The pictures in the book are grossly inaccurate and aiming at the sensational. And certain known data has been ignored or speculated upon.

Haven't you heard of forensic reconstruction? We have a good idea what the Neanderthals looked like. As far as the spear head, only various rocks can be worked into spear heads, and unfortunately their site is generated by the publisher and author. Prof.Davidson has not read the book, but viewed a manuscript only.

I agree with one poster surely the description of the Neandertals is a scam.
And that means Danny is ignoring and indirectly rubbishing previous scholarly work. Come on folks, this book was made for a film (see Danny's
profile) and meant to generate controversy, like Van Daniken who still is making millions from his ET theory of intervention while ignoring scholarly or scientific data. Readers or some enjoy his work too. People are renown for corrupting data to suit their hypothesis, happens in academic circles also.

Fear of the dark! Sure some predators pick on their prey at night (like cats)
Humans can't see well in the dark so that's why we sleep at night. Self preservation of course. That's the reason for the cats' eyes on Danny's Neandertal. Recall the Apex predator label? You are not telling me they were, what about the other mega fauna carnivores around at the time even wild canines and felines? Neandertals died out or they may have shifted to more hospitable climes for them. Darwin's theory - 'Survival of the fittest?' Means if you don't breed successfully a species will die out from lack of numbers to further their gene pool. They were cold weather adapted like the Inuits who depended on protein as their main source of energy rather than carbohydrates.

In times their protein diet may have diminished, they would have moved on and within quite a short time, clans would have joined or died off. I've said
enough. Don't buy it though.

Oh - I have a BA majoring in Archaeology and Palaeoanthropology.

yeah, people were prey for all sorts of things, there were even people getting killed and eaten by some animals into the 17-1800's, it still happens today sometimes with alligators and all. wouldn't be surprised if a neanderthal occasionally ate a human.

cat-eyed chimp men with stainless steel spearheads are a little tougher to nod and agree with

Originally posted by Gren
cat-eyed chimp men with stainless steel spearheads are a little tougher to nod and agree with

Not stainless steel...note the conchoidal fractures. Cat eyes, sure, that's a reasonable beef, but not the spear head.

double post


[edit on 14-11-2009 by aorAki]

Originally posted by Bush bunny


Neandertals used the Mousterian tool assembly Google it and see for your
self

quote]

Fark you are a self-righteous wenker...a BA eH? /That's awesomew Geology and access to eminent (Paleo)Anthropologists + but yea you're always right you self-righteus prig.

Yes I've been drinking but that'sonly totemper the lack of sight you appear to have arse.

Originally posted by aorAki

Originally posted by Bush bunny




quote]

Fark you are a self-righteous wenker...a BA eH? /That's awesomew Geology and access to eminent (Paleo)Anthropologists + but yea you're always right you self-righteus prig.

Yes I've been drinking but that'sonly totemper the lack of sight you appear to have arse.

Naughty naughty, don't turn to drink over me, son, and become abusive. The spear point in the picture is not conchoidal. It looks ground not fractured. Clovis points that had used this type of technology were from a period much later than Neandertals and most prevalent in the Americas. And Obsidian used as a spear point? Certainly was used as a arrow head,
that our dear departed Neandertals never used on large prey.

Keep smiling and learning - and maybe you could spell check before posting.

at the risk of sounding ridiculous, let me remind those who are arguing about the how the neanderthal is supposed to look and how the spearpoint isn't this or that, "you guys are arguing over an artist's sketch!".

Hmmm , nice story.

If the Neanderthal was apex, it would not have died out about 24 000 years ago.

There were for a while certainly, but the image portrayed here is not really swaying me. The demonic red eyes, really we can tell their soft parts like eyes, ears lips etc.
This image is just hairier. Their autapomorphy is different on our shared timeline, I spose Ill have to read his book to see which period the author is talking about. I certainly hope its not a broad sweep timeframe.

Their Mousterian tool kit was not as advanced as modern humans.
They didnt have:
fish hooks or nets, sewn clothing, needle-and-thread, and long-distance trade.Art or music....well, they found some bones in 94 that are still debated if they were bear bite marks of groove marks for an instument, and burials have found some flowers arranged, which is also debated if they were medicinal flowers or emotional ritualistic flowers.

Also they did have spears, they were on wood and for jabbing only, we had the ability to launch and aim.
Our babies had the same cranium size when born, but our babies now have smaller, and we're smarter, go figure....

Our thumbs we both have to thank, it all boils down to our thumbs....

Did they eat humans?
There is evidence of canablsim (eating other neanderthals) in France, and another cave in Slovenia (stretching memory sorry if its not Slovenia) thats bones have signs of ritualistic defleshing that looks not like butchering but a ceremonial process for burial.



[edit on 14-11-2009 by zazzafrazz]

Originally posted by apacheman
Seems a little silly to me.

And only 50 humans in all the middle east? Please. Mitochondrial research has already put that one ot bed.

