In years past, Neanderthals were considered a sub-species of H. sapiens, but now most biologists consider them a separate species. A few guys (like Milford Wolpoff and the multiregionalists) would still put both in the same species, but that’s pretty unusual these days. That’s where the confusion comes from.
Link for Neanderthal DNA sequencing. Do some googling-- there are lots of others that are easy to find.
How is that known?
rjk:
Firther to your question about when the species convention changed, there was always a debate about whether Neanderthals and Sapiens were the same species or not. In the 50s and 60s it was common to think that only one species of hominid existed at any given time, and so it was logical to think of Neanderthals as the ancestors of modern Europeans. As evidence of overlap between various hominid species showed up in the fossil record, this theory was questioned more and more. I think what really got things going, though, was the DNA work done in the 80s that showed all modern humans can be traced back to an African ancestor about 150k years ago (popularly referred to as mitochondrial Eve).
So, if you look at books from the 60s, you’ll see a lot of references to H. sapiens neanderthalensis, but in the 80s and 90s that term drops out of favor. As to whether Neanderthals and Sapiens couldn’t interbreed, or whether they simply didn’t do so (very often), that’s unclear.
Simply looking at the skull shape (and endocasts of the brain on the inside of fossil skulls).
How old is the most recent specimen? What is the generally agreed-upon “check out” date for this species?
About 30k years ago, +/- a few k years.
Weighing in from the schlock fiction corner: I’ve read two novels on the subject: the god-awful “Raising Abel” (author forgotten), which tells the story of a young Neanderthal, cloned from tissue from an ancestor frozen in a glacier, raised by modern parents and on the run from wacko fundies. Our young hero is described as blond, muscular, with funny-looking facial structure; reasonably bright, with some unusual capabilities concerning spacial relationships and night-vision. Also has difficulty vocalizing some particular consonant sounds.
The other is Michael Crichton’s “Eaters of the Dead”, which may involve the Jotun myths the OP refers to–interaction between Vikings and Neanderthals. (made into the movie “The Thirteenth Warrior” with Antonio Banderas, but the movie never explains the origin of the Vikings humanoid antagonists.)
There’s also the famous “The Inheritors” by William Golding, which attempts to explain why Neanderthal genes are not present in modern humans.
And, of course, the movie from a few years back “Iceman”. Other than the stereotypical new-agish anthropologist and the evil female scientist, was actually a pretty good movie.
Oh, you mean art. Well jewelerry and the like don’t preserve very well so it’s hard to say what they had. As other have pointed out they used ochre and flowers on burials, as well an animal teeth and even animal jaws so they had art in that sense. There’s little debate there. There have been finds of rocks with hole sin them and hollowed out bones that may be flutes from Neanderthals ites but the state of preservation and paucity of finds makes it diffciult to determine.
To put that in some kind of perspective humans have been living in Australia for 60, 000 years and yet with the exception of parietal art there is no archaeological evidence of people having any art on that continent. Yet we know they did. We therefore know that most artforms just aren’t preserved. So absence of evidence is certainly not evidence of absence.
Yes, it’s a theory like the theory of gravity and the germ theory of disease. There is nothing “just” about scientific theories. They ae as close to fact as it is possible to come. Neanderthals had tools, that’s a theory but it’s not one anyone but you dipsutes with cute little rolleyes smilies.
It’s very confusing and compeletely wrong though.
Maybe not in anthropological sites, but there are numerous fossil flowers going back many millions of years. They can be preserves in the right conditions.
Well what I said was that genetic evidence can be interpreted to suggest interbreeding was unlikely, but that interpretation is highly suspect for numerous reasons.
In reality we have no idea at all whether interbreeding occurred or how common it was. Genetic evidence might swing the argument slightly towards the negative but the evidence is highly unreliable.
60k or 40k for Australia? I know the “Mungo Man” fossils were originally dated to 60k, but have since been redated to more like 40kl. Are there others? I also seem to remember there being some very old Australian art (again, 40k yrs ago?) dated from the overlaying, fossilized wasp nests on top of it. I’ll have to do some googling to see what I can come up with.
Current consensus for human habitation is 55, ooo years giving probable human habitation of the continent of 60, 000.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993403
Even if we go for the extre low end estimate of 45, 000 years human habitation it doesn’t change my point. No non-parietal art survived from even 500 years ago despite 40, 000 years of known habitation. An absence of evidence of art is clearly not evidence of absence of art.
Presumably that is parietal art.
I’m not familiar with the term “parietal” art. This is what I was talking about.
PARIETAL ART:a term used to designate art on the walls of caves and shelters, or on huge blocks.
What you have there is an example of parietal art. My original comment was “with the exception of parietal art there is no archaeological evidence of people having any art on that continent”.
That explains my confusion then. The last time I did any serious reading on the subject was the 60s. I Googled (which I should have done before) and read a few sites that helped me out, especially this one which says, if I read it right, that the genetic difference between H. nean. and H. sap. is about three times larger than the variation within H. sap.
Thanks to you and to Blake for your patience.
But only for that one tiny region of mtDNA analysed. That really should be stressed more. There is more variation within other regions of mtDNA between extant human populations than there is within this section of mtDNA between H. sapiens and H. neandertahlensis. Or to put that another way if we selectively killed of a couple of billion people tommorow and we applied the same technique we would be forced to conslude that you are not the same species as some of the other people currently on this planet. Those dead people would vary too much form you in the section of mtDNa tested for.
Added to that mtDNA form the earlist sapiens remains shows a difference of about twice the current variability, yet those people were certainly the same species as us.
The other point to note is that ‘3 times larger than the variation within H. sapiens’ still means that neanderthals are more closely related to us than two tribes of chimpmazees are to each other. It’s just that modern humans are incredibly genetically uniform. From the POV of most species were are all third cousins.
That highlights just how dubious the conclusions drawn about speciation and hybridisation are.
Dispute… or typo :rolleyes: 
Hmmm, I read that… didn’t think it was too great. Thought it strecthed a bit too far, but then again I knew nothing of the myths.
Raising Abel was written by Michael & Kathleen Gear, a well-known writing partnership who have collaborated on many ‘anthropological/archeological fiction’ novels - best known is their First Americans series (10 books and counting!)
Their other books don’t concern neanderthals, AFAIK, but are firmly based in current thinking and research. I assume, however predictable the plot, that Raising Abel is also at least tethered, if not anchored, in reasonably defensible research and ideas.
And Eaters of the Dead is pretty much the only place I’ve come across the ‘neanderthal hold-outs in Scandinavia are at the root of Norse folklore’ idea.
Robert Sawyer (as mentioned), Michael Bishop, Stephen Baxter and I’m sure many more, have all written fiction involving neanderthals with varying degrees of insight and expertise…
According to Physical Anthropologist Sally McBreardy (University of Connecticut), modern humans sometimes exhibit characteristics of archaic sapiens but none are currently known to exhibit specifically Neandertal traits. A specialist in Neandertals (also at University of Connecticut), Penn Handwerker, says that beads have been found in exclusively Neandertal sites and that tools have been found that have non-functional decoration such as patterns of lines. Representational decoration is not currently found in Neandertal assemblages.
*yeh, I just finished an MA in Anth-Archeology at UConn.
One more for the fiction lovers…
Harry Turtledove’s A Different Flesh postulates a world in which the original asian peoples never crossed the Bering land bridge so neanderthals survived to the present day. The book is a series of short stories regarding the interaction of humans and neanderthals following the discovery of the new world by Europeans and up to the present day.
Would the “one odd find” be the flute that I’ve heard about?