Scomparsa del Neanderthal

July 17, 2014

Early Neandertal disappearance in Iberia

Journal of Human Evolution DOI: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2014.06.002 

New evidence of early Neanderthal disappearance in the Iberian Peninsula 

Bertila Galván et al. 

The timing of the end of the Middle Palaeolithic and the disappearance of Neanderthals continue to be strongly debated. Current chronometric evidence from different European sites pushes the end of the Middle Palaeolithic throughout the continent back to around 42 thousand years ago (ka). This has called into question some of the dates from the Iberian Peninsula, previously considered as one of the last refuge zones of the Neanderthals. Evidence of Neanderthal occupation in Iberia after 42 ka is now very scarce and open to debate on chronological and technological grounds. Here we report thermoluminescence (TL) and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dates from El Salt, a Middle Palaeolithic site in Alicante, Spain, the archaeological sequence of which shows a transition from recurrent to sporadic human occupation culminating in the abandonment of the site. The new dates place this sequence within MIS 3, between ca. 60 and 45 ka. An abrupt sedimentary change towards the top of the sequence suggests a strong aridification episode coinciding with the last Neanderthal occupation of the site. These results are in agreement with current chronometric data from other sites in the Iberian Peninsula and point towards possible breakdown and disappearance of the Neanderthal local population around the time of the Heinrich 5 event. Iberian sites with recent dates (less than 40 ka) attributed to the Middle Palaeolithic should be revised in the light of these data. 

Link

Pigmenti preistorici

Analisi dei pigmenti usati 

nell'arte rupestre preistorica

 Un team che coinvolge ricercatori del Consiglio nazionale delle ricerche spagnolo ha analizzato, per la prima volta, due figure rupestri di ripari situati nel complesso archeologico di Minateda, a Hellin (Albacete). Hanno stili diversi e sono separati da diversi millenni nel tempo. I risultati, pubblicati nel Journal of Archaeological Science , mostrano che la composizione del dipinto nella preistoria non ha cambiato in migliaia di anni e che non c'erano connotazioni culturali o rituali nel suo farsi. 

La composizione della pittura nella preistoria non cambia in migliaia di anni e la sua realizzazione non aveva connotazioni rituali, secondo una nuova ricerca [Crediti: CSIC] 

La prima delle figure analizzate, raffigurante un bovide, appartiene all'arte levantina praticata dai nomadi cacciatori-raccoglitori che abitavano la penisola iberica circa 10.000 anni fa. D'altra parte, la seconda figura, raffigurante un quadrupede, ha uno stile schematico, sviluppato dai primi produttori, agricoltori e allevatori che vivevano nella zona compresa tra 6.500 e 3.500 anni fa. Il primo stile è caratterizzato dal naturalismo delle sue forme e scene, mentre la seconda illustra le sue ragioni, a volte raggiungendo anche l'astrazione. Gli artisti utilizzati ossidi di ferro e terrigeni come pigmenti. Questi materiali sono facilmente reperibili nell'ambiente dei rifugi analizzati: il Grande Abrigo de Minateda, il più emblematico per definire l'origine e l'evoluzione di arte rupestre nel bacino del Mediterraneo della Penisola Iberica, e la Abrigo del Barranco de la Mortaja. Alberto Jorge, CSIC ricercatore presso il Museo Nazionale di Scienze Naturali, afferma: "Le composizioni dei pigmenti utilizzati in entrambi gli stili, separati da diversi millenni nel tempo, sono identici, il che significa che gli artisti non si spengono le ricette intenzioni come era in precedenza pensò. La verità è che si tratta di un materiale abbondante e di buona qualità pigmentazione che era facile da trovare nelle vicinanze ". Nuove interpretazioni Un'altra conclusione dei lavori ha implicazioni nella metodologia di ricerca dei pigmenti di arte rupestre all'aperto. La presenza di ossalato di calcio sarebbe dimostrare che il pigmento e portante fuse con lo strato esterno nei secoli. Jorge spiega: "Questo risultato potrebbe mettere in discussione gli studi condotti finora, sulla base di distinguere tre livelli stratigrafici - superficie, pigmenti e patina-, in quanto questi sono continuamente fusi e modificati, che introduce un fattore casuale chiaro nel dating". I ricercatori hanno anche rilevato la presenza di alcuni acidi grassi, il che suggerisce che quando i pigmenti sono stati elaborati, applicati o conservati, potrebbero venire a contatto con pelli di animali. CSIC ricercatore aggiunge: "Da ora in poi, dobbiamo essere molto cauti quando si parla sui rituali nella preparazione dei pigmenti, in quanto queste interpretazioni si avvicinò quando sostanze come fosfati di calcio, interpretati come carbonizzata e le ossa schiacciato, sono stati trovati nei pigmenti. Queste estrapolazioni non sono corrette in quanto abbiamo anche trovato queste sostanze nel substrato roccioso stessa " .

