This isn't about writing. I do that quite frequently. But it is about Neandertals, because when I started this blog, I mentioned(I believe), that I would load any interesting news about them, that I could find. Or something like that. So. . . . .here's this And also this. The last link isn't really about Neandertals at all. It's about the "hobbits", the little fossils found on Flores Island, Indonesia. But at the very end, the author does suggest that Neandertals and "modern" humans had very similar, if not identical, behavioral characteristics. In this last case, Dr. Riel-Salvatore thinks Neandertal and "modern" tool types were a lot more "advanced"(whatever that means) than those of the "hobbits", and goes to a great deal of trouble to explain why. But both feeds are worth checking out.
Anne G
Redheaded Neanderlady
This is a photoshopped version of something I found in National Geographic about the time I started researching
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2 comments:
I love these types of arguments but frankly I wish there were more specimens available to address these ongoing debates. It’s getting tiresome hearing this wrangling about this single find. The discovery of Homo floresiensis could be one of the great stories in human evolution and hopefully we’ll know more once the original research team gets back to the caves in Flores and to the other islands. Hard to believe, but their work was halted by the Indonesian government at one point further adding fuel to this mess.
Of course, I have a vested interest in hoping this story has some validity to it, having written a fictional adventure novel called Flores Girl on the recent find. If you are interested, there is more on this ongoing controversy about Homo floresiensis at www.floresgirl.com
Erik John Bertel
Erik:
I agree that it would be nice if they could find more specimens. OTOH, you have to remember that until fairly recently, very little archaeological work has been done in that part of Siberia. Even East Asia has been mostly neglected, the Flores discoveries being a welcome exception.
I would also like to add that the most recent blast in the ongoing arguments over the nature of the Flores fossil centers on their "primitive" wrist bones. These seem not to be very much like H.erectus wrist bones, let alone those of later hominids. Which suggests something or other. Personally, being "agnostic" about the whole thing, I don't know what they represent, but for further information, you might want to look at the John Hawks Weblog. If you want to link directly to it from here, just scroll down the right-hand side of this blog and look under "Anthropology" blogs. Click on "John Hawks Weblog. When you get to the John Hawks website, click on Homo Floresiensis. He has a whole section devoted to that, and you'll find his comments on the wrist bones in the latest section. Or maybe he still has them up in the "main" section. Anyway, his ideas probably are better than mine anyway, since he's a professional biological anthropologist.
Anne G
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