A Hot Cup of Joe

Wednesday, August 27, 2008 will mark the next edition of the Four Stone Hearth which will be hosted at Tangled Up in Blue Guy. This is his first time hosting the FSH, so give him your support and send some cool stuff.

The next slot was vacant, so I sent Martin an email volunteering for it. I figure that’ll be a good housewarming party for the new digs here at my own domain.

Hmmm…. I might just have a theme there….

Neanderthals probably weren't stupid

It has long been thought that one of the reason Homo sapiens eventually dominated the hominid line, colonizing Africa and Europe beginning at around 40,000 years ago and eradicating or out-competing the Neanderthals, was that they were technologically advantaged. The idea was that because H. sapiens had better stone tool technologies, they had the edge, so to speak, on their Neanderthal cousins who already occupied the lands H. sapiens were migrating into.

This sort of explanation, perhaps, is easily believed whether one wants to accept it or not since H. sapiens are us and we do, after all, have a not-so-proud history of simply taking the lands we need from those less advanced or capable.

The Dim-Witted Cave Man?

I ♥ My ♣

It’s also been a common preconception that Neanderthals = “cave men,” which carries the cultural connotation of being stupid or of diminished wit, bringing to mind the humorous television commercials produced by Geico and the thousands of magazine and newspaper cartoons over the years that depicted cave men in various antics, the most prevalent theme being, perhaps, clubbing a cave woman over the head and taking her home.

However, new information has come to light with a study published today in the Journal of Human Evolution in which researchers in experimental archaeology spent three years producing flakes, stone tools created through the process of flintknapping in which cores of stone are shaped through percussion and pressure to manufacture tools like blades, axes, scrapers, and points.

The production of three years worth of flakes and blades, the former used by Neanderthals and the latter by Homo sapiens, allowed the researchers to gather statistical data on the quantities of tools, amounts of produced cutting-edges, durability of cutting-edges, and efficiency of the tools. The empirical data allowed the researchers to conclude that the difference in stone tool technology used by the H. sapiens vs. the Neanderthals offered no technological advantage.

The lead author of the paper in the J. of Human Evolution, Metin Eren of the University of Exeter, remarked:

Our research disputes a major pillar holding up the long-held assumption that Homo sapiens were more advanced than Neanderthals. It is time for archaeologists to start searching for other reasons why Neanderthals became extinct while our ancestors survived. Technologically speaking, there is no clear advantage of one tool over the other. When we think of Neanderthals, we need to stop thinking in terms of ’stupid’ or ‘less advanced’ and more in terms of ‘different.’

The University of Exeter in the U.K. offers the only degree in Experimental Archaeology in the world. The other researchers on the project were from Southern Methodist University and Texas State University as well as the Think Computer Corporation.

I’ve been watching for the article, but it doesn’t seem to have made it to online publication just yet even though it’s slated for today. It’ll be interesting to see just what, specifically, the differences are between cutting edges of flakes versus blades.

Regardless, this sort of research is always great since it eliminates assumptions, which, when wrong, are bad since they lead archaologists down the wrong path. If blade technology wasn’t the clear advantage H. sapiens had over Neanderthals, then the question becomes, “what, then, caused the Neanderthals to go extinct and why were H. sapiens more adapted to deal it? Or could H. sapiens simply not have faced the same pressures at all?”

I’ve made a move to 1and1.com and I’m now using my own domain with 1and1.com as the host. Thanks to Kambiz’s recommendation. I hope the link he gave me had his promo code in it -if so, he should get a small commission since the cookie should have still been on my computer. If you don’t get it, sorry. I completely forgot about it until after the fact or I would have looked for the original link in our chat :-}

I’ve still got a bit of work to do and I’m not entirely sure this is the theme I want to use (I’m willing to take suggestions if anyone has them), but there should be some regular posts on the way. I’m thinking about posting here and using short descriptions on the wordpress.com domain with links to here for a while, so if you get the chance, be sure to update your links since I’ll eventually discontinue posting at the WP site.

Oh, and if anyone can educate me on how to add a favicon I can use the help. I put “favicon.ico” in both the root directory and the wp-content directory where the index.php file sits, but no icon in the address bar or my bookmark.. very frustrating.