 Fonte: Spanish National Research Council [14 gennaio 2014]

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I Neanderthal erano cannibali?

Cannibal Neanderthals in northern Spain ate neighbours

Una ricerca recentemente presentata a Londra alla Royal Society dimostrerebbe che almeno una comunità di Neanderthal, i cui resti siono stati reperiti in Spagna, era composta da cannibali che macellavano i propri simili. 

 Scientists have discovered the remains of a group of Neanderthals in northern Spain who were butchered and eaten by a group of local cannibals, according to research presented at the Royal Society in London.

A researcher at work in El Sidrón Cave
[Credit: CSIC Comunicación]

Una quantità di ossa - che erano evidentemente state spezzate ed aperte usando strumenti è stata studiata ed analizzata accuratamente nel corso degli ultimi 13  anni.

 A cache of bones which had clearly been cracked open using tools has been analysed in a painstaking study over the past 13 years.

Le ossa furono dapprima scoperte presso il fondo del sistema di grotte di El Sidron, nel 1994: sin trattava di ossa che si erano preservate pressocché intatte per 51.000 anni, e sono state finalmente tutte analizzate con metodi di medicina forenze moderna.

First discovered deep inside the El Sidron cave system in 1994, the bones had been preserved for 51,000 years and have now been analysed using modern-day CSI forensic techniques.

Da quanto riportato anche dal Sunday Times, Il dottor Carles Lalueza-Fox dell'Istituto di Biologia Evolutiva di Barcellona avrebbe dichiarato alla Royal Society che il gruppo di Neanderthal macellati avrebbe incluso anche tre bimbi di età compresa tra i 2 ai 9 anni, tre adolescenti e sei adulti.

According to reports in the Sunday Times, Carles Lalueza-Fox of the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Barcelona told the Society the slaughtered group included three children aged from two to nine, three teenagers and six adults.

Sembra che siano stati uccisi e mangiati, con ossa e crani apertti per esporre l'interno: midollo, cervello, lingua.

“They appear to have been killed and eaten, with their bones and skulls split open to extract the marrow, tongue and brains,” he said.

Tutto il recuperato era stato macellato: dev'essere stato un lauto banchetto.

“All had been butchered. It must have been a big feast.”

Il dottor Lalueza-Fox sostiene che più probabilmente il mucchio di ossa dev'essere sprofondato attraverso una caditoia da un riparo roccioso fino al piccolo ricettacolo in fondo al sistema di grotte, dove infine è stato triovato in buono stato.

Dr Lalueza-Fox said the bone pile likely washed through a sinkhole from a rocky shelter above, eventually settling in the small alcove of the cave system where they were found.

Neanderthal foot bones in a block of cemented sand and clay from the
El Sidrón cave in Spain [Credit: PNAS/Rosas et al'

Per questo motivo, si sono conservate in condizioni differenti da quelle di qualsiasi altro resto neanderthaliano, dimostrandosi una splendida istantanea di un singolo scontro mortale tra due gruppi locali.

This meant they were kept in a condition unlike almost any other Neanderthal remains, and proved a perfect snapshot of a single, deadly clash, likely between two local gangs.

