by
eating the flesh of an enemy. There are also rare documented
cases of murderers eating the flesh of their victims in order to
prevent the ghost of the dead from haunting them; or the
relatives of a murdered person may eat the victim's flesh, in the
belief that it will aid them in their quest for revenge. The
slaughters at Krapina and Hortus, however, seem more savage and
less selective than any cannibalistic rite of today.
"Ritualistic motives appear more likely at another
ancient feast on human flesh. The evidence is in the group of
skulls excabated on the banks of the Solo River in Java. Though
eleven skulls were dug up, no other skeletal parts were found,
except for two shin bones. The facial bones had been smashed off
every skull, and not a single jaw or tooth was left. The
bodiless isolation of the skulls is enough to hint at some ritual
intent. Even more suggestive is the treatment of the opening at
the base of the skull. The foramen magnum is normally about an
inch and a quarter in diameter. In all but two of the Solo
skulls, it had been widened considerably by hacking with stone or
wooden tools. similar mutilation of skulls was carried out at
choukoutien, as we have seen, and has been observed among
cannibals of the present day, who widen the opening so they can
reach into the skulls to scoop out the brains."~Bernard Campbell,
Humankind Emerging, (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1985), p.
404-405
Thank you for the examples of cannibalism. I appreciated that.
>In any event, if Neandertal is only distantly related to Homo
>sapiens, with a last common ancestor with Homo sapiens 550 kya (see
>below), it is Biblically irrelevant whether Neandertal carried out
>ritual cannibalism or not. The evidence is mounting that modern
>man is very recent, and surprisingly genetically homogenous (which
>broadly fits the Biblical picture):
>
The evidence proves that that particular Neanderthal's mother didn't leave
any modern offspring. But due to genetic cross over during egg and sperm
formation, it does not rule out Neanderthal genomic nuclear contributions to
moderm men and the authors of the cell article admit that.
>
>In fact, the average variation among modern humans is less than
>*one-third* that of the average between Neandertal and modern humans:
>
This is the point Stephen. Since there is only one example of a neanderthal
mtDNA it is hardly a good comparison to compare it with the AVERAGE of
thousands of measurements of modern humans, especially when some modern
humans may have more mtDNA variation than Neanderthals.
>GM>But the range of variation among modern humans is 1-24!
>
>The point is that there was almost no overlap: the most divergent
>human pair of mtDNA strands differred in 24 nucleotides, but the
>*least* divergent modern-Neandertal pair had 20 differences:
>
The ONLY Neatherthal mtDNA had an experimental error of between 22 and 36
nucleotide differences. This one is the most and the least divergent
Neanderthal.
>
>"These data put the Neandertal sequence outside the statistical range
>of modern human variation and, says Paabo, make it `highly unlikely
>that Neandertals contributed to the human mtDNA pool.'" (Science,
>11 July 1997, p177).
>
While I would agree with this, I cannot agree that there is no evidence of
genetic contributions of Neanderthals with modern people. The mandibular
foramen in Neanderthals was a unique type that only developed in Europe
during the years that Neanderthal lived. And that wierd shaped foramen
occurs today ONLY among Europeans. I would say that some of us inherited
this feature from Neanderthals.
>GM>The ONLY Neanderthal sampled differed by 27 from the putative
>>standard sequence. Looked at in this way, it is not a huge difference
>at all.
>
>It may not be "huge" but it is statistically significant. A random
>sample of modern humans would have expected a maximum of only *8*
>different base-pairs:
No a random sample would be expected to have a maximum of 24 differences. 8
is the average difference.
>GM>The original authors wrote:
>>
>>"Whereas these modern human sequences differ among
>>themselves by an average of 8.0+/- 4.1 (range 1-24)
Note that the original authors said that the maximum variation was 24
>Where does it say that this was an "experimental error"?
>
Krings, Matthias, et al, 1997. "Neandertal DNA
Sequences and the Origin of Modern Humans," Cell, 90:19-30, p.
24-25
>If this is the case, and you claim that Neandertal and Homo sapiens
>are equally human and spiritual, you would have to claim that either
>humanity and spirituality stagnated for over half a million years, or it
>developed separately in two entirely different lineages and then one
>just died out. Which is it to be?
>
I don't know where you get the idea that spirituality stagnated or even why
that is important. Both lineages are human just like the european and
chinese lineages are human but are indeed separate lineages.
>"But the new data suggest no mixing at all, at least in mitochondrial
>genes. "Neandertals in Europe could not have contributed to the
>modern mitochondrial genome," says Stanford University geneticist
>Luca Cavalli- Sforza.
As I have said, I don't have a problem with this but it does not rule out a
nuclear contribution. The original authors state:
"These results do not rule out the possibility that
Neandertals contributed other genes to modern humans. However,
the view that Neandertals would have contributed little or
nothing to the modern human gene pool is gaining support from
studies of molecular genetic variation at nuclear loci in
humans."~Matthias Krings, et al., "Neandertal DNA Sequences and
the Origin of Modern Humans," Cell, 90:19-30, p. 27
>Since your post to this message board was nearly 5 months ago, I
>presume it has been evaluated and either accepted or rejected?
>What was the result?
It was accepted into the Anthropological E mail news. That is what I said.
glenn
Adam, Apes, and Anthropology: Finding the Soul of Fossil Man
and
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm