THE

NEANDERTHAL
DAWN.
ARCHAEOLOGY RESEARCH PROJECT 2012

NEANDERTHAL DAWN.
Ronnie Carleton 2012
Co Researcher ;Tanja Mancinelli.

ARCHAEOLOGY RESEARCH PROJECT 2011 EARLY HUMANS.

CHAPTER ONE.

Much has been written and filmed about the early apes and the first human,
reputations made and lost, fraud, and ego going hand in hand and those who
work in the field of archaeology, scratch or shake their heads at such going
skulduggery, but brave as they are, even foolhardy they struggle on seeking
answers and getting more questions instead.
Thirty years of research, notes scribbled here and there, papers have finished
or not at all I still seek, I find and now I put it all together as my research here.
Half way through 70 years of age I have at least discovered a number of
things, three that are important to me; The study of archaeology is life though
I look at the dead and rattle bones, history often repeats itself and the human
race as a species in on the road to extinction, and somewhere out there,
hidden bones and clues to early man like the Neanderthals who led us into
what we are today.
This research starts with the dawn of the Neanderthal but must also

in passing deal with those great pretenders, the early upright apes who many
call Homo and yet cannot claim that they were or are human but some still do.
Neanderthal man is like a salmon coming back to the river where it was first
an egg in gravel, then a fry followed as a fingerling and migrated to the sea for
years and turned silver then became known as the fish of knowledge. The
man, the first, keeps coming back like the salmon of knowledge but not living
just to haunt us and is little more now than a wisp of wood smoke.
That is what happens when your mind is left open because no matter what
else you have been doing over the years the seed of early humans has been
planted and you keep going back to it, looking at it finding out more, deleting
old research data and adding more.
This research of mine therefore leaves questions to be answered and
rechecking and that is what I have done over the years. It may come to
nothing or little but it has opened doors into the world of early humans and decluttering the mind of this researcher. Now all that is left to do is write it up
and from there when and if it gets finished what to do with it.

BONES OF CONTENTION DATA.

Ronnie Carleton (c) 2011
PART ONE.
What is it with archaeology and bones that in the past causes so many
debates, some very heated on the subject of bones of past apes, ape men
and the first humans? It is not a question that can be easy answered because
there are two sides, or two answers to it and maybe as this research of mine
will show both wrong because of dating and interpretation of the subject.
There is in my mind and my own opinion that the walking apes of Africa in the
past were not and never were 'human' until the time of the coming of the
Neanderthals and it is at this stage that the change took place, not through
the well-known and broadcast opinions of experts but because the human
beings from that time to now are the result of mutations caused by some
biological or chemical agent.
Thirty years of study and research has brought me to this final conclusion.
What has been put forward in the past on early upright apes, the research
into their bones and the thousands of books and papers written on that
subject is in fact a wildlife study of primates, good information but lacking
conviction to suggest that these were our early genetic links.
It was not in any way a useless study because it did for the most give us a
better understanding in the evolution of apes which I should point out stopped
dead in its tracks because there is no evidence anywhere that it continued in
present day apes or other primates world-wide.

This research does not just look at Early Humans as humans but as I
suggested before it starts with the Neanderthals because in my opinion and
the supporting evidence there is little point in going back further in history like
Zing above or other apes. They will of course be mentioned from time to time
but only in passing. What moved out of Africa at two points was not apes
though some of the upright apes did migrate long distances but never went
anywhere in a boat or raft. The Neanderthals unknown to many were in fact
and advanced culture of Homo and it was much later that Cro-Magnon and
the Neanderthals crossed paths even for a time living almost side by side.
Then something went wrong and the Neanderthals died out either by disease
or killed off.
What I discovered about past research that in many areas of humans data
there is a lot of science jargon but little wisdom involved and each paper
written is repetitive.
That is because most of other peoples research is in fact copied from others
and no field work done that would at least present some evidence that would
stand up without it being 30 thousand years each side of the recorded data by
a research. Unless I am missing something, 30 thousand years in human
progress is a very long time which to be left in the dark of what happened how
and why? This suggests to me guesswork by some of the past researchers
rather than good down to earth research, like field work.
Here I am talking about the Neanderthals onwards and enter Cro-Magnon

many years later but both thinking humans rather than apes with sticks and
stones in Africa.
What therefore migrated out of Africa by two suggested routes were apes,
followed by some Neanderthals, a small group in fact and Cro-Magnon did not
come from Africa though I will suggest and of the opinion that some small
groups migrated there in time.
Cro-Magnon where they did show up came from the NE of Europe which
leaves the question still unanswered today where in Europe or Asia did they
come and why if they are being linked to early humans why were they hairless?

Old bones and skulls will only give part of the answer but without background
research of a site and area that is all you have in the long run, old bones that
can be dated sometimes yet no evidence looked for or found of who this tribe
was and what was their natural history.
As a child in Ireland my first reaction of seeing a black man in1948 was that
he was from Africa and a good friend of Tarzan the Ape Man and when I was
told that he did in fact come from some islands of South America and his
family in the past may have come from Africa but as slaves I was more than
disappointed. Later when I was told another man came from India I was again
disappointed because he did not look like any Indian I seen in the cinema and
wore not a single feather in his hair and did not carry an axe or bow and arrow.

For a boy such events were indeed rare but always ended up as a wet squib
and put out of the mind quickly as other things took over.
Without knowing it at the time, the seeds had been sown and my interest in
tribes of all kinds increased until it became Anthropology and Archaeology
studies that remains with me today.
I therefore plough on, research and re-research and make some journeys to
strange places in search of answers and sometimes I get them.

CHAPTER TWO

THE HUMAN THAT TIME FORGOT.

If we look at the modes of archaeology worldwide and more so when it comes

to early apes and early humans most deal with what others have found in the
way of bones and of course naming such a find at a named site. Their finds
for the most deal with the apes classified by some as Homo meaning
Hominid genus which it is said that Humans belong. Early apes were never
human so the name Homo is misleading and wrong and because an ape
stands upright, face and neck forward of the spine, uses stone tools, like a
rock or club (stick) it cannot be classified therefore as a thinking human or
have a group religious culture.
My research here is based on the Neanderthal boundary of their
world which runs from as far East in, Asia Teshik Tash, NW to Denmark,
Norway and Sweden, SW to Morocco and a thin belt of North Africa taking in
the Mediterranean Sea, SE to the Persian Gulf. Therefore included within the
boundary are the countries of Italy, Israel, Crimea, France, Germany, Croatia,
Belgium, Spain, Gibraltar, Belgium and the South of the UK.
I call this the Research Project Areas or RPA to keep it simple for the reader
and myself in writing up my research.
Forty years of start and stop research, scribbled notes, hidden notebooks,
scribbles and drawings, marked text in old books, maps and field research in
Borneo, and India, Museum and University visits and last but not least,
computer research all massed a wealth of material chaff that had to be sorted.
Sorted it now is and the research project is the result. I have named it for
reference as ;
BONES OF CONTENTION PROJECT 2012 and for good reason as you will
see.
It would be useless of course to leave out the classification by others of early
Homo species mentioned by others and their dates suggested as well as early

Apes because to do so would take away the main points of my own research
and therefore would be no evidence of comparison to work with or leave room
for debate on my and other findings over the last forty years.
The forensics within this research (2011/2012 may not always agree with
others in the same field but at least I hope it will give food for thought that
poor interpretation of artefacts, geology, dating and habits of culture can no
longer be ignored or excepted as good stand up evidence. There is no room
for fiction in field archaeology and less so when it comes down to dating of
bones and bone fragments and looking at the dating of the past of such in
some cases it does suggest guesswork of the worse kind along with slap
happy archaeology interpretation just so a paper can be rushed through and
published in scientific journals and magazines to help build the human ego.
In my research this is not the case because I dont need approval or praise
from others much younger than me. What I do need and except for this
research would be constructive input or comment that would add to the
research and points made where I may have gone down the wrong track.
Research into the Neanderthals will of course continue by others long after I
am gone which I hope it will. If I have just uncovered a fragment of new
evidence into the human Neanderthal then I will feel that after many years I
have completed something worthwhile.

SUGGESTED TIMELINES FOR EARLY APES AND HUMANS.

APES.
FAMILY; Oreopithecidae

10

Apidium 30 mya
Oreopithecus 30 mya
Pongidae.
Pliopithecus 26-27 mya Africa and Europe.
limnopithecus.
Hylobates (Gibbon) Recent.
Symphalangus (Siamang) Recent.
Aegyptopithecus 30 mya
Dryopithecus 25-10 mya, Europe, Asia and
Africa
(Includes; Sivapithecus,Proconsul,Bramapithecus.)
Pongo ( Orang-utan) Recent.
Pan (Chimpanzee) Recent.
Gorilla, Recent.

Hominidae.
Ramapithecus 14-7 mya
( Includes Kenyapithecus)
Australopithecus 5-1 mya
(Includes Paranthropus,Plesianthropus.)
Homo.
Homo Human species (Man) Recent.
NOTE;
The

above

is

the

suggested

data

by

J.Z,YOUNG

in

her

book

Introduction to the Study of Man

To the layperson the above data presented by Young may mean little or
nothing except for the mention of Orang-utan, chimpanzee, gorilla and Man

11

which can be identified with as known yet to many others the jumble of
possible data on apes may mean much more.
THE MISSING TRIBES.
The discovery of human remains on the island of Flores in Indonesia of a
missing tribe is of no surprise to me because if we look at a map of that area
there could well be many more discoveries there. I am of the opinion still after
seeing a small female nude in the rainforests of Borneo a few years back that
she and the remains found have a link.
The skulls above show the small size compared with a skull of resent past
history and it is not of a child but full adult, more than likely and aged person
as shown below. The female I seen and have had reports on when I was back
in Borneo in 2004 was modern looks and small build.
She was not alone judging for later reports and local Borneo tribes did still talk
about them and were I felt staying well away from the areas that they may
have lived. Both were no more than 3 feet or 1 M high .
The other problem I have with this is that I always did feel that there were two
or even three different stages of human progress in all parts of the world
rather than just the one that was always being pushed towards Africa as the
start of human kind.
I do agree that Africa had ape like creatures that may well have progressed
towards an evolution path but not human but I disagree strongly that this was
the main stage for mankind today.
Asia and South East Asia is I feel a major source of human kind and more
advanced at the time when the ape in Africa stood upright.
The human apes died away as did some aspects of early man but the small
tribes in Asia were still around 300 years ago and also in the rainforests of
Borneo, a few groups still remain, for the moment untouched by western

12

minds and thinking but there at the sources of many of the rivers. Missing
Tribes is not a Myth. It is a fact though in some cases reported the evidence is
thin on the ground.
The rainforests of Borneo are for the most still hidden from public gaze in
most of the areas. They are hard to get into and most of the time travel by
boat is the only highway to even get to the edge of the wilder and remote
parts of it. Once you are inland from the coast you do enter a world of
rainforest, high moist temperatures, rain most days with a thunder storm
thrown in just for the fun of it, leeches which can be found almost everywhere
even away from the rivers and streams, crocodiles that can and will eat you if
given the chance, all types of bats and snakes, and plants that cure or kill.
From a tribal point of view there is no shortage of food or natural building
materials, fresh water in the side streams is plentiful and if you want to live a
life well away from other more advanced tribes such as those on the coast,
you can lose yourself and never have to worry about being found if you dont
want to. The KG Walau area is a good example of this if you move west and
SW into rain forest.
I would suggest to also seek evidence of small people NE and E of Borneo on
the TAWI TAWI groups of islands because these people could and did move
from Island to Island on primitive rafts of bamboo.
I am talking here about four or more Pigmy Races of Tribal peoples who were
located in and around Borneo and other Islands and though a few tribes will
have died out or killed off, there will be still survivors and genetic links to be
found. There will also be bones somewhere and the real possibility of DNA
extraction from these to match with other samples from living tribes.
Any expedition to the rainforests would have to be worthwhile, involves
archaeologists, biologists of the rainforest type, anthropologists, tribal guides,

13

SE Asia Departments of Sciences, and of course the local government and

tribal intuitions. There would also need to be up front funding over a few years
and continued if the research evidence is positive.
There has always been, a political problem of movement between the
borders and into the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia, mainly by the
military establishment of Indonesia. Medical and Genetic personal would need
to be recruited and work on results fast because of the rainy seasons. Local
people would need to be involved from the beginning and from local tribes.
Without their involvement the project would not get off the ground and
therefore fail.
My last trip in 2004 involved an 18-hour flight from the UK to Sabah, a boat
ride and a lot of walking. You gain more information from tribal elders than
you will from any local city resource unless it deals directly with archaeology.
Books of the area are useful to a point but communications with elders is
more useful.
Many of the tribes in Borneo that are known, were and in some areas still are,
fond of removing the head of anyone who offends them and I have seen
skulls that belonged to invaders from Japan in long houses. Other skulls were
passed down over the years and this includes a number of skulls of people
from the west going back around 200 years + If present day skulls were taken
from Westerners, France, Spain, Europe and the UK then they must be well
hidden but I have no doubt at least a few men have lost their heads over local
tribal women!
My own research into small people and that includes the medical condition of
Dwarfism, showed that the medical condition is totally separate from small
tribal men and women. On looking at tribal similarities in the Asia area I came
up with skull sizes and features but with no loss of human intelligent even

14

though the brain of the human remains found in Asia was small by modern
standards.
Pygmy, Africa. Iban woman, Borneo. Kuba, Sumatra.
Small people in a number of tribes in Africa and SE Asia are known but what
is not known at the moment is what tribes and links are still to be found in
remote areas such as in Borneo. There is in my opinion a common genetic
link between them and the pygmy tribes of Africa. To get to Africa they would
have to go by raft or small boat over vast areas of open sea and vice versa.
If we then take a movement or possible movement of such people Island
hopping east and SE then in time they would reach the west coasts of South
America. I feel that this was the case of some of the tribal groups in the
Amazon areas.
Yanomami. Jivaro.
Let us look at Borneo and the blowpipe and dart use. In my own observations
the blowpipe is a useful and deadly weapon in the right hands, the poison on
the darts is quick acting when it hits the prey and this poison is obtained from
a tree bark and other vines of the same species off tree.
The groups in South America are the same and their poison works in the
same way.
The blowpipe is shaped and made as in Borneo and there is no way that the
making and use of a blowpipe here was a matter of luck in its design. It had to
be passed on and the only way that could happen is by contact within the two
groups at some stage. When that happened I dont know.
Proof of this would require DNA testing in all groups and the remains of past
humans in such groups but I am sure that there will be evidence of inherited
traits in both groups though they live thousands of miles apart with the Pacific
Ocean between them.

15

Though there may well now be a spoken language barrier between the Asia
and South America groups there would be I am sure a well-known nonspoken language and again the only way to test this is to take a member of
one group and place them with another to see how well communication works.
Language games would also be useful to support this.
I know that many will disagree with these findings but until they come up with
a much better theory then we all need to act in conserving the tribes of small
people and of course their remains. What they dont need is religion brought
in from outside, disease and unnecessary western artefacts that we claim to
be useful. We do need to learn from such people before all is lost.
WHO WERE YOU?
NOTE.
That in fact is one of the many questions in my research when it comes to the
Neanderthals because the human race today and more so the educated
human race, unless they work in the field of biology, archaeology, or
anthropology then a great amount of knowledge is going to be lost. The UN is
well aware of such and is I believe doing its best to find solutions of enforced
tribal relocations while some countries, including the USA and the UK make
noises but do little to help sort out this official genocide which is taking place
even as I write.
If there is oil, timber, gold, silver and many other materials that would make a
company rich or a country better off than jungle and forest habitats, so be it
because to them it means little. Great amounts of hard cash finds a way into
the hands of officials to pave the road into tribal areas, to bribe tribal elders
and to hire protection for work groups who are intent on taking the land, what
is on it and have a burn and slash policy. (Carleton 2011)

16

CHAPTER THREE
THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF AFRICA.
RESEARCH PROJECT 2012

Ronnie Carleton 2012

This research Project ( DATA RED CODEX 2011) has now been updated in
2011 and though changes have been made to my files folders and research
work over thirty years I am still of the opinion that early apes were not early
humans as so often put forward as fact. We know much about early apes,
very little about early humans and nothing at all about how it all came about
except the word Evolution is the word used to explain everything and yet
nothing as factual evidence.
I have now included some of the research carried out by others so that at
least some sort of intelligent debate can restart, something that has been
lacking in archaeology writing for many years now. My opinion, with evidence,
is that an early ape is just that, not in anyway, 'human' or for that matter

17

progressed into human form. They were stand up apes that used tools but the
true humans as now known, were the result of genetic and gene mutations.
Apes today still used tools at times but they have not moved forwards as
much as humans have and this on its own is a good indicator that if humans
and apes were linked then apes today should be able to speak in a language,
write, draw, play music, plant a crop and tend it. There is no evidence
anywhere that early apes or today's apes were into crop growing or farming,
one of the main trends of a community or small civilization of early human
history.
The study therefore of archaeology is always pushing this agriculture progress
of humans but no such evidence for pre-history apes even today. By that I
mean 'organised' agriculture and not a ape burying fruit or fruit seeds in their
natural habitat.

THE EARLY 'APE' LIKE CREATURES.

18

MEASURING SKULLS AND THE EVIDENCE OF BRAIN SIZE.

There has been much debate about skull and brain size in the cases of early
Homos as well as the overall measuring view of the skulls themselves. A
large skull and brain as we know, or should, does not mean a high IQ if many
of todays humans is anything to go by.
What is needed is more research on what is now linked to what when it
comes to early skull history and of course possibilities.
This should also be applied to all bones discovered along with the skull.
ANTHROPOMETRICS MEASUREMENTS are the main key to all this.
When it comes down to the growth and development of skulls it is one of
comparison and measurements that is needed.
A predetermined set of measurements on a number of skulls is known of
different age groups and through the growth stage process; a fixed point is
therefore established.
A common one is the line connecting the anterior midpoint of the foremen
magnum, the hole that is large where the spinal cord exits the skull, to the
posterior midpoint of the foremen magnum.
From here all other measures are taken from this point to other anatomical

19

points on the FACE and BRAINCASE. The spot on the mid line between the
orbits, farthest anterior projection of brow-ridges, highest point on the skull
vault. As many as 10 to 20 points can be defined and measured and to
display the results a trace of profiles of all skulls known are aligned on a
registration plane. Therefore a classic image shows the skull as onion, with
the younger and smaller skull profiles contained within the older and larger
ones.

HOMO SAPIENS (ARCHAIC) HOMO SAPIENS NEANDERTHAL.

This Homo Sapiens Neanderthal is the main part of all my research and I still
feel, with confidence that new finds could be made in the caves of Borneo and
other large islands East of it.
The word "hominid" refers to members of the family of humans, Hominidae,
which consists of all species on our side of the last common ancestor of
humans and living apes. (Some scientists use a broader definition of
Hominidae which includes the great apes.) Hominids are included in the
superfamily of all apes, the Hominidae, the members of which are called
hominoids. Although the hominid fossil record is far from complete, and the
evidence is often fragmentary, there is enough to give a good outline of the
evolutionary history of humans.
The time of the split between humans and living apes used to be thought to
have occurred 15 to 20 million years ago, or even up to 30 or 40 million years
ago. Some apes occurring within that time period, such as Ramapithecus,
used to be considered as hominids, and possible ancestors of humans. Later
fossil finds indicated that Ramapithecus was more closely related to the
orang-utan, and new biochemical evidence indicated that the last common

20

ancestor of hominids and apes occurred between 5 and 10 million years ago,
and probably in the lower end of that range (Lewin, 1987). Ramapithecus
therefore is no longer considered a hominid.
The field of science which studies the human fossil record is known as
palaeoanthropology. It is the intersection of the disciplines of palaeontology
(the study of ancient life forms) and anthropology (the study of humans).

Hominid Species
The species here are listed roughly in order of appearance in the fossil record
(note that this ordering is not meant to represent an evolutionary sequence),
except that the robust australopithecines are kept together. Each name
consists of a genus name (e.g. Australopithecus, Homo) which is always
capitalized, and a species name (e.g. africanus, erectus) which is always in
lower case. Within the text, genus names are often omitted for brevity.

Ardipithecus ramidus
This species is a recent discovery, announced in September 1994 (White et
al.1994; Wood, 1994). It is the oldest known hominid species, dated at 4.4
million years. Most remains are skull fragments. Indirect evidence suggests
that it was possibly bipedal, and that some individuals were about 122 cm
(4'0") tall. The teeth are intermediate between those of earlier apes and A.
afarensis, but one baby tooth is very primitive, resembling a chimpanzee tooth
more than any other known hominid tooth. Other fossils found with ramidus
indicate that it may have been a forest dweller. This may cause modification
of current theories about why hominids became bipedal, which often link

21

bipedalism with a move to a savannah environment. (White et al. have since

discovered a skeleton which is 45% complete, but have not yet published on
it.)

Australopithecus anamensis
This species was only named in August 1995. The material consists of 9
fossils, mostly found in 1994, from Kanapoi in Kenya, and 12 fossils, mostly
teeth found in 1988, from Allia Bay in Kenya (Leakey et al.1995). Anamensis
existed between 4.2 and 3.9 million years ago, and has a mixture of primitive
features in the skull, and advanced features in the body. The teeth and jaws
are very similar to those of older fossil apes. A partial tibia (the larger of the
two lower leg bones) is strong evidence of bipedalism, and a lower humerus
(the upper arm bone) is extremely humanlike. Note that although the skull and
skeletal bones are thought to be from the same species, this is not confirmed.

Australopithecus afarensis
A. afarensis existed between 3.9 and 3.0 million years ago. Afarensis had an
apelike face with a low forehead, a bony ridge over the eyes, a flat nose, and
no chin. They had protruding jaws with large back teeth. Cranial capacity
varied from about 375 to 500 cc. The skull is similar to that of a chimpanzee,
except for the more humanlike teeth. The canine teeth are much smaller than
those of modern apes, but larger and more pointed than those of humans,
and shape of the jaw is between the rectangular shape of apes and the
parabolic shape of humans. However their pelvis and leg bones far more
closely resemble those of modern man, and leave no doubt that they were
bipedal (although adapted to walking rather than running (Leakey, 1994)).
Their bones show that they were physically very strong. Females were

22

substantially smaller than males, a condition known as sexual dimorphism.

Height varied between about 107 cm (3'6") and 152 cm (5'0"). The finger and
toe bones are curved and proportionally longer than in humans, but the hands
are similar to humans in most other details (Johanson and Edey, 1981). Some
scientists consider this evidence that afarensis was still partially adapted to
climbing in trees, others consider it evolutionary baggage. It is more than
likely in my opinion that this species did both and there is no room for
doubting that. A nest or bed built off the ground at night would be good
thinking, even today.

Australopithecus africanus
A. africanus existed between 3 and 2 million years ago. It is similar to
afarensis, and was also bipedal, but body size was slightly greater. Brain size
may also have been slightly larger, ranging between 420 and 500 cc. This is a
little larger than chimp brains (despite a similar body size), but still not
advanced in the areas necessary for speech. The back teeth were a little
bigger than in afarensis, the front teeth a little smaller. Although the teeth and
jaws of africanus are much larger than those of humans, they are far more
similar to human teeth than to those of apes (Johanson and Edey, 1981). The
shape of the jaw is now fully parabolic, like that of humans, and the size of the
canine teeth is further reduced compared to afarensis.
Australopithecus

afarensis

and

africanus

are

known

as

gracile

australopithecines, because of their relatively lighter build, especially in the

skull and teeth. (Gracile means "slender", and in palaeoanthropology is used
as an antonym to "robust".) Despite this, they were still more robust than
modern humans.

23

Australopithecus aethiopicus
A. aethiopicus existed between 2.6 and 2.3 million years ago. This species is
known from one major specimen, the Black Skull discovered by Alan Walker,
and a couple of other lower jaw specimens which may belong to the same
species. It may be an ancestor of robustus and boisei, but it has a baffling
mixture of primitive and advanced traits. The brain size is very small, at 410
cc, and parts of the skull, particularly the hind portions, are very primitive,
most resembling afarensis. Other characteristics, like the massiveness of the
face, jaws and single tooth found, and the largest sagittal crest in any known
hominid, are more reminiscent of A. boisei (Leakey and Lewin, 1992). (A
sagittal crest is a bony ridge on top of the skull to which chewing muscles
attach.)

Australopithecus robustus
A. robustus had a body similar to that of africanus, but a larger and more
robust skull and teeth. It existed between 2 and 1.5 million years ago. The
massive face is flat or dished, with no forehead and large brow ridges. It has
relatively small front teeth, but massive grinding teeth in a large lower jaw.
Most specimens have sagittal crests. Its diet would have been mostly coarse,
tough food that needed a lot of chewing. The average brain size is about 530
cc. Bones excavated with robustus skeletons indicate that they may have
been used as digging tools.

Australopithecus boisei (was Zinjanthropus boisei)

A. boisei existed between 2.1 and 1.1 million years ago. It was similar to
robustus, but the face and cheek teeth were even more massive, some
molars being up to 2 cm across. The brain size is very similar to robustus,

24

about 530 cc. A few experts consider boisei and robustus to be variants of the
same species.
Australopithecus aethiopicus, robustus and boisei are known as robust
australopithecines, because their skulls in particular are more heavily built.

Homo habilis
H. habilis, "handy man", was so called because of evidence of tools found
with him. Habilis existed between 2.4 and 1.5 million years ago. It is very
similar to australopithecines in many ways. The face is still primitive, but it
projects less, and the back teeth are smaller, but still considerably larger than
in modern humans. The average brain size, at 650 cc, is considerably larger
than in australopithecines. Brain size varies between 500 and 800 cc,
overlapping the australopithecines at the low end and Homo erectus at the
high end. The brain shape is also more humanlike. The bulge of Broca's area,
essential for speech, is visible in habilis brain casts, and indicates it was
probably capable of rudimentary speech. Habilis is thought to have been
about 127 cm (5'0") tall, and about 45 kg (100 lb.) in weight.
Habilis has been a controversial species. Some scientists have not accepted
it, believing that all habilis specimens should be assigned to either the
australopithecines or Homo erectus. Many now believe that habilis combines
specimens from at least two different Homo species.

Homo erectus
H. erectus existed between 1.8 million and 300,000 years ago. Like habilis,
the face has protruding jaws with large molars, no chin, thick brow ridges, and
a long low skull, with a brain size varying between 750 and 1225 cc. Early

25

erectus specimens average about 900 cc, while late ones have an average of
about 1100 cc (Leakey, 1994). Some Asian erectus skulls have a sagittal
crest. The skeleton is more robust than those of modern humans, implying
greater strength. Body proportions vary; the Turkana Boy is tall and slender,
like modern humans from the same area, while the few limb bones found of
Peking Man indicate a shorter, sturdier build. Study of the Turkana Boy
skeleton indicates that erectus may have been more efficient at walking than
modern humans, whose skeletons have had to adapt to allow for the birth of
larger-brained

infants

(Willis,

1989).

Homo

habilis

and

all

the

australopithecines are found only in Africa, but erectus was wide-ranging, and
is found through Africa and Asia (and was probably in Europe, but no
unambiguous skeletal remains are known from there). Evidence from the
Peking Man site in China indicates that erectus used fire, and their stone tools
are more sophisticated than those of habilis.

Homo sapiens (archaic)

Archaic forms of Homo sapiens first appear about 500,000 years ago. The
term covers a diverse group of skulls which have features of both Homo
erectus and modern humans. The brain size is larger than erectus and
smaller than most modern humans, averaging about 1200 cc, and the skull is
more rounded than in erectus. The skeleton and teeth are usually less robust
than erectus, but more robust than modern humans. Many still have large
brow ridges and receding foreheads and chins. There is no clear dividing line
between late erectus and archaic sapiens, and many fossils between 500,000
and 200,000 years ago are difficult to classify as one or the other.
Neanderthal man existed between 150,000 and 35,000 years ago. The

26

average brain size is slightly larger than that of modern humans, about 1450
cc, but this is probably correlated with their greater bulk. The brain case
however is longer and lower than that of modern humans, with a marked
bulge at the back of the skull. Like erectus, they had a protruding jaw and
receding forehead. The chin was usually weak. The mid facial area also
protrudes, a feature that is not found in erectus or sapiens and may be an
adaptation to cold. There are other minor anatomical differences from modern
humans, the most unusual being some peculiarities of the shoulder blade, and
of the pubic bone in the pelvis. Neanderthals mostly lived in cold climates,
and their body proportions are similar to those of modern cold-adapted
peoples: short and solid, with short limbs. Men reached about 168 cm (5'6") in
height. Their bones are thick and heavy, and show signs of powerful muscle
attachments. Neanderthals would have been extraordinarily strong by modern
standards, and their skeletons show that they endured brutally hard lives. A
large number of tools and weapons have been found, more advanced than
those of Homo erectus. Neandertals are the first people known to have buried
their dead, with the oldest known burial site being about 100,000 years old.
Neandertals are found throughout Europe and the Middle East. Western
European Neandertals usually have a more robust form, and are sometimes
called "classic Neandertals". Neandertals found elsewhere tend to be less
excessively robust. (Trinkaus and Shipman, 1992; Trinkaus and Howells,
1979)

Homo sapiens sapiens (modern)

Modern forms of Homo sapiens first appear about 120,000 years ago. Modern
humans have an average brain size of about 1350 cc. The forehead rises
sharply, eyebrow ridges are very small or more usually absent, the chin is

27

prominent, and the skeleton is very gracile. About 40,000 years ago, with the
appearance of the Cro-Magnon culture, tool kits started becoming markedly
more sophisticated, using a wider variety of raw materials such as bone and
antler, and containing new implements for making clothing, engraving and
sculpting. Fine artwork, in the form of decorated tools, beads, ivory carvings of
humans and animals, clay figurines, musical instruments, and spectacular
cave paintings appeared over the next 20,000 years. (Leakey, 1994)
Even within the last 100,000 years, the long-term trends towards smaller
molars and decreased robustness can be discerned. The face, jaw and teeth
of Mesolithic humans (about 10,000 years ago) are about 10% more robust
than ours. Upper Paleolithic humans (about 30,000 years ago) are about 20 to
30% more robust than the modern condition in Europe and Asia. These are
considered modern humans, although they are sometimes termed "primitive".
Interestingly, some modern humans (aboriginal Australians) have tooth sizes
more typical of archaic sapiens. The smallest tooth sizes are found in those
areas where food-processing techniques have been used for the longest time.
This is a probable example of natural selection which has occurred within the
last 10,000 years (Brace, 1983).
This diagram shows roughly the times during which each hominid species
lived. Ages are in millions of years, with each character position representing
100,000 years. This resolution is a little coarse to accurately represent the
most modern species.
5.0

4.0

3.0

2.0

1.0

0.0

|---------|---------|---------|---------|---------|
|
|

|
|

A.robustus ******

|
|

28

|
|

A.boisei ***********|

A.aethiopicus **** |

A.africanus ***********

A.ramidus * |

A.anamensis ****

A.afarensis **********
|

| H.erectus **************** |

| modern H.sapiens **

H.habilis **********

|
|

archaic H.sapiens *****|

Neandertals *|

|---------|---------|---------|---------|---------|

Prominent Hominid Fossils

This list includes fossils that are important for either their scientific or historic
interest, or because they are often mentioned by creationists. One sometimes
reads that all hominid fossils could fit in a coffin, or on a table, or a billiard
table. That is a misleading image, as there are now thousands of hominid
fossils. They are however mostly fragmentary, often consisting of a single
bone or isolated teeth. Complete skulls and skeletons are rare.
The list is sorted by species, going from older to more recent species. Within
each species, finds are sorted by the order of their discovery.

29

Each entry will consist of a specimen number if known (or the site name, if
many fossils were found in one place), any nicknames in quotes, and a
species name. The species name will be followed by a '?' if suspect. If the
fossil was originally placed in a different species, that name will also be given.
The following terminology is used. A skull refers to all the bones of the head.
A cranium is a skull minus the lower jaw. A braincase is the cranium minus
the face and upper jaw. A skullcap is the top portion of the braincase.

Abbreviations: KNM-ER
KNM-WT

Kenya National Museum, East Rudolf

Kenya National Museum, West Turkana

KP

Kanapoi, Kenya

SK

Swartkrans, South Africa

Sts

Sterkfontein, South Africa

TM

Transvaal Museum

OH

Olduvai Hominid, Tanzania

AL

Afar Locality, Ethiopia

ARA-VP

"ARA-VP,

Aramis, Ethiopia

Sites

1,

&

7",

Ardipithecus

ramidus

Discovered by a team led by Tim White, Bernard Asfaw and Gen Suwa (1994)
in 1992 and 1993 at Aramis in Ethiopia. Estimated age is 4.4 million years.
The find consist of fossils from 17 individuals. Most remains are teeth, but
there is also a partial lower jaw of a child, a partial cranium base, and arm
bone
ARA-VP-6/1

fragments
consists

from
of

10

teeth

2
from

individuals.
single

individual.

ARA-VP-7/2 consists of parts of all three bones from the left arm of a single

30

individual, with a mixture of hominid and ape features.

KP

271,

"Kanapoi

Hominid",

Australopithecus

anamensis

Discovered by Bryan Patterson in 1965 at Kanapoi in Kenya (Patterson and

Howells, 1967). This is a worn fragment of a lower left humerus which is about
4.0 million years old.
KP

29281,

Australopithecus

anamensis

Discovered by Peter Nzube in 1994 at Kanapoi in Kenya. This is a lower jaw

with all its teeth which is about 4.15 million years old.
KP

29285,

Australopithecus

anamensis

Discovered by Kamoya Kimeu in 1994 at Kanapoi in Kenya. This is a tibia,

missing the middle portion of the bone, which is about 4.0 million years old. It
is the oldest known evidence for hominid bipedalism.
Australopithecus

afarensis

Discovered by Donald Johanson in 1973 at Hadar in Ethiopia (Johanson and

Edey, 1981; Johanson and Taieb, 1976). Estimated age is about 3.4 million
years. This find consisted of portions of both legs, including a complete knee
joint which is almost a miniature of a human knee, but apparently belongs to
an adult.
AL

288-1,

"Lucy",

Australopithecus

afarensis

Discovered by Donald Johanson in 1974 at Hadar in Ethiopia (Johanson and

Edey, 1981; Johanson and Taieb, 1976). Estimated age is about 3.2 million
years. Lucy was an adult female of about 25 years. About 40% of her skeleton
was found, and her pelvis, femur (the upper leg bone) and tibia show her to
have been bipedal. She was about 107 cm (3'6") tall (small for her species)
and about 28 kg (62 lbs.) in weight.

31

AL

333

Site,

"The

First

Family",

Australopithecus

afarensis?

Discovered in 1975 by Donald Johanson's team at Hadar in Ethiopia

(Johanson and Edey, 1981). Estimated age is 3.2 million years. This find
consisted of remains of at least 13 hominid individuals, of all ages. The size of
these specimens varies considerably. Scientists debate whether the
specimens belong to one species, two or even three. Johanson believes they
belong to a single species in which males were considerably larger than
females. Others believe that the larger specimens belong to a primitive
species of Homo. If this was the case then this so called primitive species
should also have turned up elsewhere and of course named. In this case I am
of the opinion that there is not enough evidence, yet, and this should be
looked for
"Laetoli

footprints",

Australopithecus

afarensis?

Discovered in 1976 at Laetoli in Tanzania. Estimated age is 3.7 million years.

The trail consists of the fossilized footprints of two or three bipedal hominids.
Their size and stride length indicate that they were about 140 cm (4'8") and
120 cm (4'0") tall. Many scientists claim that the footprints are effectively
identical to those of modern humans (Tattersall, 1993; Feder and Park, 1989),
while others claim the big toes diverged slightly (like apes) and that the toe
lengths are longer than humans but shorter than in apes (Burenhult, 1993).
The prints are tentatively assigned to A. afarensis, because no other hominid
species is known from that time. I suggest that it may well not have been A.
afarensis prints because we are still in the dark of what else in the form of
apes, were around in the same time line as suggested by others and that the
footprint timeline is only guess work.

32

AL

444-2,

Australopithecus

afarensis

Discovered by Bill Kimbel and Yoel Rak in 1991 at Hadar in Ethiopia (Kimbel
et al.1994). Estimated age is 3 million years. This is a 70% complete skull of a
large adult male, easily the most complete afarensis skull known. According to
its finders, it strengthens the case that all the First Family fossils were
members of the same species, because the differences between AL 444-2
and the smaller skulls in the collection are consistent with other sexually
dimorphic hominoids.
"Taung

baby",

Australopithecus

africanus

Discovered by Raymond Dart in 1924 at Taung in South Africa (Dart, 1925).

The find consisted of a full face, teeth and jaws, and an endo-cranial cast of
the brain. It is probably between 2.5 and 3.0 million years old, but it and most
other South African fossils are found in cave deposits that are difficult to date.
The teeth of this skull showed it to be from an infant about 5 or 6 years old (it
is now believed that australopithecines matured faster than humans, and that
the Taung child was about 3). The brain size was 410 cc, and would have
been around 440 cc as an adult. The large rounded brain, canine teeth which
were small and not apelike, and the position of the foramen magnum(*)
convinced Dart that this was a bipedal human ancestor, which he named
Australopithecus africanus (African southern ape). Although the discovery
became famous, Dart's interpretation was rejected by the scientific community
until the mid- 1940's, following the discovery of other similar fossils.
(*) Anatomical digression: the foramen magnum is the hole in the skull
through which the spinal cord passes. In apes, it is towards the back of the
skull, because of their quadruped posture. In humans it is at the bottom of the
skull because our head is balanced on top of a vertical column. TM 1512,

33

Australopithecus

africanus

(was

Plesianthropus

transvaalensis)

Discovered by Robert Broom in 1936 at Sterkfontein in South Africa (Broom,

1936). The second australopithecine found, it consisted of parts of the face,
upper jaw and braincase.
Sts

5,

"Mrs

Ples",

Australopithecus

africanus

Discovered by Robert Broom in 1947 at Sterkfontein in South Africa. It is a

very well preserved cranium of an adult. It has usually been thought to be
female, but there have been recent claims that it could be male. It is the best
specimen of africanus. The brain size is about 485 cc.
Sts

14,

Australopithecus

africanus

Discovered by Robert Broom and J.T. Robinson in 1947 at Sterkfontein.

Estimated age is about 2.5 million years. This find consisted of a nearly
complete vertebral column, pelvis, some rib fragments, and part of a femur of
a very small adult female. The pelvis is far more human than apelike, and is
strong evidence that africanus was bipedal (Brace et al.1979), although it may
not have had the strong striding gait of modern humans (Burenhult, 1993).
KNM-WT

17000,

"The

Black

Skull",

Australopithecus

aethiopicus

Discovered by Alan Walker in 1985 near West Turkana in Kenya. Estimated

age is 2.5 million years. This find is an intact, almost complete cranium. The
brain size is very small for a hominid, about 410 cc, and the skull has a
puzzling mixture of primitive and advanced features. (Leakey and Lewin, 1992)
TM

1517,

Australopithecus

robustus

(was

Paranthropus

robustus)

Discovered by Robert Broom in 1938 at Kromdraai in South Africa (Broom,

1938). It consisted of skull fragments, including five teeth, and a few skeletal
fragments. This was the first specimen of robustus.

34

OH

5,

"Zinjanthropus",

"Nutcracker

Man",

Australopithecus

boisei

Discovered by Mary Leakey in 1959 at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania (Leakey,

1959). Estimated age is 1.8 million years. It is an almost complete cranium,
with a brain size is about 530 cc. This was the first specimen of this species.
Louis Leakey briefly considered this a human ancestor, but the claim was
dropped when Homo habilis was found soon afterwards.
KNM-ER

406,

Australopithecus

boisei

Discovered by Richard Leakey in 1969 near Lake Turkana in Kenya. This find
was a complete, intact cranium lacking only the teeth (Lewin, 1987).
Estimated age is about 1.7 million years. The brain size is about 510 cc. (see
also ER3733
KNM-ER

732,

Australopithecus

boisei

Discovered by Richard Leakey in 1970 near Lake Turkana in Kenya. The

cranium is similar to that of OH 5, but is smaller and has other differences
such as the lack of a sagittal crest. The estimated age is about 1.7 million
years. The brain size is about 500 cc. Most experts believe this is a case of
sexual dimorphism, with the female being smaller than the male.
Homo Hablis.
Discovered by the Leakeys in the early 1960's at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania.
A number of fragmentary specimens were found (Leakey et al.1964).
OH 7 (Johnny's Child), found by Jonathon Leakey in 1960 (Leakey,
1961), consisted of a lower jaw and two cranial fragments of a child,
and a few hand bones. Estimated age is 1.9 million years, and the
brain size was about 680 cc.
OH 8, found in 1960, consisted of a set of foot bones, complete except
for the back of the heel and the tips of the toes. Estimated age is about

35

1.8 million years. The foot bones had most of the adaptations to
bipedalism possessed by modern humans. There is a well-developed
arch, and the big toe is alongside the other toes instead of diverging, as
is the case with apes and monkeys.
OH 13 (Cindy), found in 1963, consisted of a lower jaw and teeth, bits
of the upper jaw and a cranial fragment. Estimated age is 1.7 million
years, and the brain size was about 650 cc.
OH 16 (George), found in 1963, consisted of teeth and some very small
skull fragments (George was unfortunately trampled by a herd of Masai
cattle before he could be excavated, and much of his skull was lost).
Estimated age is 1.7 million years, and the brain size was about 640 cc.
OH

24,

"Twiggy",

Homo

habilis

Discovered by Peter Nzube in 1968 at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. It

consisted of a badly crushed skull and seven teeth. It is about 1.8 million
years old and has a brain size of about 590 cc.
KNM-ER

1470,

Homo

habilis

Discovered by Bernard Ngeneo in 1972 at Koobi Fora in Kenya (Leakey,

1973). Estimated age is 1.9 million years. This is the most complete habilis
skull known. Its brain size is 750 cc, large for habilis. It was originally dated at
nearly 3 million years old, a figure that caused much confusion as at the time
it was older than any known australopithecines, from whom habilis had
supposedly descended. A lively debate over the dating of 1470 ensued (Lewin,
1987; Johanson and Edey, 1981; Lubenow, 1992). The skull is surprisingly
modern in some respects. The braincase is much larger and less robust than
any australopithecine skull, and is also without the large brow ridges typical of
Homo erectus. It is however very robust in the face. A number of leg bones

36

were found within a couple of kilometres, and are thought to probably belong
to the same species. The most complete, KNM-ER 1481, consisted of a
complete left femur, both ends of a left tibia and the lower end of a left fibula
(the smaller of the two lower leg bones). These are quite similar to the bones
of modern humans.
KNM-ER

1805,

"The

Mystery

Skull",

Homo

habilis??

Discovered by Paul Abell in 1973 at Koobi Fora in Kenya (Leakey, 1974).

Estimated age is 1.85 million years. This find consisted of much of a heavily
built cranium containing many teeth. Its brain size is about 600 cc. Some
features, such as the sagittal crest, are typical of A. boisei, but the teeth are
too small for that species. (Willis, 1989; Day, 1986) Various workers have
assigned it to almost every conceivable species, but it seems most similar to
Homo habilis (Wood, 1991).
KNM-ER

1813,

Homo

habilis??