Gli strumenti trovati nel sito del macello provengono da una distanza di alcuni chilometri, ciò che sembra suggerire che gli aggressori fossero anche vicini confinanti delle stesse vittime.

The tools found at the site of the slaughter came from a few kilometres away, Dr Lalueza-Fox said, suggesting their fellow early human attackers were probably also their neighbours.

Infine, gli studiosi hanno provato ad ipotizzare un motivo causale dell'aggrssione: uno anche piuttosto semplice.

Finally, scientists proposed a theory for the motive behind the attack – and a simple one at that.

A differenza dei primi U.A.M. (uomini anatomicamente moderni), che in periodi di scarsità di cibo tendevano a riunirsi in gruppi più grandi ed efficienti, i Neanderthal al contrario tendevano a dividersi in bande ristrette di 10-12 individui.

Unlike the earliest anatomically modern humans, who coped with periods of food shortage by joining forces in large, efficient groups, Neanderthals tended to gather in small family gangs of around 10-12.

Quando la situazione si faceva più difficile - in inverno - essi dovevano ricorrere a misure estreme.

When times were tough in winter, this meant they had to resort to extreme measures.

Il dottor Lalueza-Fox sospetta che il gruppo cui appartenevano le ossa studiate sia stato ucciso in inverno, durante un'estrema scarsità di cibo. Non c'è alcuna evidenza di fuoco, per cui probabilmente furono sbranati crudi, immediatamente, ed ogni più minuscoloo pezzo di carne fu asportato. anche questo fatto, oltre al crollo, rende ragione del buono stato di conservazione dei resti, che furono così sottratti ai processi della decomposizione naturale.

Dr Lalueza-Fox said: “I would guess they were killed in winter when food was short. There is no evidence of any fire so they were eaten raw immediately and every bit of meat was consumed. They even cut around the mandibles of the jaw to extract the tongues.”

Author: Adam Withnall | Source: The Independent [November 24, 2013]

Archeologia di genere: chi ha fatto gli stencil delle mani?

L'archeologia di genere non è stata solamente una breve moda: continua la sua strada. Le immagini di mani lasciate per lunghissimi periodi nelle grotte, quasi ovunque, nel mondo sembra fossero fatte - per il 75% - da donne. Esistono altre teorie, naturalmente: e posseggono un'identica plausibilità. Circa il motivo per cui questi 'stencil' fossero fatti, si formulano solamente ipotesi, nessuna certezza.

Prehistoric cave art 

drawn mostly by women

 

says archaeologist

Women made most of the oldest-known cave art paintings, suggests a new analysis of ancient handprints. Most scholars had assumed these ancient artists were predominantly men, so the finding overturns decades of archaeological dogma.

Handprints in ancient cave art most often belonged to women, overturning the dogma
that the earliest artists were all men [Credit: Dean Snow/National Geographic]

Archaeologist Dean Snow of Pennsylvania State University analyzed hand stencils found in eight cave sites in France and Spain. By comparing the relative lengths of certain fingers, Snow determined that three-quarters of the handprints were female.

"There has been a male bias in the literature for a long time," said Snow, whose research was supported by the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration. "People have made a lot of unwarranted assumptions about who made these things, and why."

Archaeologists have found hundreds of hand stencils on cave walls across the world. Because many of these early paintings also showcase game animals—bison, reindeer, horses, woolly mammoths—many researchers have proposed that they were made by male hunters, perhaps to chronicle their kills or as some kind of "hunting magic" to improve success of an upcoming hunt. The new study suggests otherwise.

"In most hunter-gatherer societies, it's men that do the killing. But it's often the women who haul the meat back to camp, and women are as concerned with the productivity of the hunt as the men are," Snow said. "It wasn't just a bunch of guys out there chasing bison around."

Experts expressed a wide range of opinions about how to interpret Snow's new data, attesting to the many mysteries still surrounding this early art.

