Published:
April 28, 2021 at 12:46 pm
Nobody alive today remembers a time before we knew the Neanderthals. Yet their discovery happened very recently in the wider context of human history – barely five generations back. 1856 is the official Neanderthal “ground zero”, when bones materialised in a cloud of clay clods and black powder from the Feldhofer cave, near Düsseldorf in Germany.
Advertisement
This was the first
recognised find. Nearly three decades earlier, a Neanderthal skull-top had been discovered in a Belgian cave, but its unusual anatomy was less obvious because it was a child. In 1848 yet another skull emerged, this time from near the Forbes military battery on Gibraltar. This nearly became the “type” fossil for the species. But its true significance only became clear just after the Feldhofer find had been given a scientific moniker:
FacebookTwitterEmail
Editor s Note: The following is an opinion piece.
In a statement on Wednesday evening, President Biden criticized Governor Abbot’s decision to end mask mandates, calling it to be a “big mistake” and “Neanderthal thinking” in the face of CDC warnings about easing restrictions with developing coronavirus strains.
While the move is undoubtedly inhumane, drawing to mind a few choice words, the issue arises with Biden’s unforgivable, tragic comparison. To liken the governor s thought process to the extinct hominid is a grave insult to Neanderthal intelligence. Contrary to Biden’s words, they weren’t really the type to make moronic public health decisions on a state level. Instead, they were our particularly bright, beautiful brethren who in the end just couldn’t hack it. They met a very empathetic end. Many of us can even trace our lineage back to these robust, big-boned, wide-ribbed, pleistocene epoch grandmas. With knowledge of the microbiome,
Neanderthals weren t that bad Biden should apologize to them mysanantonio.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from mysanantonio.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Follow
Dec. 19, 2020
Less is known about Neanderthals than one might think from the popular press, especially their behavior. The question of ritual burial by non-sapiens is a divisive topic: evidence is scanty, possibly partly because if bury they did, it was in shallow graves. Now an international group of researchers has concluded that a Neanderthal toddler was deliberately buried about 41,000 years ago at the famed La Ferrassie rock shelter in Dordogne, France.
About 2 years old at death, the infant had been placed in a pit dug into an otherwise archaeo-paleontologically sterile sediment layer, Antoine Balzeau of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris and colleagues reported in Nature. The child had been part of one of the latest Neanderthal groups in the region.