Discovered by Kamoya Kimeu in 1973 at Koobi Fora in Kenya (Leakey, 1974).

This specimen is similar to 1470, but is much smaller, with a brain size of 510
cc. Estimated age is 1.8-1.9 million years. Some scientists believe this a case
of sexual dimorphism, others believe that the brain architecture is different
and that 1813 is another species of Homo, and others believe it is an
australopithecine. Like the previous skull, 1805, this one is in the "Suspense
Account". (Willis, 1989)
OH

62,

"Dik-dik

hominid",

Homo

habilis

Discovered by Tim White in 1986 at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania (Johanson

and Shreeve, 1989; Johanson et al.1987). Estimated age is 1.8 million years.
The find consisted of portions of skull, arm, leg bones and teeth. Almost all
the features of the skull closely resemble habilis fossils such as OH 24, ER

37

1813 and ER 1470, rather than the australopithecines. But the estimated
height is very small, maybe about 105 cm (3'5"), and the arms are very long in
proportion to the legs. These are australopithecine traits, and in fact the
skeletal bones are very similar to those of Lucy. This find is significant
because it is the only fossil in which limb bones have been securely assigned
to habilis. Because of the small size, this was almost certainly a female. As
with the australopithecines, males would have been considerably larger.
"Java Man", "Pithecanthropus I" H.erectus (was Pithecanthropus erectus)
Discovered by Eugene Dubois in 1893 near Trinil in Java. Its age is uncertain,
but thought to be about 700,000 years. This find consisted of a flat, very thick
skullcap, a few teeth (which may belong to orang- utans), and a femur found
about 12 meters away (Theunissen, 1989). The brain size is about 940 cc.
Trinkaus and Shipman (1992) state that most scientists now believe the femur
is that of a modern human, but few of the other references mention this.
"Heidelberg

Man",

Homo

erectus?

(was

Homo

heidelbergensis)

Discovered by gravel pit workers in 1907 near Heidelberg in Germany.

Estimated age is between 400,000 and 700,000 years. This find consisted of
a lower jaw with a receding chin and all its teeth. The jaw is extremely large
and robust, like that of Homo erectus, but the teeth are at the small end of the
erectus range. It is therefore identified as erectus on the basis of its age, but
could be an archaic sapiens.
"Peking

Man

Site",

Homo

erectus

(was

Sinanthropus

pekinensis)

Between 1929 and 1937, 14 partial craniums, 11 lower jaws, many teeth,
some skeletal bones and large numbers of stone tools were discovered in the
Lower Cave at Locality 1 of the Peking Man site at Zhoukoudian, near Beijing,
in China. Their age is estimated to be between 500,000 and 300,000 years

38

old. (A number of fossils of modern humans were also discovered in the

Upper Cave in 1933.) The most complete fossils, all of which were braincases
or skullcaps, are:
Skull III, discovered at Locus E in 1929 is an adolescent or juvenile with
a brain size of 915 cc.
Skull II, discovered at Locus D in 1929 but only recognized in 1930, is
an adult or adolescent with a brain size of 1030 cc.
Skulls LI, LII and LIII were discovered at Locus L in 1936. They are
thought to belong to an adult man, an adult woman and a young adult,
with brain sizes of 1225 cc, 1015 cc and 1030 cc respectively.
Skull 5: two cranial fragments were discovered in 1966 which fit with
(casts of) two other fragments found in 1934 and 1936 to form most of
a skullcap. These pieces were found at a higher level, and appear to be
more modern than the other skullcaps. (Jia and Huang, 1990)
Most of the study on these fossils was done by Davidson Black until his death
in 1934. Franz Weidenreich replaced him and studied the fossils until leaving
China in 1941. The original fossils disappeared in 1941 while being shipped to
the United States for safety during World War II, but excellent casts and
descriptions remain. Since the war, other erectus fossils have been found at
this site and others in China.
OH

9,

"Chellean

Man",

Homo

erectus

Discovered by Louis Leakey in 1960 at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania (Leakey,

1961). Estimated age is 1.2 million years. It consisted of a fairly complete
braincase with a brain size of 1050 cc.
OH

12,

"Pinhead",

Homo

erectus

Discovered by M. Cropper in 1962 at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. It is similar

39

to but less complete than OH 9, and smaller, with an estimated brain size of
only 750 cc. It is estimated to be between 600,000 and 800,000 years old.
Sangiran

17,

"Pithecanthropus

VIII",

Homo

erectus

Discovered by Sastrohamidjojo Sartono in 1969 at Sangiran on Java. This

consists of an almost complete cranium, with a brain size of about 1000 cc. It
is the most complete erectus find from Java. This skull is very robust, with a
slightly projecting face and huge flaring cheekbones. It has been thought to be
about 800,000 years old, but a recent dating has given a much older figure of
nearly 1.7 million years. If the older date is correct, it means Homo erectus
migrated out of Africa much earlier than previously thought.
KNM-ER

3733,

Homo

erectus

Discovered by Bernard Ngeneo in 1975 at Koobi Fora in Kenya. Estimated

age is 1.7 million years. This superb find consisted of an almost complete
cranium. The brain size is about 850 cc, and the whole skull is similar to some
of the Peking Man fossils. The discovery of this fossil in the same stratum as
ER 406 (A. boisei) delivered the coup de grace to the single species
hypothesis: the idea that there has never been more than one hominid
species at any point in history. (Leakey and Walker, 1976)
KNM-WT

15000,

"Turkana

Boy",

Homo

erectus

Discovered by Kamoya Kimeu in 1984 at Nariokotome near Lake Turkana in

Kenya (Brown et al.1985; Leakey and Lewin, 1992; Walker and Leakey, 1993).
This is an almost complete skeleton of an 11 or 12 year old boy, the only
major omissions being the hands and feet. (Some scientists believe erectus
matured faster than modern humans, and that he was really about 9 years old
(Leakey and Lewin, 1992).) It is the most complete known specimen of
erectus, and also one of the oldest, at 1.6 million years. The brain size was

40

880 cc, and it is estimated that it would have been 910 cc at adulthood. The
boy was 160 cm (5'3") tall, and would have been about 185 cm (6'1") as an
adult. This is surprisingly tall, indicating that many erectus may have been as
large as modern humans. Except for the skull, the skeleton is very similar to
that of modern boys, although there are a number of small differences.
"Rhodesian

Man",

(was

Homo

rhodesiensis)

Discovered by a labourer in 1921 at Broken Hill in Northern Rhodesia (now

Kabwe in Zambia) (Woodward, 1921). This was a complete cranium that was
very robust, with large brow ridges and a receding forehead. Estimated age is
between 200,000 and 125,000 years.
The brain size was about 1280 cc.

Petralona

1,

Homo

sapiens

(archaic)

Discovered by villagers at Petralona in Greece in 1960. Estimated age is

250,000-500,000 years. It could alternatively be considered to be a late Homo
erectus, and also has some Neanderthal characteristics. The brain size is
1220 cc, high for erectus but low for sapiens, and the face is large with
particularly wide jaws. (Day, 1986)
"Neanderthal skeleton", Discovered by Johann Fuhlrott in 1856 in the
Neander valley in Germany. The find consisted of a skullcap, thigh bones,
part of a pelvis, some ribs, and some arm and shoulder bones. The lower left
arm had been broken in life, and as a result the bones of the left arm were
smaller than those of the right. Fuhlrott recognized it as a primitive human, but
the German establishment headed by Rudolf Virchow rejected this view,
incorrectly claiming that it was a pathological modern human. (Trinkaus and
Shipman, 1992)

41

(There were actually two earlier Neanderthal finds. A partial cranium of a 2.5
year old child found in 1829 in Belgium was not recognized until 1936. An
adult cranium found on Gibraltar in 1848 gathered dust in a museum until it
was recognized as Neanderthal in 1864.)
"Spy

and

2",

Homo

sapiens

neanderthalensis

Discovered by Marcel de Puydt and Max Lohest in 1886 at Spy (pronounced

Spee) d'Orneau in Belgium. Estimated age is about 60,000 years. This find
consisted of two almost complete skeletons. The excellent descriptions of the
skeletons established that they were very old, and largely discredited the idea
that the Neanderthal physique was a pathological condition, but also
erroneously concluded that Neanderthal Man walked with bent knees.
Discovered by Dragutin Gorjanovic-Kramberger in 1899 near Krapina in
Croatia. This site yielded significant remains from two to three dozen
individuals, and teeth and jaw fragments from dozens more. When Gorjanovic
published on his finds in 1906, it confirmed for once and for all that
Neandertals were not pathological modern humans.
Discovered by Amedee and Jean Bouyssonie in 1908 near La-Chapelle-auxSaints in France. It is about 50,000 years old, with a brain size of 1620 cc.
This nearly complete skeleton was reconstructed by Marcellin Boule, who
wrote a definitive and highly influential paper on it which managed to be totally
wrong in many of its conclusions. It exaggerated the apelike characteristics of
the fossil, popularizing the stereotype, which would last for decades, of a
stooping ape-man shuffling along on bent knees. This specimen was between
about 30 and 40 when he died, but had a healed broken rib, severe arthritis of
the hip, lower neck, back and shoulders, and had lost most of his molar teeth.
The fact that he survived as long as he did indicates that Neandertals must

42

have had a complex social structure.

Ralph Solecki discovered 9 Neanderthal skeletons between 1953 and 1960 at
the Shanidar cave in Iraq. They are thought to be between 70,000 and 40,000
years old. One of them, Shanidar 4, had apparently been buried with offerings
of flowers (although this interpretation has recently been disputed). In 1971
Solecki wrote a book, "Shanidar, reversing the earlier stereotypes of semihuman brutes. Another skeleton, Shanidar 1, was partially blind, one-armed
and crippled. His survival also is evidence of a complex social structure.
"Saint-Cesaire

Neanderthal",

Homo

sapiens

neanderthalensis

Discovered by Francois Leveque in 1979 near the village of Saint-Cesaire in

France. It consisted of a badly crushed skeleton. The skull was mostly
complete, with only the back of the cranium missing. It is dated at about
35,000 years old, and is the most recent Neanderthal known. This find was of
special interest because it was found with tools that had previously only been
associated with the Cro-Magnon culture, instead of the usual Neanderthal tool
kit.
Discovered by workmen in 1868 at Cro-Magnon in France. Estimated age is
28,000 years. The site yielded skeletons of about half a dozen individuals,
along with stone tools, carved reindeer antlers, ivory pendants, and shells.
The Cro-Magnons lived in Europe between 35,000 and 10,000 years ago.
They are almost identical to modern man, being tall and muscular and slightly
more robust than most modern humans. They were skilled hunters,
toolmakers and artists famous for the cave art at places such as Lascaux.

Alternative Taxonomies
The above list has used a fairly conservative naming system. Recently a

43

number of scientists have suggested various changes in these names.

Many people are now using the genus name Paranthropus, originally given to
robustus, to refer to the robust australopithecines (robustus, boisei, and
aethiopicus). This change makes sense if all these species form a clade (all of
the species descended from a common ancestor) but it is not yet known if this
is the case here.
Homo habilis is, as mentioned above, controversial. There is much
disagreement over which specimens belong in habilis, and which do not. A
number of scientists are now using the name H. rudolfensis to refer to ER
1470 and some similar fossils. The smaller habilis-like specimens such as ER
1813 and ER 1805 are variously assigned to habilis, H. ergaster, or to another
as yet unnamed species. The name H. microcranous has recently been
proposed for 1813.
Some scientists have also proposed splitting Homo erectus. The Turkana Boy
and 3733 fossils would then become Homo ergaster (Tattersall, 1993). H.
erectus would have a larger average brain size than ergaster, and the brow
ridges may have a different shape, flaring out to the side more (Burenhult,
1993).
It has also been proposed that the names Homo heidelbergensis and Homo
neanderthalensis should be restored as species names for archaic Homo
sapiens and the Neandertals.
There are a number of other recent discoveries which may change current
thinking when they have had a chance to be analysed:
Some hominid fossils found recently in Spain, and dated at over
780,000 years, would be the oldest European hominids, but it is not yet

44

clear what species they belong to.

New finds in Spain and Croatia suggest that Neandertals may have
survived longer than previously thought, perhaps as recently as 30,000
years ago.
Four australopithecine foot bones dated at around 3.5 million years are
the oldest hominid fossils yet found in South Africa. They seem to be
adapted to bipedalism, but have an intriguing mixture of ape and
human features.

Summary
There are a number of clear trends (which were neither continuous nor
uniform) from early australopithecines to recent humans: increasing brain size,
increasing body size, increasing use of and sophistication in tools, decreasing
tooth size, decreasing skeletal robustness. There are no clear dividing lines
between some of the later gracile australopithecines and some of the early
Homo, between erectus and archaic sapiens, or archaic sapiens and modern
sapiens.
Despite this, there is little consensus on what our family tree is. Everyone
accepts that the robust australopithecines (aethiopicus, robustus and boisei)
are not ancestral to us, being a side branch that left no descendants. Whether
H. habilis is descended from A. afarensis, africanus, both of them, or neither
of them, is still a matter of debate. It is possible that none of the known
australopithecines is our ancestor. The discoveries of A. ramidus and A.
anamensis are so recent that it is hard to say what effect they will have on
current theories. It is generally accepted that Homo erectus is descended
from Homo habilis, but the relationship between erectus, sapiens and the

45

Neandertals is still unclear. Neanderthal affinities can be detected in some

specimens of both archaic and modern sapiens. The problem with this I found
that many researchers past over the Neanderthal era to quickly and more in
depth research is needed including DNA sampling from across Europe and
into Asia.
The usual creationist response to these fossils is to claim that there are no
intermediates; each one is either a human or an ape. It doesn't matter that
some of the "humans" have a brain size well below the normal human range,
heavy brow ridges, no chin, and teeth larger than modern ones set in a
projecting jaw, or that some of the "apes" were bipedal, with very humanlike
teeth, and brains larger than those of similar sized apes. There are some
skulls which cannot be reliably assigned to either genus. (Willis, 1989)
This is exactly what we would expect if evolution had occurred. If, on the other
hand, creationism was true, it should be easy to separate hominid fossils into
humans and apes. It would not matter even if creationists could decide where
to put the dividing line between humans and apes. No matter where it is
placed, the humans just above the line and the apes just below it will be more
similar to one another than they will be to other humans or other apes.
In 1950, Wilfred Le Gros Clark published a paper which definitively settled the
question of whether the australopithecines were apes or not. He performed a
morphological study (based on the shape and function) of teeth and jaws,
since these formed most of the fossil evidence. By studying human and
modern ape fossils, Le Gros Clark came up with a list of eleven consistent
differences between humans and apes. Looking at A. africanus and robustus
(the only australopithecine species then known), he found that they were
humanlike rather than apelike in every characteristic. Judged by the same

46

criteria, A. afarensis falls somewhere between humans and apes, and

possibly closer to the apes (Johanson and Edey, 1981). White et al. (1994)
did not judge A. ramidus by these criteria, but it is clear that ramidus is even
more chimpanzee-like than afarensis. The ramidus arm bones also display a
mixture of hominid and ape characteristics.
Solly Zuckerman attempted to prove with biometrical studies (based on
measurements) that the australopithecines were apes. Zuckerman lost this
debate in the 50's, and his position was abandoned by everyone else
(Johanson and Edey, 1981). Creationists like to quote his opinions as if they
were still a scientifically acceptable viewpoint.
Charles Oxnard (1975), in a paper that is widely cited by creationists, claimed,
based on his multivariate analyses, that australopithecines are no more
closely related, or more similar, to humans than modern apes are. Howell et
al.(1978) criticized this conclusion on a number of grounds. Oxnard's results
were based on measurements of a few skeletal bones which were usually
fragmentary and often poorly preserved. The measurements did not describe
the complex shape of some bones, and did not distinguish between aspects
which are important for understanding locomotion from those which were not.
Finally, there is "an overwhelming body of evidence", based on the work of
nearly 30 scientists, which contradicts Oxnard's work. These studies used a
variety of techniques, including those used by Oxnard, and were based on
many different body parts and joint complexes. They overwhelmingly indicate
that australopithecines resemble humans more closely than the living apes.
Creationists often cite Oxnard's qualifications, and use of computers to
perform his calculations, with approval. This is special pleading; many other
scientists are equally qualified, and also use computers. Gish (1993) states

47

that "[a] computer doesn't lie, [a] computer doesn't have a bias". True enough,
but the results that come out of a computer are only as good as the data and
assumptions that go in. In this case, the primary assumption would seem to
be that Oxnard's methods are a useful method of determining relationships.
This seems doubtful, given some of the other unusual results of Oxnard's
study (1987). For example, he places Ramapithecus as the ape closest to
humans, and Sivapithecus as closely related to orang-utans, even though the
two are so similar that they are now considered to be the same species of
Sivapithecus.
Less controversially, Oxnard also claims that, while probably bipedal,
australopithecines did not walk identically to modern humans. Creationists
sometimes quote this conclusion in a highly misleading manner, saying
Oxnard proved that australopithecines did not walk upright, and then adding,
as an afterthought (or in Willis' (1987) case, not at all) "at least, not in the
human manner".
Creationists are generally reluctant to accept that australopithecines, including
Lucy, were bipedal. A statement by Weaver (1985) that "Australopithecus
afarensis ... demonstrates virtually complete adaptation to upright walking" is
dismissed by Willis (1987) as "a preposterous claim". Willis adds: "Many
competent anthropologists have carefully examined these and other
"Australopithecine" [sic] remains and concluded that Lucy could not walk
upright."
Willis' evidence for this consists of a statement by Solly Zuckerman made in
1970; a 1971 statement from Richard Leakey that australopithecines "may
have been knuckle-walkers", and a quote from Charles Oxnard about the
relationship between humans, australopithecines and the apes. In fact, none

48

of these quotes refer to Lucy. Two of them were made before Lucy, and A.
afarensis, was even discovered (and the third was made very soon afterwards,
before Lucy had been studied).
Even in 1970, Zuckerman's views had long since been discredited. In what is
obviously a fabrication, Willis says that Leakey "referred to Lucy as an ape
who did not walk upright", three years before Lucy was discovered. Leakey
was merely making a suggestion (about robust australopithecines) which he
soon retracted, not stating a firm opinion, and he has since stated (1994) that
Lucy "undoubtedly was a biped". Oxnard (1975; 1987) has some unorthodox
opinions about the australopithecines, but the Oxnard quote supplied by Willis
discusses neither bipedality nor A. afarensis. Elsewhere in the same paper
that

Willis

refers

to,

Oxnard

(1975)

repeatedly

mentions

that

australopithecines may have been bipedal, and he has since stated (1987)
that the australopithecines, including Lucy, were bipedal.
Gish (1985) has a long discussion of the debate about Lucy's locomotion. He
quotes extensively from Stern and Susman (1983), who list many apelike
features of A. afarensis and argue that it spent a significant amount of time in
the trees. As Gish admits, none of the scientists he mentions deny that Lucy
was bipedal, but he goes on to suggest, with no evidence or support, that A.
afarensis may have been no more bipedal than living apes, which are well
adapted to quadrupedality and only walk on two legs for short distances. By
contrast, the feet, knees, legs and pelvises of australopithecines are strongly
adapted to bipedality, while the hands and wrists show no adaptations to any
form of quadrupedalism (McHenry, 1986). Gish's conclusion is strongly
rejected by Stern and Susman, and, apparently, everyone else:
"That bipedality was a more fundamental part of australopithecine

49

behaviour than in any other living or extinct nonhuman primate is

not in serious dispute."

"...we must emphasize that in no way do we dispute the claim that

terrestrial bipedality was a far more significant component of the
behaviour of A. afarensis than in any living nonhuman primate."
(Stern and Susman, 1983)

Gish writes as if showing that A. afarensis did not "walk upright in the human
manner" is all that is needed to disqualify it as a human ancestor. But there is
no reason that bipedality, when it first arose, had to be identical to human
bipedality; that final step could have occurred later. As Stern and Susman
(1983) state:
"In our opinion A. afarensis is very close to what can be called a
"missing link". It possesses a combination of traits entirely
appropriate for an animal that had traveled well down the road
toward full-time bipedality..."

Another creationist writes:

"From the neck down, certain clues suggested to Johanson that
Lucy walked a little more erect than today's chimps. This
conclusion, based on his interpretation of the partial hip bone and a
knee

bone,

has

been

hotly

contested

by

many

paleoanthropologists." (Morris, 1994)

Almost everything in this quote is a distortion (Johanson's and Lucy's names

50

are about the only exceptions). "Certain clues suggested" doesn't mention
that the whole find screamed "bipedality" to every qualified scientist who
looked at it. "a little more erect", when everyone believes that Lucy was fully
erect. "the partial hip bone and a knee bone", when Lucy included almost a
complete pelvis and leg (taking mirror imaging into account, and excluding the
foot). "has been hotly contested", when no reputable paleoanthropologist
denies that Lucy was bipedal. The debates are about whether she was also
arboreal, and about how similar the biomechanics of her locomotion was to
that of humans. Given that we have most of Lucy's leg and pelvis, one has to
wonder what sort of fossil evidence it would take to convince creationists of
australopithecine bipedality.
To support the idea that australopithecines are just apes, Parker says:
"In their critique of the Leakeys, Johanson and White (1980) noted:
'Modern chimpanzees, by this definition [Richard Leakey's] would
be classified as A. africanus.' Apes after all?" (Morris and Parker,
1982)

When the paper by Johanson and White is examined, it is apparent that

Parker has taken their quote out of context in a way that almost reverses its
meaning. Leakey did not call A. africanus a chimp, nor did Johanson and
White accuse him of doing so. They criticized Leakey's definition because it
was imprecise enough to also include chimps. Of course, such a criticism only
makes sense if A. africanus is not a chimp.
In 1987, creationist Tom Willis accused Donald Johanson of fraud, claiming
that the skeleton known as "Lucy" consisted of bones that had been found at
two sites about 2.5 km (1.5 miles) apart. Willis had actually confused two

51

separate finds which belong to the same species. (This was in spite of the fact
that a best-selling book (Johanson and Edey, 1981) has photos of both fossils:
AL129-1 is a right knee, while Lucy has a right femur and a left tibia.) This
was a spectacular error which could hardly have been made by anyone who
had done the most elementary research, but that didn't stop a number of other
creationists from picking up the claim and repeating it.
Creationists rarely address the issue of why australopithecines have a
foramen magnum at the bottom of the skull. Gish (1985) criticizes Dart's
reasoning that the Taung baby walked upright, based on the position of its
foramen magnum. Gish correctly states that the position of the foramen
magnum is closer in juvenile apes and humans than it is in adults (in apes, it
moves backwards during growth), and concludes that Dart was unjustified in
analyzing this feature on a juvenile skull. This is the same criticism that Dart
originally faced from scientists, but Gish fails to mention that later evidence
proved Dart's analysis correct and silenced his critics.
Creationists also rarely mention australopithecine teeth. Gish says that "[Dart]
pointed out the many ape-like features of the skull, but believed that some
features of the skull, and particularly of the teeth, were man-like". (Note the
misleading implication that the apelike features really exist, while the
humanlike ones are a figment of Dart's imagination.) Gish disputes this,
pointing out that the molar teeth of africanus are extremely large. What Gish
does not tell readers is that this is one of the few differences between them
and human teeth. When the teeth of the Taung child could be properly
examined, Dart's claim was strongly confirmed, and is now universally
accepted.
Despite its importance, Homo habilis is virtually ignored by creationists. The

52

one exception is ER 1470, which is too well-known to be totally ignored.

Creationists disagree on whether 1470 is an ape or a human. The other
habilis fossils are never analysed, but the few creationists who do mention
them are in agreement that they are all apes.
The skull ER1471 was discovered in 1972, and publicized as both amazingly
humanlike, and extremely old, at nearly 3 million years. Creationists eagerly
seized on the statement of Richard Leakey, its discoverer, that 1470 "wipes
out everything we have been taught about human evolution [this proved to be
wrong], and I have nothing to offer in its place". Creationists sometimes give
the impression that it is a modern human skull. But despite some modern
traits, it has a number of australopithecine features, and a brain size of about
750 cc. Gish (1979) points out its small size, but states that its age and sex
are unknown, presumably seeking to imply that it might belong to a child. That
is not probable, as can be seen from comparative photos (Weaver, 1985).
1470's face is very robust, and as large as that of a modern Cro-Magnon skull,
despite a much smaller brain size, and the cranium has a markedly different
shape. There is also other evidence that it was an adult.
Curiously, as a debating tactic to discredit other hominid fossils, creationists
often accept 1470 as human, even though many of them reject larger-brained
erectus specimens as apes.Creationists, however, are unlikely to find the idea
of a human with a brain size of 510 cc very appealing.
Gish in 1979 tentatively accepted 1470 as fully human. By 1985, he seemed
to have reversed that opinion, and was suggesting that it should be placed in
the genus Australopithecus (as have some scientists). His reasoning for this is
that another habilis fossil OH 8 a set of foot bones) had been claimed by
Oxnard and Lisowski to be not as humanlike as previously thought. This is

53

used to justify placing all habilis fossils, including 1470, into the
australopithecines. OH 8, of course, does not belong to 1470, and may not
even have belonged to a member of the same species, so it is irrelevant to
determining 1470's status. Gish implies that his earlier evaluation of 1470 was
based on preliminary information, but the photos and descriptions on which
Gish based his earlier opinion were published as early as 1973. Gish gives no
new information about 1470 that would justify reclassifying it from a human to
an ape.
If 1470 was an ape, it would be a truly extraordinary one. The brain is far
larger than that of any ape, with the exception of a few very large male gorillas.
The braincase is far more rounded and gracile than that of any ape, and the
brain has a human rather than an apelike pattern.
Cronin et al.(1981) list nine features of 1470 which are either shared with A.
africanus, or intermediate between africanus and other H. habilis specimens.
Gish lists some of these in support of his contention that 1470 is
australopithecine, but, in a fine example of selective quotation, failed to
include another section from the same paragraph listing other features of
1470 that are generally associated with the genus Homo.
Lubenow (1992), by contrast, considers 1470 fully human. So two of the
foremost creationist experts on palaeoanthropology are both certain that 1470
is not intermediate between human and ape, yet one of them thinks it an ape,
and the other thinks it is a human! There could be no more convincing
demonstration of its transitional status.
Although 1470 is usually placed in the genus Homo, it is definitely not a
modern human. There is ample evidence of this:
"The endocranial capacity and the morphology of the calvaria

54

[braincase] are characters that suggest inclusion within the genus

Homo, but the maxilla [upper jaw] and facial region are unlike those
of any known form of hominid." (Leakey, 1973)

"KNM-ER 1470, like other early Homo specimens, shows many

morphological

characteristics

in

common

with

gracile

australopithecines that are not shared with later specimens of the

genus Homo" (Cronin et al.1981)

"There is no evidence that this cranium particularly resembles H.

sapiens or H. erectus according to either phenetic or cladistic
evidence. Phenetically, KNM-ER 1470 is closest to the remains
from Olduvai [considered apes by creationists] referred to H. habilis.
(Wood, 1991)

Shortly after 1470 was discovered, anatomist A. Cave said in an interview that
it was, "as far as I can see, typically human". Creationists interpret this to
mean that it was the skull of a modern human. More likely is that Cave was
merely saying that the skull belonged to, and had features typical of, the
genus Homo.
Another fossil which Lubenow considers human is ER 1590, consisting of
cranial fragments and teeth of a child of about 6 years. It is not complete
enough for the brain size to be directly measured, but it seems to be very
close in size to 1470. However this child had teeth which were larger than
those of Homo erectus, which are in turn larger than those of Homo sapiens.
In addition, the sequence of tooth development has little resemblance to that

55

of Homo sapiens (Wood, 1991).

To support the claim that 1470 is human and other habilis fossils are apes,
Lubenow quotes from a paper by Falk, which states that the endocast of 1470
has a human pattern, while that of 1805 is apelike (these were the only fossils
discussed by Falk). However Tobias (1988) shows that other habilis fossils
such as OH 7, OH 13, OH 16 and OH 24 (which creationists consider apes)
all share many advanced features with ER 1470.

It is lightly built, with a rounded skull and no sagittal crest, modest eyebrow
ridges, and a small amount of nasal prominence (Day, 1986). This is
combined with a jaw and teeth that are similar to but larger than those of
modern humans. Another transitional fossil! Because its brain was far smaller
than any human, creationists have no choice but to call this an ape, despite
the fact that 1470 looks more similar to 1813 than it does to a modern human
skull.
In fact, despite its larger brain size, Cronin et al.(1981) consider 1470 to be
more primitive, with more australopithecine features, than 1813. The teeth of
1470 (as inferred from the sockets) were australopithecine-sized, while 1813
had smaller, Homo erectus-sized teeth (Klein, 1989). Others (reviewed in
Wood (1992)) consider 1470 to belong to the same species as either OH 7 or
1813. OH 62 also closely resembles 1470 (Johanson et al.1987). Sorting out
the exact relationships of these fossils is very difficult, but it is clear that all of
them are similar, with a mixture of Homo and Australopithecus features. There
is no "significant gap" separating 1470 from the others.
The only Homo erectus fossils mentioned by many creationists (Huse, 1983;
Morris and Parker, 1982; Taylor, 1992) are the Java Man and Peking Man

56

fossils (discussed in the following sections). Most creationists consider both

apes, although Lubenow (1992) considers both human even though many
books stress their very close similarity.
A few authors do mention other erectus fossils in passing. Morris suggests
(although it is not clear which specimens he is referring to) that they are
degenerate humans:
"It may well be that Homo erectus was a true man, but somewhat
degenerate in size and culture, possibly because of inbreeding,
poor diet and a hostile environment" (Morris, 1974).

Gish (1985) suggests that many erectus fossils would have been attributed to
Neanderthal Man were it not for their supposed age, and hence probably also
considers the erectus morphology to be caused by disease.
There is no explanation of why these adverse conditions would cause H.
erectus to be so physically powerful, and in fact many erectus may have been
of average human size (see the entry on the Turkana Boy fossil). Nor is it
explained why all human skulls over 500,000 years old are erectus, and why,
given the number of modern people who face a poor diet and a hostile
environment, no erectus specimens are found nowadays.
One Homo erectus specimen, the Turkana Boy, is recognized by Gish (1985)
as human. Unavoidably, since it is an erectus skull attached to a body that is
almost completely modern. Gish suggests that except for the brain size, all
major aspects of the skeleton are within the limits of Homo sapiens, and that
were it not for the estimated age of 1.6 million years it would be assigned to
that species. That is incorrect; the Turkana Boy skull is a typical erectus skull,
differing from modern humans in many aspects other than brain size. It is

57

more similar to 1470 (H. habilis), or to other erectus specimens such as the
Peking Man skullcaps, than it is to modern humans. The skeleton also has a
number of minor differences from those of modern humans.
Many creationists have claimed that Java Man, discovered by Eugene Dubois
in 1893, was "bad science". Gish (1985) says that Dubois found two human
skulls at nearby Wadjak at the same level and had kept them secret; that
Dubois later decided Java Man was a giant gibbon; and that the bones do not
come from the same individual. Most people would find Gish's meaning of
"nearby" surprising: the Wadjak skulls were found 65 miles of mountainous
countryside away from Java Man. Similarly for "at the same level": the Wadjak
skulls were found in cave deposits in the mountains, while Java Man was
found in river deposits in a flood plain (Fezer, 1993). Dubois had briefly
reported the Wadjak skulls in three separate publications around 1890, but,
recognizing that they were modern, devoted all his attention to Java Man once
it was found. Based on his own theories about how brains had evolved and
wishful thinking, Dubois did claim that Java Man had the proportions of a giant
gibbon, but never said that it was one, and never stopped believing that he
had found an ancestor of modern man (Theunissen, 1989; Gould, 1993;
Lubenow, 1992).
Creationists are right about one thing. Most modern scientists agree that the
femur is more recent than the skullcap, belonging to a modern human. Some
of the teeth found nearby are now thought to be from an orang-utan, rather
than Homo erectus.
It is instructive to listen to Gish (1993) expounding on the apelike qualities of
the skullcap:
"Now we see that the skullcap is very apelike; notice that it has no

58

forehead, it's very flat, very typical of the ape. Notice the massive
eyebrow ridges, very typical of the ape".

Despite this, the skullcap definitely does not belong to any ape, and especially
not to a gibbon. It is far too large (940 cc, compared to 97 cc for a gibbon),
and is similar to other Homo members that have been found. One of these is
Sangaien , also found on Java.
This skull, which is never mentioned by creationists, is an almost complete
cranium and is clearly human, albeit primitive If one is trying to pigeonhole
Java Man as either an ape or a human, calling it a human is easily the best
choice, but Lubenow (1992) seems to be the only creationist who has done so.
However he attempts to disqualify Java Man as a primitive human by using
faunal evidence to show that it is the same age as the Wadjak skulls.
Lubenow gives the following quote from Hooijer (1951):
"Tapirus indicus, supposedly extinct in Java since the Middle
Pleistocene, proved to be represented in the Dubois collection from
the Wadjak site, central Java, which is late - if not post Pleistocene in age."

Lubenow is saying that since this species of tapir was found in both the Trinil
[the site where Java Man was found] and Wadjak faunas, these fossils may
be of the same age. This conclusion is reinforced by three other quotes from
Hooijer, all of which describe difficulties in using faunal methods to date Java
fossils. Lubenow's argument fails for a number of reasons.
Even if faunal methods were completely invalid, it would not constitute
evidence that Wadjak Man and Java Man were the same age. The most that
could be claimed was that the ages of both were unknown. And Hooijer never

59

said that the faunal methods were useless, or that the Wadjak and Trinil
faunas were the same.
By far the simplest resolution of the tapir discrepancy is, as Hooijer stated,
that Tapirus indicus survived longer than previously thought on Java
(Lubenow does admit this possibility). This is consistent with the rest of the
evidence. The Wadjak fauna is modern, and hence Wadjak Man is considered
to be less than 50,000 years old, and more probably about 10,000 years old.
The Trinil fauna contains many more extinct species, and is hence older.
Basically, Lubenow argues that Wadjak Man and Java Man are the same age
because a single species of tapir is in both faunas, ignoring that there are
many other species not shared between the faunas, and that the extinct
species are exclusively in the Trinil fauna.
Lubenow claims that Dubois concealed the Wadjak fossils because the
discrepancy of the tapir would have contradicted his claim that Java Man was
far older than Wadjak. This seems implausible because Dubois was one of
the earliest collectors in Java, and detailed information on the Javan faunas
was not compiled until decades later (Hooijer, 1951).
Incidentally, the tapir was probably not singled out for mention by Hooijer
because it is an anomaly, as Lubenow seems to suspect. It was probably of
interest because this species of tapir is still living in South East Asia, and is
not, as Lubenow states, extinct. Hooijer only stated that it was extinct in Java,
not elsewhere.
Parker (Morris and Parker, 1982) expresses puzzlement that Johanson (1981)
considers Java Man to be a valid fossil. It is of course a valid fossil because
the skullcap had to belong to something, but Parker merely dismisses it as
"bad science". (He seems to be of the opinion that it was an ape, but does not

60

say so explicitly.)
Peking Man is another favourite target. Creationists claim that the Peking Man
fossils are the remains of apes or monkeys eaten by real humans; that the
original fossils may have been disposed of to conceal the evidence of fraud;
that only models of the fossils remain; and that they are distorted to fit
evolutionist preconceptions. Gish (1985) discusses Peking Man extensively,
drawing most of his material from Boule and Vallois (1957). This book, which
was almost 30 years old when Gish wrote, was a light revision by Vallois of a
book that had originally been written by Boule another 20 years or so
previously (Boule died in 1942).
Gish, citing the "fact" that the bases of the skulls had been bashed in so the
brains could be extracted, states that "All authorities agree that every one of
the Sinanthropus [Peking Man] individuals had been killed by hunters and
eaten." That may have been true in 1957 (although Boule and Vallois do not
say so). Boule and Vallois do discuss the claims of various evolutionists that
Sinanthropus had been eaten by modern man, or by Sinanthropus himself (i.e.
cannibalism). Gish ignores the latter option and declares that since humans
were responsible, Sinanthropus could not have been our ancestor, and must
have been a giant ape. This is of course incorrect. Both can and did coexist.
Almost all recent authorities (Jia (1990) is an exception) reject as unsupported
the idea that Sinanthropus was hunted. The missing skull parts are the most
fragile parts which are least likely to be preserved. It is most probable that the
skulls were the prey of hyenas, the bones and faeces of which were often
found in the excavation. So Gish's argument fails on multiple grounds: there is
no proof, or even good evidence, that the Sinanthropus skulls were eaten by
anyone, let alone modern humans. Even if they were, it would still not

61

disqualify Peking Man from being a primitive human.

Gish's claim that the skullcaps are of apes is similarly farfetched. The largest
skullcap, about 1225 cc, is twice as large as that of a large male gorilla. Any
ape with a brain that size would be enormous, but no such ape has been
found at Zhoukoudian or anywhere else, and the jaws of Peking Man are
much smaller than those of a gorilla but larger than one of which is attached
to a body that even Gish recognizes as human (the Turkana Boy). Clearly it
makes more sense to assume that Peking Man belonged to the same species
than to hypothesize giant apes.
Gish claims that "The features of the lower jaws described by Boule and
Vallois were all apelike except for the shape of the dental arcade...". In fact,
Boule and Vallois list 3 apelike characteristics, and 1 humanlike characteristic,
but state that there are more of both. They agree with the conclusion of
Weidenreich, who said the lower jaws present "a veritable intermingling of
pithecoid [apelike] and human characters".
Gish similarly claims the teeth were apelike, "with very few exceptions". Boule
and Vallois do state that the teeth are apelike, though not as emphatically as
Gish does. They list 6 features, 3 apelike, 1 humanlike, and two others whose
significance is unclear.
Gish does not mention the few skeletal bones that were found, probably
because Boule and Vallois' discussion shows that they were all similar or
identical to the same bones in modern humans, although the limb bone
fragments were very thick. Boule and Vallois suspected that they might not
belong to the same creatures as the skulls, but modern finds have confirmed
that Homo erectus does have a primitive skull combined with a robust but
essentially modern skeleton.

62

Gish's conclusion that Sinanthropus was an ape is reached by emphasizing

the apelike features of the fossils, and downplaying the human features. This
conclusion is not supported by Boule and Vallois, any of the other authors
quoted by them, or any modern authorities. The opinions are divided as to
whether Sinanthropus is advanced enough to be called human, but no one
considers it an ape. Boule and Vallois state that Peking Man has "physical
characters intermediate between the group of Anthropoid Apes and the group
of Hominines", and that many characters of the skull "which, if they do not yet
conform exactly to the human morphological type, are singularly close to it".
Another claim is that only models of the fossils remain, which, because they
were made by committed evolutionists, may not be accurate copies. Gish
appears to be confused about the words "cast" and "model", once using them
as if they were synonymous. A cast, made from a mold of the fossil, is an
almost exact duplicate. Excellent casts of the Peking Man fossils were made,
and are mentioned in many books, including that of the creationist author
Lubenow (1992). The models of complete skulls Gish refers to may partly
reflect the subjective views of their maker since missing information will have
had to be guessed at, but the primary evidence of Peking Man's affinities
remains the casts and extensive documentation of the original material, not
reconstructed skulls. Gish's statement that "All we have available are the
models fashioned by Weidenreich" is totally untrue.
Gish states that a model of a Sinanthropus skull by Weidenreich, shown in
Boule and Vallois, differs glaringly from their earlier text descriptions, and from
a model of Java Man shown earlier in the book. Weidenreich's model (which
does look more humanlike than one might expect from Boule's description)
was made using parts of at least 4 different individuals. By that time all of the

63

Peking Man material had been found, and almost all portions of the skull were
known, so Weidenreich's reconstruction is likely to be accurate. The braincase,
for example, was precisely known and is clearly far more similar to that of a
modern human than any ape. The Java Man reconstruction relied on fewer
and less complete fossils, so is not as reliable. Part of the difference is
probably also due to the Java Man skulls having a flatter, receding forehead
compared to the more convex Peking Man skulls (Burenhult, 1993) (and, in
fact, a flatter forehead is the major difference between what Gish says are
"glaringly" different reconstructions).
If Boule was biased, as Gish claims, it was in making Sinanthropus appear
more apelike than it really was. Gish, in asserting that Peking Man was an
ape, is adding to Boule's bias, rather than correcting for it. Gish nowhere
explains why the discrepancy between Boule's description of a creature
intermediate between ape and human and Weidenreich's more humanlike
reconstruction provides evidence that Peking Man was an ape.
If Peking Man were an ape, Weidenreich must have been unbelievably
incompetent to produce such a humanlike reconstruction. But descriptions of
Weidenreich and his work often use words such as "meticulous, "compulsively
careful", "detailed", and the casts he made of the Peking Man fossils are
usually described as "excellent". In addition, Weidenreich produced hundreds
of pages of monographs on the fossils, with photos, measurements, drawings,
and even X-rays.
The only way these fossils could be apes would be if Weidenreich
systematically fabricated not only the skull reconstruction, but his entire body
of work. Even this would not be sufficient, as some of the earlier fossils were
photographed, described, and had casts made of them, before Weidenreich

64

ever saw them. Many scientists also saw the original fossils. Unless there was
an extraordinarily widespread conspiracy among all the people who found,
worked on, photographed and saw the fossils, they are genuine. As a
testimony to the accuracy of the casts, some skull parts found in 1966 fit
perfectly with casts of earlier portions to make most of a skullcap.
Interestingly, Gish says that if Weidenreich's model is considered accurate,
Boule and Vallois' claim that Peking Man is intermediate between ape and
man could hardly be rejected. Therefore, these fossils are, according to Gish's
own logic, indisputable transitional forms.
The other source used by Gish is "Science of Today and the Problems of
Genesis" (1969) by Rev. Patrick O'Connell, a Roman Catholic priest who was
in China during the 1930's. O'Connell claimed that Peking Man was a large
scale fraud, which presumably would have had to involve most of the people
working with the fossils, and that the fossils may have been deliberately
destroyed to remove the evidence. O'Connell never visited Choukoutien,
never saw the fossils, apparently had no relevant expertise, and if he had any
evidence for his wild claims, Gish does not give it. Gish, while not endorsing
these claims, is at least sympathetic to them. O'Connell's work appears to not
have enough substance to be worth addressing.
Gish also states "Boule had visited Peking and Choukoutien and had
examined the originals." C. Loring Brace, in a debate with Gish in 1982, called
this "pure invention". Boule never visited either place, and worked from photos
and descriptions. Despite this correction, Gish has repeated the assertion in
1985, and in debates as recently as 1992. (Fezer, 1993)
The effort Gish expends in discrediting Peking Man seems totally wasted, as it
is all nullified by the more competent work of Lubenow (1992), another

65

creationist. Lubenow accepts Peking Man as Homo erectus as a matter of

course, and, although he must have been familiar with Gish's criticisms,
apparently did not consider any of them worth repeating.
No creationist who discusses the human fossil record avoids mentioning
Piltdown Man or Nebraska Man. Piltdown Man (Eoanthropus dawsoni) was
discovered in England by an amateur, Charles Dawson, between 1908 and
1912. It consisted of parts of a surprisingly modern-looking skull associated
with a surprisingly apelike lower jaw. Later fragments found in 1913 and 1915
also seemed to have a mixture of ape and human characteristics, and quelled
suspicion that the original bones were from two unrelated creatures. In 1953
Piltdown was discovered to be a hoax, consisting of a modern human skull
and an orang-utan jaw. Well before then, Piltdown had become a puzzling
anomaly when compared to all other hominid fossils, and the scientific
community was relieved to be able to forget about it.
The paleontological community was horribly embarrassed by the uncovering
of Piltdown, and justifiably so. A number of scientists had made what were in
retrospect extremely foolish statements about the skull, elaborating on its
"unmistakably apelike characteristics." Piltdown's acceptance was probably
helped by the fact that it conformed to prejudices about what a primitive
human skull would look like. In fact a number of scientists did believe that the
cranium and jaw were not from the same creature, but no-one had suspected
forgery.
Nebraska Man (Hesperopithecus haroldcookii) was named from two
humanlike teeth found in 1922. As creationists tell it, evolutionists used one
tooth to build an entire species of primitive man, complete with illustrations of
him and his family, before further excavations revealed the tooth to belong to

66

a pig. The true story is much more complex (Wolf and Mellett, 1984; Gould,
1991). The imaginative drawing was the work of an illustrator collaborating
with an English scientist, and was done for the Illustrated London News, not
for a scientific publication. Few other scientists claimed it was a human
ancestor. Some, including the finders, identified it only as an ape of some kind.
Many others were skeptical even of that. It is an exaggeration to claim that
Nebraska Man was widely accepted as human, or even as an ape, by
scientists.
Identifying the tooth as belonging to a higher primate was not as foolish as it
sounds; pig cheek teeth are extremely similar to those of humans, and the
specimen was worn, making identification even harder. Creationists often
claim that Nebraska Man was used as proof of evolution during the Scopes
Monkey Trial in 1925, but this claim is apocryphal. No scientific evidence was
presented at the trial. (Some evidence was read into the trial record, but even
this did not refer to Nebraska Man.)
Nebraska Man should not be considered an embarrassment. The scientists
involved were mistaken, but not incompetent or dishonest. The whole episode
was actually an excellent example of how the scientific process should work.
Given a problematic identification, scientists went out, found further data
which falsified their earlier ideas, and promptly abandoned them (a marked
contrast to the creationist approach).
Creationists often point out, correctly, that Neandertals were human, but they
tend to exaggerate their similarity to modern humans:
"The creationists in those days [the 1860's] responded 'Now wait a
minute. Neanderthals are just plain people, some of whom suffered
bone

disease'"

67

"Nowadays, evolutionists agree with creationists: Neanderthals

were just plain people, no more different from people living today
than people than one living nation is different from another" Parker
in (Morris and Parker, 1982). "Nowadays, Neanderthal Man is
classified as Homo sapiens, completely human" (Huse, 1983).