Mitochondrial research has only proven that humans were unsuccesful in mating with neanderthal women. Mitochondrial DNA can not prove or disprove that Neanderthals mated with human women. If Neanderthals were higher up the ladder than their human kin, it makes sense that their women did not want our men.

Originally posted by toreishi
glad to see so much emotion in here, personally i don't think we'll ever know what a neanderthal looks like unless a time machine gets built during our lifetimes. and OF COURSE, conventional science will say that a time machine is going to be impossible to build.

A time machine that goes to the past is, in fact, impossible. A time machine to the future is quite within the realm of possibility. All you need to do is figure out how to keep a human body alive in stasis for a very long period of time, and when he wakes up, tada, the future-ture-ture!

Backwards time travel is too damn full of paradoxes to work.

luckily for us, the Neanderthals were polite enough to die frequently, leaving us with a fair amount of remains to reconstruct their appearance from. Barring the remote possibility of someday finding a mummified specimen, or perhaps some big advances in cloning, we'll never know such answers as skin color, general hairiness, or the type of hair they had. But we can see their musculature pretty well, as well as other connective tissue, thanks to the markings on their bones.

And trust me, we'll be cloning neandethals long before we build time devices

is science becoming dogmatic in its disregard for possibilities which are outside the accepted view? is this denying ignorance? and how is the human race going to move forward when we feel that we already know everything there is to know? are we just going to accept this premise that we're stuck as we are and there's nothing else out there for us to discover? is this what ats has become?

[edit on 11.13.09 by toreishi]

Oh, not this horse crap. "Science doesn't agree with my new pet theory, therefore science is bad and we're never gonna get anywhere, sniffle sniffle bawwwww!"

Science disregards idiotic claims with no evidence backing them that are made only to sell a sensationalist book written by a fifth-rate film director, yes. We're all better off because of that

Doesn't make any difference - the author has presented it as a true representation to back up his Neandertal Predation hypothesis, not theory in
my mind as a theory is based on scientific proof or experiment.

By doing so - in my opinion - it is rubbishing previous academic opinion and scientific factors. Danny has no respect for these in my opinion, or he tries
to present he does!

He has willfully picked some very outdated academic papers to substantiate
some of his arguments. (P.254 re Kow Swamp Australian aborigines were related to H.erectus because of skull shape and robust bodies and killed off by modern Aborigines. He quotes from a hypothesis presented by Alan Thorne et al in 1972 however ignores others who rightly disputed this) Anyone in non- academic circles can Google Kow Swamp and read Prof.Peter Brown's explanation, an internationally renown palaeanthropologist who got his explanation published in 1982. He now holds the chair at UNE in Australia and was involved in describing Homo
florensesis (aka The Hobbit) with Prof.Mike Morwood

As far as contact between Neandertals and modern anatomical humans, we have no idea. Although the archaeological record suggests that both species were co existing in some regions, means nothing. These people - well Neanderthals lived maybe 30 years maximum. Some say older, but how far could they travel in a year. Just because archaeological evidence suggests for example they once shared the same cave, there could be a gap of 5K years in occupancy.

His argument seems to suggest that Neandertal predatory habits influenced modern human behaviour. How could it? If they never met. In all cultures
legend and myths have some moral message, or just a good hero worship story that suits their chosen mode of survival at the time.

However, that is my opinion, and if you haven't read the book and the scholarly references mentioned, then I suspect my opinion might not make sense to some. Anyway I feel I have said enough on this subject.

I'm not sure who hunted who.

Our species tends to kill those unlike them. Tribalism and conflicts between tribes is a perfect example.

If they ain't us - we don't like them.

Who we don't like - we kill.

Either from a standpoint of fear or in the interest of self-preservation.

Originally posted by eradown

Originally posted by apacheman
Seems a little silly to me.

And only 50 humans in all the middle east? Please. Mitochondrial research has already put that one ot bed.

Mitochondrial research has only proven that humans were unsuccesful in mating with neanderthal women. Mitochondrial DNA can not prove or disprove that Neanderthals mated with human women. If Neanderthals were higher up the ladder than their human kin, it makes sense that their women did not want our men.

Haplogroup X has been suggested to be a Neanderthal mtdna haplogroup.

Even if it wasn't, the "proof" given suggests that Homo N. and Homo S. have totally distinguished haplogroups. That may not be. They might have been divergent.

Further, even if you in the end get rid of all the mtDNA of an absorbed group this doesn't suggest that you would have not absorbed the nuclear DNA through interbreeding and then social dysfunction leading to getting rid of them.

Here is a brief description of human take overs:
Kill all males, old, young, and weak. Take females of almost fertile years to fertile years. Rape them. Repeatedly. Use them as slave labour. They die early, so what. Children conceived. Boys proven useful are kept, and if they prove to be strong might find themselves a place in the tribe. Girls who survive, suffer the same fate as their mothers. Maybe worse, because it starts earlier. Only some make very far into adulthood. A few generations of this, you have no more mtDNA line. But you do have nuclear DNA from the women being passed into the boys. All the boys children have their mother's mtDNA - human.