"Hand stencils are a truly ironic category of cave art because they appear to be such a clear and obvious connection between us and the people of the Paleolithic," said archaeologist Paul Pettitt of Durham University in England. "We think we understand them, yet the more you dig into them you realize how superficial our understanding is."

Sex Differences

Snow's study began more than a decade ago when he came across the work of John Manning, a British biologist who had found that men and women differ in the relative lengths of their fingers: Women tend to have ring and index fingers of about the same length, whereas men's ring fingers tend to be longer than their index fingers.

One day after reading about Manning's studies, Snow pulled a 40-year-old book about cave paintings off his bookshelf. The inside front cover of the book showed a colorful hand stencil from the famous Pech Merle cave in southern France. "I looked at that thing and I thought, man, if Manning knows what he's talking about, then this is almost certainly a female hand," Snow recalled.

Hand stencils and handprints have been found in caves in Argentina, Africa, Borneo, and Australia. But the most famous examples are from the 12,000- to 40,000-year-old cave paintings in southern France and northern Spain.

These hand stencils found in the El Castillo cave in Cantabria, Spain, were probably made
by a man (left) and a woman (right), respectively [Credit: Roberto Ontanon Peredo,
courtesy Dean Snow/National Geographic]

For the new study, published this week in the journal American Antiquity, Snow examined hundreds of stencils in European caves, but most were too faint or smudged to use in the analysis. The study includes measurements from 32 stencils, including 16 from the cave of El Castillo in Spain, 6 from the caves of Gargas in France, and 5 from Pech Merle.

Snow ran the numbers through an algorithm that he had created based on a reference set of hands from people of European descent who lived near his university. Using several measurements—such as the length of the fingers, the length of the hand, the ratio of ring to index finger, and the ratio of index finger to little finger—the algorithm could predict whether a given handprint was male or female. Because there is a lot of overlap between men and women, however, the algorithm wasn't especially precise: It predicted the sex of Snow's modern sample with about 60 percent accuracy.

Luckily for Snow, that wasn't a problem for the analysis of the prehistoric handprints. As it turned out—much to his surprise—the hands in the caves were much more sexually dimorphic than modern hands, meaning that there was little overlap in the various hand measurements.

"They fall at the extreme ends, and even beyond the extreme ends," Snow said. "Twenty thousand years ago, men were men and women were women."
Woman, Boy, Shaman?

Snow's analysis determined that 24 of the 32 hands—75 percent—were female.

Some experts are skeptical. Several years ago, evolutionary biologist R. Dale Guthrie performed a similar analysis of Paleolithic handprints. His work—based mostly on differences in the width of the palm and the thumb—found that the vast majority of handprints came from adolescent boys.

For adults, caves would have been dangerous and uninteresting, but young boys would have explored them for adventure, said Guthrie, an emeritus professor at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. "They drew what was on their mind, which is mainly two things: naked women and large, frightening mammals."

Other researchers are more convinced by the new data.

"I think the article is a landmark contribution," said archaeologist Dave Whitley of ASM Affiliates, an archaeological consulting firm in Tehachapi, California. Despite these handprints being discussed for half a decade, "this is the first time anyone's synthesized a good body of evidence."

Whitley rejects Guthrie's idea that this art was made for purely practical reasons related to hunting. His view is that most of the art was made by shamans who went into trances to try to connect with the spirit world. "If you go into one of these caves alone, you start to suffer from sensory deprivation very, very quickly, in 5 to 10 minutes," Whitley said. "It can spin you into an altered state of consciousness."

The new study doesn't discount the shaman theory, Whitley added, because in some hunter-gatherer societies shamans are female or even transgendered.

The new work raises many more questions than it answers. Why would women be the primary artists? Were they creating only the handprints, or the rest of the art as well? Would the hand analysis hold up if the artists weren't human, but Neanderthal?

The question Snow gets most often, though, is why these ancient artists, whoever they were, left handprints at all.

"I have no idea, but a pretty good hypothesis is that this is somebody saying, 'This is mine, I did this,'" he said.

Author: Virginia Hughes | Source: National Geographic [October 08, 2013]