Actually, Neandertals are classified as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, a

subspecies of man, in recognition of consistent differences such as heavy
brow ridges, a long low skull, a robust skeleton, and others. (Some scientists
believe the differences are large enough to justify a separate species, Homo
neanderthalensis.) Evolutionists last century claimed that these were real
differences between us and Neandertals, and they were right. Creationists
claimed that the differences were a result of various diseases, and they were
wrong. For Parker to claim that creationists won this debate is a rewriting of
history.
Amazingly, a century after scientists knew otherwise, most creationists still
believe that Neandertals were merely modern humans, deformed by diseases
such as rickets, arthritis or syphilis. Some, but by no means all, Neandertals
have been found with signs of these and other health problems. But
Neandertals have many distinctive features, and there is no reason why these
diseases (or any others) would cause many, let alone all, of these features on
even one, let alone many, individuals. Modern knowledge and experience
also contradicts the idea that disease is a cause of Neanderthal features.
Last century the famous pathologist Rudolf Virchow was one who claimed that
the first Neanderthal fossil found was of a rickets sufferer. As Trinkaus and
Shipman (1992) point out, Virchow, an expert on rickets, should have been
the first to realize how ridiculous this diagnosis was. People with rickets are

68

undernourished and calcium-poor, and their bones are slender and weakened.
The bones of the first Neanderthal, by contrast, were about 50% thicker than
those of the average modern human, and clearly belonged to an extremely
athletic and muscular individual.
Lubenow (1992), relying on the authority of Virchow and Ivanhoe (1970),
claims that Neandertals (and H. erectus and the archaic sapiens) were
caused by a post-Flood ice age: heavy cloud cover, the need to shelter, and
wear heavy clothes, and a lack of vitamin D sources, would all have combined
to cause rickets.This explanation fails for many reasons:
Rickets does not produce a Neanderthal, or Homo erectus morphology;
it is clear from many sources (Reader, 1981; Tattersall, 1995) that the
original Neanderthal skeleton was unlike any previously known, even in
a century in which rickets was a well-known disease.
Even Virchow did not, as Lubenow implies, accept rickets as a sole
cause. Virchow in 1872 decided that the Neanderthal Man had had
rickets in childhood, head injuries in middle age, and chronic arthritis in
old age. A whole population of such people strains credibility, to say the
least.
Humans could hardly have stayed in shelter all the time; food gathering
would have required them to spend a lot of time outside (and probably
a lot more time than most modern urban humans).
The most extreme differences from modern humans (H. erectus) are
mostly found in regions such as Africa and Java, which were always
tropical; the reverse of what would be predicted by Lubenow's
hypothesis.
Creationists usually claim that most of the fossil record was laid down

69

by the Flood. And yet there are hundreds of fossils of "post-Flood"

humans, who supposedly lived in a period of low population and little
fossilization. Why, underneath these post-Flood humans, do we not
find large numbers of fossilized pre-Flood humans?
Creationists sometimes imply that a paper by Straus and Cave (1957) showed
that Neandertals were identical to modern humans. Straus and Cave
overturned the stereotype, created by Boule, that the Neanderthals were Ape
Men with a shambling gait and a divergent big toe, and showed instead that
their posture was identical to ours. But they went on to add:
"This is not to deny that his limbs, as well as his skull, exhibit
distinctive features - features which collectively distinguish him
from all groups of modern men." (Straus and Cave, 1957)

The exhibit on Neandertals at the ICR (Institute for Creation Research)

Museum says (or used to say):
"Many Neanderthal features are similar to those in elderly humans
today. Since humans lived to great ages in the initial generations
after the flood and Babel, perhaps the features are primarily due to
advanced age...".

In fact, none of the distinctive features of Neandertals are similar to those of

old people, least of all powerful bones and muscles. This argument is
especially ridiculous because even Neanderthal children are distinctive.
Whoever wrote this presumably also thinks that Neandertals are arthritic
modern humans.
At least two evolutionary scientists have revived the idea that Neanderthal
morphology may be a result of congenital diseases such as rickets (Ivanhoe,

70

1970) or syphilis (Wright, 1971). According to Day (1986), neither of these

cases was adequately supported or subsequently justified. Both claims seem
to have sunk without a trace, except among creationists. Gish goes even
further, dishonestly implying that even the scientific community accepts these
claims:
"They have now concluded that these primitive features of
Neanderthal people were not genetic, they were pathological."
(Gish, 1985)

Straus

and

Cave

made

striking

comment

about

Neandertals:

"Notwithstanding, if he could be reincarnated and placed in a New York

subway - provided that he were bathed, shaved, and dressed in modern
clothing - it is doubtful whether he would attract any more attention than some
of its other denizens". This may be a source of the creationist idea that
Neandertals are "just plain people" (Morris and Parker, 1982). Note, though,
that this is not what the quote says. Anyone who has travelled the Big Apple's
subway will probably agree that Neandertals could look quite odd and still
meet Straus and Cave's rather lax criterion. Gish (1985) distorts this quote by
claiming that a Neanderthal in a business suit could walk down a city street
and not attract more attention than any other individual, a statement that is
probably false.
Johanson and Edey (1981) extend the example by saying that if you put
Homo erectus on a subway, "people would probably take a suspicious look at
him". Put Homo habilis on the subway, and "people would probably move to
the other end of the car". Berra (1990) states that "if cleaned up, shaved and
dressed in business suits, [Neandertals] could probably pass for television
evangelists."

71

The following quote from Trinkaus and Shipman (1992) refutes claims that
Neandertals differ no more from modern humans than living races do from
each other:
"Rare individuals among modern humans may share one, or even
a few, of the anatomical characteristics of Neandertals, but not one
human - much less any population - can be found that possesses
the entire constellation of traits that define Neandertals" .

I found this to be true in my research in populations in Wales,

Cornwall and SE Ireland and people watching in cities worldwide.
If you know what you are looking for then from a genetic point of
view some of the features stand out in both males and females.

A common creationist claim is that humans existed alongside or predated all

of their presumed ancestors in the fossil record. Taylor (1992) contains a long
list of supposed examples (with the disclaimer "Remains which some
researchers have suggested as evidence that the various "missing links" were
contemporaneous, or that man and these creatures were contemporaneous").
I suggest for the moment that the evidence is lacking on this but more
research is needed.
Many of these cases are various hominid fossils which appear in the correct
position in the fossil record. Some of these have already been mentioned: the
Petralona specimen, 1470, the Turkana Boy, and the Krapina specimens.
Other examples are:
Laetoli footprints: creationists invariably mention the close resemblance
between these and modern human footprints, but often neglect to mention
their extremely small size and the fact they are similar to the feet of the

72

australopithecines living at the same time (exactly how similar is a matter of

debate).
KP 271: Lubenow (1992) states that this is indistinguishable from a human
bone, Parker and Morris (1982) state that it is a human bone. Lubenow
quotes a number of scientists who state that KP 271 is very humanlike, but
not Feldesman (1982), who found that KP 271, "far from being more 'humanlike'

than

Australopithecus,

clearly

associates

with

the

hyperrobust

Australopithecines from Lake Turkana". KP 271 has usually been assigned to

the australopithecines (and recently to A. anamensis) because no other
hominids are known from 4 million years ago.

Although Lubenow considers this conclusion "shocking", there are plausible

reasons for it. The lower humerus of chimps is quite similar to that of humans,
and it is reasonable to suppose that australopithecines would be even more
similar, especially since the upper end of the humerus in australopithecines is
known to fall within the human range. Patterson and Howell (1967) state that
both KP 271 and the australopithecine upper humerus were, based on their
measurements, virtually identically to some modern humans, yet Lubenow is
able to conclude that KP 271 is "strikingly close" [his italics] to modern
humans, while the upper humerus is only "quite similar, based on visual
assessment". Because the lower humerus is poorly known in hominids, and is
a poor diagnostic indicator, it is premature to claim that KP 271 cannot be an
australopithecine fossil.
Swanscombe Man:
two cranium fragments discovered in 1935 and 1936 by Alvan Marston in
England, and a third fragment, discovered in 1955, which fit with the earlier

73

ones. The bones are very thick, with a mixture of primitive and modern
features, and an estimated brain size of 1325 cc. They are probably from an
archaic Homo sapiens, a view compatible with their estimated age of 200,000
to 300,000 years. (Day, 1986)
Fontechevade Man:
a skullcap fragment which is difficult to classify, and whose dating is doubtful,
it is probably also an archaic H. sapiens.
Vertesszollos Man:
a few tooth fragments, and part of an adult cranium. The cranial fragment is
very thick and broad, with a mixture of modern and primitive features. This is
also considered to be probably an archaic sapiens. This would match its age,
which has variously been estimated to be from 160,000 to over 350,000 years.
(Day, 1986)
Of the other "anomalous" hominid fossils, most are of fossil humans that have
since been discovered to be intrusions, i.e. they have been buried in deposits
that are older than they are. Examples are:
Abbeville, or Moulin Quignon, Jaw:
discovered by Jacques Boucher de Perthes in 1863 at Abbeville in France.
This was a modern-looking jaw that had come from very old deposits.
However because of strong evidence that it was a modern jaw that had been
"planted", probably by de Perthes' workmen, who were paid for good finds,
few scientists have ever accepted it as genuine. (Trinkaus and Shipman, 1992)
Oldoway Man:
a skull and skeleton found by Hans Reck at Olduvai Gorge in 1913. In 1932 it
was shown to be a modern Homo sapiens, buried 20,000 years ago in older

74

deposits that had been exposed by faulting (Johanson and Shreeve, 1989).
Taylor (1992) writes "Some have suggested this skeleton is an intrusive
burial", when in fact this explanation has been unanimously accepted (even
by the notoriously stubborn Louis Leakey).
Kanjera Man, Kanam Jaw:
discovered by Louis Leakey in 1932, and claimed by him to be very old. The
dating however proved to be uncertain, and both are probably modern bones.
(Johanson and Shreeve, 1989; Lewin, 1987)
Castenedolo Man:
Morris and Parker (1982) say "Fossils of ordinary people in Mid-Tertiary rock
[i.e. tens of millions of years old; the actual date is about 1.5 million years]
were found in Castenedolo, Italy back in the late 1800's...". An official report
on these skeletons in 1899 noted that all the fossils from the deposit were
impregnated with salt, except the human ones. This implies that they are from
relatively recent burials. Collagen tests in 1965 and radiocarbon dating in
1969 confirmed this. (Conrad, 1982)
Guadeloupe Man:
W. Cooper claimed in 1983 that a modern skeleton found on Guadeloupe in
1812 had been dated at 25 million years old, in the Miocene period. The
excellent condition of the skeleton, and the fact that it had originally been
found with other skeletons (all pointing in the same direction) along with a dog
and some implements, indicate that it was a recent burial. In addition, it has
never been claimed to be from Miocene deposits by anyone except Cooper.
(Howgate and Lewis, 1984)
Galley Hill Man:

75

this was a modern-looking skeleton discovered in 1888 in old deposits. Even

last century, many thought it was a modern human, and this was confirmed in
1948 when it was fluorine dated (Trinkaus and Shipman, 1992).
Henry Morris has claimed (1974) that since 10,000 year old Homo erectus
skulls were found at Kow Swamp in Australia, erectus cannot be the ancestor
of modern man. The logic is faulty, since there is no reason that a population
of erectus could not have survived long after Homo sapiens first appeared.
Morris also has his facts wrong. Characteristics of the Kow Swamp skulls led
to suggestions that some Homo erectus _features_ had survived in them, as
the quote Morris gives from Thorne and Macumber (1972) clearly states.
Morris' claim that they are erectus _skulls_ is incorrect. It is now thought that
the most prominent such primitive feature, flattened foreheads, may have
been caused by the cultural practice of head-binding (Day, 1986; Gamble,
1993).
Lubenow (1992) makes a stronger case that the Kow skulls are H. erectus,
claiming that the pathological or cultural causes suggested for them could
equally well be applied to much older erectus skulls. Lubenow claims that the
Kow skulls meet many criteria for H. erectus, but gives no documentation for
this, other than showing that they are more primitive than modern skulls. It is
possible that the Kow skulls are primitive by modern standards, without
reaching the degree of primitiveness of archaic sapiens, or erectus, skulls, but
Lubenow gives no evidence which would exclude this possibility. His claims
are flatly contradicted by Gamble (1993) "There is no doubt that all the people
who have ever lived on the continent [Australia] would qualify as anatomically
modern humans", and Burenhult (1993) "Analysis of these skeletons has
shown conclusively that all are of modern humans, Homo sapiens sapiens".

76

Thorne and Macumber (1972) mention that the frontal bones of the skull are
particularly archaic, being very similar to some of the Java erectus skulls. By
implication, the rest of the skull is not, particularly since it is also stated that
the skulls show preservation of early sapiens characteristics. In addition,
Kennedy (1984) shows that the femurs of the Kow skeletons are identical to
those of modern humans, and significantly distinct from those of those of
Homo erectus.
Some creationists point to Olduvai Gorge, where australopithecines are found
contemporaneously with Homo habilis and erectus, above another layer which
contains the remains of a circular stone habitation, apparently made by
humans. How could australopithecines be the ancestor of habilis, or habilis of
erectus, if they are all found together? And how could erectus be the ancestor
of modern man, if traces of modern man are found below it? There are a
number of errors in this reasoning. First, the australopithecines in question are
robust, and are not considered as ancestors of Homo. Even if they were,
there is no reason why they could not coexist with a descendant species.
Finally, the claim that the stone circle is an artefact has been dropped. It is
only a rough arrangement, and could have just as easily have been formed by
water or other activity at any time in the past. Even if it was artificial, there is
no reason to believe that habilis or erectus would have been incapable of
making it.
Brain sizes vary considerably within any species, but this variation is not
usually related to intelligence. Instead, it correlates loosely with body size:
large people tend to have larger brains. As a result, women on average will
have smaller brains than men, and Pygmies will have smaller brains than
Zulus, but the average intelligence of all these groups is, as far as we can tell,

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the same.
Note: for convenience, I use the term "brain size" instead of "cranial capacity".
Because the brain does not fill the cranial cavity, the brain size is smaller than
the cranial capacity, but the latter value is, obviously, the only one that can be
determined from a skull.
Figures for the average brain size of modern humans tend to vary between
sources, but a typical value is 1350 or 1400 cc. The following figures should
convey a feel for the normal range of variation in human skulls. Burenhult
(1993) states that the 90% of humans fit in the range 1040- 1595 cc, and that
the extreme range is 900-2000 cc. S.J. Gould, in "The Mismeasure of Man",
reviewed a 19th century study by Morton of 600 skulls which ranged from 950
to 1870 cc (and 25% of this sample was of small-statured Peruvians, so the
figure of 950 cc is, if anything, lower than it might be for 600 randomly
selected humans). Morton also catalogued his skulls by race, with the lowest
average for any racial group being 1230 cc.

Various sources, some of them creationist, give lower limits for human brain
size of 900 cc (twice), 855 cc, and 830 cc. Normal humans are found with
values smaller than this, but they are very rare. Microcephalics, who are
subnormal in intelligence, can be as low as 600 cc, but this is a pathological
condition and such skulls cannot be considered normal.
Compare this range with that of the 5 measurable Java Man skulls. These
average 930 cc (less than the minimum of the 600 modern skulls cited above),
with the smallest being 815 cc. Moreover, unlike modern humans with low
brain sizes, these skulls are very robust, with flattened braincases and large
brow ridges.

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These figures also show how extraordinary the Turkana Boy is. As an adult,
he would have been over 183 cm (6'0") tall, large even by modern standards.
Modern men of that stature could be expected to have a brain size of at least
1500 cc, but the Turkana Boy's estimated adult brain size of 910 cc is smaller
than all but a fraction of 1% of modern humans of all sizes and both sexes.
For comparison, 900 cc is a typical brain size for a modern child of 3 or 4
years weighing 15 kg (33 lbs).
Lubenow (1992) states that the normal human range is 700-2200 cc. Part of
the reason for this wide range is that we have a huge sample size, compared
to any extinct species. Obviously, skulls at the extreme ends of that range will
be very rare. It is clearly implausible for Lubenow to claim that ER 1470, at
750 cc, is "well within the normal human range", when it is well below what
most people consider a minimum size for normal modern humans. One might
equally validly claim that 4'0" (122 cm) is a normal adult height on the grounds
that some people are only 3'6" (107 cm) tall. The probability of finding an adult
human skull as small as ER 1470 is very remote (probably less than 1/10,000).
It is far more probable that 1470 was a fairly typical member of its population,
rather than an extreme case. This is what we find: other habilis fossils, very
similar to 1470, are even smaller, well below Lubenow's lower limit of 700 cc.
Chimpanzees have a brain size between 300 and 500 cc, with an average of
400 cc. Gorillas have an average brain size of 500 cc, with large individuals
going up to 700 cc, or even 750 in one instance. Hominids are best compared
with the similar-sized chimpanzees than the much larger gorillas it is said but I
feel human emotion gets in the way of this data as Chimps have more human
faces and therefore more likeable and would be easy excepted.
Lubenow states that "the crucial element is not brain size but brain

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organization. A large gorilla brain is no closer to the human condition than is a

small gorilla brain". That is true, but many of the H. habilis fossils that
Lubenow, and all other creationists, claim to be apes do come close to the
human condition: the insides of their skulls show that they had many modern
features (Tobias, 1988). Some of them also had brain sizes between 600 and
700 cc; smaller than any human, but much larger than any chimpanzee, and a
respectable size even for a gorilla.
Between species, average brain size, when a corrective formula for body size
is applied, is a fair indicator of relative intelligence. The results are
approximate, because they depend on which formula is used, and also on
brain and body size, both of which are difficult to estimate for most fossil
hominids. However it seems australopithecines were roughly as smart as, or
probably a bit smarter than, chimps. Homo habilis and erectus were
intermediate between chimps and modern humans. Walker and Leakey (1993)
and Tobias (1988) have good overviews of attempts to estimate the relative
intelligence of hominid species.
The major argument of Marvin Lubenow's book "Bones of Contention" is that
the various species of hominid cannot form an evolutionary sequence
because they overlap one another in time. I have used this book as part of my
research and it well used and getting past its sell by date.
Firstly, he argues that a species cannot survive once it has given rise to a new
species. Unlike other creationists, he does attempt to give some justification
for this. Supposedly, the newer, fitter descendant species, would, because of
its superiority, drive its parent species to extinction. The argument is incorrect
because members of the parent species may live in a separate region from
the new species. If the species come into contact again, there may be no

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competition because they have diverged enough to occupy different

ecological niches. (Many scientists would argue that even the requirement for
a separate region is unnecessary.) Additionally, it is a misunderstanding of
evolutionary theory to claim that a new species is "superior", in some absolute
sense, to its parent species. Typically, both species will be "superior" at living
in their own niches.
This argument is so broad that it would not only disprove human evolution but
all evolution; Lubenow is basically asserting that a species cannot split into
two species. Obviously this is not the view of speciation accepted by
evolutionists, since it would follow that the number of living species could
never increase.
The argument is also contradicted by real world examples, such as that of the
13 species of finch which live on the Galapagos Islands. There is such
compelling evidence that these are descended from a common ancestor that
even most creationists accept them as evidence of evolution "within a created
kind". If Lubenow was correct, even such micro-evolution would be impossible.
By his argument, newly-evolved finch species should drive their ancestors to
extinction. This does not happen, of course, because they all live on different
foods.
Secondly, and more seriously, Lubenow claims that, in some cases, a
descendant species existed before the species it supposedly descended from.
This is I should point out,
impossible under evolutionary theory.
For example, Lubenow claims that Homo erectus overlaps the entire time
range in which Homo habilis is found. The oldest dated habilis specimen he
lists is about 1.9 million years old (with a possibility that another was as much

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as 2.35 million years old).

Lubenow criticizes Klein (1989) for showing a graph in which habilis is shown
preceding erectus in time, when none of the habilis fossils discussed by Klein
are dated before 1.9 million years ago. In this case, Lubenow has not read
Klein carefully enough. Klein does, on page 133, and in a graph on page 112,
mention the presence of habilis-like fossils found at about 2.3 million years.
These are a few fragmentary teeth attributed to Homo, found at Omo in
Ethiopia, and dated to 2.3-2.4 million years (Howell et al.1987). They are
relatively unimportant, and it is not surprising that Klein would not give them
any further discussion.
But there is no reason to believe that fossils have been found over the entire
range of time for which habilis existed. Almost all habilis fossils have been
found in the rich deposits of Olduvai Gorge and Koobi Fora (less than 2
million years old), while there is a scarcity of fossiliferous regions between 2
and 2.5 million years.
One might expect further fossil finds to extend the time range in which H.
habilis is known, and that is what has happened. Hill et al.(1992) have
analysed a skull bone, KNM-BC 1, found in Kenya in 1967. They identified it
as belong to the genus Homo (though not to erectus or sapiens), and have
dated it at 2.4 million years. And Schrenk et al.(1993) have announced the
discovery in Malawi of a hominid lower jaw, UR 501, that they have attributed
to Homo rudolfensis (a proposed habilis-like species). This fossil has been
faunally dated between 2.3 and 2.5 million years.
Similarly, Lubenow claims that humans are found up to 4.5 million years ago,
before any australopithecines. Before 2 million years ago, the evidence for
this consists of only two fossils, the Laetoli footprints and the Kanapoi

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Hominid (since dated at 4.1 million years). This is Lubenow's strongest

argument, because both fossils are, arguably, from humans. The problem is
that there is not enough other evidence to exclude the possibility that both
belong to australopithecines. More diagnostic fossils such as skulls, or partial
skeletons, could prove the existence of humans, but so far, all such evidence
points only to the existence of australopithecines past 3 million years ago.
There are more fossils which Lubenow considers to be sapiens, but which are
as old as the earliest erectus fossils (about 2 million years). These consist of
some undoubted habilis fossils such as ER 1470, and some fossils usually
assigned to erectus or habilis. These fossils are all of body parts which are
difficult to classify, because other Homo species are both poorly known, and
not that different below the neck, as far as we know, from modern humans.
Lubenow admits the difficulty but assigns them to H. sapiens anyway.
Most of Lubenow's book is devoted to documenting the overlaps which he
believes falsify human evolution. Once it is realized that this argument is
based on an elementary misunderstanding of evolutionary theory, there is
little left of his book that needs to be refuted.

When one reads creationist literature about the human fossil record, there is a
definite pattern in the fossils that are selected for discussion.
When I say selected that is what happened, because knowledge being what it
was at the time, the more profile examples were used and therefore much
may have been missed in the left out sampling of fossils of a lower order.
Huse (1983), in a summary of "some of the more significant so-called fossil
ape-men", discusses the insignificant Nebraska Man, Piltdown Man, Lucy, the

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Neandertals, and the original Java Man fossil, ignoring all other H. erectus
fossils, H. habilis, and A. africanus.
Taylor (1992), ("Each of the most famous 'missing links' is discussed")
devotes only two sentences to H. habilis, mentioning no fossils by name and
dismissing it as an ape. Taylor also makes misleading use of the past tense to
imply that even evolutionists no longer accept habilis as a transitional form an implication which is totally incorrect. For H. erectus, only Peking Man and
the original Java Man fossil are mentioned in the main text.
Parker (Morris and Parker, 1982) claims that "all the candidates once
proposed as our evolutionary ancestors have been knocked off the list", and
then proceeds to give the list, which is inexplicably lacking H. erectus (it is
lumped in with Java Man) and H. habilis, and the gracile australopithecines.
(Parker

then

contradicts

himself

by

admitting

that

the

gracile

australopithecines are still possible candidates).

Gish (1985) discusses Java Man, Peking Man and ER 1470, but almost totally
omits mention of all other H. habilis and H. erectus fossils.
Lubenow (1992) alone appears to be aware of all the fossil material, and
comes closest to addressing the evidence, but he fails to discuss some of the
more compelling intermediate fossils such as OH 7, OH 24 and ER 1813
(because his book is about the human fossil record, and he considers most
habilis specimens to be apes). Lubenow is virtually the only creationist to
avoid the absurdity of claiming that the Java Man and Peking Man fossils are
apes.
Creationists appear to avoid discussion of the fossils that are the best
evidence for human evolution. These include superb fossils such as OH 9, ER
3733 and Sangiran 17 (human but with primitive features), Sts 5 (apelike, but

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with some modern features) and OH 7, OH 13, OH 24, and ER 1813 (so
perfectly transitional that they are difficult to classify).
In contrast to the above omissions, it is almost impossible to find a creationist
work that does not mention Nebraska Man (Lubenow is the one exception),
despite the fact that it was at best weak evidence for human evolution even
during its brief heyday 70 years ago, the year of my first birthday and Piltdown
Man, despite the fact that the hoax was discovered over 40 years ago.
Ramapithecus, which was often claimed to be a human ancestor in the 1960's
and 70's, also gets mentioned frequently.

Some transitional fossils are often mentioned in creationist literature, typically

Java Man and Peking Man, and sometimes ER 1470. This is probably
because most creationists, knowing little about the fossils and copying their
information from another creationist source, are under the mistaken
impression that these fossils have been shown to be either ape or fully human.
When creationists do perform their own research, they show a surprising
inability to agree on which fossils are apes and which are humans: which is
exactly what one would expect if evolution had occurred.
Even more surprisingly, creationists do almost no anatomical comparisons,
even of the fossils they do discuss. Typically, they will flatly assert that a fossil
is a human or an ape. Nor do they provide photographs, so that their readers
could judge for themselves whether the fossils are transitional or not. If, as
most of them claim, Java Man is an ape, a comparative photo of an ape, Java
Man and a human would be an easy way to demonstrate it. If they are
confident in their interpretation of the data, why do they not show the evidence
to their readers?

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Another feature of creationist literature is its approach to scientific authority.

Creationists appear to make no attempt to weigh evidence; they often accept
uncritically any statement made by a scientist which can be used to
advantage, while ignoring any contrary opinions. Scientists used in this way
include Oxnard, Zuckerman, and Ivanhoe. Their results are often treated as if
they were authoritative, when in reality they are very much minority opinions
in the scientific community.
The creationist approach of allocating all fossils to either apes or humans is
inherently dishonest, because it excludes intermediates by defining them
away. No creationist ever defines what would be acceptable as a valid
transitional fossil, because examples could be found to fit any reasonable
definition. Instead, creationists are forced to take pot-shots at irrelevant fossils,
misrepresent a few carefully selected examples, and ignore the strongest
evidence for human evolution.
The pathology of early humans is of great interest to anyone looking at our
past. Getting it right of course is much more difficult not only that we tend to
forget all too easy or dismiss it out of hand the psychology and the
paranormal side of such beings. Early man did have a brain but I have to
question when it became activated, dreams started, and the paranormal
aspect came into the picture. The brain of course would need a stimulus for
such thinking and dreaming but first let us look at the modern human from the
present day backwards to when the missing link was supposed to be. It all
starts with the brain and within the brain of course and its function, lies hidden
fears of death and the spirit world even in early man.
It is easy to see that many of the above were carried or imprinted
into the brains of many of our past families along at times with some forms of

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mental illness.
With very early man then they would have been concerned only with the dead,
basic astronomy, seasons, and rituals of a bloody nature, food, fire and
shelter.
There would have also been forms of mental illnesses much as we have
today as well as bone disease because of the high intake of vitamin A from
the livers of carnivores which they would have also killed and eaten as food.
Very early man had one thing in mind at all times and that was to survive as
long as he/she could before dying from disease, being killed by a wild animal,
starvation, accident or killed by its own kind for food. Death was an everyday
event and it was kill or be killed but whatever was killed was eaten.
From a psychology point of view and early mankind things are not as easy
clear-cut.

THE MIND.

CONSCIOUSNESS.

The question is of course are when early mankind from

ape like mammals to upright homo mammals developing a state of
consciousness and the aspects of change. There is no doubt that early man
was aware of external and internal stimuli of his/her environment from the
bodys sensory systems but at times unaware of the background stimuli at
times unless there is a sudden change in it. We walk through the woods today
with someone and a group of children and we are aware of the talk and the
noise but most times unaware of birds singing unless we stop and listen or go
out with a purpose of seeing birds.

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Early mans attention and ours was and is selective and all events that are
important to our own survival have a top priority. Take pain in a part of our
body. If it becomes severe then we block out all other awareness and lock in
on the pain and all other consciousness is put on hold until we deal with the
pain.
All that was going on around early man on daily and from his storage and
memories of past events, his attention would have been focus on only a few
stimuli at any given moment and like us, he would ignore, select and reject all
the time so that consciousness would be changing all of the time.
In todays human, many of the memories as well as past stimuli that are not
part of your consciousness at a moment in time can be brought to the now
when needed or triggered off by a body stimuli. These pre- consciousness
memory banks is one of the reasons from a paranormal point of view, that
ghosts are seen and even possible that
Alien Abduction has occurred and you have missed time even though you
were awake.
It is not that all the people who claim alien abduction or seeing and feeling
ghosts are lying, though some do, but because of past stimuli that your mind
has stored of images, colours and sounds.
Someone is driving along a dark country road at night somewhere in the UK.
Woods surround the road and it is raining, the headlights on, the window
wipers scraping across the glass of the car and a hare runs out, stops for a
moment caught in the headlights then dashes into cover as you speed by.
Your mind tells you that it was a small rodent or a hare but some of you will
confuse it with a rabbit. If it was a deer dashing across the road in the night
rain you would see a much larger mammals and if it was lacking antlers then
when it had passed out of sight you would question and wonder was it in fact

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a deer and not something else? After all where you passed there is no
reports of deer in that area so why should a deer turn up and maybe on
thinking on it, the grey brown body, sleek with rain may have beenYou start
to question and reason as you drive on, look in the rear mirror now and then,
grip the wheel tighter and wait for something else to run across in front of you.
Then your car splutters to a halt. The lights stay on and you curse under your
breath and try to restart the engine. It turns over but nothing. You switch off
the lights and now you are in darkness and try again, this time it gives a
cough but again fails to start. You dont like sitting there in the darkness alone
and with wet trees all around you. There are no lights to be seen, no other
cars, just darkness, rain and you alone at 9.34pm on a wet night in November
in a wooded countryside.
Your mind now starts to operate overtime, your heartbeat quickens, and your
mobile phone is still back at the house because you forgot to bring it with you.
You look out at the woods in the headlights. Something is in there watching
you. Right now there are eyes on your lights from deep within the wet woods.
A nose twitches, the eyes alert and it moves forward a little then stops. You
can see it but they are there. Not one but a few. All watching your headlights.
You fear the dark and what might be lurking there, what might harm or even
kill you and you try the engine again and this time it splutters into life and you
roar off burning rubber glad to be away from that place. Over the hill the lights
of a village and you start to relax while the mice in the wood watch your taillights fade away into the night.
Eyes can see many things but the mind does not always get it right at that
moment in time. Take a look at the examples below. Your modern mind will
try and work it out and more than likely come up with a number of answers
until you get the correct onethat is for you!

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What we see at first is real enough to us but if we look again we see the same
picture but with a different meaning in the here and the now. Come back to
the pictures and again you have the same problem. Which is real and which
do we want to be real?
Is it possible that we humans live in two mind worlds, at times crossing over
here and there? I suggest this is more likely in vivid dreams than when we are
awake but sometimes what we see and hear during the day because our
attention has been drawn to it suddenly is not always at first as it seems, until
that is the mind deciphers the information.

Shapes and sizes all take on different meanings to us humans but with early
mankind it was much the same except that it was in a much more limited form
but was more true to form and understanding than we have.

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When it comes down to the unconscious mind some memories, impulses and
desires are not accessible to the consciousness and painful memories and
fearful ones are diverted into the unconscious storage place. These of course
affect us indirect and in very disguised ways. This will happen in dreams,
irrational behaviour, and mannerisms and such unconscious desires and
impulses are the cause of many of the mental illnesses of today as well as
brain injury or disease. Brain injury with trauma injury or disease is a common
factor and much of it is not diagnosed or when discovered, diagnosed wrongly
and of course a medical label put on it.

If we are dealing with early upright man we are not talking about ape like
creatures because it is my view that the apes that walked upright and even
the most primitive human like creatures did in fact live side by side, one a
vegetarian with broad flat and chewing teeth, the ape-like ones, and the
carnivore type with teeth of the cutting sort but absent of long canines like a
wolf or a dog. There had to be cross breeding of that I am sure and many
thousands of years down the line, the more human type of homo appeared
because of gene mutation, the new DNA makeup the result that the ape like
creature was bred out and replaced by homo in a more human form. With that
human form came a larger brain and advanced consciousness and the
unconscious thought but also hints of mental illnesses and vivid dreams.
Some of these vivid dreams were drug induced in some tribes, the dream
time is a common factor in some tribes of native Americans and tribes from
Asia and Africa.

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Everyone dreams even if they dont know it during their REM-sleep period and
those who sleep soundly do not always recall their dreams. Not everyone
knows they are dreaming and it has been proved beyond doubt that those
people who have lucid dreams all events in that dream seem real and normal.

When it comes to sleep walking it occurs only during the NREM periods of
sleep and it happen in the first third of sleep in the night. The eyes are open
but unseeing, and many teenage sleepwalking in the 1600s/ 1700s seen at
night walking in the garden or on a road at night were looked on from local
people as being possessed or witches and at times put to death along with
their family. A sleepwalker of course does not remember what they have done
or where they have been and some modern killers claim that the did so while
unaware of it and asleep but because an act of violence was carried out then
contact had to be made, even a struggle and the sleepwalker would have
awakened with a shock and deep fear.
If we look at PSI PHENOMENA then early man would have been better
equipped to be in touch with it than most of todays humans because of the
uncluttered mind but from a parapsychology point of view it concerns me that
too many people are easy led up the garden path when it comes to ESP,
Telepathy, Precognition, Psycho kinesis and Clairvoyance. The trouble is of
course today is that most people who claim to be parapsychologists also
consider themselves to be scientists and applying the rules of scientific
enquiry to very unusual phenomena. The first rule of course is evidence that
will stand up as acceptable. There has also to be controls and safeguards and
inadequacies plague all of the sciences in the natural world we live in. Anyone
today who claims to be a parapsychology expert needs first of all to have
studied to more than a basic limited psychology, biology, physics and geology.

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With early man it was inbred in order to survive and by the time it was passed
down through the family genes to man in the moment much of the powers
had been badly diluted or discarded. A few people, a very few, do have some
type of paranormal powers which has been passed on through the genes and
with that comes fragments of past knowledge, a bit like a roll of 16 mm black
and white film with a few frames along it exposed. When we talk of prehistory
memory being passed on this is what is needed.
[1] Some genetic link from A to Z, Z being a modern human in 2012.
[2] A gene memory bank with some encoded past information.
[3] A receptive uncluttered human mind.
[4] Drug free brain and CNS tissue.
[5] A subject and control subject of the same age and sex, born on the same
day at the same time and unknown to one another.
[6] Subjects not over the age of 14 years of age and living in different
countries from one another.

Finding such subjects is not impossible but finding two subjects who have not
been pre-exposed to todays media hype would almost be. I have been lucky.
At present I am working on this research project, with one subject in Canada
and one in Africa.
If and it is a big IF I can link up the sent information over the next year with
that of the other person then it will be possible to explain, at least in part,
some link in recovered memory banks even though the two people involved
will never meet or be in contact with one another.

With early mankind we always have assumed that the world as we know it
was a joined mass of land with two poles. We know the mass broke up, some

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of it sinking and some drifting as todays continents. However what has not
been looked at is the real possibility that a few million years ago, the earth
was knocked of its rotation by a meteor strike and reversing the poles to
where they are now?
Early man movements before the earth tilted and a change in the
Earths magnetic force field.
If this was the case and I do believe there was an Earth tilt two million years
ago because of some solar storm then it would help explain the lost bones of
bear, wolf, hippo, crocodile, elephant and jungle like plants found in mud and
coal faces, soil and rock and in sand dunes and chalk.
Homos dating back 2.2 mya and 1.3 million years ago have been found in ice
well above the known ice age movements and under it even as far south as
the Alps on the ice fields there. Todays climbers on ice know all too well the
dangers of falling into a snow covered crevasse and being lost for years but in
the end the ice moves slowly downhill and gives up the dead. The same thing
happens when a climber falls from a height into deep snow and is killed. He/
she may not killed outright but die from hypothermia and found in the snow
and ice many years later sitting with their back to a rock or ice block. The
same can be said for very early man for not only did many die from cold and
buried by snow and ice but they also return to the surface many thousands of
years later. Such bodies though rare do and have turned up as like the ICE
MAN below.

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Though the above Iceman is Neolithic it does show that permafrost

mummies can be well preserved for many years and somewhere out there in
an icy wasteland is the mummies of very early man that is not ape-like in
nature.
Artificial mummification came about in Egypt around 3,000 BC but that was
with human dead bodies and I suspect that the process was going on a long
time before that with animals like cats and dogs. They and others believed
that the soul re-enters the body and therefore important that the body be
preserved.
It was not only in Egypt that this process was carried out but also much closer
to home with sun drying the bodies of the gauchos of the Canary Islands.
With burial in permafrost like the bodies of the Siberian burial mounds of
Pazyryk in the Altai Mountains and the bodies lay in ice filled wooden grave
chambers. Even horses were found entombed with the dead and this Scythian
nomadic group who came there in 500 BC. Bodies found in the ice in
Greenland were also well preserved with no sign of grave wax because of the
cold.

If I look at the ICEMAN and his culture above I find that he lived sometime
between 8M BC and 3M BC, used tools, cultivated plants, and kept cattle and
sheep. He was also armed with a bow and a small cutting knife, wore clothes
that he made or was made for him and walked a lot on foot. The bow was
made of yew; the knife handle of ash and the shoots of the Wayfaring tree
were the arrow shafts. There is no doubt in my mind that he lived on the low
lands of where he was found but what took him so high in the mountains
where he died?

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If he was hunting there then it could have been Red deer but only in summer
above the tree line, Elk but also in summer, Chamois and found in the
mountains up to 3500 M, Alpine Ibex, and the Mouflon, a type of goat. I doubt
very much if he went that high in search of small game like members of the
grouse family or hares.
No matter what we tend to discover about the ICEMAN we know that he is
modern man from an archaeology point of dating. Nothing can change that or
his features and he had a thinking culture.
Which brings us to what lay before him as a Homo and the missing link.
Enter on stage Homo neanderthalensis, NEANDERTHALERS, with a large
brain, massive brow ridge, receding chin and of a heavy muscular build and
how they were in time replaced by anatomically modern Homo sapiens.
Somewhere is old ice field there are remains to be discovered.
In years we are talking 150,000 to 30,000 years ago and sometime around
30,000 years ago or a few thousand years before, Homo sapiens turned up
but from where?
First let me make it clear that no Alien spacecraft arrived with modern Homo
clones that were left on Earth to breed with their own kind and also cross
breed with the Neanderthals. There is not the slightest bit of evidence
anywhere in the world that this was indeed the case. If modern man were an
Alien then they would have been more advanced with their technology and
their culture than Homo sapiens of that time and today.
Remember we are talking only 30,000 to 35,000 years ago before the
Neanderthals started to die back as a race and even now there are
anatomically features turning up in some of todays modern humans through a
flawed genetic link.
In my research I had to first of all look closely at the culture of the

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Neanderthals in order to find some of the answers to many of the questions.

First off I have to disregard the entire ape like creatures that walked upright as
human like or human thinking.
They were not human in any form though they did have some human traits
like the use of tools but even todays chimps and apes use tools in their
everyday lives. Chimps can be taught to use tools and press buttons for a
reward; they have family groups, leaders of groups, aggression and in some
cases, even murder of another member or baby of that group.
They also kill and eat small mammals as well as feeding on berries and fruit
but they dont do artwork in caves or on rocks, nor do they build homes to live
in. They build nests in the trees each evening in order to sleep off the ground
but they do not or ever will have a thinking culture. They are not human.

The link between them all is the size of the brain, the long bones and the
height as well as posture when standing upright. Mating for early man took
place from the back, as is still the case in some tribal areas of the Earth but
this did not take place at random as is the case today. The sex drive of males
was driven on by stimuli, be it smell, body posture and of course most times a
bond between male and female. Today we use the word Love or I should
say misuse because the whole point of the exercise is to produce children or
off-spring but with bonding as a family unit. Todays humans also enjoy sex if
there is a bond.
Also humans have sex when and if they want it. It is a fun thing for most, a
power thing for males and females and is used at times as a form of control of
the other person.
In many cases there is no real life long bond to one partner and others are
sought out for the dual purpose of sex only. This today is showing up by 40

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million cases of AIDS reported and also STDs, HIV/AIDS worse of the deadly
disease spread by sexual contact with a carrier and the percentage in Africa,
the place where it is said the first upright Homo came from, though I feel that
is wrong or mistaken. Mankind with his uncontrolled sexual drive may in fact
destroy his race with a virus rather than by a war and by the year 4000 cease
to exist as a human being as we know today. It should be noted that
HIV/AIDS like viruses have been recorded in Chimps and other African
primates but the question is who passed on to what and when?

Chimp.

Ape skull.

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With the family groups and possible tribes of Neanderthal Man roaming parts
of the Earth there had to be some forms of communication between groups.
There was a developing culture and it is here that we must look at what
evidence there is that Neanderthal was stocky, not an ape and had a brain
that functioned as a thinking brain as well as a creative brain. It was their main
survival tool ever.
There were also the use of tools and it may well be that this first early man
was more in tune with nature and the afterlife than we care to give credit for.
The paranormal events were in the mind and in their everyday lives, the moon
and sun also played an important part of their culture and they believed that
the dead, if a family member went to that other world. That is unless they
were needed for food.
I write here of Neanderthal Man, a human type creature that roamed parts of
Europe, Africa and SE Asia. In file three you will see why I know that this early
man species was important to us and may also have passed down the genetic
line fragments, even if small of past memory events.
We tend to ignore the genetic mind funnel of our past because our minds are
cluttered with todays noise, stimuli and we block out any idea that we were
once

part

of the Neanderthal group of people.

If early man, and by Man I mean a Homo who looks, walks and thinks like a
man/ woman, then they migrated from Asia into Europe and North America

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and not the ape like groups from Africa as is often put forward as our direct
ancestor. It is more than likely that there were two groups of Ape like
creatures but the ones in Asia were more advanced and progressed faster as
a survival species and with a culture.

AL 129-1a/b
Australopithecus

Species:

afarensis
Age:

3.0-3.2

million

years
Date

of 1976

Discovery:
Location:

Hadar, Ethiopia

Discovered D.
by:

Johanson

and M. Taieb

A complete knee joint (AL 129-1), minus the knee cap

(patella), from a single individual was found at Hadar,
which showed that the species Australopithecus afarensis
made a habit of walking bipedally.

AL 129-1 is a complete knee joint, consisting of the distal

femur (lower end of the thigh bone, at the top of the
photo) and proximal tibia (upper end of the shin bone, at
the bottom of the photo) from a single individual. This

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discovery was conclusive proof of bipedal walking in early

humans as old as 3 million years ago. (More recent finds
push that benchmark of human evolution back to at least
4 million years ago.)

The Hadar knee shows several characteristics that reflect

adaptation to bipedal locomotion. First, the end of the
femur has an area of bone (called the lateral condyle, on
the left side of the photo) that is elliptically shaped, as in
humans, rather than spherical like a chimp's lateral
condyle. This shows that the movement of the femur on
the tibia was like that of a bipedal human. Second, the
patellar groove, which is a depression in the femur that
allows space for the kneecap (patella), is deep and had a
high lip on the outside. This is important because bipedal
legs have to lock straight when walking.

Finally, look at the angle of the femoral shaft, the part of

the top bone that rises above the knee. There is a definite
angle, relative to the tibia. This oblique femoral shaft is an
adaptation that allowed early humans to walk upright by
placing the foot under the centre of the body when
walking. A chimpanzee knee shows both bones lining up
in a straight line.

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AL 200-1

Species:

Australopithecus
afarensis

Age:

3.0-3.2

million

years
Date

of 1975

Discovery:
Location:

Hadar, Ethiopia

Discovered by:

D. Johanson and
M. Taieb

The Afar Depression of Ethiopia has provided the majority of fossils of

the early human species Australopithecus afarensis. These fossils
include the famous "Lucy" skeleton, the most complete A. afarensis
known. Locality 200 in the Afar provided the undistorted palate to the
right, with a complete dentition.

This palate shows that the dentition of early humans was essentially
ape-like. It had broad "spatulate" incisors -- wide front teeth that are
spatula-like in appearance, visible in the frontal view at the top -- and

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the cheek teeth were arranged in sub-parallel rows, giving the dental
arcade a distinct "U-shape" (visible in the inferior view, bottom). Notice
also the presence of a diastema, or gap, between the canine teeth and
the outside incisors, again similar to apes and not humans. In the
lateral view (middle photo), we can see the protruding premaxilla, the
bone between the teeth and the nose. The protruding, or prognathic,
lower portion of the face, which sticks out beyond the nose and eyes,
is a similarity to the apes.

Cro-Magnon 1

Species:

Homo sapiens

Age:

~30,000 years

Date

of March 1868

Discovery:
Location:

Les

Eyzies,

France
Discovered by:

Louis Lartet

Dordongne,

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During construction for a rail road in 1868, a rock shelter in a limestone cliff
was uncovered. Near the back of the shelter, an occupation floor was
recognized, and when excavated, it revealed the remains of four adult
skeletons, one infant, and some fragmentary bones. The condition and
placement of ornaments, including pieces of shell and animal tooth in what
appears to have been pendants or necklaces, led the researchers to think
that the skeletons were intentionally buried in a single grave in the shelter.

Cro-Magnon 1 preserved the skeleton of an adult male. The individual was

probably middle-aged (less than 50 years old) at his death on the basis of
the pattern of closure of cranial sutures. The bones in his face are
noticeably pitted (see top photograph) from a fungal infection. The skull
was complete except for the teeth, which are reconstructed in the cast
photographed here.

While the Cro-Magnon remains are representative of the earliest

anatomically modern human beings to appear in western Europe, this
population was not the earliest anatomically modern humans to evolve.
The skull of Cro-Magnon 1 does, however, show the traits that are unique
to modern humans, including the high rounded cranial vault with a near
vertical forehead. The orbits are no longer topped by a large brow ridge.
There is no prominent prognathism of the face.

Analysis of the pathology of the skeletons found at the Les Eyzies rock
shelter indicates that the humans of this time period led a physically tough

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life. In addition to the infection noted above, several of the individuals

found at the shelter had fused vertebrae in their necks indicating traumatic
injury, and the adult female found at the shelter had survived for some time
with a skull fracture. The survival of the individuals with such ailments is
indicative of community support of individuals, which allowed them to
convalesce.

Associated tools and fragments of fossil animal bone date the site to the
uppermost Pleistocene, probably between 32,000 and 30,000 years old.

BONES; A QUESTION OF MATHS

ARCHEOLOGY RESEARCH

The trouble with past archaeology is that it was a closed field of study to many
and very few people were experts or claimed to be experts and that left the
few that were to rule the roost without question. Thankfully that now has
changed and such people who have been blinked are dragged into 2011. For

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their own survival they either had to look at archaeology in the new light or live
in the dark with fixed ideas of their subject, or be left alone and alone with little
or no progress.
In my own research I had to and still do embrace the subjects of archaeology,
biology, physics, some maths, chemistry, astrophysics and geology. Add to
that a sprinkling of myth, and religion, some history of the earth and the
Universe, pathology and common sense and you have the whole canvas.
My field of study in the main has been early human kind. That is not to say
that all other fields of archaeology are not linked because they are but the
study of bones and the main bone, the skull offer me a larger scope into what
makes human beings and where indeed did we come from?
When it comes down to searching and with evidence of that all elusive
missing link I have to say that in the beginning of my work thirty years ago I
did not believe there was one.
That thinking has now changed because I have opened and closed doors of
the past and in my research found that if we look carefully enough and keep
an open mind, some of the answers are there. Even at that I am left with
many un-answered questions for the moment and I may never find all the
answers.
The good news is that I have made progress even though it has been a slow
haul up a massive hill of knowledge and of course facts by others being
misinterpreted as fact. This spiders web had to be fought through and fame
and fortune cast aside for unlike many others working in my field I have no
grand ideas of every being hailed as a progressive paleoanthropologist. Nor
do I care if others reject or accept my own findings. I know my bones and the
shape of bones and I also know that if early human like creatures are to be

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accepted as a link between todays humans then what also must kept in mind
is when they got the power of thought and speech. Once we establish that
factor then we can say without doubt when they walked into the world of the
paranormal and religion!
The grand search for THE MISSING LINK has went on for well over 200
years with claims and counter claims by archaeologists worldwide but with
very little evidence that supports any of the finds as nothing more than wishful
thinking. A few people have come close. Many were off the mark and
published papers of their findings, sending them to places of learning for
approval and of course worldwide acceptance. Much depended on such
acceptance, future funding for more research, fame in the University of choice
and of course ego. All could be lost at the simple word written or spoken.
REJECTION. There were many rejections of papers when it came to the
study and findings of early man but even more when it came to finding or
claiming to have found the missing link.
This Missing Link was proving to be just as hard to find as an Alien being in a
flying spacecraft or evidence of The lost City of Atlantis as fact. Then there is
the theory that Aliens came from deep space and started to interbreed with
the local half human females which means they had to deal with unwashed
and lice ridden females, not to mention aggressive behaviour towards them
from the half human males. We can rule out that myth right away. We are not
the by-product of a per history female and a big brained Alien being from deep
space.
That does not mean that we could not have been the by product of a mutation,
the trigger being some virus or chemical that did get to some parts of our
planet a few million years ago and that a gene was the reason of what we

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know today as the human race. But more on that later.

When it comes to skulls and parts of skulls of human like beings and apes 3
to 8 million years ago we only have fragments to work on that had to be glued
together and filled in to give us a rough shape of that the face was like but
also the amount of brain tissue held within the skull cap.
The mismeasurement of mankind when it comes down to what we term as
intelligence has gone on for many years and it is all to do with our skull and
brain.

Creative interpretation in science and more so in the study of early man is well
known but it also happens today when it comes down to the myth of Alien
UFOs, Alien abduction, Alien cross breeding with humans, Alien buildings
and ley-lines and so on. It is the interpretation that is at fault and to put a
name to our theory of visits from deep space, many of us become very
creative indeed but without evidence or facts that will stand up in the cold light
of day. Many of the people who claim such visits from deep space and the
abduction of human females for implants do not seem to grasp that in their
interpretation are trapped by their own rhetoric.
Let us say that in the near future a blood sample from me and
tagged Ronnie Carleton Born 5th Jan 41 then the sample placed into a
computer and a few instructions typed on the keyboard to start DNA testing

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into my own family history and where that family first came from.
We now type in DNA

+ past history going back to 30,000 years or even

50,000 years.
Press RETURN and the screen comes up with WAIT then starts the process
which takes about an hour to download and would read something like this;

Grandfather = Irish = Celt x Norse = Viking. ?

Grandmother = Scot = Celt x =?
Great Grandmother = French = Celt = x India =?
Great Great Grandmother = India x?
= Homo sapiens.

Homo erectus = world wide, Asia/ Africa. Human.

Missing link? Human.

Homo erectus erectus. Human like.

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Homo erectus sinensis. Human like.

Australopithecus, robustus.
+ Pithecanthropus.
Human like.
+ Sinanthropus.
+ Atlanthtopus.

Homo habilis, Plesianthropus. Ape like. + Human

like.

A. africanus. Ape like

Ramapithecus / kenyapithecus. Ape.

Lateral view of the skull of Peking Man

H. Erectus. 500,000 years ago.

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BELOW Mandibles of H Erectus.

With skull size also comes brain size and it is here that we can get into a maze
with a built in mine field and no map of where they really are.
It is of course the map of the brain inside any of the skulls from early man to
the present day that gives us the clue to parts of what is termed as the
Missing Link but we have modern brains trying to deal with what we think
early man brains were like.

Brain showing left side Bocas area.

111

This area is believed to be the speech generating area but I have found that it
does not always function during linguistic use and may not in fact be linked.
(Carleton 1980)
What made early man human? We know that he/she used tools of a very
primitive form but so do apes in Africa and India today. We know that once fire
was discovered to be useful that it was put to good use but apes today dont
use fire as a tool and when did early man become a thinking mammal and
using knowledge as well as real language?
The owner of the skull below may have been a thinking mammal in the past for
its own basic survival but its reasoning was more than limited and it would
have used all its natural senses when alive. There would have been no
language but grunts may have been emitted and communication between such
mammals would have been by smell, sight and body language.

It was rash of many people in the field to conclude, wrongly, that the owner of
this skull found in Africa may have had speech even though it would have been
limited speech. This is not the case but there had to be a form of
communication.
Future generations of the same mammal species may have begun to use a
form of mouth communication but we are talking 500,000 years down the line
and just after basic art work on rocks and cave walls. Such art work would not

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have been as advanced as the cave and rock drawings that we know of today
and without doubt in my mind the creature above would have been more
carnivore and cannibalistic than even early upright man that was not ape like in
shape and size. That does not mean that early man was not cannibalistic and
ate his own kin and kind. He/she was and would have eaten dying or dead
members of their own tribe rather than waste the meat. To them there was
nothing moralistic or psychological damaging in eating their off spring and
great grandmother. It was nothing more than a food source.
That X factor, the Missing Link lies between Homo erectus, Neanderthal/ CroMagnon Man and as for the rest of the early ape like creatures in my mind
have now no place to play in the debate on such a missing link except for
themselves in cross breeding and inbreeding with one another. Inbreeding in
some species produces hybrids and mutants as seen in modern man in some
societies.
Researching the skulls below it was easy to see that they were of different
shapes and sizes and therefore a crossover by breeding had to take place.

Left to right. Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon and Australopithecus africanus.

Somewhere in between and after A. africanus came Homo erectus but it does

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not explain that even today we tend to get throwbacks in a genetic form in
some modern humans who have the skull shape and features of Homo erectus.

In my research I have found human beings in todays society that show

throwback features of early man and though it is claimed to be rare, it may not
be as rare as we are laid to believe. I have come across it in the UK and
Ireland, parts if India and if you know what you are looking for or at then it
jumps out at you. The brow ridges, forehead, hair and shape of the face like
the illustration below.

In many cases of such a condition in modern humans it is sometimes

diagnosed as Acromegaly wrongly because todays medicine and its study
misses the point that it could in fact be a genetic throw back which I believe
strongly it is. It is these human beings that carry the past with them into our
future and somehow many people missed the link. With DNA tracing and

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recording with the permission of such people with the condition as well as
family history backgrounds I know we will learn more of the changeover
between early man and todays human being.
If we look closely at Acromegaly as the condition then there will be an
enlargement of the bones, hypertrophy of connective tissue, noted changes in
the hair and skin. The face will be large with heavy features, prognathous jaw
and course thick hair sometimes over mostly of the lower body and back. The
frontal sinuses are prominent with the eyes deeply set and if the mouth is
examined the lower teeth and jaw project beyond the upper ones. I have seen
many human beings like this but what I also noted that the feet are large and
sometimes clumsy, the back slightly bent and the hands reaching almost to the
top of the knees. The lips I found were also large in nature and on examination
of the scalp it will be found that the skin is furrowed or corrugated. At seasonal
times of the year there may well be increased sexual excitement and the
chances in the basal metabolic rate are not constant but during the active
stage it will be increased and the appetite can well be voracious.
Seasonal sunlight hours may well have something to do with this increased
sexually activity and in early man I feel that mating took place in order that
children were born in a warmer time of the year and that food was more
plentiful.
If we look at the gestation period of humans we get around from the time of
conception to birth, 9 months with a child being born between 6 lbs. and 7 lbs.
Early mankind would be much the same except for the time of conception and
more so in the ape-like women and man.
In part two I will look at the bones of contention that exist between our own
human origins and those of apes. Because of the infighting and sometimes-

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public battles, those people working in the field of palaeoanthropology were

more at odds with themselves than with the subject matter that should have
concerned them. There has been lost opportunities because of this in Africa
and as it is an unstable continent some of the known sites of early man are
surrounded by politics with research being slowed down. The eyes now must
be turned to the SW Far East and the native peoples there as well as from
where they came from because it is from here, not Africa or India that the final
answer may be found of what was human-kind and the missing link.
The human fossil record of early man supports the special creation of man
and the account given in the book of Genesis. This includes the fossils of
Homo

sapiens,

archaic

Homo

sapiens,

Homo

neanderthalensis

or

Neanderthal man, Homo erectus, and Australopithecus (extinct apes). Many

people believe that the fossils that have been found support the evolution of
man and his ascent from the primates. This is not correct. What the
anthropologists have done is interpret the fossils so that they seem to show
the correctness of evolution. But the fossils can be interpreted another way
a way that shows that the evolutionary theory of early man is bankrupt and
that early men have all descended from Adam. The problem in the
evolutionary fossil record is not the fossils themselves but the incorrect
interpretation that is placed on these fossils. A correct interpretation is
harmonious with the Biblical record.
If Human Evolution were TrueWhat Would the Fossil Record Indicate?
If human evolution were true we could expect to see its workings in the fossil
record of humans.
The fossil record if it supported evolution would show the following:
A gradual blending of all the fossils in the line that leads to modern human

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it would be difficult to tell when one species died out and when the other
began.
There would be many transitional human fossils.
As species became better adapted the old ancestral lines would die outold
fossils and young fossil would not coexist.
Fossils of early man would not show long periods of stability.
For evolution to have occurred the fossil record of early man would show
great change and transition over time. In the beginning of the last 4.5 million
years the evolutionary record should show no modern humans in the fossil
record. As evolutionary history progressed a gradual blending of the fossil into
a modern human morphology would occur. There would also be many and
varied transitional fossils.
If Special Creation were TrueWhat Would the Fossil Record Indicate?
If H. sapiens, H. erectus, and Neanderthals were products of creation and
descendants of Adam the fossil record would have certain characteristics.
There is no evidence of this.
This would also suggest that Adam and Eve were ape like and not human if
they came before the Neanderthals and very human if they came later.
These would include:
No blending of fossilsFossil would be excavated that would be easily
categorized with allowances made for variety.
There would be no transitional fossilssince Adam was independently
created there would be distinct breaks between the human line and the animal
line (primates).
The fossil men such as H. erectus, Neanderthal and archaic H. sapiens
would all coexist at the same time since they are merely variation of the
created kind.

117

Fossils of early humans would exist in very old strata. (No evidence of this)
Fossils of early man would appear abruptly in the geologic record.

What Does the Overall Fossil Record Reveal?

The fossils of early man when looked at as an overall category all support
special creation. They appear fully formed and fully human in the fossil record.
They appear in the earliest strata as would be expected if they were created.
The various fossil men all were contemporaries of each other for long periods
of time, sometimes the older fossil, from an evolutionary point of view,
appears in the fossil record at a younger time period.
Human fossils (KP 271) that are indistinguishable (McHenry 1975 & Patterson
1967) from those of modern skeletons have been found in stratum that is
more than 4.5 million years old.
(remember the author does not agree with these evolutionary dates).

This shows that true humans have a lineage that extends at least that far back
in the evolutionary timetable. There may be older fossils of H. sapiens that
have not yet been discovered. In other words, fossils that are the identical to
modern humans have been found that are older than the australopithecines.
Which indicates that the Australopithecus line could not be the evolutionary
ancestral line leading to modern man and never was.
Homo erectus fossils have been excavated that range in age from a very
recent 30,000 (Swisher 1996) years ago to more than 1.6 million years. The H.
erectus line has remained virtually unchanged for almost 1.6 million years. H.
erectus have not evolved into anything during this time period, they have
remained unchanged. If evolution were true then H. erectus should be in a

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state of evolutionary changethe fact that it has remained unchanged

supports the creation account.
Another concept that falsifies the evolutionary concept is that modern H.
sapiens, Neanderthals, and H. erectus have all lived together as
contemporaries at one point in time or another. None of them have evolved
from a more primitive type into a more modern type. In some cases H. erectus
fossils are younger than H. sapiens and Neanderthal fossils. This cannot be
correct if evolution is correct; because evolutionary theory states that H.
erectus gave rise to H. sapiens and/or Neanderthal. Since the creation
account is correct they are simply variations and they would all coexist at the
same time.
There are no fossils of the primitive primates at the correct time to give rise to
the human ancestral line. These primitive primates would include A. afarensis,
A. africanus, Kenyanthropus platyops (Leakey 2001) and others. The fossil
record indicates that when these primates existed that humans were already
on the scene. The Laetoli Footprints (Leakey 1979), said to be made by a
modern shaped human foot, and the Kanapoi humerus (KP 271), all predate
these fossils. Therefore these extinct primates could not have given rise to the
human line since humans were already in existence. Interestingly there exist
today primates that are very similar to the Australopithecus line. The pygmy
chimp (Pan paniscus), called Bonobo by the locals is found in the jungles of
Zaire, Africa. This is only a few hundred miles away from where many of the A.
afarensis and A. africanus fossils are being unearthed today. It has the same
body type and is the same size as the Australopithecines it also can walk
bipedally for short distances. In my opinion here, that does not mean that it is
human and never would be.
The overall fossil record reveals that even when we use the evolutionists

119

dates (which are incorrect in my opinion (Carleton 2011) and arrange the
fossil according to these dates that no human evolution has taken place.
When it is said that humans appear in the fossil record more than 4 million
years ago, according to some evolutionary dates, they appear fully formed,
already human and they appear abruptly. This did not happen because in my
opinion being human and a thinking human at that came around 50,000 years
ago supports creation and not evolution. But created from what?
Bias in the Interpretation of the Fossil Record
The science of human anthropology is full of circular reasoning, and
philosophical bias. Anthropologists only focus on the fossils that seemingly
support their contention that man has evolved from apelike ancestors. When
evolutionists draw family trees of these relationships they do not include all
the pertinent data.
Past examples, and many others like it, supposedly shows A. afarensis giving
rise to H. erectus and then H. erectus giving rise to H. sapiens. The total fossil
picture is not shown in these types of "family trees." If the total fossil record is
used a drawing of a family tree is not possible because the fossil do not fit the
evolutionary scenario.
In reality the evolutionists only use the fossils that support their preconceived
bias. There are many human fossils that do not fit in with these biases. If all
the fossils are used in the interpretation of the early human record then the
answer is obvious, man was createdhe did not evolve. This is fully
supported by the correctly interpreted fossil record of early man.
RESEARCH DATA AND MENTION FOR THIS PART OF MY RESEARCH.
Carleton 2012
Johanson DC. Lucy, the Beginnings of Humankind. Touchstone Pub. New
York. 1990.

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Leakey MG. Spoor F. Brown FH. Gathogo P. Kiarie C. Leakey LN. McDougall.
New hominine genus from

eastern Africa shows diverse middle Pliocene

lineages. Nature. 410:433-440, 2001.

Leakey MD. Footprints in the ashes of time. National Geographic. April 1979.
McHenry H. Fossils and the mosaic nature of human evolution. Science
190:425-431. 1975.
Patterson B. Howells WW. Hominid humeral fragment from early Pleistocene
of North-western Kenya. Science. 156:64-66. 1967.
Swisher CC. Homo erectus of Java: potential contemporaneity with Homo
sapiens in Southeast Asia. Science. 274:1870-74. 1996.
Much of the research by the authors above needed to be mentioned because
of the complexity of dating early apes and early humans with spot on solid
evidence that would stand up to close scrutiny. As many will know there are in
some cases major gaps in such dating and because of this I needed to carry
out cross reference on such data. From the 1950s to 2011 much of such
dating is now in doubt and I suggest here that it needs to be revised.
There is also, in my opinion that inbreeding took place in some of the early
groups of early humans and cross breeding with Neanderthals as well.
Until we carry out DNA comparisons of Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon human
bones then the data is still lacking and this needs to be treated as a major
research project by someone in the future and in depth. We do have part of
the jigsaw but many pieces are missing and they need to be found but without
guess work coming into play in the research.
Researchers into DNA profiling of the two human subjects that I mention
above, is subject to funding of course and this comes in the way of grants if it
ever happens in the future. Once evidence has been established that there
was cross breeding and interbreeding by the two groups we can then expand

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this DNA family tree which I have outlined below for my research.
Carleton 2012

DNA AND RNA CROSSOVERS.

EARLY MAN AND GENETICS.
Ronnie Carleton (c) 2012

AFRICA.
From an archaeology point of view we have been informed and except that
early mankind started in Africa then in time though a process of evolution
moved into Europe as first Neanderthal Man then Cro-Magnon today we are
said to be the end result. With each Species and generations comes of course
the genetic make-up which is passed on again and again through DNA and
RNA. I am of the opinion therefore that it is a mistake to classify the
Neanderthal as 'brutish' and was never human in thinking or deed. It would
also be a mistake to assume, as is now often the case, that all present day
humans came from away back in time, from Africa. Though there may well be
an African linkage ,as I believe there is for many humans today, there is also

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a vital link between Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon Man due to crossbreeding

in the later stages of the worlds history and the genes of such a relationship
passed onto some modern humans today. From my own research and in
order to understand it and put forward the real possibilities of such a union I
have publish my research below for debate, if any, or rejection I'm sure by
many established archaeologists who may well have to bite the bullet in the
future, revise all their dating processes and look at the species list much
closer. As for the people who made such claims about early humans and
early ape data and are now dead there can be no redress by them but still
their data should be re-examined and addressed if the need should arise.
If we indeed believe that mankind or humankind started its' thinking 'life in
Africa then we also know that all human beings in Europe today have a very
close Genetic heritage to Africa and that DNA, RNA and Chromosome type
have all been passed on and will continue to do so. With the DNA information
also come chromosome information of genetic illnesses. Putting this data
together did take a long time but I feel the end results were well worth it then It
keeps it all in the Human Family so to speak.
I start with Neanderthal man and what set me off on this trail was a question
that bothered me for some time, left-handed humans of today. Being left
handed is not an illness but it is a genetic trait and is passed down through
families. 30% of left handed people go back many generations as in the Kerr
family in the UK, Ireland and the USA. As this is the case with many left
handed families throughout Europe I then thought that Neanderthal family
members as well as the Cro-Magnon family would also show this trait and
pass it on. As I stated early on, being left handed is not any form of illness but
all to do with chromosomes that was passed to generation to another. If we
could back track from one left handed family here in the UK and Europe, from

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2005 back to 50,000 years ago then it would be through the Cro-Magnon part
of that family unit and still back or running side by side, with the Neanderthal x
Cro-Magnon group. From here we could go back almost anywhere except to
the standing apes.
( Research of left hand use IN APES carried out in Borneo, India, Africa and
the zoos of the UK) Carleton 2000 to 2005 (c) )
Of course the tracking of around 50,000 to 100,000 genes is impossible but
genes do play a very complex part but if one parent possess a gene of being
left handed, colour blind or have a good musical ear there is a 50/50 chance
that some of their off spring will also. When it comes down to some inherent
diseases then there is a good chance that it will be passed onto any off-spring
of the parent or parents. Unless they breed outside their genetic circle of
course as many are doing today and which I will call outbreeding
We know that 30%of Europeans cannot taste the chemical PTC
(phenylthiocarbamide), the other 70% have an unpleasant taste in their
mouths. Bitter is not the word for it. In other words if the parents of children
cannot taste PTC then neither will any children. One parent can taste it then
half the children in that family will also be able to taste it too.
When genes' go wrong' or show damage then they show as inherited disease
and if you consider that there are around 4,000 known, some of them rare
conditions while others are common in families.( cystic fibrosis in 1 of 2,000
births in the west, muscular dystrophy which affects 1 in 5,000 male children.)
Haemophilia is another example in the Royal Families of England and Europe.
Rheumatoid arthritis, a very painful immune disorder affects 1 in 20 females in
the west by the time they are aged 65 to 70 years of age. The victims do have
a genetic makeup and can be revealed in a simple blood test . We know today
that all human type blood is not alike and can be classified into groups as

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listed below.
A, B,O BLOOD
CLUMPING
BSERUM O A B AB
ASERUM O A B AB
There are 3 groups which read like this; mixed together, O serum clumps A
and B blood cells but not O cells.
B serum clumps A cells but not B or O
A serum clumps B cells but A and O
O, B, and A serum clumps AB blood.
This clumping is caused by anti-bodies known as anti-body A and anti-body B.
As this research is dealing with the possible genetic make-up from early man
to the present day and the gene links carried forward, even mutant genes
then I had to look at any and all genetic interpretation from that past into the
present.
A = A and B Not A or O not A or O AB
B = A Not B or O
O A and B Not O
There are 3 versions of 1 gene, A-determining version, B-determining version
and O for neither. Simple in fact. Human mating by AB to OO would show up
in half the children who were A (AO) and one half children B (BO).

Samples taken in the south of the UK showed up like this,

Group O 44%
Group A 45%
Group B 8%

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Group AB 4%
These differ between different populations with type B three times more
common in Asian populations than with Europeans as an example. With type
A it increases from south to the north of England into Scotland.
X and Y CHROMOSOMES. 1 to 22

+ X = 23 female
1 to 22 + XY =23 male.
one sperm will carry x and a y chromosome.
Female will carry one copy of X chromosome.
X SPERM -FEMALE EGG X = XX = FEMALE CHILD BORN.
Y SPERM -FEMALE EGG X =XY = MALE CHILD BORN.
Males therefore determines the sex of offspring, not females.
It is chromosome9 that determines the ABO blood groups in Human Kind and
that started away back around1.2 million years ago. As each human mammal
has 2 chromosome 9, one from our father and one from the mother and if
someone gets a paternal chromosome 9 with an A blood group gene and his
maternal chromosome 9 with the B version this means they will be
themselves blood group AB. If it is a female who has the AB blood she will
produce eggs that will either have the gene responsible for A group or B blood.
The partner may have type O then he contributes via his sperm, chromosome
9 with the O gene. The children therefore will end up with a genetic A O and

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have type A blood or will have the genetic constitution BO = type B blood.
There is no relation between the sex of any child and its blood group because
the sex-determining X and Y chromosomes that are separate entities
determining chromosome9.This is not of course true for all chromosomes nor
is it true for two genes on the same chromosome, colour blindness and
haemophilia are good examples. They both are found on the X chromosome
but not inherited together.
Blood groups therefore track through generations so if a husband who is type
O and the wife is A and they ended up with an AB child then the wife has
been having sex with another man, not the husband. So far then it should be
possible to get DNA samples from bones and body material if any f rom the
early standing apes and early thinking humans giving us a starting point
where we ourselves came from.
If we came out of Africa as claimed by most working in archaeology then all
of us should be carrying a hint or suggestion of Sickle Cell Disease but this is
not the case except in many black people in the UK and the USA where in
Africa, the Gold Coast and Gambia, it was uncommon in the black population
there. In the north and south of Africa it is uncommon but the Sickle Cell gene
is found in middle west Africa and very common in the west of Africa. Those
that carry the gene rarely get Malaria because the parasite grows inside red
blood cells and anyone who has the Sickle cell gene does not offer this
parasite a good environment in which to live. Yet in present day white people
in Europe there is no records of sickle cell gene which is odd because it is
passed on through generations. To understand this better I have laid out a
chart below.
AS. AS.
MALE FEMALE.

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SPERM A SPERM S A S
AA AS AS SS
A carrier father has 2 genes, one for sickle Haemoglobin(S) and one for
normal Haemoglobin (A)
The carrier mother has the same layout. One child will be born without sickle
cell but all others will have it but have only one sickle cell gene each but will
be carriers and one who will have full blown sickle cell disease.
The survival of early humans in east Africa was in fact a hard road because
not only had they to survive the harshness of day to day living ,attacks by wild
animals but also a number of diseases, some that were passed on down
through a family unit. What should be noted is that such groups were small
and they would have little or no knowledge or taboo's about who mated with
who. In breeding would have been a common factor and the average life span
for any adult would have been30 years only. This is often overlooked in
archaeology as is in a few cases evidence of bone disease and height.
When it comes down to genetic features of the face of early man too few
studies have been carried out. Europeans have large noses and this was
passed down to us from Homo erectus and the deep brow ridge and stocky
body still found today in some humans across Europe suggest a pass on from
Neanderthal Man. Yet in my research I discovered that both features can be
found in today's humans, male and female and a few even show the almost
hidden features of a face that could well be mistaken for Neanderthal Man.
This face feature is not as uncommon as many think and across Europe into
the UK and Ireland.
This does not explain the very modern skulls found in Israel and South Africa
in 1980 in caves and datedat100,000 years old because if the dating is correct
then all the data on early humans listed is wrong as well as the dating of other

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early apes and humans. It also suggests that if a modern type human was
around100,000 years ago, living in caves then they must have been more
advanced than any other early humans, or ape like humans. This of course
creates a genetic nightmare for researchers because for the moment it is not
known where these humans came from. We are told, and wrongly in my view,
that modern humans as we are, only put in an appearance 40,000 years ago.
The 100,000 year old remains found dispute that finding and suggests that a
tribe or tribes of modern humans did function, though in small groups from
Israel and the north of Africa down to the tip of South Africa.
Blood grouping of course is the way forward in such research and gives clues
in some cases to where the human being of today had past family linkage.
The B blood group of true gypsies in Europe can be linked to India where it is
50% as with only 10% in northern Europe. The DNA from African chimps
show that the genomes differ from humans by only 1.6% yet chimps are not
human, though I do suggest that humans did and do have a close relationship
in Africa and elsewhere, that goes beyond the pale. Human male x female
chimp=?This could well explain in Africa two things. A genetic link to humans
and chimps in the past and a HIV type disease found in chimps in the present.
Who passed what genetic material as well as a virus type is for the moment
unclear but I suggest modern humans started it all off and are still doing so in
controlled conditions today in many parts of our world behind very closed
doors.

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CHIMP DNA DATA. REF RESEARCH ARCHAEOLOGY

Researcher Ronnie Carleton 2012

Chimp and Human DNA

FORENSIC ARCHAEOLOGY Scientists have decoded the chimp genome

and compared it with that of humans, a major step toward defining what
makes people human and developing a deep insight into the evolution of
human sexual behaviour. The comparison pinpoints the genetic differences
that have arisen in WILDLIFE AFRICA the two species since they split from a
common ancestor some six million years ago.
The realization that chimpanzees hold a trove of information about human
evolution and nature comes at a time when they and other great apes are
under harsh pressures in their native habitat. Their populations are dwindling
fast as forests are cut down and people shoot them for meat. They may soon
disappear from the wild altogether, primatologists fear, except in the few
sanctuaries that have been established.
Chimpanzees and people possess almost identical sets of genes, so the
genes that have changed down the human lineage should hold the key to
what makes people human. Chimps are not human however.
Biologists suspect that only a handful of genes are responsible for the major
changes that reshaped the apelike ancestor of both species into a human and
that these genes should be identifiable by having evolved at a particularly
rapid rate.
The comparison of the human and chimp genomes, reported in an issue of
Nature, takes a first step in this direction but has not yet tracked down the

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critical handful of genes responsible for human evolution.

One problem is the vast number of differences -some 40 million in the
sequence of DNA units in the chimp and human genomes. Most are caused
by a random process known as genetic drift and have little effect. For now,
their large numbers make it difficult for scientists to find the changes caused
by natural selection if indeed there ever was such a process.
But another aspect of the comparison has yielded insights into a different
question, the evolution of the human Y chromosome. The new finding implies
that Apes have led sexually virtuous lives for the last six million years, at least
in comparison with the flamboyant promiscuity of chimpanzees.
Some 300 million years ago, the Y chromosome used to carry the same 1,000
or so genes as its partner, the X chromosome. But because the Y cannot
exchange DNA with the X and update its genes, in humans it has lost all but
16 of its X-related genes through mutation or failure to stay relevant to their
owner's survival. However, the Y has gained some genes from other
chromosomes because it is a safe haven for genes that benefit only men,
since it never enters a woman's body. These added genes, not surprisingly,
all have functions involved in making sperm.
The scientific world's leading student of the Y chromosome, David Page of
the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Mass., has been seeking to understand
whether the Y will lose yet more genes and lapse into terminal decay, taking
men with it. The idea of the Y's extinction "was so delicious from the
perspective of gender politics," Dr. Page said. "But many of my colleagues
became confused with this blending of gender politics with scientific
predictions."
Six years ago, he discovered a surprising mechanism that protects the spermmaking genes. Those genes exist in pairs, arranged so that when the DNA of

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the chromosome is folded back on itself, the two copies of the gene are
aligned. If one copy of the gene has been hit by a mutation, the cell can repair
it by correcting the mismatch in DNA units. That is all well and fine but when I
give this more thought (2011) it is possible that gene mutation may be the
reason why we are human.
The 16 X-related genes are present in only single copies. Dr. Page and his
colleagues thought the chimpanzee genome might show how they were
protected. To their surprise, they report in Nature, the protection was not there.
The chimp Y chromosome has lost the use of 5 of its 16 X-related genes.
The genes are there, but have been inactivated by mutation. The explanation,
in his view, lies in the chimpanzee's high-spirited sexual behaviour. Female
chimps mate with all males around, so as to make each refrain from killing a
child that might be his.
The alpha male nonetheless scores most of the paternities, according to DNA
tests. This must be because of sperm competition, primatologists believe -the
alpha male produces more and better sperm, which out compete those of rival
males. This mating system puts such intense pressure on the sperm-making
genes that any improved version will be favoured by natural selection. All the
other genes will be dragged along with it, Dr. Page believes, even if an Xrelated gene has been inactivated.
If chimps have lost five of their X-related genes in the last six million years
because of sperm competition, and humans have lost none, humans
presumably had a much less promiscuous mating system.
But experts who study fossil human remains believe that the human mating
system of long-term bonds between a man and woman evolved only some 1.7
million years ago. I suggest that it was much later than this.
Males in the human lineage became much smaller at this time, a sign of

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reduced competition. The new result implies that even before that time, during
the first four million years after the chimp-human split, the human mating
system did not rely on sperm competition.
Dr. Page said his finding did not reach to the nature of the joint chimp-human
ancestor, but that "it's a reasonable inference" that the ancestor might have
been gorilla like rather than chimp like, as supposed by some primatologists.
The gorilla mating system has no sperm competition because the silverback
maintains exclusive access to his harem.
Frans B. M. de Waal of the Yerkes National Primate Research Centre in
Atlanta said he agreed with fossil experts that the human pair bonding system
probably evolved 1.7 million years ago but that the joint ancestor could have
resembled a chimp, a bonobo, a gorilla, or something else entirely. It is this
something else that throws the spanner in the works of ape/human evolution
and in my opinion humans like we see today are not the result of all or any of
the early upright apes cross breeding or gene manipulation by nature. In fact I
would go as far to say that humans today are the result of mutation where
apes and chimps never moved onto the next plane to become human and
never likely to do so.
The scientists who have compared the whole genomes of the two species say
they have found 35 million sites on the aligned genomes where there are
different DNA units, and another five million where units have been added or
deleted. Each genome is about three billion units in length. The chimp
genome was completed in draft form in December 2003 by the Broad Institute
in Cambridge and Washington University in St. Louis.
Statistical tests for accelerated evolution are not yet powerful enough to
identify the major genes that have shaped humans. "We knew that this was
only a beginning, but from a general standpoint we have captured the vast

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majority of the differences between human and chimps," said Robert H.

Waterston of the University of Washington, Seattle, the senior author of the
report. The genome of a third primate, the orang-utan, is now in progress and
will help identify the genes special to human evolution, he said.
Somehow I feel that such research has gone down the wrong biological road
and linking a rain forest ape with humans would put humans coming out of
Asia and not Africa if this is correct. That would in fact put the lid on all
ape/human past history that would have to be re-written again which in my
opinion it should be.
At the level of the whole animal, primatologists have uncovered copious
similarities between the social behaviour of chimpanzees, bonobos and
humans, some of which may eventually be linked to genes. But this rich vein
of discovery may be choked off if the great apes can no longer be studied in
the wild.
"The situation is very bad, and our feeling is that by 2040 most of the habitat
will be gone, except for those little regions we have set aside," Dr. de Waal
said.

Author Ronnie Carleton

Dr de Waal may well be right in the case of habitat but there are good
conservation projects in progress to address this problem and governments

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are aware of them, more so in 2012 than ever before.

There is little point in beating the breast and waving the hands in the air
because besides apes the human being today is hell bent on his/her own
destruction and that will come because of population numbers.
We are like voles and when vole numbers get too high then there is a crash
due to disease and this is fact. Natural disasters to humans are all part of the
cycle and for some reason, with the best of intentions, the human beings
elsewhere jump in with aid and money but little do they understand that they
are not doing human kind any favours when it comes down to world survival
for the rest. If five million people died next month from a disease, hunger and
drought this only makes a small hole in the human population and nature
takes them. Keeping human populations down this way is Natures way of
controlling the human mammal when it gets too high. Not allowing it will result
in a much massive problem in the near future, even into extinction because of
a major virus mutation happening and because of high human population
numbers, the deadly spread will be rapid across our planet.
Unlike the Neanderthals who died out because of invaders or small pockets of
disease their world population was not in any way large so they did not all die
out at the same time and were well scattered in family groups. Human nature
today as well as religious beliefs tend to border on the sentimental and
compassion levels and we jump in and want to fix it which if we were honest
we do not succeed in saving the world, or a tribe of people, only some of them.
Such natural disasters in a mammal species in normal events is sad but when
it is a major disaster there is only a certain amount we can do because of the
political involvement by the country concerned and their need to try and take
control of it all, including cash donations sent by well-meaning people.
Unless someone or a group of people look at this virus/disease problem much

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closer now the risk is great to the human mammal because of population
growths and immigration as well and major famines which I forecast due to
another round of the Earth climate changes still to come within the next twenty
years.
Climate change and species has been going on for millions of years and no
doubt will continue to do so in the future. We have already lost many species
due to natural causes but also due to human neglect and habitat destruction.
We the human mammal will in fact destroy human kind and we know that
chimpanzees cannot record that event in writing when it happens because
they are not that intelligent to do so.

THE NEANDERTHAL DAWN.

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It has been stated, with some conviction that the Neanderthals evolved
from the late form of Homo erectus that had been in Europe during that
timeline or from a descendant of that species. The Neanderthal face, skull
bones and mandible had occurred by the end of the middle PleistoceneFrance 125,000 years ago.
Seven sets of bones found in Germany including one child have been dated
as even older, 230,000 years ago, on the prime site of Ehringsdorf and this I
feel was a split from the linkage of what I now term as modern humans.
A fragmentary specimen found at Pontnewydd, Wales and dated the same
age which suggests to me on the evidence that the Neanderthals were around
in the middle Pleistocene here. This is reflected in some of the skulls and skull
fragments we know about. These are of course the fossil records like
Swanscombe in England, Steinheim in Germany, Arago and Montmaurin in
France, Atapuerca in Spain and Petralona in Greece. My forensic research

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into these suggested a number of things and a few questions, and I have laid
this out below. One of course has to remember that fossils like these are
subjected to damage, either by nature and then their removal. Parts of the
skull bones may well be reshaped over many thousands of years, earth
movements, ice, water and soil chemistry all will have played a part. Not
everything that is seen can be used in evidence as fact or true shape.
Swanscombe skull.

It should be kept in mind that the skull above was found in three parts or at
least three parts of a skull were found on site and over the years they fitted
together. My concern here is that they almost fitted perfectly as others have
stated but given the time factor from finding part one and finding parts two and

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three it is possible that the fragments were not all from the same skull.
The dates for the above is 1935, 1936 and then a great jump to 1955.
STEINHEIM SKULL.

Found in a gravel pit near Stuttgart in 1933 and has a much smaller brain size
than Swanscombe skull and was 1100 ml where the skull from Swanscombe
was 1325 ml. This skull is much more round and thinner but narrower in the
forehead part which is low and narrow, a very strong brow ridge while the
upper jaw is flat with a present day cheek hollow though I suggest from a
forensics point of view due to the process of fossilization. The back of this
skull almost matches that of Swanscombe which I am of the opinion and the
evidence presented was a primitive early Neanderthal and may well be also
female. It is in my view much older than the Swanscombe skull and falls in
with the timelines data known or suggested of fossil hominids from Tautavel,
France which could be 400,500 years old. Here was found sixty two
specimens. A hip bone, two jaw bones and a front face with right side of a
skull but seem to me to point at H. erectus X Neanderthal. The primitive
showing in the French remains, Arago is distorted before it was reconstructed
which tended to blend in of the thinking of H. erectus when I feel that it is in
fact more Neanderthal.

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Arago skull 1200ml

THE PETRALONA CRANIUM.
GREECE.

The skull discovered in the cave is very large and strong looking and at first
tends to lean towards H.erectus but a closer look it is Neanderthal because
the brow ridges have a double arch shape above the orbits. The cheek bones
are inflated and the nose bones suggest also Neanderthal rather than erectus.
It is suggested by others that the brain case is 1,220 ml and the cast inside
the brain case is much smaller, less flattened at the front than that of erectus.
What I did discover in this skull and the data surrounding it is that it sends out
conflicting messages because the front is Neanderthal, the back looks erectus.
What we have so far in my research is that there is much confusion with past
data to archaeology timelines as the human fossils discovered in Ehringsdorf
in 1908 and onwards from that were dated as last interglacial age, around
120,000 years ago but they have to be twice as old or even 100,000 years
earlier than that. There is little doubt that the remains from this site show
Neanderthal characteristics and more so at the back of the skull and most of
all thick skull bones. Of course if we look at the data from the long cold period,

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stage 6 in fact these early Neanderthals were around 180,000 130,000

years ago which now includes the two Biache skull fragments which are made
up from a upper jaw and back of a female skull. It would seem from my
research that more females are discovered than males for reasons unknown
to me. The front of a possible male was also discovered but the French teams
disagree with the sex of the skull so anything they put forward has to be
veiwed as heresay rather than factual evidence.
70,000 years ago across Europe the land was in the grip of the last Ice Age
that is if people have done their maths right. Even with the ice and snow here
the area was inhabited by Neanderthals only and did so for the next 30,000
years. Cro-Magnon Man had not yet entered the archaeology stage of Europe.

There is little point in taking on board the

models presented by others on the Neanderthals and their thnking on
evolution because such data is more than obscure but has very conflicting
ideas which in the end becomes frustating.
We all know what a brush is, we know what a hand brush is and we are very
aware that there is many types of brushes but not always aware what their
use is. It could be said the same for the Neanderthals and that is where we
are today because this human species over many years came in shapes and
sizes, depending where they lived and we are still gathering data and I hope
that we are also interpeting the data correctly as it presents itself. There is of
course that some young bloods, wanting to make a name for themselves, and
juggle the data to suit their own needs rather than for the Archaeology

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Community on the whole.

With the Neanderthals what needs to be looked at much more closely is the
reason why they had such larger noses across Europe and what was the
linkage to others not in Europe? Nor does it explain why the native peoples of
South East Asia as far down as New Zealand then to show the same face
profile even today. The Neanderthal gene is in there somewhere and it could
be we missed the boat of an African / Europe link.
There is, sometimes un-noticed, great change in the fossil records from
around 120,000 years ago and it is only after this time the almost complete
skeltons were preserved for later discovery. Here I am dealing with the
Neanderthals and not yet so called modren humans and suggest that for the
first time some from of death ritual took place such as burial in the ground in
the form of a pit. Yet bodies not buried were left in caves such as in Spain.
Such cave disposal would have attracted the wolf, bear and big cats and it is
very likely if this was the case then full skeltons would not be found.
I should point out from my research world wide the samples of Neanderthal
remains is not large with around 20 skulls, almost complete, and bones of
men, women and children. In Kebara in a cave in Israel a trunk and upper
limb skeleton was discovered. If we put all the finds together we know what
these people would have looked like when alive, what diseases showed and
they were exposed to during their life, and from a forensic point of view,
possible cause of death.

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Of course natural deaths were also happening but it is unlikley that more
than 20% of such deaths were due to natural causes.
Jig-jaw bone fragments tell us little but the skull tells us a lot of these humans
who lived on Earth from 120,000 to 35,000 years ago and such skulls may be
long but flat on top but it is also worth noting that H.erectus also showed such
a flat skull as well as the bar of bone above the eye sockets which both
species have except that in the Nenderthals are two arches with large air
spaces called the frontal sinuses. Such eyebrows were strong also in the
females as in their children from ten years onwards. I would state that the
Nenderthal browridges were not as important to the them as they were to
early apes as reflected in the frontal sinuses. When and if you have a
Nenderthal skull in your hand you know what you are looking at and should
not be confused with any other species.
I have placed a number of skulls below and skull fragments for comparrsion.

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The mtDNA data is also below and should be considered also.

If the mtDNA data is correct then it should show in samples of skulls from
Europe and elsewhere and site conditions, diet as well as climate, should be a
consideration for future research. Like humans today, and we leave out fab
diets and religion, not all the groups of living Neanderthals had the same diet
due to site locations.

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Such Nenderthal sites are placed now into two main categories;
Caves and Rock shelters that had remains;
Open sites and Rock shelters that produce tools and evidence of use.
What should be noted is that the main areas where skeletons and stone tools
were found were in South West France and the Middle East. In the west at
major sites (Rock shelters) at La Ferrassie, La moustier and La Quina.
Combe Grenal in south west France also produced good data.
Other sites included in Europe are, Bockstein in Germany, Hungary, Russian
and Ukrainian plains but not as rich for finds as the others but if we are going
to link Nenderthals with the Mousterian culture then I have to include Iberian
peninsula, Italy,Croatia and Greece. Other clues on site are stone tools and
other artifacts some of which I have placed below as an example.

The Middle East caves of Mount Carmel outside Haifa, the Shanidar Cave in
Iraq produced much useful information.

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Without doubt such tools were made, as above, by humans and not upright
apes. To make and shape such tools required a thinking brain with purpose,
something todays apes or Chimps cannot do is make and use such tools as
above. The evidence therefore points to Neanderthals as fully human.
I have already covered the Neanderthal nose and the very possible links to
other tribes in SE Asia down to New Zealand.We also know a little about the
teeth which I have outlined below.
The front teeth were large and well worn which suggests as part of a cutting
or vice like tool that is not used as much by apes or early Homo species and it
is the large size of these front teeth, more so than the other teeth. Micoscope
examanation of such teeth tend to show scratch marks going outwards, in
other words something was gripped in the teeth, pulled away from the mouth
and cut with a stone or flint tool and the direction of the outward marks
suggested that the Neanderthals were mainly right handed when they held the
cutting tool. In time with much use the teeth became shovelled shaped and
the back teeth had extra cusps. Back teeth of the Neanderthals had bull roots
and the same has been found in some Inuit populations today. Any female
with an extra X chromosomes no matter who they are will also produce this
root condition.

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Nenderthal teeth are in a forward position but there is a few other features in
the mandible that I feel need to be mentioned such as the hole or foraman
which lies in the rear upright part of the ascending ramus. The nerve
concerned here runs to the front of the jaw and I found odd that the bony lip
is only found in two out of three jaws examined and rare in ape jaws and the
modren humans. I should point out that it was very rare in early upright apes
fossils. In a quarter of known Cro-Magnon jaws it is also present and I
suggest that the function of the bony lip may well be related to a strong pull on
the mandibular ligament which runs from the ear down to the mandibular
foraman. This may well have something to do with holding the jaw steady
when used as a tool but as time moved forwards there came in some of the
Nenderthals a slight chin development and more so in the much later
ones.There is no evidence of a simian shelf which apes have in the front
base of the jaw but there is evidence in that the chin on the outside, has a
bony ridge on the lower jaw that serves as reinforcement and gives that extra
strenght needed.

THE NENDERTHAL BRAIN.

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In the data I have researched it is said that the Neanderthals had a much
larger brain than Cro-Magnon = N 1400cc and CM 1370cc but I should point
out a larger brain is not always a smarter brain and I suggest not all the
Neanderthals had a brain at 1400cc if you look at the world population at the
time. There is conflict with the brain data and more so what seems to be
pushed time and again that the shape of the Neanderthal brain and that it had
some effect on their thinking and actions.

Evidence of course is lacking from many sources that this was in fact the case
and in my research I will show that the Neanderthal brain was fully active as
what is termed a modren man brain would be. They may well have had thick

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skull bone structure but this does not mean that they were thick in their
thinking. The brain case of course is directly related to the shape of the brain,
much the same as if hot jelly is poured into a mould and left to cool, and this
brain was long, low and somewhat flattened in comparison to a human brain
today.
Knowledge of brain functions sixty years ago was rather limited and as far as
the Neanderthal brain is concerned great errors of interpretation occurred and
tended to show today the ignorance of learned men of the time. The larger
brain with Neanderthals was not due to evolution as such but more to do with
climate, cold areas in which they lived, sometimes extreme cold. There is
evidence to show that even today human populations living in higher and
much colder conditions tend to show a large brain mass as well as a larger
body mass. Those people that live across Asia in hot climates show a lower
brain mass yet both climate brains function the same. No one living today
has yet to show the unknown significance between the Neanderthal and
Modern brains and that is the rub here. We need to find out if there was or is
one.
We must never forget that the Neanderthals and ourselves are mammals and
belong to the animal kingdom like all land mammals. Organs such as todays
humans have were the same but bone structure did differ in some ways. Diet
also must be taken into consideration because the diet of the Neanderthals
was based on hunter gatherers mode and rather limited to what was on offer
or found. If food become scarce in an area then a small group would have to
expand their area until they found enough food. This may mean that the
hunting group may be away for a few days while some of the women, children
and aged stayed at the base camp.
POSSIBLE DNA RESEARCH ACROSS EUROPE.

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Wednesday, 24 August 2011

Carleton 2012

Most people with any education knows a little or more about what DNA is and
sometimes how it fits into forensics and linking humans to a match.
In case you are reading this or want to skip this part please dont because it is
not Rocket Science. I suggest therefore you read on as this part of my
research also deals with the possible projects that could be undertaken within
the confines of Neanderthal Man or women and their relations to modern
humans across Europe today.

In this brief but I hope informative outline of the chemical deoxyribonucleic

acid =DNA it will through some light on the research I would like to see
moving forwards and giving us more information on possible links to that early
first human, Neanderthal Man and some of us.
DNA is found within the nucleus of every cell and it twists and turns upwards
in spirals and very tightly when it does so which are in fact chromosomes.
This DNA is the major key to all life, a Master and complex structure that can
kick start the making of proteins which are needed in the development of an
animal, organs and structure.
What is more interesting is for this research on the Neanderthals ,it forms the
major basis for inheritance and passed down through all the generations with
some or many characteristics carried by genes which are made from DNA.
Proteins in part that are in the body make up the structure of skin as an
example. Messenger ribonucleic acid = mRNA assembles amino acids which

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are relayed by the DNA

Translation = ribosome which moves along the strand of mRNA three bases
at a time and this ribosome attaches amino acids in sequence in the mRNA
triplets.
Body cells in time divide continuously during their periods of growth and to
make up for any cell damage but before a new cell is made the DNA must be
copied or replicated which suggests that the DNA strands unzip along their
length. There are three stages to this.
Mitochondrial DNA is the energy production structures in cells, contain only a
small amount of DNA but the cell nucleus which is inherited from both parents
is DNA while Mitochondrial DNA is only inherited from the mother. Any
mistakes made in copying Mitochondrial DNA results, I should point out, in
genetic disorders.
Each human has his or her unique appearance but will have also inherited
some very obvious features such as eye colour, height, chin shape from one
or both parents. The Neanderthals also had this inherited factor which rules
put the archaeology myth of the past that they all looked the same. Once a full
set of Chromosomes with its genetic material intact is established, half from
the mother and half from the father and at once the new cell will start to copy
itself and replicate the genetic information.
Therefore, physical characteristics, many medical disorders and behaviour
are partly determined by genes that are passed from parents to children or
off-spring.
A quarter of each childs genes are inherited from each grandparent.

With this DNA information we at least have a people canvas to work with
when it comes to possible DNA research and Neanderthal blood and genetic

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lines across Europe, maybe parts of Russia and Asia and down to parts of
North Africa.

THE GENETIC TRAIL PROJECT.

OUTLINE FOR NEANDERTAL LINKS.

BONE RESEARCH AND SKULL FEATURES.

FACE AND BONE FEATURES MODREN HUMANS.

DNA SAMPLING FROM BONES OF NEANDERTHALS.

DNA SAMPLING FROM PICKED POPULATIONS IN EUROPE,

RUSSIA AND CANADA.

DNA DATABASE SET UP FOR PROJECT.

LENGTH OF STUDY. 5 YEARS.

GENETIC FEATURES AND LINKS.

FUNDING FOR PROJECT.

POSSIBLE GENETIC LINKS TO NEANDERTHALS.

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Yupik. 21,000 of a population. Locations; NW Canada, NE Siberia.

Not related to the Inuit tribes but related to the Yuit at Lawrence Island in the
Bering Sea. Possible link for research.

Inuit. Population in Canada, and Greenland; 100,000. Possible link.

Haida. Population now only 3,600 on the Gwaii Islands Canada. Possible link
but not strong.

Innu. Population in Labrador, Canada now 13,000. Weak link.

South America. No possible links.

USA

No possible links.

Iceland.

No possible links.

Sweden. Population 9. Million. Scattered possible links.

Norway. Population 5. Million. Scattered possible links. Weak.

Nordic Countries.

5 Million. Scattered possible links.

Ensonians in Baltic States. 1.4 million. Strong possible links.

Lapland. Population for the Sami. Strong possible links.

Latvians, Baltic States. Population 2.4 million weak possibility.

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Wales UK. Population 1.85 million. Evidence of throwback features.

Possibility of link

Bretons. Population 600,000. Possible links.

Catalans Spain. Andorra in France. Population 10 million. Possible links.

Portuguese. NW, possibility of links.

Dutch. Weak possibility.

Austrians. Possibility of weak links population 8.million

Swiss. Weak possibility.

Sorbs. 60,000 of a population. No possible links.

Poles. 38 million of a population. Strong possible links.

Germans. 100 million. Strong possible links in N and NE

Italians. 58 Million. Weak links.

Roma. 12 million of a population. Very Strong links.

Slovacks. 4. Million. Strong possibilities.

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Slovenes. 2 million. Very strong possibilities.

Ukrainians 36 million of a population. Very Strong possibilities.

Ashkenazim 10 million. Some possible links.

Romanians. 20 million. Strong possibilities.

Bulgarians. Very strong possibilities.

Greeks. Some island possibilities.

Croats. 4.00 million. Possible links in NE

Serbs. 8 million. NE populations possible links.

Komi Russians.400,000. Urals, Russia. Possible links.

Udmurts.750,000. Udmurtia Russia. High possibility of links.

Mari 600,000 of a population. Isolated, Russian. Possible strong link.

Tartars. 6,000,000. Strong possibilities of links.

Kalmyks, Russian.177,000 population. Volga area. Possible links.

Avers. 600,000of a population. SW Russia. Possible strong links.

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Tribes of Borneo high possibility.

The tribes of the Motu, Dani, Abelam, Huli, Ni-Vanuatu of Melanesia are all
high possibilities.

Warlpira tribe of Australia high possibility.

Arrernte tribe of Australia high possibility.

From this list above I am confident that with the right team and
funding this proposed project would open up many doors into the gene spread
of the Neanderthals across Europe and parts of Asia.
At least one University would need to be involved, a teaching medical
University even better and I see no reason why the Neanderthal Gene Project
could not be up and running by 2013 if there was funding.

There are of course risks in the present data gathered to be taken as fact
when it comes to fossil dating of all Neanderthal artefacts so far discovered
and this must not happen to any new finds. Therefore I suggest that a new
fossil record database be set up as I have in my place of work on both
computers and all data entered checked and cross referenced. There is very
little point in having any database for the work and research that I envisage
with massive gaps in a timeline of early man or the wrong data put in the
wrong place. I have therefore now set up a database called Neanderthal

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Codex which will be maintained and added to. It is running on the

Ubuntu/Linux programmes and not Windows because I found that it is a good
platform for this type of research and holding data. Conversion is easy to do
from Open Office or Libre Office or covert to PDF however the data may not
show as it should.

SOME NEANDERTHAL PROBLEMS WITH INTERPETATION OF FINDS

AND BONES.

Sadly this has been going on since I was a boy and for some reason is still
going on in the circles of academic intuitions and some Universities are the
worst offenders. By offenders I mean staff who work in the field and will not
listen to reason or advice because like most people with a degree or PhD in
the subject that my research is based on they have only three ways of
interpretation and follow it to the rule this being I observed; the right
interpretation, the wrong interpretation and their own interpretation which they
never give ground or even when deep down they know more investigative
work is needed. It is only after they are dead are their mistakes uncovered but
by then the damage is done by the data that they have submitted fast to be
published and beat the decaying body clock.
Such farcical episodes in Palaeoanthropology research is just as bad today as
it was fifty years ago I should point out the search is still going on for those
Missing Links that they seek here and there and everywhere, a little like the
UFO- brigade who still seek lights in the skies, aliens who carry out
abductions, and head-bangers who claim that an Alien Force came to Earth
2.5 million years ago and mated with apes, thus, we are the result of that
great union between Ape and Aliens.

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Not only that, the off-spring of such a Union then went on to build the Egyptian
pyramids and then shot over to South America and taught the local natives to
do the same. This of course in 2012 is what some people still think and what
Early Humans Researchers think when they talk about that Missing Link. The
Missing Link myth is running close second now to the hunt for the Holy Grail
and common sense does not enter into some academic minds that is so full of
chaff and self-importance that they fail to grasp the archaeology nettle.

The Palaeontologist, no matter who she or he is, is always faced with

such dilemmas when it comes to fossil human remains and ape fossils and I
should point out that there are many good ones out there in the field and in
our Universities but no four put together in a padded room will agree to what
the fossil is and what did it belong to man or ape?
Conclusive evidence, one way or the other on the real timelines of the
Neanderthals in Europe and parts of Asia is very hard to find and as an
example of what happens when you jump the gun and dont do your research
right, double check it and then check it again with someone else, you end up
with more than egg on your face.
This is what happened to the Swiss Naturalist, Johann Scheuchzer, 16721733 found a long vertebral column with some other parts and all were in that
advanced fossil state. He of course claimed that it belonged to the remains of
a man before the Flood. He was so happy about his find and broadcast it to
many people only to find out later that it was a large Salamander and not
human in any form of his imagination.
But Scheuchzer was not alone in his fool thinking because later a skeleton
from Guadeloupe was found aboard a French Ship being searched by the
Royal Navy in the early 1900s and was said to be, the bones of a man in a

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fossil state. It proved later to be no more than 200 years old and not what
could be termed as a fossil as we know them.
A headache of course for anyone who makes claims first before checking out
dates and possible dates of remains found.
Real fossils, be they animals or humans have to go through a process of
fossilization and because after death remains are not broken down by now
known chemical components, such bones have been hidden away from the
many agents of decomposition then infiltrated by minerals and leaving us with
a stone like form of the human or animal shape when in life.

HOW DO WE KNOW WHAT IS A BONE FOSSIL AND WHAT IS MORE

RECENT.?

In the bad old days of hit and miss bone research the tongue test was used
and this was in the early to middle 19th century. If a bone stuck to your tongue
then it was called a fossil because of the amount of collagen it contained.
Sadly once the use of hydrochloric acid came into use for testing bone fossils
it was discovered that tongue stick bone in fact contained large amounts of
collagen when in fact it should have been very little if it were a real bone fossil.
Sadly what went before the acid test and slipped through the archaeology net
of possibility was already labelled as fossil and today such items now lie
hidden away in shoe boxes in some dusty vault or have been tossed on a
rubbish pit, the collectors name removed from the find,
Today there is a simple field test. Was the fossil found above, below or in with
other bones of long extinct animals? Even then, the evidence of early man
was viewed with suspicion by many in case they were in fact much younger

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than the local geology on site suggested.

Such archaeology suspicion resulted in the very first fossil remains known to
have been found in the year 1700 at Cannstadt in the south of Germany being
rejected as human and a fossil at that. Through the find was a skull fragment
it lay in a small box for a 136 years afterwards in the Stuttgart Museum until it
was rediscovered in 1882 and turned out to be a real fossil but got very little
attention afterwards by people who claimed to be hot on the bones.
This was a sign of the times of course and when fossil human remains were
discovered by Baron von Schottheim in 1820 at Koestritz, upper Saxony they
were also treated with distain. No one who had any knowledge of bones and
fossils were going to stick their German necks out in public and claim human
fossil remains.
This is understandable because of the mistakes made in the past and
confidence took a hard knock in many establishments in places of learning
across Europe.
Paul Schmerling, 1791-1836 who was the founder of the first Palaeontology
study in Belgium had the same reaction from the public and Universities when
he discovered seven human skulls and other linked artefacts in caves at
Engis The skulls in question were mixed in with the remains of mammoth and
rhino bones which suggests strongly that they were in fact fossils. His claims,
which were in fact right, were rejected by the experts of the day. It was a hard
blow for him at the time but later it was Charles Lyell, an Englishman, who did
comment on their importance yet it was twenty five years before the experts
at the University of Liege passed the find at true and with evidence of such.
Evidence of such finds that were passed over by experts of the day did not
just happen in Europe but in England. Experts were not really interested and
if a few were they kept their mouths shut and their self-build reputations intact.

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Kents Cavern, near Torquay is a good example of English thinking at that

time and the evidence of flint working tools with the fossils of very extinct
animals in 1829 and was dismissed. A few years later, a skull discovered in
Gibraltar in 1846 was also dismissed by the archaeology community but I will
comment on this later.

Much of this could not care less attitude in the west may have had something
to do with Christian thinking at that time of debate on the thorny subject of
Evolution and I have no doubt at all that this was one reason why such finds
were dismissed, and even hide evidence of anything that looked human but
different. God you see, it is said, made Man in his image and the whole idea
that God had brow ridges, a larger un-shapely body and the remains looked
deformed was at this time a non-runner for upstanding Christians. What nailed
the whole thing was that the remains suggested strongly that this thing was
around before Adam and Eve ever came on the scene as humans, like us.
An example of such thinking I give here and it all started with a man
hunting rabbits with nets over the holes, went to get a rabbit out of the net
which had been carried deep into the hole by the fleeing animal.
This was on a hillside outside Aurignac, France and his hand touched
something that was not a rabbit but a large bone. He pulled out the bone,
followed by the rabbit in the net which he dispatched then dug deeper into the
hole. This suggests he had nets, ferrets and a small digging spade and he
used the spade to good effect because he found a cave that was littered with
human bones. As this happened in 1852 the local mayor, who it turns out was
also the local doctor for the area, Dr.Amiel no less, he confirmed that there
was the remains belonged to seventeen humans of both sexes and all ages.
Being a good Christian, the mayor and a doctor he had the power to order a

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quick Christian burial down in the parish churchyard and as far as he and
everyone else was concerned that was the end of the matter.
Alas that was not to be because eight years later in 1860 when a
palaeontologist; Edouard Lartet asked the Church Sexton about the burial of
the bones, the man shrugged and said he knew nothing of any such burial
and if it happened he would have known. I suggest that he did know and did
not want the matter brought up again or the bones in the mass grave.
In 1844 and in 1858 two books were published that in time tended to throw a
spanner in the works of Early Human Research, such as it was at this time.
The first book Vestiges had to be published anonymously to protect the
author; Robert Chambers 1802-1844 and its full working title was called;
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, and the second and better known
book today was published fifteen years later by Charles Darwin; The Origin
Of Species and both caused uproar in many quarters across the reading
world.
Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection was almost beaten to the
post as an unpublished MMs by an Englishman by the name of Alfred Russel
Wallace, fourteen years younger than Darwin and a poor man at that, who
came up on the same track as Darwin. Wallace did write his book but made
the mistake of sending it to Darwin to read who was now living in Down House,
Down in Kent. The MMs from Wallace arrived with Darwin on the 26 th of June
1852. When Darwin opened and read the book he must have been shocked
because his own baby was still in stage five and both books, still unpublished
seemed to him to be almost replicas of one another. The rub for both men is
that their books had to be read and looked at closely by the committee of the
Linnean Society of London and read. The readings took place on the 1 st July
1858. It could well be that Darwin had friends on the committee where

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Wallace was not as well-known so it is possible that a nod and a wink was
given to Darwin and was told to prepare for publication and worked on stage
six as we today know it and the book, his book, was published on the 24th
November 1859. Whatever happened to Wallaces book I dont know.
In all from my research there were in fact three such books, published or
unpublished all on the same trail of evolution and all in a hurry to get there
first in the public eye. Darwin of course read Vestiges then slagged it off and
as the author of Vestiges was taking all the public and professional doubts
about content this took the focus of Darwin though he did have his critics.
The relations between Darwin, the public, Church and the apes soured and
science looked like it was in fact opposing religion, the Bible looked like just a
book and read in quotes and even some of the learned people of the day also
condemned Darwin and his book. Darwin had kicked hard, a wasps nest of
objection and his views on Evolution of human kind which I should point out
still lingers today. Soon the debate raged for and against Darwins theory of
Evolution across the world and before anyone could say, Ape Man the
Neanderthals were dragged into the hot debate and for many, classified in the
science world as a gorilla from Africa. No one at that time could of course
explain how a gorilla entered Europe, a small part of Asia and lived in caves
with burning fires?

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Above are two skulls form an African gorilla and in comparison to any
Neanderthal skulls the difference could not be missed even by the small
number of so called experts in the 1800s

Above is the Neanderthal skull (left) and a modern skull (right) so how anyone
could get it wrong even in those far off days is beyond me, unless of course
they had their own agenda?
Any past finds and new ones of Neanderthal skulls should show in part or
whole the larger brain case and of course the brow ridges that cannot be
missed and there is nothing ape like with it.

The first official Neanderthal Man was discovered by limestone workers

clearing a deep cave and very narrow ravine in the Neander Valley and where
the Dussel River flows and just a short distance from the Rhine at Dusseldorf.
Though this cave was large getting into it was difficult because it was 20m up
a steep cliff-side with the entrance around a meter. All the bones discovered
where down almost two meters in mud and it was likely that the whole

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skeleton when found but because they were looked on as modern bones or
animal bones to the quarry men they were dumped with other rocks and mud
into the quarry below.
It was around seven weeks that a few of the bones were discovered by a
school teacher as well as a skull cap and no evidence of any fossil animals
found with the few shattered bones left. This would mean that the remains
could not be placed in a geology time-lines bracket so ID was done by sight
only.
Hermann Schaaffhausen, Professor of Anatomy at the University of Bonn who
could confirm the remains were human but very old and also he presented his
facts in Bonn on the 4th February, 1857 and three years before Darwins book
was in fact published.
The professor was also able to establish that the limb bones were thick with
strong muscle attachments which suggested to him that whoever the man
was he was strong and used to heavy manual work and exercise. The strange
shape of the skull got more attention from him and he was able to say that it
was a normal shape but very different from modern day humans and not from
any race of skulls he had known.
His comments on the large brow ridges at first suggested large ape but he
knew that what he looked at was not an ape but from some primate human
from NW Europe that had even confronted the Romans when they invaded.
His dating of the timelines is wrong of course but what is important is that he
classified it as an ugly and strong human when living.

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So what we had then was the first Neanderthal uncovered and classified as
such but most of all, excepted as such.
From where had this early human come from and when?

New Genetic Phylogeny

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I can only suggest that DNA and RNA do give some of the answers
where we come from, but where the Neanderthals came from and where they
went is still in debate. Current animal and plant classification models are fairly
subjective in how they are set up and scientists had hoped that the newer
science of molecular biology would provide more objectivity to classification
systems. It was hoped that comparisons of the nucleotides of DNA or RNA
sequences or of amino acid sequences in proteins would yield more
consistent results that could be used to classify organisms with a high degree
of accuracy. However, according to an article in the January 1998 issue of
Science: hit this on the head and a bit of a blow to those that wanted it and
those that needed it to be true

Animal relationship derived from

these new molecular data sometimes
are very different from those implied
by older, classical evaluations of
morphology. Reconciling these
differences is a central challenge for
evolutionary biologists at present.
Growing evidence suggests that
phylogenies of animal phyla
constructed by the analysis of 18S
rRNA sequences may not be as
accurate as originally thought.
Inaccuracies may occur in molecular
phylogenies for a variety of reasons.

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Prior to analysis, the sequences of

corresponding genes from each
animal must be placed in register
(aligned) with each other so that
homologous sites within each
sequence can be compared.
However, sequence divergences
may be sufficiently large that
unambiguous alignments cannot be
achieved, and different alignments
may lead to different inferred
relationships. Additionally, the data
are often sufficiently noisy that there
may be a lack of strong statistical
support for important groupings.

I therefore needed to discusses a figure detailed similarities and

differences in 18s rRNA sequences which show that molluscs (scallops) are
more closely related to sea urchins than arthropods (brine shrimp). Of
course, this is not too surprising. Intuitively, a scallop seems more like a sea
urchin than a shrimp but a Neanderthal seems more human than an ape,
even upright ones from Africa. So, the 82% correlation between the scallop
and sea urchin is not surprising or that past and modern apes still look like
apes not human Here we have two different arthropods, a shrimp and an
scallop. How can a scallop be much more related to one type of arthropod

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and much less related to the other type of arthropod? Such a troubling
thought led the authors of the Science article to remark:

Different representative species, in this case brine shrimp or

tarantula for the arthropods, yield wildly different inferred
relationships among phyla. Both trees have strong bootstrap
support (percentage at node). . . The critical question is whether
current models of 18S rRNA evolution are sufficiently accurate
to successfully compensate for long branch attraction between
the animal phyla. Without knowing the correct tree ahead of time,
this question will be hard to answer. However, current models of
DNA substitution usually fit the data poorly .

Cytochrome C and other Proteins

There are many other interesting little problems concerning commonly

used phytogenic tracing genes and proteins. An example, mammalian and
amphibian "luteinizing hormone releasing hormone (LHRH) is identical.
However, birds, reptiles, and certain fish have a different type of LHRH. If this
were the case are humans therefore more closely related to frogs than to
birds? Not according to standard evolutionary phylogeny trees. Again, the
data does not match the classical theory in this particular situation so what do
we have left?
Calcitonin (lowers blood calcium levels in animals) is another protein
commonly used to determine phylogenies. Though humans differ from pigs by
18 of 32 amino acids, but by only 15 of 32 amino acids from the salmon. Are
we therefore more closely related to fish than to other mammals like the pig?

169

Cytochrome c is another famous phytogenic marker protein used to

determine evolutionary relationships. There is only a single amino acid
difference between human and chimp cytochrome c. and because of this,
many assume that the evolutionary link is obvious.
It is not I say because if it was re-worked with many other animals, this link
is not so obvious. Cytochrome c protein of a turtle is closer to a bird than it is
to a snake and a snake is closer to a human (14 variations) than it is to a
turtle (22 variations). Humans and horses, both being placental mammals,
are presumed to have shared a common ancestor with each other more
recently than they shared a common ancestor with a kangaroo (a
marsupial). So the evolutionist would expect the cytochrome c of a human to
be more similar to that of a horse than to that of a kangaroo. Yet, the
cytochrome c of the human varies in 12 places from that of a horse but only in
10 places from that of a kangaroo.5 Such discrepancies between traditional
phylogenies and those based on cytochrome c are well known. If that has got
you confused as it did me when I read this data you are not alone.

Ayala commented that:

"The cytochrome c phylogeny disagrees with the

traditional one in several instances, including the
following: the chicken appears to be related more closely
to the penguin than to ducks and pigeons; the turtle, a
reptile, appears to be related more closely to birds than to
the rattlesnake, and man and monkeys diverge from the

170

mammals before the marsupial kangaroo separates from

the placental mammals."

Even so, cytochrome c does seem to generally match the predictions of

common decent. However, there are some who think that the general
cytochrome c data presents some puzzles from a neo-Darwinian
perspective. First, the cytochromes of all the higher organisms (yeasts, plants,
insects, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals) exhibit an almost
equal degree of sequence divergence from the cytochrome of the bacteria
Rhodospirillum. The degree of divergence does not increase as one moves
up the scale of evolution but remains essentially uniform The following data
chart that compares the % homogeny of cytochrome c among various
creatures:

Chi

Neu

Tetra
S.

Hum mp- Hor Donk Mou Ca Lamp Mai ro-

Eugl pom

an

anze se

ey

se

rp rey

ze

spor

ena

hyme

be
e

a
88.

Human

--

100

78.
89.4 91.3

5
Chimpan
zee

66.
80.8

88.
100 -5

66.
80.8

88.5 88.5 --

99.0 94.2

63.7 67.3 56.6 47.5

7

81.
Horse

63.7 67.3 56.6 47.5

7

78.
89.4 91.3

63.
84.6

na

65.7 71.2 58.6 46.5

7

171

99.
Donkey

89.4 89.4

82.
--

95.2

94.
Mouse

91.3 91.3

64.
85.6
7

83.
95.2 --

66.
84.6

78.6 78.6

59.
82.5 83.5 --

81.6

6
81.
85.6 84.6
6

66.7 66.7

ora

57.

--

57.
68.3

70.8 --

58.

52.

51.

58.6 56.6

55.6
0

46.

44.

42.

46.5 48.5

48.5
0

54.5 48.5

57.6 54.5 --

70.8 57.6 45.5

47.5 47.5
mena

58.1 57.1 51.5 42.6

58.

64.
72.1 71.2

Euglena 56.6 56.6

Tetrahy

--

59.2
3

71.
67.3 67.3

pombe

59.2

65.7 65.7
7

S.

65.
63.7 63.7

59.2 68.3 55.6 48.5

59.
64.7 66.7

7
Neurosp

59.
--

63.
Maize

57.3 64.1 52.0 44.0

2

84.
Lamprey 80.8 80.8

65.7 71.2 56.6 48.5

7

81.
Carp

65.7 72.1 58.6 46.5

48.0

45.5 48.5 48.0 -6

In reviewing this chart, pay particular attention to the

tetrahymena. Tetrahymena are unicellular ciliated protozoans.
According to the theory of common decent, all creatures living today are
equally separated in time from their first common ancestor
(i.e.: single celled bacteria).

172

Even the bacteria that remain alive today have sustained mutations over
time as they maintained their similar morphology.
There is no reason not to suggest that the Neanderthals also had a
number of mutations thus producing something like Homo sapiens or to put a
finer point on it; modern humans of today because we should expect and not
be surprised when there is equal divergence between "simple" and
"complex".
If we think of it as spokes on a wheel with the central hub being the
common ancestor and the tips of each spoke representing a different
creature. The tip of each spoke is equally distant from the wheel hub as well
as many of the other spoke tips on the wheel. So obviously then, even if the
tip of one of the spokes was a single celled creature, like tetrahymena, this
creature would be expected to be equally distant from almost every other
creature on that wheel to include other single celled creatures as well as
multi-celled creatures like fish, corn, rabbits and humans.
Higher organisms, on the other hand, might be more similar to each other
due to a more recent separation from a common ancestor between them. For
example, humans and chimps are both equally different from bacteria, but
when compared with each other, their cytochrome c proteins are almost
identical but only one is human.
Thus, a more recent common ancestor seems quite logical as humans
and chimps simply share the same wheel spoke except that this spoke splits
at the very tip with humans and chimps sharing different tips.

Maximum Differences and Time

173

The data put forward by others does seem to generally match the theory
even if specific anomalies may be encountered on relatively "rare" occasions
in such cases as cytochrome c phylogenies.
There are a few problems with this scenario supporting the theory of common
decent. The problem might arise when one considers that mutation rates are
calculated on a per generation average and if we consider that the average
mutation rate for a given gene in all creatures, is about 1 x 10 mutations per
gene per generation. That would mean that a given gene will mutate only
one time in one million generations on average. As that single celled
organisms have a much shorter generation time than multi-celled organisms
on average.
A fair example, the bacteria E. coli have a minimum generation time of 20
minutes compared to the generation time of humans of around 20 years. With
a gene being mutated every 1 to 10 million generations in
E. coli, one might think this would be a long time. Each and every gene in an
E. coli lineage will get mutated once every 40 to 80 years. So, in one million
years, each gene will have suffered at least 10,000 mutations. Therefore if
we work out the data for the Neanderthals from 100,000 years to 30,000
years as a single human example there has to be some evidence somewhere
that matches the other suggested data from elsewhere for or against?
Cytochrome c phylogenies are generally based on analysis of certain subunits of cytochrome c which range in number of amino acids up to a maximum
of about 600 or so. This would translate into a minimum of at least 1,800
nucleic acids in DNA coding for this sub-unit of cytochrome c protein (3bp per
codon). Note that in the table above, the tetrahymena species are about 50%
different from all other creatures on the table. It seems then that all the
creatures would have experienced at least a 25% change in their genetic

174

codes from the time of common ancestor.

So how many generations would it take to achieve this 25% difference?
Taking 25% of 1,800 give us 450 mutations so let us say that the average
mutation rate is one mutation per 1,800 nucleic acids per one million
generations. For a steady state population of just one individual in each
generation it would take about 450 million generations to get a 25% difference
from the common ancestor. With a generation time of 20 minutes (i.e.: E. coli),
that works out to be about 342,000 years. So, for bacteria, the 25%
difference from the common ancestor cytochrome c, might have been
achieved relatively rapidly given the evolutionary time frame. Unless
something speeded up the mutations of the Neanderthals?

Functional Differences

The question is then, if bacteria can achieve such relatively rapid neutral
genetic drift, why are they not more wide ranging in their cytochrome c
sequences?
It seems that if these cytochrome c sequence differences were really
neutral differences, that various bacterial groups, colonies, and species,
would cover a rather large range of possible cytochrome c sequences potentially to include that of mammals.

Why are they then so uniformly separated from all other "higher" species
unless the cytochrome sequences are functionally based and therefore
statically different due to the various functional needs of creatures that inhabit
different environments? Questions on Questions if you try to work it out and

175

the answers I discovered are not simple, some doubtful.

Bacteria are thought to share a common ancestor with creatures as diverse
as snails, sponges, and fishes and this split from the common ancestry of the
creatures is said to have happened over 3 billion years ago. About 600
million years ago there was the Cambrian explosion where all the major phyla
of living things are thought to have suddenly evolved but as far as I am
concerned the jury is still out on this one.
All of these creatures have all been around long enough and are diverse
enough to exhibit quite a range in cytochrome c variation. If this was the case
why then are their cytochrome c sequences so clustered and arranged in
such an orderly hierarchy and why don't bacteria, snails, fish, and sponges
cover a more random range of cytochrome c sequence variation if these
variation possibilities are in fact neutral?
I am going to suggest that the clustered differences that are seen in genes
and protein sequences, such cytochrome c, are the result of differences in
function that actually benefit the various organisms according to their different
individual needs.
If the differences were in fact neutral differences, there could be a vast
overlap by now with complete blurring of species' cytochrome c boundaries
and even between species as obviously different as humans and bacteria.
Sequence differences may not be so much the result of differences due to
random mutation over time as they are due to differences in the functional
needs of different creatures.
Much the same can be said of most if not all phylogenies that are based on
genotypic differences between all living things but evidence of such is lacking
as fact.
I have considered that if either humans or bacteria would be better served by

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a different sequence for a particular function this different sequence would be

rapidly evolved - especially in bacteria but if the human sequence for
cytochrome c would better serve E. coli bacteria than their current fairly
similar type of cytochrome c, how can an evolutionist say that E. coli would
have very much trouble at all evolving the human sequence?
Sequences remain consistently different over a significant real time line,
observation (over a million generations for bacteria at least) is very good
evidence that the differences in DNA character sequencing are based in
differences of functional need, not evolutionary heritage, unless something
happened to change this 30,000 years ago in Europe.

Nested Hierarchical Patterns and Common Descent

Then, there is also the argument that the nested hierarchical pattern, by
itself, supports the theory of common descent - even if it is known that
intelligent design had to have been involved. Regardless of the involvement
of intelligent design or not, the simple presence of the pattern is argument
enough to support the theory of common descent - or is it?

Parts of the Tree of Life

Another interesting question concerns the notion that a nested hierarchical

pattern is present throughout the tree of life. This doesn't seem to be the
case. It seems as though the roots of the tree do not show a nested
pattern. This means that the evolutionary theory has to be able to explain
both nested and non-nested patterns in the tree of life.

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In this line consider the fairly recent comments from Elizabeth Pennisi in a
1999 Science article entitled, "Is it Time to Uproot the Tree of Life?"

"A year ago, biologists looking over newly

sequenced genomes from more than a dozen
microorganisms thought these data might support
the accepted plot lines of life's early history. But
what they saw confounded them. Comparisons of
the genomes then available not only didn't clarify
the picture of how life's major groupings evolved,
they confused it. And now, with an additional eight
microbial sequences in hand, the situation has
gotten even more confusing . . . Many evolutionary
biologists had thought they could roughly see the
beginnings of life's three kingdoms . . . When full
DNA sequences opened the way to comparing
other kinds of genes, researchers expected that
they would simply add detail to this tree. But
"nothing could be further from the truth," says
Claire Fraser, head of The Institute for Genomic
Research (TIGR) in Rockville, Maryland. Instead,
the comparisons have yielded many versions of
the tree of life that differ from the rRNA tree and
conflict with each other as well .

Such problems were not completely unexpected. Earlier, in 1993,

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Patterson, Williams, and Humphries, scientists with the British Museum,

reached the following conclusion in their review of the congruence between
molecular and morphologic phylogenies:

As morphologists with high hopes of molecular

systematics, we end this survey with our hopes
dampened. Congruence between molecular
phylogenies is as elusive as it is in morphology and
as it is between molecules and morphology. Partly
because of morphologys long history, congruence
between morphological phylogenies is the exception
rather than the rule. With molecular phylogenies, all
generated within the last couple of decades, the
situation is little better. Many cases of incongruence
between molecular phylogenies are documented
above; and when a consensus of all trees within 1%
of the shortest in a parsimony analysis is published
structure or resolution tends to evaporate.

In 1998 biologist Carl Woese, who was an early pioneer in producing

rRNA-based phylogenetic trees, concluded:

"No consistent organismal

phylogeny has emerged from the
many individual protein phylogenies
so far produced.

179

Phylogenetic incongruities can

be seen everywhere in the universal
tree, from its root to the major
branchings within and among the
various taxa to the makeup of the
primary groupings themselves. Yet
there is no consistent alternative to
the rRNA phylogeny, and that
phylogeny is supported by a number
of fundamental genes... For
example... different (related) aaRSs
root that tree differently...
Exceptions to the topology of the
rRNA tree such as these are
sufficiently frequent and statistically
solid that they can be neither
overlooked nor trivially dismissed on
methodological grounds. Collectively,
these conflicting gene histories are
so convoluted that lateral gene
transfer is their only reasonable
explanation.

In 1999, Michael Lynch noted in "The Age and Relationships of the Major
Animal Phyla" that:

180

Clarification of the phylogenetic

relationships of the major animal
phyla has been an elusive problem,
with analyses based on different
genes and even different analyses
based on the same genes yielding a
diversity of phylogenetic trees.

In 1999 Philippe and Forterre wrote an article entitled, "The rooting of the
universal tree of life is not reliable" in which they made the following
comments:

"The addition of new sequences

to data sets has often turned
apparently reasonable phylogenies
into confused ones. . . In general, the
two prokaryotic domains were not
monophyletic with several aberrant
groupings at different levels of the
tree. Furthermore, the respective
phylogenies contradicted each others,
so that various ad hoc scenarios
(paralogy or lateral gene transfer)
must be proposed in order to obtain
the traditional Archaebacteria-

181

Eukaryota sisterhood."

Another 1999 Science article by Stiller and Hall:

"A precipitous acceptance of

such widespread LGT places
evolutionary biologists in the
untenable position of adopting an
falsifiable hypothesis, at least in
terms of the techniques of
comparative sequence analyses that
currently dominate the field of
molecular evolution. Any
phylogenetic pattern inferred from
any given gene can be fit to some
suitable mix of conventional
interspecies gene transmission and
interorganismal genetic promiscuity.
Thus, unless more reliable evidence
is uncovered, the scientific method
requires that we invoke the idea of
ubiquitous LGT only as a last resort."
And another 1999 Science article by Doolittle:

182

"Each new prokaryotic genome that appears contains dozens, if not

hundreds, of genes not found in the genomes of its nearest sequenced
relatives but found elsewhere among Bacteria or Archaea."

Just one more 1999 paper by Ann Miller, from the Yale Department of
Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, entitle, "The Evolution of
Phylogenetic Classification: From 16S rRNA to the Genomic Tree."

"The 16S rRNA tree is not an

organismal phylogenetic tree; it is a
gene tree. To move towards
organismal phylogeny, scientists
began creating trees based on other
proteins. In many cases, the other
phylogenies do confirm the rRNA
tree, but no one consistent
phylogeny has emerged."

More recently Kechris, wrote:

"Phylogenies constructed on
nitrogen fixation genes are not in
agreement with the tree-of-life based

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on 16S rRNA but do not conclusively

distinguish between gene loss and
LGT hypotheses. Using a series of
analyses on a set of complete
genomes, our results distinguish two
structurally distinct classes of MoFe
nitrogenises whose distribution cuts
across lines of vertical inheritance
and makes us believe that a
conclusive case for LGT has been
made."

There is even suggestion that lateral gene transfer (LGT) may be fairly
common between single-celled organisms and multicellular creatures. In a
2007 paper published in Science, Hotopp et. al., argue that there has been
"widespread lateral gene transfer" between endosymbiosis bacteria and
insects, and nematodes.

Consistent hierarchies, at least for the earliest branches of the supposed

"Tree of Life", are falling apart with additional evidence and I suggest almost
like a bad human post mortem being performed but unlike some researchers
still has a brain before removal. When a given organism has hundreds of
genes which none of its supposed nearest evolutionary relatives have,
evolutionists are left in a very perplexing position even though they have
some of the bones and hard guesses at dating a timeline.

In order to maintain their theory they must propose, in an ad hoc non-

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falsifiable manner, that these differences were not the result of evolution from
a common ancestor over time, but were in fact the result of lateral transfer of
pre-evolved sequences. This comment as far as I am concerned is bad
research without good cross reference with the notion of being a "science". It
is not science since it is not falsifiable.

It is nothing more than "just so" storytelling and those people, at least some
of them who work in genetics, tend to blind other researchers with their
advanced science jargon I have observed over the years. There is little
purpose to this when working with genetics and early humans because it does
not come across to me as people with knowledge of the subject but of people
who love quoting text book jargon to try and impress others. It fails badly of
course and even Neanderthals, if they were around today, would come to the
same conclusion that the writer of such data, from a biology point of view
knew little of his/her subject and a complete dip stick when it came down to
the study of the Neanderthal data. They quote what they have read and not
from what they should know.

So, evolutionary mechanisms are used to explain both hierarchical and

non-hierarchical patterns. No matter how high up the tree this lack of
hierarchy goes, the theory of evolution would still be used to explain the origin
of such patterns. But why?
For focal problems in the tree between branches at higher levels, a
change in mutation rate, or notions like convergence, divergence, or even
lateral gene transfer are used. This messes everything up. Evolutionists
would have a much stronger case if the sequences in question were actually
neutral with regard to phenotypic function, but they aren't. That is why the
notion of maybe was so popular for such a long time - until recently when

185

pseudo genes were actually found to be functional.

Some argue that this doesn't happen because the different sequences are
equally beneficial or "optimal" if applied to the same organism. That is
basically arguing that the differences are not in fact functional different, but
are actually neutral with respect to a functional optimum. Again, that makes
no sense in light of the evidence that the differences, in addition to the
similarities, are maintained over time. If this neutral argument were correct,
then the distribution of sequences would be more randomly distributed. In
other words, it would not be so neatly nested or filed away as research data
that is truth.
The evidence of functional maintenance over time is very strong evidence
that the nested differences are not so much the result of common ancestry as
they are the result of various functional needs of different organisms in
different environments. And, this is very much what we find in real life.
Even modern humans, when occupying different environments, will evolve
different genetic sequences for various protein products that are actually
functionally maintained over time due to various advantages that the
differences provide in the different environments.
There are many examples of this. And yet, when placed in the same
environment, the differences quickly disappear in the offspring over time.
Why? Because, there are indeed different optimal sequences when different
overall phenotypes interact with different environments.
The significant majority of differences between the cytochrome c of bacteria
and humans are functional. They are not neutral. If the human sequence
were put in a bacterium, it might survive ok, but it would not do as well. Over
time, its offspring would rapidly evolve back the original more optimum
sequence.

186

Hominid/Primate D-loop Sequence Analysis

A "few million years" might also be a problem for the

resolution of mitochondrial D-loop sequences. Consider that the
sequences used (two of them) to estimate the time of the most
recent common ancestor (MRCA) between modern humans,
Neandertals, and chimpanzees where each less than 400 base
pairs in length (333bp and 340bp respectively). The mutation
rate used by Krings et. al. was based on the a priori assumption
that modern humans split off from chimps some "4-5 million
years" ago. Based on this perhaps plausible, but indirect
assumption, a substitution rate of 0.94 x 10-7 substitutions per
site per year per lineage, was determined. Using this rate, the
MRCA between humans and Neandertals was calculated to
have lived about 465,000 years ago. The MRCA of modern
humans was calculated to have lived around 163,000 years ago.
And, the MRCA of chimps and bonobos was calculated to have
lived around 2,844,000 years ago. 3, 11, 13
Krings' figures are all fine and good except if we happen to
come across a more direct measurement of mtDNA. The
following work by Thomas Parsons published in the journal
Nature Genetics:

187

"The rate and pattern of

sequence substitutions in the
mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) control
region (CR) is of central importance
to studies of human evolution and to
forensic identity testing. Here, we
report a direct measurement of the
intergenerational substitution rate in
the human CR. We compared DNA
sequences of two CR hyper variable
segments from close maternal
relatives, from 134 independent
mtDNA lineages spanning 327
generational events. Ten
substitutions were observed,
resulting in an empirical rate of 1/33
generations, or 2.5/site/ Myr. This is
roughly twenty-fold higher than
estimates derived from phylogenetic
analyses. This disparity cannot be
accounted for simply by substitutions
at mutational hot spots, suggesting
additional factors that produce the
discrepancy between very near-term
and long-term apparent rates of
sequence divergence. The data also
indicate that extremely rapid

188

segregation of CR sequence variants

between generations is common in
humans, with a very small mtDNA
bottleneck. These results have
implications for forensic applications
and studies of human evolution . . .
The observed substitution rate
reported here is very high compared
to rates inferred from evolutionary
studies. A wide range of CR
substitution rates have been derived
from phylogenetic studies, spanning
roughly 0.025-0.26/site/Myr,
including confidence intervals. A
study yielding one of the faster
estimates gave the substitution rate
of the CR hyper variable regions as
0.118 +- 0.031/site/Myr. Assuming a
generation time of 20 years, this
corresponds to ~1/600 generations
and an age for the mtDNA MRCA of
133,000 y.a. Thus, our observation of
the substitution rate, 2.5/site/Myr, is
roughly 20-fold higher than would be
predicted from phylogenetic analyses.
Using our empirical rate to calibrate

189

the mtDNA molecular clock would

result in an age of the mtDNA MRCA
of only ~6,500 y.a., clearly
incompatible with the known age of
modern humans. Even
acknowledging that the MRCA of
mtDNA may be younger than the
MRCA of modern humans, it remains
implausible to explain the known
geographic distribution of mtDNA
sequence variation by human
migration that occurred only in the
last ~6,500 years."

Several other more real time studies dealing with historical

families have backed up Parson's findings.
So, it seems as though more direct real-time measurements of
mtDNA mutation rates show as much as a 20-fold higher
mutation rate than that which was used by Krings et al. Now
what does this mean - besides the obvious?
The sequences studied by Krings totaled 673 base pairs in
length. According to the rate determined by Parsons, every
single one of these base pairs would have changed more than
twice in one million years and at least once in 400,000 years.

190

Half of the base pairs would have mutated at least once in

200,000 years. And yet, humans are separated by only about
95 or so substitution differences from chimps? What is wrong
with this picture? Each substitution difference (in a sequence
some 673 base pairs in length) takes an average of 600 years to
achieve. Taking into account that each lineage would build up
substitution differences separately, in 600 years there would be
around two substitution difference between two lineages. This
seems to indicate that the common ancestor of humans and
chimps lived some 30,000 years ago (not 4 to 8 million years
ago as Krings et al., suggest - based on indirect methods).
Modern humans, being separated from each other by an
average of only 10 substitutions (according to Krings), appear to
have a common ancestor living some 3,000 years ago. Modern
Humans and Neandertals are separated by an average of only
35 substitution which to me seems to indicate a common
ancestor living only some 10,000 years ago.!

Reasonable Explanation?

"It should be noted that molecular phylogenies are constructed on the

basis of certain evolutionary assumptions. The tree that is presented is
chosen from a forest of alternatives, typically on the assumption of maximum
parsimony. That is, the tree that is selected is the one that reflects the least
amount of presumed evolutionary change. But, if the assumption of maximum
parsimony fails to fit the data, it can be jettisoned in favour of another."

191

In other words, any result can be accommodated by the theory by revising

one or more of the underlying assumptions but not proven.
Even if a morphological phylogeny was matched closely by multiple
molecular phylogenies, that would not prove that the groups in question
descended from a common ancestor.
The molecular differences could be linked to the morphological differences
for some other reason. For example, all of the living organisms on this planet
live in a relatively similar environment. All use the same water, breathe the
same air, and eat the same basic foods for building blocks and energy. Is it
not reasonable to assume that a similar environment requires at least some
similarities in the creatures that utilize it for survival?
Nothing lives to itself. All living things are dependent upon other living
things. If they were not molecularly and thus genetically compatible, nothing
would survive very long. The "cycle of life" is dependent upon this fact. There
would be no cycle if the basic building blocks of the creatures involved were
not interchangeable with each other. Considering this need, it seems
reasonable to assume that those creatures that share the most similar
environments, body plans, and physiology would also have the most similar
needs and thus the most similar genetic and molecular machineries.
Biologist Leonard Brand makes this point quite eloquently in the following
excerpt:

"Anatomy is not independent of

biochemistry. Creatures similar anatomically are likely to
be similar physiologically. Those similar in physiology
are, in general, likely to be similar in biochemistry,

192

whether they evolved or were designed. An alternate,

interventionist hypothesis is that the cytochrome c
molecules in various groups of organisms are different
(and always have been different) for functional
reasons. Not enough mutations have occurred in these
molecules to blur the distinct grouping evident. If we do
not base our conclusions on the a priori assumption of
mega evolution, all the data really tell us is that the
organisms fall into nested groups without any indication
of intermediates or overlapping of groups, and without
indicating ancestor/descendant relationships."

So, classification models of living things that are based on molecular

similarities and differences are quite limited as far as their use as
evidence of common ancestry beyond very recent times. Many
differences that are maintained seem to be function based. Because of
this, certain differences in sequences cannot be used as a "molecular
clock" since natural selection fixes certain sequences based on
functional needs so that random drift is not allowed. Beyond this, very
different phylogenetic relationships can be hypothesized depending
upon which sequence is subjectively chosen for analysis. These
different trees are often outright incompatible with each other or, at
best, inconclusive and that means no matter how good the genetic
research has been when it comes down to the DNA of Neanderthal
Man and what is called modern humans today there is room for doubt

193

because I am off the opinion that they are one in the same, only one
mutated big time.

It seems that in the case of Neanderthal Man there is differences of

opinion but before I go into that I want to go over what we know or think
we know about the Neanderthals in Europe.

- Sima de los Huesos, near Atapuerca, Spain

A cave full of bones, including at least 24 near-humans and this was a deep
crack, not a comfortable shelter which does not appear to be an animal den,
or the bodies may have been put there intentionally.
These first group of bones dated about 0.3 mya (300,000 ya) with a mixture of
features of (1) H. heidelbergensis.
(2) and of Neanderthals.
The bones were very variable from individual to individual with different
features mixed in different individuals and at first suggest that the
Neanderthals evolved from H. heidelbergensis rather than being a distinctly
different population.

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However I should point out similarly intermediate, hard-to-classify individuals

have been found elsewhere around Europe during this general period

By about 127,000, these early humans with a fairly consistent suite of

physical traits lived all over Europe but in small groups and numbers. For
the benefit of this research I call them, Neanderthals after the German name
of the Neander valley, where the first one was found so enter Homo
neanderthalensis.
Neanderthals are found only in Europe and my research does show that
H. heidelbergensis continued in Africa and Asia without developing the
Neanderthal features thus again suggesting that the Neanderthals came from
another source and place.
It has been suggested by others over the years through some recent genetic
work indicates that there are few or no Neanderthal genes in modern
Europeans ,instead, all modern humans apparently descend from a fairly
small population of H. heidelbergensis in Africa.
I have to disagree strongly with the view and believe the evidence points at
Neanderthals being the first modern human followed by Cro-Magnon Man
but l will get to this later during the first early Cro-Magnon timeline.
The European Neanderthals, the Asian H. erectus, and probably the Asian H.
heidelbergensis all eventually went extinct only about 30,000 years ago dead
branches on our family tree but it was Homo Neanderthals that lived longer in
Europe that eithers H.erectus or Heidelbergensis.

Thankfully we happen to know a something about the Neanderthals because

they lived relatively recently and in Europe, where lots of
paleoanthropologists have been working since the field work began.

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Some features of Neanderthals - cranial features, large brains, larger on

average than modern humans .1245 to 1740 cc, averaging 1520 cc
H. heidelbergensis at 1200-1300 cc and modern H. sapiens at 1000 to 2000
cc, averaging 1400 cc
Some researchers think maybe Neanderthals' larger brains simply reflect
greater overall body mass than modern humans?
Yes there was a rounded, more inflated braincase but shape is still longer
and lower than modern H. sapiens. Occipital bun, rather than occipital torus unlike the occipital torus, the occipital bun is not a thickening of the bone,
instead, it is just a part of the braincase that bulges out - gives a rounder
shape to the lower back of the cranium, compared to the more sharply angled
shape of H. heidelbergensis
Low forehead of course thin cranial bones, unlike H. heidelbergensis.
Facial features
Large, heavily-built face - Face is pulled forward relative to braincase this
and the massive face itself leave space for larger sinuses separating the brain
a bit from the path of cold air entering the nose thought to be an adaptation to
cold climate in Europe yet so far the evidence is weak.

The massive brow ridges but hollow, containing sinuses, rather than solid
bone matter and again, may be an adaptation to lose less heat from the brain.

Huge, beaky nose wide nasal opening nasal bones approach horizontal,
indicating a high, projecting curve at the top of the nose again one other
research claims that it may be an adaptation to cold, with more tissue to
warm incoming air before it blows by the brain and into the lungs

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Receding chin.

Dental formula features.

Small back teeth, especially the molars - molars (upper parts of the roots are
merged together into one big, tubular root) - Retro molar gap
probably just reflects the more forward position of the teeth relative to the
hinge of the jaw due to pulling the whole face forward
- Relatively large incisors with usually with very heavy, angled wear from
working hides by pulling or scraping with the front teeth.
There is often evidence of diagonal scratches on the front of the incisors from
cutting off meat or hide held in the front teeth but such
scratches are mostly from the individuals own upper left to lower right - just
as expected if a right-handed person were cutting something held in their front
teeth, cutting close to the teeth.

Body features;
Stocky, robust, very muscular bodies with leg bone shafts are thicker-walled
than modern H. sapiens and knee and hip joints larger than modern H.
sapiens.
This may have been to spread weight, shocks, wear over a larger area
should withstand heavy use better with more muscular scapulae (shoulder
joints) than H. sapiens and strong arms.

Barrel-chested:
deep, round torso - typical of modern populations that are adapted to cold

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climates and/or high elevations - increases lung capacity, thus oxygen intake,
thus ability to support lots of muscle and
heavy activity and conserves heat by reducing surface area relative to volume
of tissue in the torso.
Short extremities in particular, low index length of tibia divided by length of
femur that is, lower leg is short relative to upper leg.
In modern humans, lower crural indices are strongly correlated to populations
that have long lived in cold climates - stumpy limbs conserve more heat; long
limbs radiate more heat - Neanderthals crural indices are like the most
extreme known for modern humans: Laps, who live in the arctic Overall,
many Neanderthal features seem to reflect selection pressures from very cold
environments and this thinking is not surprising, given that Neanderthals
appeared as the Pleistocene ice ages were beginning and persisted almost
until they ended
The timeline during which Neanderthals evolved averaged much colder than
today, with drastic swings in global climate - by, say, 110,000 years ago,
Europe and North America were partially covered by glaciers and exposed
land would have been frigid, nearly Arctic grassland which supporting herds of
large animals from reindeer to woolly mammoths.
Climate change is nothing new to us or in fact to the first early humans
and our current climate in the last 10,000 years or so has been both unusually
warm and unusually stable.
At one time there were wild global temperature swings that went from high to
low in a matter of centuries - from relatively brief periods that were
substantially warmer than today - to longer periods that averaged much colder
than today and European data now suggest that some shifts from temperate
to subarctic climates occurred within as little as 25 years!

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Neanderthal culture;

Again debate of what is culture and I do not believe as others do and

broadcast it off the top of their heads that that the Neanderthals ever had a
working culture.
One must not forget that H. ergaster and early H. heidelbergensis made
mode 2 Acheulean style of stone tools - 1.6 0.3 mya - This is referred to as
the Old Stone Age in Africa, or the Lower Paleolithic period in
Europe but you could not call it a culture as such. A timeline or period yes,
culture no.
Late H. heidelbergensis in both Africa and Europe, as well as the
Neanderthals in Europe, made better stone tools than before - starting around
0.3 mya - emphasizing flake tools, typically with the shape of the flake
controlled by preparing the core, as in the Levalloisian technique
This is referred to as the Middle Stone Age (MSA) in Africa, or the Middle
Paleolithic period in Europe the European style of mode 3 tools that
Neanderthals made is called Mousterian

Features of Mousterian stone technology

It is based on carefully made flakes, rather than the cores from which the
flakes were removed with the classic technique of the Mousterian style is the
"Levalloisian technique" ,the shape of the flake is predetermined and
controlled by carefully preparing the core and the flake is then used as it is, or
slightly modified to make a projectile point, scraper, knife, drill, or other tool.
Some cores were then reshaped and another flake tool is struck off

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unlike the repetitive Acheulean style, in which just a couple of main forms
were made, the Mousterian style includes a wide variety of identifiably
different forms - this presumably means that some more complex thinking was
involved in making and using them.
Some Mousterian tools were apparently hafted (mounted in handles or on
shafts, probably of wood) - this is based on studies of wear on the stone parts
and it goes along with the finding that many of the tools have edges that
show wear typical of cutting wood ,later used that would be for making
handles, shafts, clubs, digging sticks, etc.
Stone use only would up to a few kilometres from its source, maybe an
afternoon's walk at most .
Other aspects of Neanderthal culture;

In almost all Neanderthal sites - no bone tools ,no decoration on tools

no beads, pendants, figurines, cave art, etc.
There is one known exception, a cave at Arcy-sur-Cure, France
lower levels contained one fragment of a cranium that has been identified as
Neanderthal dated very late for Neanderthals: about 33,000 ya the artefacts
included bone awls which included one that broke while it was being made
and was never finished.
This suggests that the Neanderthal residents of the cave made these tools,
rather than getting them from possible modern humans nearby - also bone
beads and pendants, with similar evidence of being made in the cave shows
that Neanderthals were biologically capable of this human-like behaviour that
is, working bone and most of all, the symbolic thinking involved in making and
using personal ornaments.

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Most groups of Neanderthals very rarely did it and this raises the question,
why not?
Of course the late date means that there could have been modern humans
sharing the region with these Neanderthals , small groups of Cro-Magnons
and some sort of commutations in force as well as sharing goods, food and
skins.
I suggest that some evidence does point at the Arcy-sur-Cure Neanderthals
coming into contact with more modern humans and picked up some of their
customs.
Neanderthals probably hunted large and small game - at least up to antelope
size with some regularity ,probably sometimes larger animals, including bison,
wild ox, etc.

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The evidence scant as it is at Neanderthal sites, was that there is a high

proportion of just one or a few large animal species - scavenging or
opportunistically killing old or weak animals would give a mix of
species more like the mix of live animals in the environment and
in many sites, there are many bones of mature animals

There would also have been scavenging or opportunistic killing would produce
more emphasis on young and old animals, which are more likely to have been
carnivore prey or to have died of other causes
and several sites with Mousterian tools seem to be places where herds of
large animals (including mammoths) were driven off cliffs and then butchered.
Other sites have unusually high proportions of meaty limb bones suggesting
that the Neanderthals hunted the animals cut off the best, most portable parts,
and brought only those back to a camp.
Even so they still did not apparently build shelters - many sites are inside
caves - but this is probably just because cave sites happen to be better
preserved and are easier to find than open-air sites that would feel safe and
much easier to defend.
Search the data as you will but I have found no evidence of postholes from
huts, hearths, or other constructed features, so if they didnt build huts or
hearths in the mouths of caves, maybe they didnt build them outside of caves.
From the known bone data Neanderthals tended to die young, often after
having survived multiple injuries in their lifetime, the oldest Neanderthal
skeletons were 40-45 years old at death yet they often show serious arthritis,
loss of teeth, etc., one from Shanidar (Iraq) had had the side of his face
crushed by a serious blow that healed, but probably left him blind in one eye
and paralyzed on one side (the arm and leg bones were atrophied) and there

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are many other Neanderthals with healed fractures, bone infections probably
caused by bad wounds, etc.
- It has often suggested that all these healed injuries and decrepit old people
indicate that Neanderthals cared for their old and sick. Boyd and Silk suggest
point out that non-human primates often survive serious injuries without help
from others but still, this does not explain why so many injuries?
One study suggests that the mix of injuries is similar to that found in rodeo
competitors but I doubt it so Neanderthals may have frequently had hostile
encounters with cow and horse-sized animals in herds while involved in a
major hunt. They would if they hunted the sorts of animals found at many of
their sites and used weapons that required them to get close, like spears.
Neanderthals sometimes buried their dead evidence is scanty to say the least
but in contrast to any previous homos, we suddenly have numerous finds of
whole bodies - not just scattered parts or very rare whole individuals and I find
that the only reasonable explanation for such a improvement in preservation
is that they began burying their dead.
The data on such bodies suggest they have been cared for post death and
found flexed, on their side not in random positions or as left by predators or
scavengers
When the archaeology community dont know the answer they always
suggest possible ritual treatments? This is some seem to have been buried
with stone tools and in one case (Shanidar, Iraq), pollen in the soil of the
burial suggested that the body was buried with flowers but this could suggest
that the smell of a decaying body was the reason for the flowers.
In another case, a set of mountain goat horns were found over the head but
these cases are all debatable because the said objects might have already
been in the soil - or maybe they got into the burial accidentally at the time. We

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just dont know in this case.

In Africa the fossil record for this period is not nearly as good as it is for
Europe because in Europe: by 100,000 ya, some populations of H.
heidelbergensis were developing Neanderthal traits - by 90,000 ya,
Neanderthals were a clearly distinctive variety (maybe species) in Europe by
contrast, in Africa.
- from about 300,000 to 200,000 ya, there were still populations similar to
Homo heidelbergensis
- none developed the distinctive Neanderthal-like traits - this makes sense if
the Neanderthal traits were adaptations to the extreme cold of Pleistocene
Europe
- from about 200,000 to 100,000 ya, African populations began looking more
like modern humans: Homo sapiens - higher, more rounded cranium in side
view - reduced browridges - more on this next time
- About 50,000 ya, anatomically modern Homo sapiens, with modern, humanlike culture, began spreading out of Africa - again, more on this next time they may have shared parts of Europe and the Middle East with the latest
Neanderthals - from about 40,000 to 30,000 ya - remaining physically distinct
- and mostly culturally distinct
- Arcy-sur-Cure around 33,000 ya may be a rare exception
- with Neanderthals maybe in contact with modern Homo sapiens
- and maybe adopting some of their cultural practices

- by 30,000 ya, the Neanderthals were gone

- What happened to the Neanderthals? - genetic studies indicate that they

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made little or no contribution to modern human populations - they probably

co-existed with distinctly different modern humans for a while in the Middle
East and Europe - but apparently did not interbreed with them much or at all
- so Homo sapiens apparently simply replaced them in Europe
- out-competed them?
- drove them to extinction?

- something similar happened in Asia

- H. heidelbergensis (or the Asian equivalent) disappeared - also apparently
making little or no genetic contribution to modern Homo sapiens in Asia - H.
erectus in Asia disappeared around the same time - coincidence?
- so, by about 30,000 ya, the only hominin left standing in Africa, Europe, or
Asia was Homo sapiens
- Next time we will look at the origins of these Homo sapiens in Africa, and
their spread over the rest of the world.

When I researched Huxleys work I was again taken by surprise because he

presented in detail his own research and most of it I tend to agree with. In
honour of the man I have included it below.

Huxleys research is worthwhile and not in any way is it a that far out
from what I am trying to do a cross reference on. The two skulls images
I have inserted and are in colour.
Ronnie Carleton 2012

FOSSIL REMAINS OF MAN

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Thomas Huxley
I HAVE endeavored to show, in the preceding Essay, that the ANTHROPINI,
or Man Family, form a very well defined group of the Primates, between which
and the immediately following Family, the CATARHINI, there is, in the existing
world, the same entire absence of any transitional form or connecting link, as
between the CATARHINI and PLATYRHINI.

It is a commonly received doctrine, however, that the structural intervals

between the various existing modifications of organic beings may be
diminished, or even obliterated, if we take into account the long and varied
succession of animals and plants which have preceded those now living and
which are known to us only by their fossilized remains. How far this doctrine is
well based, how far, on the other hand, as our knowledge at present stands, it
is an overstatement of the real facts of the case, and an exaggeration of the
conclusions fairly deducible from them, are points of grave importance, but
into the discussion of which I do not, at present, propose to enter. It is enough
that such a view of the relations of extinct to living beings has been
propounded, to lead us to inquire, with anxiety, how far the recent discoveries
of human remains in a fossil state bear out, or oppose, that view.

I shall confine myself, in discussing this question, to those fragmentary

Human skulls from the caves of Engis in the valley of the Meuse, in Belgium,
and of the Neanderthal near Dusseldorf, the geological relations of which
have been examined with so much care by Sir Charles Lyell; upon whose
high authority I shall take it for granted, that the Engis skull belonged to a
contemporary of the Mammoth ('Elephas primigenius') and of the woolly
Rhinoceros ('Rhinoceros tichorhinus'), with the bones of which it was found

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associated; and that the Neanderthal skull is of great, though uncertain,

antiquity. Whatever be the geological age of the latter skull, I conceive it is
quite safe (on the ordinary principles of paleontological reasoning) to assume
that the former takes us to, at least, the further side of the vague biological
limit, which separates the present geological epoch from that which
immediately preceded it. And there can be no doubt that the physical
geography of Europe has changed wonderfully, since the bones of Men and
Mammoths, Hyenas and Rhinoceroses were washed pell-mell into the cave of
Engis.

The skull from the cave of Engis was originally discovered by Professor
Schmerling, and was described by him, together with other human remains
disinterred at the same time, in his valuable work, 'Recherches sur les
ossemens fossiles decouverts dans les cavernes de la Province de Liege',
published in 1833 (p. 59, 'et seq.'), from which the following paragraphs are
extracted, the precise expressions of the author being, as far as possible,
preserved.

"In the first place, I must remark that these human remains, which are in my
possession, are characterized like thousands of bones which I have lately
been disinterring, by the extent of the decomposition which they have
undergone, which is precisely the same as that of the extinct species: all, with
a few exceptions, are broken; some few are rounded, as is frequently found to
be the case in fossil remains of other species. The fractures are vertical or
oblique; none of them are eroded; their colour does not differ from that of
other fossil bones, and varies from whitish yellow to blackish. All are lighter
than recent bones, with the exception of those which have a calcareous
incrustation, and the cavities of which are filled with such matter.

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"The cranium which I have caused to be figured, Plate I., Figs. 1, 2, is that of
an old person. The sutures are beginning to be effaced: all the facial bones
are wanting, and of the temporal bones only a fragment of that of the right
side is preserved.

"The face and the base of the cranium had been detached before the skull
was deposited in the cave, for we were unable to find those parts, though the
whole cavern was regularly searched. The cranium was met with at a depth of
a metre and a half [five feet nearly], hidden under an osseous breccia,
composed of the remains of small animals, and containing one rhinoceros
tusk, with several teeth of horses and of ruminants. This breccia, which has
been spoken of above (p. 30), was a metre [3 1/4 feet about] wide, and rose
to the height of a metre and a half above the floor of the cavern, to the walls of
which it adhered strongly.

"The earth which contained this human skull exhibited no trace of disturbance:
teeth of rhinoceros, horse, hyaena, and bear, surrounded it on all sides.

"The famous Blumenbach 1 has directed attention to the differences

presented by the form and the dimensions of human crania of different races.
This important work would have assisted us greatly, if the face, a part
essential for the determination of race, with more or less accuracy, had not
been wanting in our fossil cranium.

"We are convinced that even if the skull had been complete, it would not have
been possible to pronounce, with certainty, upon a single specimen; for
individual variations are so numerous in the crania of one and the same race,

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that one cannot, without laying oneself open to large chances of error, draw
any inference from a single fragment of a cranium to the general form of the
head to which it belonged.

"Nevertheless, in order to neglect no point respecting the form of this fossil

skull, we may observe that, from the first, the elongated and narrow form of
the forehead attracted our attention.

"In fact, the slight elevation of the frontal, its narrowness, and the form of the
orbit, approximate it more nearly to the cranium of an Ethiopian than to that of
an European: the elongated form and the produced occiput are also
characters which we believe to be observable in our fossil cranium; but to
remove all doubt upon that subject I have caused the contours of the cranium
of an European and of an Ethiopian to be drawn and the foreheads
represented. Plate II., Figs. 1 and 2, and, in the same plate, Figs. 3 and 4, will
render the differences easily distinguishable; and a single glance at the
figures will be more instructive than a long and wearisome description.

"At whatever conclusion we may arrive as to the origin of the man from
whence this fossil skull proceeded, we may express an opinion without
exposing ourselves to a fruitless controversy. Each may adopt the hypothesis
which seems to him most probable: for my own part, I hold it to be
demonstrated that this cranium has belonged to a person of limited intellectual
faculties, and we conclude thence that it belonged to a man of a low degree of
civilization: a deduction which is borne out by contrasting the capacity of the
frontal with that of the occipital region.

"Another cranium of a young individual was discovered in the floor of the

cavern beside the tooth of an elephant; the skull was entire when found, but

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the moment it was lifted it fell into pieces, which I have not, as yet, been able
to put together again. But I have represented the bones of the upper jaw,
Plate I., Fig. 5. The state of the alveoli and the teeth, shows that the molars
had not yet pierced the gum. Detached milk molars and some fragments of a
human skull proceed from this same place. The Figure 3 represents a human
superior incisor tooth, the size of which is truly remarkable. 2

"Figure 4 is a fragment of a superior maxillary bone, the molar teeth of which

are worn down to the roots.

"I possess two vertebrae, a first and last dorsal.

"A clavicle of the left side (see Plate III., Fig. 1); although it belonged to a
young individual, this bone shows that he must have been of great stature. 3

"Two fragments of the radius, badly preserved, do not indicate that the height
of the man, to whom they belonged, exceeded five feet and a half.

"As to the remains of the upper extremities, those which are in my possession
consist merely of a fragment of an ulna and of a radius (Plate III., Figs. 5 and
6).

"Figure 2, Plate IV., represents a metacarpal bone, contained in the breccia,

of which we have spoken; it was found in the lower part above the cranium:
add to this some metacarpal bones, found at very different distances, half-adozen metatarsals, three phalanges of the hand, and one of the foot.

"This is a brief enumeration of the remains of human bones collected in the

cavern of Engis, which has preserved for us the remains of three individuals,

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surrounded by those of the Elephant, of the Rhinoceros, and of Carnivora of

species unknown in the present creation."

From the cave of Engihoul, opposite that of Engis, on the right bank of the
Meuse, Schmerling obtained the remains of three other individuals of Man,
among which were only two fragments of parietal bones, but many bones of
the extremities. In one case a broken fragment of an ulna was soldered to a
like fragment of a radius by stalagmite, a condition frequently observed
among the bones of the Cave Bear ('Ursus spelaeus'), found in the Belgian
caverns.

It was in the cavern of Engis that Professor Schmerling found, incrusted with
stalagmite and joined to a stone, the pointed bone implement, which he has
figured in Fig. 7 of his Plate XXXVI., and worked flints were found by him in all
those Belgian caves, which contained an abundance of fossil bones.

A short letter from M. Geoffrey St. Hilaire, published in the 'Comptes Rendus'
of the Academy of Sciences of Paris, for July 2nd, 1838, speaks of a visit (and
apparently a very hasty one) paid to the collection of Professor 'Schmidt'
(which is presumably a misprint for Schmerling) at Liege. The writer briefly
criticizes the drawings which illustrate Schmerling's work, and affirms that the
"human cranium is a little longer than it is represented" in Schmerling's figure.
The only other remark worth quoting is this:"The aspect of the human bones
differs little from that of the cave bones, with which we are familiar, and of
which there is a considerable collection in the same place. With respect to
their special forms, compared with those of the varieties of recent human
crania, few 'certain' conclusions can be put forward; for much greater
differences exist between the different specimens of well-characterized

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varieties, than between the fossil cranium of Liege and that of one of those
varieties selected as a term of comparison."

Geoffrey St. Hilaire's remarks are, it will be observed, little but an echo of the
philosophic doubts of the describer and discoverer of the remains. As to the
critique upon Schmerling's figures, I find that the side view given by the latter
is really about 3/10ths of an inch shorter than the original, and that the front
view is diminished to about the same extent. Otherwise the representation is
not, in any way, inaccurate, but corresponds very well with the cast which is in
my possession.

A piece of the occipital bone, which Schmerling seems to have missed, has
since been fitted on to the rest of the cranium by an accomplished anatomist,
Dr. Spring, of Liege, under whose direction an excellent plaster cast was
made for Sir Charles Lyell. It is upon and from a duplicate of that cast that my
own observations and the accompanying figures, the outlines of which are
copied from very accurate Camera lucida drawings, by my friend Mr. Busk,
reduced to one-half of the natural size, are made.

As Professor Schmerling observes, the base of the skull is destroyed, and the
facial bones are entirely absent; but the roof of the cranium, consisting of the
frontal, parietal, and the greater part of the occipital bones, as far as the
middle of the occipital foramen, is entire or nearly so. The left temporal bone
is wanting. Of the right temporal, the parts in the immediate neighbourhood of
the auditory foramen, the mastoid process, and a considerable portion of the
squamous element of the temporal are well preserved (Fig. 23).

The lines of fracture which remain between the coadjusted pieces of the skull,
and are faithfully displayed in Schmerling's figure, are readily traceable in the

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cast. The sutures are also discernible, but the complex disposition of their
serrations, shown in the figure, is not obvious in the cast. Though the ridges
which give attachment to muscles are not excessively prominent, they are
well marked, and taken together with the apparently well developed frontal
sinuses, and the condition of the sutures, leave no doubt on my mind that the
skull is that of an adult, if not middle-aged man.

The extreme length of the skull is 7.7 inches. Its extreme breadth, which
corresponds very nearly with the interval between the parietal protuberances,
is not more than 5.4 inches. The proportion of the length to the breadth is
therefore very nearly as 100 to 70. If a line be drawn from the point at which
the brow curves in towards the root of the nose, and which is called the
'glabella' ('a') (Fig. 23), to the occipital protuberance ('b'), and the distance to
the highest point of the arch of the skull be measured perpendicularly from
this line, it will be found to be 4.75 inches. Viewed from above, A, the
forehead presents an evenly rounded curve, and passes into the contour of
the sides and back of the skull, which describes a tolerably regular elliptical
curve.

The front view shows that the roof of the skull was very regularly and
elegantly arched in the transverse direction, and that the transverse diameter
was a little less below the parietal protuberances, than above them. The
forehead cannot be called narrow in relation to the rest of the skull, nor can it
be called a retreating forehead; on the contrary, the anterior-posterior contour
of the skull is well arched, so that the distance along that contour, from the
nasal depression to the occipital protuberance, measures about 13.75 inches.
The transverse arc of the skull, measured from one auditory foramen to the

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other, across the middle of the sagittal suture, is about 13 inches. The sagittal
suture itself is 5.5 inches long.

The supraciliary prominences or brow-ridges (on each side of 'a', Fig. 23) are
well, but not excessively, developed, and are separated by a median
depression. Their principal elevation is disposed so obliquely that I judge them
to be due to large frontal sinuses.

If a line joining the glabella and the occipital protuberance ('a', 'b', Fig. 23) be
made horizontal, no part of the occipital region projects more than 1/10th of
an inch behind the posterior extremity of that line, and the upper edge of the
auditory foramen ('c') is almost in contact with a line drawn parallel with this
upon the outer surface of the skull.

A transverse line drawn from one auditory foramen to the other traverses, as
usual, the forepart of the occipital foramen. The capacity of the interior of this
fragmentary skull has not been ascertained.

The history of the Human remains from the cavern in the Neanderthal may
best be given in the words of their original describer, Dr Schaaffhausen 4, as
translated by Mr. Busk.

"In the early part of the year 1857, a human skeleton was discovered in a
limestone cave in the Neanderthal, near Hochdal, between Dusseldorf and
Elberfeld. Of this, however, I was unable to procure more than a plaster cast
of the cranium, taken at Elberfeld, from which I drew up an account of its
remarkable conformation, which was, in the first instance, read on the 4th of
February, 1857, at the meeting of the Lower Rhine Medical and Natural
History Society, at Bonn.

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Subsequently Dr. Fuhlrott, to whom science is indebted for the preservation of

these bones, which were not at first regarded as human, and into whose
possession they afterwards came, brought the cranium from Elberfeld to
Bonn, and entrusted it to me for more accurate anatomical examination. At
the General Meeting of the Natural History Society of Prussian Rhineland and
Westphalia, at Bonn, on the 2nd of June, 1857, Dr. Fuhlrott himself gave a
full account of the locality, and of the circumstances under which the
discovery was made.

He was of opinion that the bones might be regarded as fossil; and in coming
to this conclusion, he laid especial stress upon the existence of dendritic
deposits, with which their surface was covered, and which were first noticed
upon them by Professor Meyer. To this communication I appended a brief
report on the results of my anatomical examination of the bones. The
conclusions at which I arrived were:1st. That the extraordinary form of the
skull was due to a natural conformation hitherto not known to exist, even in
the most barbarous races. 2nd. That these remarkable human remains
belonged to a period antecedent to the time of the Celts and Germans, and
were in all probability derived from one of the wild races of North-western
Europe, spoken of by Latin writers; and which were encountered as
autochthones by the German immigrants. And 3rdly. That it was beyond doubt
that these human relics were traceable to a period at which the latest animals
of the diluvium still existed; but that no proof of this assumption, nor
consequently of their so-termed 'fossil' condition, was afforded by the
circumstances under which the bones were discovered.

"As Dr. Fuhlrott has not yet published his description of these circumstances, I
borrow the following account of them from one of his letters. 'A small cave or

215

grotto, high enough to admit a man, and about 15 feet deep from the
entrance, which is 7 or 8 feet wide, exists in the southern wall of the gorge of
the Neanderthal, as it is termed, at a distance of about 100 feet from the
Dussel, and about 60 feet above the bottom of the valley. In its earlier and
uninjured condition, this cavern opened upon a narrow plateau lying in front of
it, and from which the rocky wall descended almost perpendicularly into the
river. It could be reached, though with difficulty, from above. The uneven floor
was covered to a thickness of 4 or 5 feet with a deposit of mud, sparingly
intermixed with rounded fragments of chert. In the removing of this deposit,
the bones were discovered. The skull was first noticed, placed nearest to the
entrance of the cavern; and further in, the other bones, lying in the same
horizontal plane. Of this I was assured, in the most positive terms, by two
laborers who were employed to clear out the grotto, and who were
questioned by me on the spot. At first no idea was entertained of the bones
being human; and it was not till several weeks after their discovery that they
were recognized as such by me, and placed in security. But, as the
importance of the discovery was not at the time perceived, the labourers were
very careless in the collecting, and secured chiefly only the larger bones; and
to this circumstance it may be attributed that fragments merely of the probably
perfect skeleton came into my possession.'

"My anatomical examination of these bones afforded the following results:

"The cranium is of unusual size, and of a long elliptical form. A most

remarkable peculiarity is at once obvious in the extraordinary development of
the frontal sinuses, owing to which the supraciliary ridges, which coalesce
completely in the middle, are rendered so prominent, that the frontal bone
exhibits a considerable hollow or depression above, or rather behind them,

216

whilst a deep depression is also formed in the situation of the root of the nose.
The forehead is narrow and low, though the middle and hinder portions of the
cranial arch are well developed. Unfortunately, the fragment of the skull that
has been preserved consists only of the portion situated above the roof of the
orbits and the superior occipital ridges, which are greatly developed, and
almost conjoined so as to form a horizontal eminence. It includes almost the
whole of the frontal bone, both parietals, a small part of the squamous and the
upper-third of the occipital. The recently fractured surfaces show that the skull
was broken at the time of its disinterment. The cavity holds 16,876 grains of
water, whence its cubical contents may be estimated at 57.64 inches, or
1033.24 cubic centimeters. In making this estimation, the water is supposed
to stand on a level with the orbital plate of the frontal, with the deepest notch
in the squamous margin of the parietal, and with the superior semicircular
ridges of the occipital. Estimated in dried millet-seed, the contents equaled 31
ounces, Prussian Apothecaries' weight. The semicircular line indicating the
upper boundary of the attachment of the temporal muscle, though not very
strongly marked, ascends nevertheless to more than half the height of the
parietal bone. On the right supraciliary ridge is observable an oblique furrow
or depression, indicative of an injury received during life. 7

mm. 8

The length of the skull from the nasal

process of the frontal over the vertex
to the superior semicircular lines of the
occipital
12.0".

measures.............................303

(300)

217

Circumference over the orbital ridges and

the superior semicircular lines of the
occipital......................................590 (590) = 23.37" or
23".
Width of the frontal from the middle of
the temporal line on one side to the
same point on the opposite.....................104 (114) =
4.1"4.5".
Length of the frontal from the nasal.
process to the coronal suture..................133 (125) =
5.25"5".
Extreme width of the frontal sinuses...........25 (23) =
1.0"0.9".
Vertical height above a line joining the
deepest notches in the squamous border
of the parietals...............................70

= 2.75".

Width of hinder part of skull from one

parietal protuberance to the other.............138 (150) =
5.4"5.9"
Distance from the upper angle of the
occipital to the superior semicircular
lines..........................................51 (60) = 1.9"2.4".
Thickness of the bone at the parietal
protuberance...................................8.
at the angle of the occipital................9.
at the superior semicircular line of
the occipital..................................10

= 0.3"

218

"Besides the cranium, the following bones have been secured:

"1. Both thigh-bones, perfect. These, like the skull, and all the other bones,
are characterized by their unusual thickness, and the great development of all
the elevations and depressions for the attachment of muscles. In the
Anatomical Museum at Bonn, under the designation of 'Giant's-bones,' are
some recent thigh-bones, with which in thickness the foregoing pretty nearly
correspond, although they are shorter.

Giant's bones.

Fossil

bones.
mm.

mm.

Length.....................................542 = 21.4"......438 =
17.4"
Diameter of head of femur.................. 54 = 2.14".....
53 = 2.0"
"

of lower articular end, from

one condyle to the other................ 89 = 3.5"....... 87

= 3.4"
Diameter of femur in the middle............ 33 = 1.2".......
30 = 1.1"
"2. A perfect right humerus, whose size shows that it
belongs to the
thigh-bones.

mm.

Length.....................................312 = 12.3"
Thickness in the middle.................... 26 = 1.0"
Diameter of head........................... 49 = 1.9"

219

"Also a perfect right radius of corresponding dimensions, and the upper-third

of a right ulna corresponding to the humerus and radius.

"3. A left humerus of which the upper-third is wanting, and which is so much
slenderer than the right as apparently to belong to a distinct individual; a left
'ulna', which, though complete, is pathologically deformed, the coronoid
process being so much enlarged by bony growth, that flexure of the elbow
beyond a right angle must have been impossible; the anterior fossa of the
humerus for the reception of the coronoid process being also filled up with a
similar bony growth. At the same time, the olecranon is curved strongly
downwards. As the bone presents no sign of rachitic degeneration, it may be
supposed that an injury sustained during life was the cause of the anchylosis.
When the left ulna is compared with the right radius, it might at first sight be
concluded that the bones respectively belonged to different individuals, the
ulna being more than half an inch too short for articulation with a
corresponding radius. But it is clear that this shortening, as well as the
attenuation of the left humerus, are both consequent upon the pathological
condition above described.

"4. A left 'ilium', almost perfect, and belonging to the femur: a fragment of the
right 'scapula'; the anterior extremity of a rib of the right side; and the same
part of a rib of the left side; the hinder part of a rib of the right side; and lastly,
two hinder portions and one middle portion of ribs, which from their unusually
rounded shape, and abrupt curvature, more resemble the ribs of a
carnivorous animal than those of a man. Dr. H. v. Meyer, however, to whose
judgment I defer, will not venture to declare them to be ribs of any animal; and
it only remains to suppose that this abnormal condition has arisen from an
unusually powerful development of the thoracic muscles.

220

"The bones adhere strongly to the tongue, although, as proved by the use of
hydrochloric acid, the greater part of the cartilage is still retained in them,
which appears, however, to have undergone that transformation into gelatin
which has been observed by v. Bibra in fossil bones. The surface of all the
bones is in many spots covered with minute black specks, which, more
especially under a lens, are seen to be formed of very delicate 'dendrites'.
These deposits, which were first observed on the bones by Dr. Meyer, are
most distinct on the inner surface of the cranial bones. They consist of a
ferruginous compound, and, from their black colour, may be supposed to
contain manganese. Similar dendritic formations also occur, not infrequently,
on laminated rocks, and are usually found in minute fissures and cracks. At
the meeting of the Lower Rhine Society at Bonn, on the 1st April, 1857, Prof.
Meyer stated that he had noticed in the museum of Poppelsdorf similar
dendritic crystallizations on several fossil bones of animals, and particularly on
those of 'Ursus spelaeus', but still more abundantly and beautifully displayed
on the fossil bones and teeth of 'Equus adamiticus', 'Elephas primigenius',
etc., from the caves of Bolve and Sundwig. Faint indications of similar
'dendrites' were visible in a Roman skull from Siegburg; whilst other ancient
skulls, which had lain for centuries in the earth, presented no trace of them. 9

"The incipient formation of dendritic deposits, which were formerly regarded

as a sign of a truly fossil condition, is interesting. It has even been supposed
that in diluvial deposits the presence of 'dendrites' might be regarded as
affording a certain mark of distinction between bones mixed with the diluvium
at a somewhat later period and the true diluvial relics, to which alone it was
supposed that these deposits were confined. But I have long been convinced
that neither can the absence of 'dendrites' be regarded as indicative of recent

221

age, nor their presence as sufficient to establish the great antiquity of the
objects upon which they occur. I have myself noticed upon paper, which could
scarcely be more than a year old, dendritic deposits, which could not be
distinguished from those on fossil bones. Thus I possess a dog's skull from
the Roman colony of the neighboring Heddersheim, 'Castrum Hadrianum',
which is in no way distinguishable from the fossil bones from the Frankish
caves; it presents the same colour, and adheres to the tongue just as they do;
so that this character also, which, at a former meeting of German naturalists
at Bonn, gave rise to amusing scenes between Buckland and Schmerling, is
no longer of any value. In disputed cases, therefore, the condition of the bone
can scarcely afford the means for determining with certainty whether it be
fossil, that is to say, whether it belong to geological antiquity or to the
historical period.'

"As we cannot now look upon the primitive world as representing a wholly
different condition of things, from which no transition exists to the organic life
of the present time, the designation of 'fossil', as applied to 'a bone', has no
longer the sense it conveyed in the time of Cuvier. Sufficient grounds exist for
the assumption that man coexisted with the animals found in the 'diluvium';
and many a barbarous race may, before all historical time, have disappeared,
together with the animals of the ancient world, whilst the races whose
organization is improved have continued the genus. The bones which form
the subject of this paper present characters which, although not decisive as
regards a geological epoch, are, nevertheless, such as indicate a very high
antiquity. It may also be remarked that, common as is the occurrence of
diluvial animal bones in the muddy deposits of caverns, such remains have
not hitherto been met with in the caves of the Neanderthal; and that the

222

bones, which were covered by a deposit of mud not more than four or five feet
thick, and without any protective covering of stalagmite, have retained the
greatest part of their organic substance.

"These circumstances might be adduced against the probability of a

geological antiquity. Nor should we be justified in regarding the cranial
conformation as perhaps representing the most savage primitive type of the
human race, since crania exist among living savages, which, though not
exhibiting, such a remarkable conformation of the forehead, which gives the
skull somewhat the aspect of that of the large apes, still in other respects, as
for instance in the greater depth of the temporal fossae, the crest-like,
prominent temporal ridges, and a generally less capacious cranial cavity,
exhibit an equally low stage of development. There is no reason for supposing
that the deep frontal hollow is due to any artificial flattening, such as is
practiced in various modes by barbarous nations in the Old and New World.
The skull is quite symmetrical, and shows no indication of counter-pressure at
the occiput, whilst, according to Morton, in the Flat-heads of the Columbia, the
frontal and parietal bones are always unsymmetrical. Its conformation exhibits
the sparing development of the anterior part of the head which has been so
often observed in very ancient crania, and affords one of the most striking
proofs of the influence of culture and civilization on the form of the human
skull."

In a subsequent passage, Dr. Schaaffhausen remarks:

"There is no reason whatever for regarding the unusual development of the

frontal sinuses in the remarkable skull from the Neanderthal as an individual
or pathological deformity; it is unquestionably a typical race-character, and is

223

physiologically connected with the uncommon thickness of the other bones of

the skeleton, which exceeds by about one-half the usual proportions. This
expansion of the frontal sinuses, which are appendages of the air-passages,
also indicates an unusual force and power of endurance in the movements of
the body, as may be concluded from the size of all the ridges and processes
for the attachment of the muscles or bones. That this conclusion may be
drawn from the existence of large frontal sinuses, and a prominence of the
lower frontal region, is confirmed in many ways by other observations. By the
same characters, according to Pallas, the wild horse is distinguished from the
domesticated, and, according to Cuvier, the fossil cave-bear from every
recent species of bear, whilst, according to Roulin, the pig, which has become
wild in America, and regained a resemblance to the wild boar, is thus
distinguished from the same animal in the domesticated state, as is the
chamois from the goat; and, lastly, the bull-dog, which is characterized by its
large bones and strongly-developed muscles from every other kind of dog.
The estimation of the facial angle, the determination of which, according to
Professor Owen, is also difficult in the great apes, owing to the very prominent
supra-orbital ridges, in the present case is rendered still more difficult from the
absence both of the auditory opening and of the nasal spine. But if the proper
horizontal position of the skull be taken from the remaining portions of the
orbital plates, and the ascending line made to touch the surface of the frontal
bone behind the prominent supra-orbital ridges, the facial angle is not found to
exceed 56 degrees. Unfortunately, no portions of the facial bones, whose
conformation is so decisive as regards the form and expression of the head,
have been preserved. The cranial capacity, compared with the uncommon
strength of the corporeal frame, would seem to indicate a small cerebral
development. The skull, as it is, holds about 31 ounces of millet-seed; and as,

224

from the proportionate size of the wanting bones, the whole cranial cavity
should have about 6 ounces more added, the contents, were it perfect, may
be taken at 37 ounces. Tiedemann assigns, as the cranial contents in the
Negro, 40, 38, and 35 ounces. The cranium holds rather more than 36 ounces
of water, which corresponds to a capacity of 1033.24 cubic centimeters.
Huschke estimates the cranial contents of a Negress at 1127 cubic
centimeters; of an old Negro at 1146 cubic centimeters. The capacity of the
Malay skulls, estimated by water, equaled 36, 33 ounces, whilst in the
diminutive Hindus it falls to as little as 27 ounces."

After comparing the Neanderthal cranium with many others, ancient and
modern, Professor Schaaffhausen concludes thus:

"But the human bones and cranium from the Neanderthal exceed all the rest
in those peculiarities of conformation which lead to the conclusion of their
belonging to a barbarous and savage race. Whether the cavern in which they
were found, unaccompanied with any trace of human art, were the place of
their interment, or whether, like the bones of extinct animals elsewhere, they
had been washed into it, they may still be regarded as the most ancient
memorial of the early inhabitants of Europe."

Mr. Busk, the translator of Dr. Schaaffhausen's paper, has enabled us to form
a very vivid conception of the degraded character of the Neanderthal skull, by
placing side by side with its outline, that of the skull of a Chimpanzee, drawn
to the same absolute size.

Sometime after the publication of the translation of Professor Schaaffhausen's

Memoir, I was led to study the cast of the Neanderthal cranium with more
attention than I had previously bestowed upon it, in consequence of wishing to

225

supply Sir Charles Lyell with a diagram, exhibiting the special peculiarities of
this skull, as compared with other human skulls. In order to do this it was
necessary to identify, with precision, those points in the skulls compared
which corresponded anatomically. Of these points, the glabella was obvious
enough; but when I had distinguished another, defined by the occipital
protuberance and superior semicircular line, and had placed the outline of the
Neanderthal skull against that of the Engis skull, in such a position that the
glabella and occipital protuberance of both were intersected by the same
straight line, the difference was so vast and the flattening of the Neanderthal
skull so prodigious that I at first imagined I must have fallen into some error.
And I was the more inclined to suspect this, as, in ordinary human skulls, the
occipital protuberance and superior semicircular curved line on the exterior of
the occiput correspond pretty closely with the 'lateral sinuses' and the line of
attachment of the tentorium internally. But on the tentorium rests, as I have
said in the preceding Essay, the posterior lobe of the brain; and hence, the
occipital

protuberance,

and

the

curved

line

in

question,

indicate,

approximately, the lower limits of that lobe. Was it possible for a human being
to have the brain thus flattened and depressed; or, on the other hand, had the
muscular ridges shifted their position? In order to solve these doubts, and to
decide the question whether the great supraciliary projections did, or did not,
arise from the development of the frontal sinuses, I requested Sir Charles
Lyell to be so good as to obtain for me from Dr. Fuhlrott, the possessor of the
skull, answers to certain queries, and if possible a cast, or at any rate
drawings, or photographs, of the interior of the skull.

226

Carleton 2012

Dr. Fuhlrott replied with a courtesy and readiness for which I am infinitely
indebted to him, to my inquiries, and furthermore sent three excellent
photographs. One of these gives a side view of the skull, and from it Fig. 25,
A. has been shaded. The second (Fig. 26, A.) exhibits the wide openings of
the frontal sinuses upon the inferior surface of the frontal part of the skull, into
which, Dr. Fuhlrott writes, "a probe may be introduced to the depth of an
inch," and demonstrates the great extension of the thickened supraciliary
ridges beyond the cerebral cavity. The third, lastly (Fig. 26, B.) exhibits the
edge and the interior of the posterior, or occipital, part of the skull, and shows
very clearly the two depressions for the lateral sinuses, sweeping inwards
towards the middle line of the roof of the skull, to form the longitudinal sinus. It
was clear, therefore, that I had not erred in my interpretation, and that the
posterior lobe of the brain of the Neanderthal man must have been as much
flattened as I suspected it to be.

In truth, the Neanderthal cranium has most extraordinary characters. It has an

extreme length of 8 inches, while its breadth is only 5.75 inches, or, in other
words, its length is to its breadth as 100:72. It is exceedingly depressed,
measuring only about 3.4 inches from the glabella-occipital line to the vertex.

227

The longitudinal arc, measured in the same way as in the Engis skull, is 12
inches; the transverse arc cannot be exactly ascertained, in consequence of
the absence of the temporal bones, but was probably about the same, and
certainly exceeded 10 1/4 inches. The horizontal circumference is 23 inches.
But this great circumference arises largely from the vast development of the
supraciliary ridges, though the perimeter of the brain case itself is not small.
The large supraciliary ridges give the forehead a far more retreating
appearance than its internal contour would bear out.

To an anatomical eye the posterior part of the skull is even more striking than
the anterior. The occipital protuberance occupies the extreme posterior end of
the skull, when the glabella-occipital line is made horizontal, and so far from
any part of the occipital region extending beyond it, this region of the skull
slopes obliquely upward and forward, so that the lambdoidal suture is situated
well upon the upper surface of the cranium. At the same time, notwithstanding
the great length of the skull, the sagittal suture is remarkably short (4 1/2
inches), and the squamosal suture is very straight.

In reply to my questions Dr. Fuhlrott writes that the occipital bone "is in a state
of perfect preservation as far as the upper semicircular line, which is a very
strong ridge, linear at its extremities, but enlarging towards the middle, where
it forms two ridges (bourrelets), united by a linear continuation, which is
slightly depressed in the middle."

"Below the left ridge the bone exhibits an obliquely inclined surface, six lines
(French) long, and twelve lines wide."

228

This last must be the surface, the contour of which is shown in Fig. 25, A.,
below 'b'. It is particularly interesting, as it suggests that, notwithstanding the
flattened condition of the occiput, the posterior cerebral lobes must have
projected considerably beyond the cerebellum, and as it constitutes one
among several points of similarity between the Neanderthal cranium and
certain Australian skulls.

Such are the two best known forms of human cranium, which have been
found in what may be fairly termed a fossil state. Can either be shown to fill up
or diminish, to any appreciable extent, the structural interval which exists
between Man and the man-like apes? Or, on the other hand, does neither
depart more widely from the average structure of the human cranium, than
normally formed skulls of men are known to do at the present day?

It is impossible to form any opinion on these questions, without some

preliminary acquaintance with the range of variation exhibited by human
structure in generala subject which has been but imperfectly studied, while
even of what is known, my limits will necessarily allow me to give only a very
imperfect sketch.

The student of anatomy is perfectly well aware that there is not a single organ
of the human body the structure of which does not vary, to a greater or less
extent, in different individuals. The skeleton varies in the proportions, and
even to a certain extent in the connexions, of its constituent bones. The
muscles which move the bones vary largely in their attachments. The varieties
in the mode of distribution of the arteries are carefully classified, on account of
the practical importance of a knowledge of their shifting to the surgeon. The
characters of the brain vary immensely, nothing being less constant than the

229

form and size of the cerebral hemispheres, and the richness of the
convolutions upon their surface, while the most changeable structures of all in
the human brain, are exactly those on which the unwise attempt has been
made to base the distinctive characters of humanity, viz. the posterior cornu of
the lateral ventricle, the hippocampus minor, and the degree of projection of
the posterior lobe beyond the cerebellum. Finally, as all the world knows, the
hair and skin of human beings may present the most extraordinary diversities
in colour and in texture.

So far as our present knowledge goes, the majority of the structural varieties
to which allusion is here made, are individual. The ape-like arrangement of
certain muscles which is occasionally met with in the white races of mankind,
is not known to be more common among Negroes or Australians: nor because
the brain of the Hottentot Venus was found to be smoother, to have its
convolutions more symmetrically disposed, and to be, so far, more ape-like
than that of ordinary Europeans, are we justified in concluding a like condition
of the brain to prevail universally among the lower races of mankind, however
probable that conclusion may be.

We are, in fact, sadly wanting in information respecting the disposition of the

soft and destructible organs of every Race of Mankind but our own; and even
of the skeleton, our Museums are lamentably deficient in every part but the
cranium. Skulls enough there are, and since the time when Blumenbach and
Camper first called attention to the marked and singular differences which
they exhibit, skull collecting and skull measuring has been a zealously
pursued branch of Natural History, and the results obtained have been
arranged and classified by various writers, among whom the late active and
able Retzius must always be the first named.

230

Human skulls have been found to differ from one another, not merely in their
absolute size and in the absolute capacity of the brain case, but in the
proportions which the diameters of the latter bear to one another; in the
relative size of the bones of the face (and more particularly of the jaws and
teeth) as compared with those of the skull; in the degree to which the upper
jaw (which is of course followed by the lower) is thrown backwards and
downwards under the fore-part of the brain case, or forwards and upward in
front of and beyond it. They differ further in the relations of the transverse
diameter of the face, taken through the cheek bones, to the transverse
diameter of the skull; in the more rounded or more gable-like form of the roof
of the skull, and in the degree to which the hinder part of the skull is flattened
or projects beyond the ridge, into and below which, the muscles of the neck
are inserted.

In some skulls the brain case may be said to be 'round,' the extreme length
not exceeding the extreme breadth by a greater proportion than 100 to 80,
while the difference may be much less. Men possessing such skulls were
termed by Retzius 'brachycephalic,' and the skull of a Calmuck, of which a
front and side view are depicted by Von Baer in his excellent, "Crania
selecta," affords a very admirable example of that kind of skull. Other skulls,
such as that of a Negro copied in Fig. 28 from Mr. Busk's 'Crania typical,' have
a very different, greatly elongated form, and may be termed 'oblong.' In this
skull the extreme length is to the extreme breadth as 100 to not more than 67,
and the transverse diameter of the human skull may fall below even this
proportion.

People

'dolichocephalic.'

having

such

skulls

were

called

by

Retzius

231

The most cursory glance at the side views of these two skulls will suffice to
prove that they differ, in another respect, to a very striking extent. The profile
of the face of the Calmuck is almost vertical, the facial bones being thrown
downwards and under the forepart of the skull. The profile of the face of the
Negro, on the other hand, is singularly inclined, the front part of the jaws
projecting far forward beyond the level of the fore part of the skull. In the
former case the skull is said to be 'orthognathous' or straight-jawed; in the
latter, it is called 'prognathous,' a term which has been rendered, with more
force than elegance, by the Saxon equivalent,'snouty.'

Various methods have been devised in order to express with some accuracy
the degree of prognathism or orthognathous of any given skull; most of these
methods being essentially modifications of that devised by Peter Camper, in
order to attain what he called the 'facial angle.'

But a little consideration will show that any 'facial angle' that has been
devised, can be competent to express the structural modifications involved in
prognathism and orthognathous, only in a rough and general sort of way. For
the lines, the intersection of which forms the facial angle, are drawn through
points of the skull, the position of each of which is modified by a number of
circumstances, so that the angle obtained is a complex resultant of all these
circumstances, and is not the expression of any one definite organic relation
of the parts of the skull.

I have arrived at the conviction that no comparison of crania is worth very

much, that is not founded upon the establishment of a relatively fixed base
line, to which the measurements, in all cases, must be referred. Nor do I think
it is a very difficult matter to decide what that base line should be. The parts of

232

the skull, like those of the rest of the animal framework, are developed in
succession the base of the skull is formed before its sides and roof; it is
converted into cartilage earlier and more completely than the sides and roof:
and the cartilaginous base ossifies, and becomes soldered into one piece
long before the roof. I conceive then that the base of the skull may be
demonstrated developmentally to be its relatively fixed part, the roof and sides
being relatively moveable.

The same truth is exemplified by the study of the modifications which the skull
undergoes in ascending from the lower animals up to man.

In such a mammal as a Beaver a line ('a b'.) drawn through the bones, termed
basioccipital, basisphenoid, and presphenoid, is very long in proportion to the
extreme length of the cavity which contains the cerebral hemispheres ('g h'.).
The plane of the occipital foramen ('b c'.) forms a slightly acute angle with this
'basicranial axis,' while the plane of the tentorium ('i T'.) is inclined at rather
more than 90 degrees to the 'basicranial axis'; and so is the plane of the
perforated plate ('a d'.), by which the filaments of the olfactory nerve leave the
skull. Again, a line drawn through the axis of the face, between the bones
called ethmoid and vomerthe "bifacial axis" ('f e'.) forms an exceedingly
obtuse angle, where, when produced, it cuts the 'basicranial axis.'

If the angle made by the line 'b c'. with 'a b'., be called the 'occipital angle,'
and the angle made by the line 'a d'. with 'a b'. be termed the 'olfactory angle,'
and that made by 'i T'. with 'a b'. the 'tentoria angle,' then all these, in the
mammal in question, are nearly right angles, varying between 80 degrees and
110 degrees. the angle 'e f b'., or that made by the cranial with the facial axis,

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and which may be termed the 'cranium-facial angle,' is extremely obtuse,

amounting, in the case of the Beaver, to at least 150 degrees.

But if a series of sections of mammalian skulls, intermediate between a

Rodent and a Man (Fig. 29), be examined, it will be found that in the higher
crania the basicranial axis becomes shorter relatively to the cerebral length;
that the 'olfactory angle' and 'occipital angle' become more obtuse; and that
the 'cranium-facial angle' becomes more acute by the bending down, as it
were, of the facial axis upon the cranial axis. At the same time, the roof of the
cranium becomes more and more arched, to allow of the increasing height of
the cerebral hemispheres, which is eminently characteristic of man, as well as
of that backward extension, beyond the cerebellum, which reaches its
maximum in the South America Monkeys. So that, at last, in the human skull
(Fig. 30), the cerebral length is between twice and thrice as great as the
length of the basicranial axis; the olfactory plane is 20 degrees or 30 degrees
on the 'under' side of that axis; the occipital angle, instead of being less than
90 degrees, is as much as 150 degrees or 160 degrees; the cranio-facial
angle may be 90 degrees or less, and the vertical height of the skull may have
a large proportion to its length.

It will be obvious, from an inspection of the diagrams, that the basicranial axis
is, in the ascending series of Mammalia, a relatively fixed line, on which the
bones of the sides and roof of the cranial cavity, and of the face, may be said
to revolve downwards and forwards or backwards, according to their position.
The arc described by any one bone or plane, however, is not by any means
always in proportion to the arc described by another.

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Now comes the important question, can we discern, between the lowest and
the highest forms of the human cranium anything answering, in however slight
a degree, to this revolution of the side and roof bones of the skull upon the
basicranial axis observed upon so great a scale in the mammalian series?
Numerous observations lead me to believe that we must answer this question
in the affirmative.

The diagrams in Figure 30 are reduced from very carefully made diagrams of
sections of four skulls, two round and orthognathous, two long and
prognathous, taken longitudinally and vertically, through the middle. The
sectional diagrams have then been superimposed, in such a manner, that the
basal axes of the skulls coincide by their anterior ends, and in their direction.
The deviations of the rest of the contours (which represent the interior of the
skulls only) show the differences of the skulls from one another, when these
axes are regarded as relatively fixed lines.

The dark contours are those of an Australian and of a Negro skull: the light
contours are those of a Tartar skull, in the Museum of the Royal College of
Surgeons; and of a well-developed round skull from a cemetery in
Constantinople, of uncertain race, in my own possession.

It appears, at once, from these views, that the prognathous skulls, so far as
their jaws are concerned, do really differ from the orthognathous in much the
same way as, though to a far less degree than, the skulls of the lower
mammals differ from those of Man. Furthermore, the plane of the occipital
foramen ('b c') forms a somewhat smaller angle with the axis in these
particular prognathous skulls than in the orthognathous; and the like may be
slightly true of the perforated plate of the ethmoidthough this point is not so

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clear. But it is singular to remark that, in another respect, the prognathous

skulls are less ape-like than the orthognathous, the cerebral cavity projecting
decidedly more beyond the anterior end of the axis in the prognathous, than in
the orthognathous, skulls.

It will be observed that these diagrams reveal an immense range of variation

in the capacity and relative proportion to the cranial axis, of the different
regions of the cavity which contains the brain, in the different skulls. Nor is the
difference in the extent to which the cerebral overlaps the cerebellar cavity
less singular. A round skull (Fig. 30, 'Const'.) may have a greater posterior
cerebral projection than a long one (Fig. 30, 'Negro').

Until human crania have been largely worked out in a manner similar to that
here suggesteduntil it shall be an opprobrium to an ethnological collection
to possess a single skull which is not bisected longitudinallyuntil the angles
and measurements here mentioned, together with a number of others of
which I cannot speak in this place, are determined, and tabulated with
reference to the basicranial axis as unity, for large numbers of skulls of the
different races of Mankind, I do not think we shall have any very safe basis for
that ethnological craniology which aspires to give the anatomical characters of
the crania of the different Races of Mankind.

At present, I believe that the general outlines of what may be safely said upon
that subject may be summed up in a very few words. Draw a line on a globe
from the Gold Coast in Western Africa to the steppes of Tartary. At the
southern and western end of that line there live the most dolichocephalic,
prognathous, curly-haired, dark-skinned of menthe true Negroes. At the
northern and eastern end of the same line there live the most brachycephalic,

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orthognathous, straight-haired, yellow-skinned of menthe Tartars and

Calmucks. The two ends of this imaginary line are indeed, so to speak,
ethnological antipodes. A line drawn at right angles, or nearly so, to this polar
line through Europe and Southern Asia to Hindustan, would give us a sort of
equator, around which round-headed, oval-headed, and oblong-headed,
prognathous and orthognathous, fair and dark racesbut none possessing
the excessively marked characters of Calmuck or Negrogroup themselves.
It is worthy of notice that the regions of the antipodal races are antipodal in
climate, the greatest contrast the world affords, perhaps, being that between
the damp, hot, steaming, alluvial coast plains of the West Coast of Africa and
the arid, elevated steppes and plateau of Central Asia, bitterly cold in winter,
and as far from the sea as any part of the world can be.

From Central Asia eastward to the Pacific Islands and subcontinents on the
one hand, and to America on the other, brachycephalic and orthognathism
gradually diminish, and are replaced by dolichocephalism and prognathism,
less, however, on the American Continent (throughout the whole length of
which a rounded type of skull prevails largely, but not exclusively) 13 than in
the Pacific region, where, at length, on the Australian Continent and in the
adjacent islands, the oblong skull, the projecting jaws, and the dark skin
reappear; with so much departure, in other respects, from the Negro type, that
ethnologists assign to these people the special title of 'Negritoes.'

The Australian skull is remarkable for its narrowness and for the thickness of
its walls, especially in the region of the supraciliary ridge, which is frequently,
though not by any means invariably, solid throughout, the frontal sinuses
remaining undeveloped. The nasal depression, again, is extremely sudden, so
that the brows overhang and give the countenance a particularly lowering,

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threatening expression. The occipital region of the skull, also, not unfrequently
becomes less prominent; so that it not only fails to project beyond a line
drawn perpendicular to the hinder extremity of the glabello-occipital line, but
even, in some cases, begins to shelve away from it, forwards, almost
immediately. In consequence of this circumstance, the parts of the occipital
bone which lie above and below the tuberosity make a much more acute
angle with one another than is usual, whereby the hinder part of the base of
the skull appears obliquely truncated. Many Australian skulls have a
considerable height, quite equal to that of the average of any other race, but
there are others in which the cranial roof becomes remarkably depressed, the
skull, at the same time, elongating so much that, probably, its capacity is not
diminished. The majority of skulls possessing these characters, which I have
seen, are from the neighborhood of Port Adelaide in South Australia, and
have been used by the natives as water vessels; to which end the face has
been knocked away, and a string passed through the vacuity and the occipital
foramen, so that the skull was suspended by the greater part of its basis.

The contour of a skull of this kind from Western Port, with the jaw attached,
and of the Neanderthal skull, both reduced to one-third of the size of nature. A
small additional amount of flattening and lengthening, with a corresponding
increase of the supraciliary ridge, would convert the Australian brain case into
a form identical with that of the aberrant fossil.

And now, to return to the fossil skulls, and to the rank which they occupy
among, or beyond, these existing varieties of cranial conformation. In the first
place, I must remark, that, as Professor Schmerling well observed ('supra', p.
300) in commenting upon the Engis skull, the formation of a safe judgment
upon the question is greatly hindered by the absence of the jaws from both

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the crania, so that there is no means of deciding with certainty, whether they
were more or less prognathous than the lower existing races of mankind. And
yet, as we have seen, it is more in this respect than any other, that human
skulls vary, towards and from, the brutal typethe brain case of an average
dolichocephalic European differing far less from that of a Negro, for example,
than his jaws do. In the absence of the jaws, then, any judgment on the
relations of the fossil skulls to recent Races must be accepted with a certain
reservation.

But taking the evidence as it stands, and turning first to the Engis skull, I
confess I can find no character in the remains of that cranium which, if it were
a recent skull, would give any trustworthy clue as to the Race to which it might
appertain. Its contours and measurements agree very well with those of some
Australian skulls which I have examinedand especially has it a tendency
towards that occipital flattening, to the great extent of which, in some
Australian skulls, I have alluded. But all Australian skulls do not present this
flattening, and the supraciliary ridge of the Engis skull is quite unlike that of
the typical Australians.

On the other hand, its measurements agree equally well with those of some
European skulls. And assuredly, there is no mark of degradation about any
part of its structure. It is, in fact, a fair average human skull, which might have
belonged to a philosopher, or might have contained the thoughtless brains of
a savage.

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The case of the Neanderthal skull is very different. Under whatever aspect we
view this cranium, whether we regard its vertical depression, the enormous
thickness of its supraciliary ridges, its sloped occiput, or its long and straight
squamosal suture, we meet with ape-like characters, stamping it as the most
pithecoid of human crania yet discovered. But Professor Schaaffhausen
states ('supra', p. 308), that the cranium, in its present condition, holds
1033.24 cubic centimeters of water, or about 63 cubic inches, and as the
entire skull could hardly have held less than an additional 12 cubic inches, its
capacity may be estimated at about 75 cubic inches, which is the average
capacity given by Morton for Polynesian and Hottentot skulls.

So large a mass of brain as this, would alone suggest that the pithecoid
tendencies, indicated by this skull, did not extend deep into the organization;
and this conclusion is borne out by the dimensions of the other bones of the
skeleton given by Professor Schaaffhausen, which show that the absolute
height and relative proportions of the limbs were quite those of an European
of middle stature. The bones are indeed stouter, but this and the great
development of the muscular ridges noted by Dr. Schaaffhausen, are

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characters to be expected in savages. The Patagonians, exposed without

shelter or protection to a climate possibly not very dissimilar from that of
Europe at the time during which the Neanderthal man lived, are remarkable
for the stoutness of their limb bones.

In no sense, then, can the Neanderthal bones be regarded as the remains of

a human being intermediate between Men and Apes. At most, they
demonstrate the existence of a man whose skull may be said to revert
somewhat towards the pithecoid typejust as a Carrier, or a Pouter, or a
Tumbler, may sometimes put on the plumage of its primitive stock, the
'Columba livia'. And indeed, though truly the most pithecoid of known human
skulls, the Neanderthal cranium is by no means so isolated as it appears to be
at first, but forms, in reality, the extreme term of a series leading gradually
from it to the highest and best developed of human crania. On the one hand, it
is closely approached by the flattened Australian skulls, of which I have
spoken, from which other Australian forms lead us gradually up to skulls
having very much the type of the Engis cranium. And, on the other hand, it is
even more closely affined to the skulls of certain ancient people who inhabited
Denmark

during

the

'stone

period,'

and

were

probably

either

contemporaneous with, or later than, the makers of the 'refuse heaps,' or

'Kjokken moddings' of that country.

The correspondence between the longitudinal contour of the Neanderthal

skull and that of some of those skulls from the tumuli at Borreby, very
accurate drawings of which have been made by Mr. Busk, is very close. The
occiput is quite as retreating, the supraciliary ridges are nearly as prominent,
and the skull is as low. Furthermore, the Borreby skull resembles the
Neanderthal form more closely than any of the Australian skulls do, by the

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much more rapid retrocession of the forehead. On the other hand, the Borreby
skulls are all somewhat broader, in proportion to their length, than the
Neanderthal skull, while some attain that proportion of breadth to length
(80:100) which constitutes brachycephalic.

In conclusion, I may say, that the fossil remains of Man hitherto discovered do
not seem to me to take us appreciably nearer to that lower pithecoid form, by
the modification of which he has, probably, become what he is. And
considering what is now known of the most ancient races of men; seeing that
they fashioned flint axes and flint knives and bone-skewers, of much the same
pattern as those fabricated by the lowest savages at the present day, and that
we have every reason to believe the habits and modes of living of such
people to have remained the same from the time of the Mammoth and the
tichorhine Rhinoceros till now, I do not know that this result is other than might
be expected.

Where, then, must we look for primeval Man? Was the oldest 'Homo sapiens'
Pliocene or Miocene, or yet more ancient? In still older strata do the fossilized
bones of an Ape more anthropoid, or a Man more pithecoid, than any yet
known await the researches of some unborn paleontologist?

Time will show. But, in the meanwhile, if any form of the doctrine of
progressive development is correct, we must extend by long epochs the most
liberal estimate that has yet been made of the antiquity of Man.

Thomas Huxley was no ones fool but he did not suffer fools gladly and was
well known as a major champion of the evolutionists and was prone to attack
people if they got it wrong, as some did no doubt. He totally dismissed

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Mayers conclusions as a research work, laden with numerous jocosities of

small size, but great ponderosity, directed at Charles Darwin and his
doctrine.

Thomas Huxley also picked up on forensics very quickly when Professor

Mayer failed to explain how a dying man had managed to climb twenty meters
high, bury himself nude, after removing all his clothes and any equipment and
head for the spirit world if known? But he also made mistakes and for a while
linked the Neanderthal remains with the lower apes, a mistake that cost him
dearly in years to come. His saving grace was of course was the Neanderthal
skull and though he commented as ape like he was quick to add, it showed
some reversion from a modern human skull towards an ape like ancestor.

Huxley 1864.

This may be all well and good in those far off days but Thomas Huxley would
not fare well in todays Archaeology circles of learned men and women and
without doubt would have been taken to task by them.

A NEW LOOK AND AN OLD PROBLEM.

I again looked at the data on early apes and the two human species,
Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon Man and of course the old problem of
dating the early apes and humans.

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I have outlined the data below that so far has been put forward by
others.

The data presented by some other researchers, now seems in doubt when it
comes down to the timeline of the Neanderthals. Granted, there may be large
gaps in some timelines of early apes and of course the Neanderthals. In order
to look at this data I had to research a number of sources and in the end I was
more than a little surprised at the amount of guesswork and maybes that
came up with reference to the Neanderthals appearance on the Archaeology
canvas. Though expected by me, I was not prepared for gaps in their life
timeline, sometimes as much as a few thousand years.
Some data suggested that the Neanderthal features appeared as far back as
100,000 years ago during the warm interglacial period that is said to have
lasted from 130,000 70,000 years ago. Something was wrong with this first
part of the data so again research from many areas give me at least a blank
canvas to work on and dealing with the Neanderthals and their lifetime on our
planet as we know it today.

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The data that suggested the interglacial period is what is termed as a warm
climate episode between Glacial episodes and all ice ages recorded or
suggested and 40,000 years ago the UK and Ireland as well as parts of
Europe were not ice free. Which suggests that the Neanderthals of Europe did
have a very cold environment to contend with both for living in and hunting
food. As I am dealing here with the Neanderthals of Europe then the data on
M-isotope stages and climate stratigraphy suggest strongly that the last
Glaciation was in fact between 50 -30 thousand years in Europe when
Chatelperronian and H. Neanderthals were still around. Before that and in the
last suggested last interglacial period on the M-isotope new evidence,
120,000 60,000 years, = Mousterian and H. Neanderthal, the timeline data
therefore should be the start of the Neanderthals ( very early) at 90,000 to
35,000 years in Europe while the suggested timeline for Western Asia at
70,000 40,000 years.
This would suggest strongly that some of the Neanderthals did live in an area
of an Ice Age or at least part of it and other groups lived in ice free zones
when we consider the scanty remains discovered from western Europe,
through the Near East and into Western Asia. What we dont know yet, is if
any of the migrations during the interglacial period 120,000-60,000 years,
went north into Russia and as far north as they could go in small groups?
On the evidence I would suggest that the only humans in Europe between
100,000 40,000 years ago were Neanderthals only.
Again I had to take another hard look at Climate change across Europe but go
much further back in time, through and just past the Neanderthal timelines.

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Oxygen isotopes in deep sea cores show that in the first 1.8 million years of
the Pleistocene suggested glacial inter-glacial cycles of every 41,000 years
and during the last 700.000 years the most dominant cycle is about 100,000
years which includes I should point out, interglacial timeline lasting about
10,000 and 15,000 years.
If we take this as far as we know then I have to place the last Ice Age at
around 115,000 years ago and ended 10,000 years ago and we are now in
the very present interglacial period. This I should point out does not match my
own research data above as such but close. The big thaw that came did so
around 15,000 years ago and the seas around Europe rose to a high point,
flooding land bridges. 11,000 years ago there was a setback in Europe and
some parts of North America which brought back the ice and known now as
the Younger Dryas Period. This did last 500 years and the North Atlantic polar
front migrated down from Iceland to the Bay of Biscay with summer
temperatures dropping as much as 10 degrees C and any ice sheets that had
started to melt began to form again and advance. Animals and plants as well
as some of the Neanderthal groups in Europe. The event ended 10,000 years
ago.
The idea that Homo Erectus had its part to play, but only as a control factor
and possible comparison in passing. It would be, I suggest, that the features
of early Neanderthals was to do with a cold and bitter climate but only in part
and it would be a mistake to say that this was the main reason for face and
body features. Something else caused the genetic change and to date no one
has yet found it or even suggested it. All they have in the bag is Cold Climate
at the moment and that I fear is not enough because something changed the
DNA makeup of the Neanderthals and it was not God.

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Cro-Magnon Man did not come onto the archaeology canvas till around
40,000 years ago in Europe at the Les Eyzies site in the Dordogne. Given the
location as the data excepted what is not explained is how did they get there
and from where? The only possible theory is that they crossed from North
Africa into Spain as this was the only narrow crossing or they came in small
migrations from Asia? I will come back to this data later for a comparisons of
evidence, such as it is.

NEANDERTHAL TOOLS.
The devil is in the detail they say in my home in Ireland, and the detail and
data on tool making and tools linked to the Neanderthals has to be part of any
research.
To do this I had to look hard at the Mousterian timeline.

and
This was a new form of stone tool technology and very closely linked with the
Neaderthals, known as the Mousterian name after a cave in the Dordogne
(Le Moustier). The design of these tools found there was a massive
improvement from that of the Acheulean period. In the case of the links
between the tools and the Neanderthals it in fact produced sixty items from
points,knives, scrapers, and all made and trimmed for a purpose. These tools

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were much more previous known cultures for want of a better word. This
suggests from the workmanship and refined Levallois flaked technique
developed to a very high degree was not the work of an ape or anything
close to such.The control of the tool makers hands, and a good eye and
working brain suggests good evidence that the Neaderthals were advanced
thinkers.
Bone tools were also made and such bone again needs very careful handling
by the tool maker.
There was however evidence of different styles in the Mousterian cultures and
I suggest here that from the reserch evidence I have looked at, four very
different cultures but realted in Europe. These were the Typical, Denticulate
Mousterian, Acheulean type, and Charentian. That could well mean that in
Europe and West Asia there were four different tribes of Neanderthal Man and
at times living close to one another.
Then if the Typical tools were from and linked to Combe-Grenal in the
Dordogne and ten to twenty kilometers away from them who were from the
Denticulate culture then at times much have met, mixed and at time bred
with one another. We do know that reindeer was the prey or main prey of the
Dordogne group and horses the main prey of the Denticilate group.
I have no doubt at all that some geographical tribal drift took place over a
number of generations and that it is possible of course that one tribe may well
have taken over a much older site of another and thus causing confusion in
the tool finds.
With such development in tools other factors in time came into play such as
burial.

NEANDERTHAL BURIALS

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As I stated early on in my research I mentioned that what was taken as early

neanderthal rutual burial was nothing more than getting rid of a body and any
flowers thrown on it rather than placed were more than likely to kill the smell.
From a forensic point of view, flowers are found in spring and summer so if a
Neanderthal was to die it had to be during this time and it would have been
less than 24 hours before blue and green blowflies would have laid their eggs
on the decaying flesh, in forty eight hours if the body was above ground it
would be moving with maggots due to the high temperatures if it was a warm
phase and the smell would have attracted all sorts of animals that were a risk
to man. So if flowers and herbs were discovered with remains then the victim
died during a warm phase and not during a cold phase therefore giving us a
dating tool from a seasonal point of view. This therefore could not be classed
as a ritual burial as such.

Ritual burial guidelines I suggest should be;

Body placed in a pit on its side.
Flints under the head.
Stone axe or other tool close to the hands.
Bones of food animals also buried.
Flowers or shells placed on the body.

I have given some examples of this here.

At Le Moustier, a young teenage boy was placed in a pit on his right side, his
head placed on his forarms and below the arms and head a pile of flints,
stone axe near the hand and the bones of wild cattle around him,
Central Asia at a place called Teshik Tash in Uzbekistan, the bones of a child
lies beside the bones of Ibex arranged around the remains, the bones having

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the cut marks of tools on them that suggests two things, one the flesh was
stripped away but I suggest does not suggest a ritual but a need for meat and
eaten by the living at that time. However the ritual part comes from six pairs of
ibex horns around the head forming a rough ring.
La Ferrassle rock shelter very near the town of le Bugue in the Dordogne the
headless remains of a young child was found lying in a flexed position at the
bottom of a shallow pit. A few feet up in the pit the discovery of a jawless skull
of a child lying on a limestone slab and evidence of red ochre on the
underside of the slab as well as small pit markings on the top of it.
A cave in Shandidar in the Zagros Mountains of Iraq has produced a number
of Neanderthal remains and one dated as far back as 60,000 years known
now as Shanider IV and many flower pollen grains discovered around the
bones. The victim must therefore have died sometime in June or July, the
flowers and herbs, some of them medical herbs known today was used also
as a bed that the body had been placed.
I have listed the flowers and plants that the pollen came from for reference.
Oak, pine,juniper,ash, yarrow,cornflower,St Barnabys thistle,ragwort, grape
hyacinth,hollyhock,woody horsetail.
To carry out such a ritual suggests strongly that this Neanderthal group at
Shanider did show emotion and even an understanding of the underworld,
could be called spiritual because the soul or spirit as we know it would not
have been named as such 60,000 years ago.
There was no religion as we know it but the evidence does suggest the
understanding of life and death however we may never know what the
Neanderthal thinking was on such matters then. Religion is a mind process,
nothing more and nothing less and could mean nothing to research or mean
everything in the long term.

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THE PREY ANIMALS OF THE NEANDERTHALS IN EUROPE.

If we take the end of the last Ice Age and during it, the prey animals that the
Neanderthals hunted for food and were hunted by as well, is a long list which I
have outlined below. Middle Europe to the Urals had formed a large Tundra
and known as the mammoth steppe. It was the land that time forgot and
mostly bog and grasses. I have not put in the scientific name of any of the
species just the common names.

Wooly mammoth.. Survived in Europe till the end of the last Glacial but in
North Asia at least 1000 years more.

Cave Bear. It took survived in Europe at the beginning of the last Glacial but
near its end the Cave bear vanished also.

Wild Horse. A small horse species and was hunted hard by the Neanderthal
groups for food and skins.

The Wolf. Still survives in the wilder part of Europe and Asia. Was at times a
risk factor to the Neanderthal groups in winter.

Cave lion. Much larger than the present day African and Asian lions. Vanished
from Europe at the end of the last Glacial.

Wolverine. Hunted for its skin and a smaller species now lives in north Europe
and Asia.

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The Steppe Bison. Hunted for meat and skins by the Neanderthal groups and
may have a genetic link to the modren bison in Europe today.

Musk ox. Vanished from Europe at the end of the last Glacial and found now
only in Canada and parts of Greenland. Hunted for food and skins.

Woolly Rhino. Vanished from Europe 12,000 years ago. Had two large horns.

Cave hyena. A large hyena and vanished almost at the end of the last
Glacial.

Giant Deer or Irish Elk. Hunted for food and skins and died out last Glacial.

Suslik. Possible food and still lives in South Europe.

Saiga Antelope. Hunted for food and skins. Now lives in South Russia.

Ibex. Hunted for food and horns.

BIRDS. All species including ducks and willow grouse for food.

Fish. All species for food.

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FOSSIL EVIDENCE SO FAR OF NEANDERTHALS .

SPECIES.

TIME LINE

SITE.

NOTES.

Early Pre Neanderthals.

More than 300,000 years.
Sima de Los Huesos Spain.
Arago,Tautavel, France.
Petralona, Greece.

Late Pre Neanderthals.

300,000 -150,000 years.

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Bilzingsleben, Steinheim, Masur, Germany.

Swanscombe,UK.
La Chaise, Biache-Saint-Vaast,France.

Early Neanderthals.
150,000-70,000 years.
Ehringsdorf,Germany.
Saccopastore,Italy.
Krapina,Croatia.
La Chaise,France.
Classic Neanderthals.
70,000-30,000 years.
Saint-Cesaire, La Ferrassie,
La Chapell aux-Saints, France.

Important fossil sites of Neanderthals in Europe.

PLACE

YEARS AGO.

FOSSILS.

Engis Belgium

Not known.

Child, Skull fragments and teeth.

Spy, Belgium.

Not known.

Adult bones of upper body.

Adult part of a skeleton.
Child,two teeth, right tibia.

Krapina, Croatia.

120,000 years.

Remains of 13 bodies.

Vindija,Croatia.

40,000-28,000 years. Part remains of bodies.

Grotte du Renne,
Arcy-sur-Cure, France, 34,000 years.

Cranial fragment (Temporal)

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La-Chapelle-aux-Saints, France.60,000-50,000 years.

Part of a skeleton.
La Ferrassie France. 70,000 years.

Adult,skeletons 2
Child, upper skeleton.
Foetus humerus and femur.
Neonate, part of a skeleton.
Foetus, part of a skeleton.
Child, part of a skeleton.

LHortus,France.

70,000 years.

38 sets of human remains.

La Moustier,France. 40,000 years.

Young adult and one child

Part of skeletons.

La Quina,France.

50,000 years.

Fragments of skulls 11.

Marillac,France.

45,000 years.

1 adult mandible, skull fragments.

Regourdou, France. Not known.

Adult part of a skeleton.

Roc de Marsal,France. 70,000 years.

Child part of a skeleton.

Saint-Cesaire, France. 34,000 years.

Adult part of a skeleton.

Ehringsdor, (Weimar) Germany. 100,000 years.

1 Adult skull fragments.

Feldhoffer Cave, Nenaderthal,Germany. 40,000 years. 1 adult part of

Skeleton.
Adult right humerus.

DISTRIBUTION of Neanderthal sites in Eurasia.

France,Germany,Spain,Italy,Greece,Black Sea area,North Africa, Turkey,
Shandidar, Teshik Tash.

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A FULL SUMMERY OF MY RESEARCH, NEANDERTHAL DAWN.

Ronnie Carleton 2012

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This research study on the Neanderthals of Europe came about because of

my doubts on the dating of bones from an archaeology point of view and also
what part this Homo had to play in modren Human advancment.
When I first started my research I was more than a little surprised in this day
and age of how much has been left out in other data, great gaps of no
knowledge and then some of the data mentioned somehow got their timelines
wrong.
It was easy to be critical of other researchers mistakes and even more so of
my own but in time I turned that around to constructive critical comment,
something that we all need so that we are aware of our failings as a human
mammal.
I of course had to focus on the Neanderthals but in doing so I could not ignore
the good work carried out of many years by others researchers on the very
early Homo species because I also had to take a closer look at them for
comparrison. For a while it become confusing because of all the many views
on the first early Homo species people had and published on. At times the
Neanderthal research had to be put to oneside as I waded through the data
on any links from early Homo and found out very quickly when it came down
to the archaeology wire I had to either except or reject data for one reason or
another.
Before I proceeded with this research, I double checked, I pondered on the
many problems and questions that arise and I have done my best to solve
most of them. Then I write up what I know and what I have gained from
research of this kind and trust it is as honest and focused as I wanted it to be.
In this part of the research I want to thank everyone who has been of help.

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The Author, bone hunting in Borneo.

THE MISSING LINK FROM AFRICA.

One of the problems that I encountered is why the Neanderthals have not
been found in many parts of Africa? The second problem I came across was
the DNA data on the Neanderthals and any links with modren humans across
Europe. In my research on the DNA I came across many conflicts of ongoing
research as well as published data. Some of this I have had to include here
for possible debate and improve it possible.

THE DNA CONFLICT

All the DNA samples it seems came from recovered material from
Neanderthal bones and the samples examined in a number of DNA sampling
labs. However I have to question how the samples were taken and how much
cross contamanation happened during the processes.

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I have no doubt at all that in some cases, slap happy sampling did take place
and that modern DNA from living humans was mixed in with that of the
Neanderthals DNA.
In contrast to previous efforts to obtain ancient sequences by direct analysis
of Sequencing and Analysis of extracts met genomic libraries allow the
immortalization of DNA isolated from precious ancient samples, obviating the
need for repeated Neanderthal Genomic DNA. The Researchers for this data I
have named below;
James P. Noonan,1,2 Graham Coop,3 Sridhar Kudaravalli,3 Doug Smith,1 Johannes
Krause,4 Joe Alessi,1 Feng Chen,1 Darren Platt,1 Svante Pbo,4 Jonathan K.
Pritchard,3 Edward M. Rubin1,2*

Our knowledge of Neanderthals is based on a limited number of remains and

artefacts from which we must make inferences about their biology, behaviour,
and relationship to ourselves. Here, we describe the characterization of these
extinct hominids from a new perspective, based on the development of a
Neanderthal metagenomic library and its high-throughput sequencing and
analysis.
Several lines of evidence indicate that the 65,250 base pairs of hominid
sequence so far identified in the library are of Neanderthal origin, the
strongest being the ascertainment of sequence identities between
Neanderthal and chimpanzee at sites where the human genomic
sequence is different.
These results enabled us to calculate the human-Neanderthal divergence
time based on multiple randomly distributed autosomal loci. Our analyses
suggest that on average the Neanderthal genomic sequence we obtained and
the reference human genome sequence share a most recent common

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ancestor ~706,000 years ago, and that the human and Neanderthal
ancestral populations split ~370,000 years ago, before the emergence of
anatomically modern humans. Our finding that the Neanderthal and human
genomes are at least 99.5% identical led us to develop and successfully
implement a targeted method for recovering specific ancient DNA sequences
from metagenomic libraries. This initial analysis of the Neanderthal genome
advances our understanding of the evolutionary relationship of Homo sapiens
and Homo neanderthalensis and signifies the dawn of Neanderthal genomics
.(The dates and the comment seem wrong but needs checking. Carleton 2012)
Neanderthals are the closest hominid rela-tives of modern humans (1). As late
as 30,000 years ago, humans and Neander-thals coexisted in Europe and
western Asia
(2). Since that time, our species has spread across Earth, far surpassing any
previous hominid or primate species in numbers, technological development,
and environmental impact, while Neanderthals have vanished. Molecular
studies of Neanderthals have been exclusively constrained to the comparison
of human and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplified Neanderthal
mitochondrial sequences, which suggest that the most recent common
ancestor of humans and Neanderthals existed. ~500,000 years ago, well
before the emergence of modern humans.
Further analyses of mito-chondrial data, including the comparison of
mito-chondrial sequences obtained from several Neanderthals and early
modern humans, suggest little or no admixture between Neanderthal and
modern human populations in Europe. However, a major limitation of all prior
molecular studies of Neanderthals is that mitochondrial sequences reflect only
maternal inheritance of a single locus.

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Accordingly, in the absence of Neanderthal autosomal and Y-chromosome

sequences, the assessment of human-Neanderthal admixture remains
incomplete.
Mitochondrial data also pro-vide no access to the gene and gene regulatory
sequence differences between humans and Nean-derthals that would help to
reveal biological features unique to each. These insights await the recovery of
Neanderthal genomic sequences.
The introduction of high-throughput sequencing technologies and recent
advances in metagenomic analysis of complex DNA mixtures now provide a
strategy to recover genomic sequences from ancient destructive extractions.
In addition, once an ancient DNA fragment is cloned into a metagenomic
library, it can be distinguished from contamination that might be introduced
during subsequent PCR amplification or sequencing by the vector sequences
linked to each library-derived insert.
Recovery of Neanderthal nuclear DNA sequences using a metagenomic
approach.
In this study, we applied an amplification-independent direct cloning method
to construct a Neanderthal metagenomic library, designated NE1, using DNA
extracted from a 38,000-year-old specimen from Vindija, Croatia.
We have recovered 65,250 base pairs ( BP) of Neanderthal genome
sequence from this library through a combination of Sanger sequencing and
massively parallel pyro sequencing. We have also used the metagenomic
library as a substrate to isolate specific Neanderthal sequences by direct
genomic selection.
Several lines of evidence indicated that the hominid sequences in this library
were largely Neanderthal, rather than modern human contamination
. Mitochondrial PCR analysis of the extract used to build the library, using an

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amplicon of similar size as the average hominid sequence identified in the

library, revealed that only ~2% of the products were from contaminating
modern human DNA, whereas the remaining 98% were Neanderthal
. Signatures of damage in the hominid sequences that are characteristic of
ancient DNA also suggested that they were ancient.
Finally and most importantly, comparison of hominid sequences from the
library to orthologous human and chimpanzee genomic sequences identified
human-specific substitutions at sites where the hominid sequence was
identical to that of the chimpanzees, enabling us to make estimates of the
human-Neanderthal divergence time.
We initially assessed the Neanderthal genomic sequence content of library
NE1 by Sanger se-quencing of individual clones, which allowed individual
library inserts to be completely sequenced and thus provided a direct
measure of hominid insert size that could not be obtained from the ~100-bp
pyro sequencing reads. We identified hominid sequences in the library by
BLAST comparison to the reference human genome sequence.
In many cases, the human BLAST hit covered only part of the insert, because
the direct cloning method we employed produces chimeric inserts consisting
of smaller fragments ligated into larger concatemers.
The small average size of these putatively ancient Neanderthal fragments (bp)
is similar to results we previously obtained from two Pleistocene cave bear
libraries, in which the average library insert size was between 100 and 200 bp,
whereas BLAST hits to reference carnivore genome sequences were on
average 69 bp. The small BLAST hit sizes and insert sizes in both cave bear
and Neanderthal metage-nomic libraries are consistent with the degradation
of ancient genomic DNA into small fragments over tens of thousands of years,
illustrating the general condition of nuclear DNA in ancient remains.

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Sanger sequencing of individual clones from library NE1 suggested that it

contained sufficient amounts of Neanderthal sequence to conduct a random
sequence survey of the Neanderthal genome. However, the small percentage
of clones we identified as containing hominid sequences indicated that we
would have to sequence a very large number of clones to obtain enough
Neanderthal genome sequence for this analysis. We therefore carried out
deep sequencing of pooled inserts from library NE1 using massively parallel
pyro sequencing.
To obtain pooled inserts, we amplified transformed NE1 library DNA in liquid
batch culture and recovered library inserts from purified plasmid DNA by PCR
We generated 1.47 million pyrosequencing reads, compared each to the
human genome sequence with MEGABLAST, and obtained 7880 hits.
Assembly of these reads and re-analysis of the resulting scaffolds by BLASTN
produced 1126 unique Neanderthal loci, yielding 54,302 bp of Neanderthal
genomic sequence.
Assessment of pyrosequencing data qual-ity by comparison to Sanger
sequence data. The pyrosequencing approach generates significant amounts
of sequence but does so with a higher error rate than Sanger sequencing.
To assess the quality of Neanderthal pyrosequencing data, we generated
consensus sequences from pyrosequencing reads overlapping the same
Neanderthal genomic locus and filtered out low-quality positions in the
resulting contigs (quality score < 15).
To determine whether these contigs contained additional errors not detectable
by quality-score filtering, we also used Sanger sequencing to analyse, 19,200
clones from the same batch culture used to generate the pyrosequencing data.
This sequencing yielded 130 loci (6.2 kb) that were also represented in the
pyrosequencing data.

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Sanger sequencing and pyro-sequencing results for these 130 Neanderthal

loci agreed at 99.89% of un-gapped positions. In addition, Sanger sequencing
and pyrosequencing yielded Neanderthal sequences that were nearly equally
divergent from the human reference sequence (pyrosequencing = 0.47%
divergence, Sanger sequencing = 0.49%).
These results indicate that the frequency of single-base errors is probably no
greater in Neanderthal genomic sequence obtained from assembled qualityfiltered pyrosequencing data than in sequence obtained from Sanger
sequencing.
The low complexity of library NE1 made these analyses possible, because it
resulted in a limited number of clones in the library that were amplified by
batch culture and PCR and then sequenced in depth.
We estimated that the coverage obtained in library NE1 (~0.002%) is
significantly lower than that previously obtained in cave bear metagenomic
libraries prepared from samples of similar age as the Neanderthal sample
used here. The low coverage in library NE1 is more likely due to the quality of
this particular library rather than being a general feature of ancient DNA.
Nevertheless, we were able to obtain substantial amounts of authentic
Neanderthal genomic sequence from the library by deep sequencing.
Comparison of orthologous Neanderthal, human, and chimpanzee genomic
sequences.
To ascertain whether the library NE1 hominid sequence we obtained was a
representative sampling of the Neanderthal genome, we identified each NE1
library sequence for which the bit score of the best BLASTN hit in the human
genome was higher than the bit scores of all other hits for that sequence.
We then determined the distribution of all such best BLASTN hits across
human chromosomes [43,946 bp in 1,039 loci.

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The amount of Neanderthal sequence aligned to each human chromosome

was highly correlated with sequenced chromosome length, indicating that the
Neanderthal sequences we obtained were randomly drawn from all
chromosomes (Pearson correlation coefficient = 0.904, ).
The hominid hits included Y-chromosome sequences, demonstrating that our
sample was derived from a Neanderthal male. We annotated each
Neanderthal locus according to the annotations (known genes, conserved
noncoding sequences, and repeats) associated with the aligned human
sequence. Neanderthal sequences obtained by both Sanger sequencing and
pyro-sequencing showed a distribution of sequence features consistent with
the known distribution of these features in the human genome.
These sequences are therefore likely to represent a random sampling of the
Neanderthal genome.
Comparison of authentic Neanderthal sequence with orthologous
human and chimpanzee genomic sequences will reveal sites at which
Neanderthal is identical to chimpanzee but at which the human sequence has
undergone a mutation since the human-Neanderthal divergence. Determining
the number of human-specific mutations is critical to dating the humanNeanderthal split.
To identify these events, we constructed alignments of orthologous human,
Neanderthal, and chimpanzee sequences and identified mutations specific to
each lineage by parsimony. We identified 34 human-specific substitutions in
37,636 human, Neanderthal, and chimpanzee aligned positions, including
substitutions on chromosomes X and Y that were not considered in
subsequent analyses.
We also identified 171 sites with Neanderthal-specific substitutions relative to
human and chim-panzee.

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It has been shown that nucleotides in genuine ancient DNA are occasionally
chemically damaged, most frequently because of the deamination of cytosine
to uracil, resulting in the incorpora-tion of incorrect bases during PCR and
sequencing. This results in an apparent excess of C-to-T and G-to-A
mismatches (which are equivalent events) between the ancient sequence and
the modern genomic reference sequence. We observe a significant excess of
C-to-T and G-to-A mismatches (relative to T-to-C and A-to-G mismatches)
between human and NE1 hominid sequences obtained by both Sanger
sequencing and pyrosequencing [P << 0.0005, Fisher).
This accounts for the large number of Neanderthal-specific substitutions we
observe and further supports the supposition that the hominid sequences are
Neanderthal in origin. Despite the bias toward C- to-T and G-to-A events in
Neanderthal genomic sequence, the overall frequency of these events is
low (~0.37% of all sites), indicating that the vast majority of humanNeanderthal-chimpanzee aligned positions are not likely to be significantly
affected by mis-incorporation errors.
The length distribution of ancient DNA fragments, when combined with the
sequence signatures of ancient DNA described above, offers another metric
for assessing the degree of modern human contamination in our library.
Based on the assumption that modern contaminating DNA fragments would
be longer than authentic ancient DNAs, which is supported by the observation
that contaminating modern human DNA fragments in the cave bear libraries
were on average much longer than the cave bear sequences (116 versus 69
bp), we examined the distribution of human-Neanderthal mismatches in our
data set as a function of alignment length.

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If a substantial fraction of the hominid sequence recovered from the

Neanderthal sample were actually modern human DNA, we would expect to
see a lower human-Neanderthal sequence divergence in the longer BLASTN
alignments than we observe in the entire data set, because the longer
hominid sequences would be enriched in modern human contaminants.
The excess of damage-induced Neanderthal-specific mismatches described
above would also be expected to decrease as alignment length increases,
because individual bases in the longer modern human fragments would show
relatively few chemical modifications. However, we did not observe these
trends in our Neanderthal sequence. The human-Neanderthal sequence
divergence in all autosomal alignments greater than 52 bp was similar to the
divergence obtained from the whole data set (0.59% versus 0.52%). The
excess of C-to-T and G-to-A mismatches was also maintained in the longer
alignments. These results further support the supposition that the hominid
sequence we obtained is predominantly Neanderthal in origin.

Coalescence time of human and Neander-thal genomic sequences.

This data allowed us to examine for the first time the genetic relationship
between humans and Neanderthals using nuclear genomic sequences. We
first considered the average coalescence time for the autosomes between the
Neanderthal genomic sequence that we obtained and the reference human
genome sequence. We observed 502 human-chimpanzee autosomal
differences in the human-Neanderthal-chimpanzee sequence alignments we
constructed. Based on comparison to the Neanderthal sequence, 27 of these
differences were human-specific and therefore postdate the most recent
common ancestor (MRCA) of the human and Neanderthal sequences.

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Using this information, our maximum likelihood estimate of the average time
to the MRCA of these sequences is 706,000 years, with a 95% confidence
interval (CI) of 468,000 to 1,015,000 years.
Amount of unique Neanderthal sequence obtained from library NE1 by
Sanger sequencing of individual clones, as well as Sanger sequencing and
pyrosequencing of clones in batch culture. (N A.,)
Individual clones Batch culture Sequencing chemistry Sanger
Pyrosequencing Reads 9984 19,200 1,474,910
Average insert 134 bp 196 bp (N A )
Average BLAST hit 52 bp 52 bp 48 bp
Unique loci 131 69 1126
Total unique hominid 6845 bp 4103 bp 54,302 bp sequence
This calculation does not make use of Neanderthal specific changes, because
many of those events are due to DNA damage as described above.
In addition, we restricted our analysis to autosomal data, because these
represent 97% of our total data set and population genetic parameters are
likely to differ between the autosomes and sex chromosomes.
Our estimate uses a mutation rate obtained by setting the average
coalescence time for human and chimpan-zee autosomes to 6.5 million years
ago, a value that falls within the range suggested by recent studies
Inaccuracies in the human-chimpanzee divergence time would shift all the
time estimates and CIs presented here in proportion to the error.

Split time of ancestral human and Neanderthal populations.

Our estimate of the average common ancestor time reflects the average time
at which the Neanderthal and human reference sequences began to diverge

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in the common ancestral population, not the actual split time of the ancestral
populations that gave rise to Neanderthals and modern humans. To estimate
the actual split time of the ancestral human and Neanderthal populations, we
developed a method that incorporated data from the human and Neanderthal
reference sequences, as well as genotypes from 210 individuals with
genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data collected by the
International Hap Map Consortium .
We included the HapMap data because they indicate what proportion of sites
in the Neanderthal sequence fall within the spectrum of modern human
variation. For example, if the ancestral human and Neanderthal populations
split long ago, before the rise of most modern human genetic diversity
captured by the HapMap data, then Neanderthal sequence would almost
never carry the derived allele, relative to the orthologous chimpanzee
sequence, for a human SNP. Conversely, a more recent population split
would result in Neanderthal sequence frequently carrying the derived allele for
human SNPs.
To formalize this idea, we considered an explicit population model for the
relationship between Nean-derthals and each HapMap population (East
Asians, (A) Representation of each Neanderthal chromosome in 43.9 kb
amount of Neanderthal sequence aligned to each. Chromosomes X and Y of
NE1 hominid sequences displaying a statistically unambiguous best are
shown at half their total length to correct for their haploid state in BLAST hit to
the human genome, relative to the total sequenced length of males relative to
the autosomes.
(B) Representation of sequence features each human chromosome minus
gaps. Chromosomes are ranked by the in the NE1 hominid sequence shown
in (A). (Europeans, and Yoruba) separately.

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We assumed that Neanderthals and modern humans evolved from a single

ancestral population of 10,000 individuals and that the Neanderthal population
split away from the human ancestral population instan-taneously at a time in
the past, with no subsequent gene flow.
In order to model the demographic histories of the HapMap populations, we
made use of models and parameters estimated by Voight et al. based on re
sequencing data from 50 unlinked, noncoding regions.
Frequency distribution of 171 Neanderthal-specific substitutions observed in
37,636 bp of aligned human, Neanderthal, and chimpanzee genomic
sequence. Complementary substitutions (such as C to T and G to A) are
considered equivalent events.
. (A) Log-likelihood curve of the time to the MRCA of the Neanderthal and
human reference sequences.
(B) Smoothed relative log-likelihood estimates of the split times between
different human pop-ulations and the Nean-derthal population.
(C) Impact of changes in the ancient population size on split time estimates
for five models that are consistent with modern polymorphism data.
KY, thousand years.
Each curve is the smoothed log likelihood relative to the maximum over all
five models. For each model, the text on the plot indicates the degree of
expan-sion or contraction and the time before the present at which the size
change occurred. The expansion models are less likely as compared to either
constant population size or the contraction modest bottlenecks for East
Asians and Europeans and modest exponential growth for Yoruba.
We then constructed a simulation-based composite likelihood framework to
estimate the time of the human-Neanderthal population split.

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At each site in the human-Neanderthal-chimpanzee alignments we

constructed, we recorded the Neanderthal and human reference alleles
relative to chimpanzee. We also determined, separately for each population,
whether each site was a HapMap SNP in that population and if so, the allele
frequency.
We used simulations to estimate the probability of each possible data
configuration at a single site as a function of the human-Neanderthal split time.
The simulations used the estimated population demography for each HapMap
population and a probabilistic model of SNP ascertainment to match the
overall density and frequency spectrum of HapMap Phase II SNPs.
Likelihood curves for the split time were computed by multiplying likelihoods
across sites as though they were independent. In practice, this is an excellent
approximation for our data because the Neanderthal sequence reads are very
short and just 1 out of 905 aligned fragments contains more than one humanspecific allele or SNP. Bootstrap simulations confirmed that our composite
likelihood method yields appropriate CIs for the split time.
Using this approach, the maximum likelihood estimates for the split time of the
ancestral human and Neanderthal populations are 440,000 years (95% CI of
170,000 to 620,000 years) based on the European data, 390,000 years
(170,000 to 670,000 years) for East Asians, and 290,000 years (120,000 to
570,000 years) for Yoruba.
(These values predate the earliest known appearance of anatomically
modern humans in Africa ~195,000 years ago ). Because these split times are
before the migration of modern humans out of Africa, the three populationspecific estimates should all be estimates of the same actual split time.
The average of these estimates, ~370,000 years, is thus a sensible point
estimate for the split time.

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Substantial contamination with modern human DNA would cause these

estimates to be artificially low, but 2% contamination, the rate suggested by
mitochondrial PCR analysis of the primary extract used to construct the library,
would have essentially no impact .
Our estimates of the human-Neanderthal split time might depend heavily on
the assumption that the ancestral effective population size of humans was
10,000 individuals. To address this, we explored a set of models in which the
ancestral human population expanded or contracted at least 200,000 years
ago. We found that much of the parameter space, though not the original
model, could be excluded on the basis of modern human polymorphism data
from Voight et al.. We repeated our likelihood analysis of the Neanderthal
data using models incorporating ancient expansion or contraction that are
consistent with modern data and found that these did not substantially change
our population split time estimates.
Our data include three sites at which Neanderthal carries the derived allele for
a polymorphic HapMap SNP. These sites are unlikely to represent modern
contamination because for two of the SNPs, the derived allele is found only in
Yoruba; also, one of the SNPs lies on a fragment that contains a C-to-T
transition in Neanderthals that is characteristic of chemical damage to DNA.
These observations indicate that the Neanderthal sequence may often
coalesce within the human ancestral tree. Based on simulations of our best-fit
model for Yoruba, we estimate that Neanderthal is a true out
group for approximately 14% (assuming a split time of 290,000 years, the
Yoruba estimate) to 26% (assuming a split time of 440,000 years, the
European estimate) of the autosomal genome of modern humans, although
more data will be required to achieve a precise estimate.

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Lack of evidence for admixture between humans and Neanderthals.

Because Neanderthals coexisted with modern humans in Europe, there has

long been interest in whether Neanderthals might have contributed to the
European gene pool.
Previous studies comparing human and Neanderthal mitochondrial
sequences did not find evidence of a Neanderthal genetic contribution to
modern humans. However, the utility of mitochondrial data in addressing this
question is limited in that it is restricted to a single locus and, due to the
maternal inheritance of mitochondrial DNA, is informative only about
admixture between Neanderthal females and modern human males .
Moreover, it has been argued that some aspects of modern human autosomal
data may be the result of modest levels of Neanderthal admixture.
If Neanderthal admixture did indeed occur, then this could manifest in our
data as an abundance of low-frequency derived alleles in Europeans where
the derived allele matches Neanderthal.
No site in the data set appears to be of this type. In order to formally evaluate
this hypothesis, we extended our composite likelihood simulations to include a
single admixture event 40,000 years ago in which a fraction part of the
European gene pool was derived from Neanderthals. We fixed the humanNeanderthal split at 440,000 years ago (the split time estimate for Europeans).
With these assumptions, the maximum likelihood estimate for the Neanderthal
contribution to modern genetic diversity is zero.
However, the 95% CI for this estimate ranges from 0 to 20%, so a definitive
answer to the admixture question will require additional Neanderthal
sequence data.

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Targeted recovery of specific Neanderthal sequences by direct genomic

Selection

. Although we have recovered significant amounts of Neanderthal genome

sequence using a metagenomic approach, hundreds of gigabases of
sequence would be required to achieve reasonable coverage of a single
Neanderthal genome by this method. Moreover, our results indicate that at
least 99.5% of the Neanderthal sequence that would be obtained would be
identical to the modern human sequence. The human-Neanderthal sequence
differences that would yield great insight into human biology and evolution are
thus rare events in an overwhelming background of uninformative sequence.
We therefore explored the potential of metagenomic libraries to serve as
substrates to recover specific Neanderthal sequences of interest by targeted
methods. To this end, we developed a direct genomic selection approach to
recover known and unknown sequences from metagenomic ancient DNA
libraries. We first attempted to recover specific sequences from a Pleistocene
cave bear metagenomic library we previously constructed and designed PCR
probes corresponding to 96 sequences highly conserved among mammals
but not previously shown to be present in the cave bear library.
We amplified these sequences from the human genome and hybridized the
resulting probes to PCR-amplified cave bear library inserts produced as
described above. Recovered library DNAs were amplified by PCR and
sequenced. We successfully recovered five targets consisting of a known
enhancer of Sox9 and conserved sequences near Tbx3, Shh, Msx2,and Gdf6.
In principle, these sequences could be derived from contaminating DNA
rather than the cave bear library. Critically, the captured cave bear sequences
were flanked by library vector sequence, directly demonstrating that these

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sequences were derived from a cloned library insert and not from
contaminating DNA introduced during direct selection.
Based on these results, we attempted to recover specific Neanderthal
sequences from library NE1. We focused on recovering sequences that we
had previously identified by shotgun sequencing because of the low
complexity of library NE1, and were able to recover 29 of 35 sequences we
targeted. The authenticity of these sequences was confirmed by the presence
of library vector sequences in the reads.
Our success in recovering both previously unknown cave bear and known
Neanderthal genomic sequences using direct genomic selection indicates that
this is a feasible strategy for purifying specific cloned Neanderthal sequences
out of a high background of Neanderthal and contaminating microbial DNA.
This raises the possibility that, should multiple Neanderthal metagenomic
libraries be constructed from independent samples, direct selection could be
used to recover Neander-thal sequences from several individuals to obtain
and confirm important human-specific and Neanderthal specific substitutions.

Conclusions.
The current state of our knowledge concerning Neanderthals and their
relationship to modern humans is largely inference and speculation based on
archaeological data and a limited number of hominid remains. In this study,
we have demonstrated that Neanderthal genomic sequences can be
recovered using a metagenomic library-based approach and that specific
Neanderthal sequences can be obtained from such libraries by direct
selection. Our study thus provides a framework for the rapid recovery of
Neanderthal sequences of interest from multiple independent specimens,
without the need for whole-genome re sequencing.

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Such a collection of targeted Neanderthal sequences would be of immense

value for understanding human and Neanderthal biology and evolution.
Future Neanderthal genomic studies, including targeted and whole-genome
shotgun sequencing, will provide insight into the profound phenotypic
divergence of humans both from the great apes and from our extinct hominid
relatives, and will allow us to explore aspects of Neanderthal biology not
evident from artefacts and fossils.
As you can see from the above research all the data provided tends to
point to some confusion in its interpretation and this is high risk if taken on
board as fact when more research may well be needed, in fact I will go as far
to state that it should be on-going and the results published.
On saying that I have placed another DNA research project here below.
Such research in important but only when it relates directly to the
Neanderthals and this Research on the Neanderthals.

Neandertals and Moderns Mixed, and It Matters

JOA O ZILHA O

Twenty-.ve years ago, the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition in Europe

could be represented as a straightforward process subsuming both the
emergence of symbolic behaviour and the replacement of Neandertals by
modern humans.
The Aurignacian was a proxy for the latter, during which enhanced cognitive
capabilities explained ornaments and art. The few instances of Neanderthal
symbolism were deemed too long postdate contact and dismissed as
imitation without understanding, if not geological contamination.

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Such views were strengthened by the recent finding that, in southern Africa,
several features of the European Upper Paleolithic, including bone tools,
ornaments, and microliths, emerged much earlier.
Coupled with genetic suggestions of a recent African origin for extant humans,
fossil discoveries bridging the transition between archaic and moderns in
the realm of anatomy seemingly closed the case.
Over the last decade, however, taphonomic critiques of the archaeology of the
transition have made it clear that, in Europe, fully symbolic sapiens behaviour
predates both the Aurignacian and moderns. And, in line with evidence from
the nuclear genome rejecting strict replacement models based on mtDNA
alone, the small number of early modern specimens that passed the test of
direct dating present archaic features unknown in the African lineage,
suggesting admixture at the time of contact.
In the realm of culture, the archaeological evidence also supports a
Neanderthal contribution to Europes earliest modern human societies, which
feature personal ornaments completely unknown before immigration and are
characteristic of such Neanderthal-associated archaeological entities as the
Cha telperronian and the Uluzzian.
The chronometric data suggest that, north of the Ebro divide, the entire
interaction process may have been resolved within the millennium centred
around 42,000 calendar years ago. Such a rapid absorption of the
Neandertals is consistent with the size imbalance between the two gene
reservoirs and further supports signi.cant levels of admixture.
This review uses a calibrated time production rendered calibration imscale. Suggestions that spikes in 14C possible in the period of the Middle-toUpper Paleolithic transition in Europe1,2 are now superseded, and the
different calibration tools available.

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The notion that the patterns of variability in extant humans mtDNA indi-Key
words: Neandertals, modern humans, orna-cate a recent African ancestry has
Cha telperronian, Aurignacian been central to complete replacement models
of modern human origins however, does not represent the full history of a
population, much less that of an entire species and, when the nuclear genome
is considered, the picture changes.
For instance, a unique pattern of nucleotide polymor-phism is now known that
roots in East Asia and has an estimated time of co-alescence of ca. 2 Myr.11
If such ancient, non-African parts of the human genome are still extant, the
implica-tion is that the early Upper Pleisto-cene expansion of modern humans
in-volved some level of admixture with contemporary archaic groups.
Based on a standard phylogeo-graphic technique, the multilocus nested-clade
analysis, the most recent review of the evidence from 25 non-recombining
parts of the human genome9,10 concludes that ever since the Out-of-Africa
event ca. at 1.5 Myr ago, human evolution has been characterized by a gene .
with isolation by distance, and that the complete re-placement model is
rejected with a P-value of <10-17. This study, however, does not exclude the
possibility that total replacement occurred in restricted areas; conceivably, the
Neandertals, in particular, could well have become extinct without descent
even if, at a global scale, the general pattern was one of admixture or
hybridization. The fact that the mtDNA ex-tracted from many Neanderthal
fossils over the last decade has revealed polymorphisms unknown among
todays humans and undetected in early modern European1214 has been
used to support precisely such notions of the Neandertals fundamental
separate-ness from the human tree.
However, because of several unresolved technical and methodological
problems, such DNA studies must be taken with great caution.

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For instance, DNA degrades with time, a process that can generate
mutational artefacts. The production of such artefacts in the extraction chain
has also been observed in controlled experi-ments; some loci in particular
seem to be repeatedly, non-randomly affected, and among them are those
where Neanderthal divergence has been ob-served.15,16 Contamination is
another unresolved issue, particularly where the a DNA of early moderns is
concerned.
As Paabo pointed out, Cro-Magnon DNA is so similar to modern human
DNA that there is no way to say whether what has been seen is real.
Thus, failure to identify Neanderthal mtDNA in a given early modern hu-man
fossil may simply result from the fact that the extracted DNA is entirely
modern contamination, not from the fact that no Neanderthal mtDNA originally
existed in that specimen. When such a failure occurs with material that, on
paleontological grounds, is clearly Neanderthal, current criteria of
authentication dictate rejection of the results, not the conclusion that the
material belonged to a genetically modern Neanderthal.
The logical implications are, .first, that early modern DNA data cannot at
present be considered and, second, that current perceptions of Neanderthal
aDNA variability may well be constrained. Given these problems, it is clear
that the current framework of aDNA research is inherently biased against
admixture, which makes it all the more signi.cant that the combined fossil and
extant genetic evidence is consis-tent with levels of Neanderthal contribution
to Europes earliest modern humans as high as 73.8%.14,2023 A re-cent
simulation study suggests that such levels must have been negligible if not nil
(at most, 0.1%),24 but this conclusion is already contained in the
anthropologically premises of the tested admixture model.25
Genetics, therefore, does not reject Neanderthal-modern admixture.

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But is there any positive evidence that it oc-curred? Arguably, that is exactly
what the most recent developments in the field of human palaeontology
suggest. Over the last few years, direct dating of the remains has
demonstrated that the large majority of Europes purported early modern
human data were instead of Holocene age. Their marked morphological
modernity and contrast with even such late Neandertals as Saint-Cesaire
supported suggestions of major physical anthropological discontinuity and
hence, complete population replacement at the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic
transition. The illusory nature of such a contrast is now apparent.
Moreover, the data forecast shows that it sufficiently complete to be
taxonomically diagnostic and, in the process of that determination were shown
to date to within a few millennia of the time of contact, feature a diverse array
of anatomically archaic, often specially Neanderthal traits unknown in the
Middle and early Upper Pleistocene of Africa. These fossils .nds are Oase
(Roma-nia), Mladec. (Czech Republic) and Lagar Velho (Portugal), the latter
being of relevance here despite its significantly later chronology, because
Neandertals survived in Iberia for much longer than elsewhere in Europe.
Where the Mladec. crania are concerned, the existence of traits such as
prominent occipital buns, broad inter-orbital breadths, and juxtamastoid
eminences is well known. In the Lagar Velho child skeleton the list includes,
among others, a low crural index and arctic body proportions, a retreating
symphyseal prole, and the presence of a suprainiac fossa.
In the Oase fossils, the list includes lingual bridging of the mandibular
foramen, a parietal/frontal curvature fully in the Neanderthal range, and third
molars that display a complex cusp morphology, are larger than the second
molars, and more than two standard deviations above the average for the
Middle Pleistocene.

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Since these features relate to aspects of skeletal morphology that are not
susceptible to change during the ontogenetic cycle, they must resect
inheritance, the persistence in these overall modern individuals of genes
transmitted by archaic ancestorsin Europe, the Neandertals. Although this
proposition initially faced a certain level of inevitable scepticism, the body of
data and arguments subsequently brought to support it remain unchallenged.
In sum, nothing in the genetic and fossil evidence reviewed here suggests the
existence of fundamental biological barriers preventing fruitful interaction
between Neandertals and moderns at the time of contact.
At least, most now agree that the issue should be approached with no
pre-conceptions, and that it is up to the empirical record to decide whether
such admixture actually occurred.
How can archaeology contribute to this debate?
Because the transmission of cultural traits follows different rules (it depends
on human volition, not natural selection), detecting a biological contribution
from the Neandertals to later populations does not necessarily entail that an
equivalent signature must exist in the realm of culture. However, if such a
signature is found to exist, then the case for admixture is strengthened.
Throughout the 1990s, any assessment of this issue was bound to be
controversial because there was no consensus on the chronology of the
archaeological entities providing a cultural background for the relevant human
fossils.
CULTURES
The Oase fossils are of particular importance in this context because, at ca.
40.5 kyr calBP, they are Europes oldest modern human remains and likely
represent the first such people to enter the continent.

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Under a model of admixture, the notion that the Oase people are very close
to the time of contact is consistent with their ar-chaic traits, and .nds additional
support in the patterns of spatio-temporal distribution of the latest Neanderthal
remains. In fact, nowhere north of the Ebro divide, from El Sidron, Spain, in
the west to Lakonis, Greece, in the east, do Neandertal remains or cultural
manifestations that can be securely associated with them, such as the
Chatelperronian of France, the Uluzzian of Italy, or the Micoquian of
Germany, postdate the 42nd millennium calBP.
The two putative exceptions are no more. That the ca. 29-28 kyr 14Cbp
results for the Neanderthal material in level G1 of Vindija could only be
minimum ages has now been vindicated by reanalysis of the samples.
This gives further credence to the notion that the ca. 29 kyr 14Cbp result for
the Mezmaiskaya cave infant must also be a vast underestimation of its true
age; this burial, in fact, was covered by intact Mousterian deposits with
multiple reliable dates in excess of 36 kyr 14Cbp.
The notion that the Chatelperronian and the Uluzzian survived for many
millennia after moderns are first recorded in Europe was based, in turn, on the
radiocarbon dating of bone samples having a geological context and chemical
characteristics that indicated incomplete decontamination.
The impact of such factors on the chronology of samples from this period is
now widely accepted.
Radiocarbon results for the Klisoura 1 cave in Greece place the Uluz-zian at
ca. 44 kyr calBP.
Because the transmission of cultural traits follows different rules (it depends
on human volition, not natural selection), detecting a biological contribution
from the Neandertals to later populations does not necessarily entail that an
equivalent signature must exist in the realm of culture.

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However, if such a signature is found to exist, then the case for admixture is
strengthened. cave sites the Uluzzian stratigraphic ally underlies a regionwide chronos-tratigraphic marker, the Campanian Ignimbrite, consistently
dated by 39A/ 40A to ca. 39 kyr calBP, and is further separated from that
marker by Aurignacian levels or by levels with a mix of Uluzzian and
Aurignacian material. Where the Chatelperronian is concerned, all
accelerator mass spectrometry results recently obtained for the sites of
Brassempouy, Caune de Belvis, Grotte XVI, La Quina, Roc-de-Combe and
Chatelperron, place it before ca. 42 kyr calBP.
In the light of these results, it is clear that the key site of the Grotte du Renne
can be no exception . Moreover, the notion that a very late Chatelperronian
would be demonstrated by the pat-terns of interstrati.cation observed at El
Pendo, Roc-de-Combe, Le Piage, and Chatelperron is now all but
abandoned.
Careful geological and taphonomic analysis of these sites, coupled with some
re-excavation, showed that the El Pendo sequence is entirely re-deposited;
that the putative Chatelperronian lens sandwiched between Aurignacian
deposits at Le Piage is in fact a mixed deposit in secondary position; and that
excavation error and faulty intra site correlations lay behind the Roc-deCombe pattern. At Chatelperron itself, the study of the museum collections
and associated documentation shows that the Chatelperronian levels
putatively situated above a lens of Aurignacian material are no more than
back dirt from the nineteenth-century excavations.
In western Europe, the Chatelperronian and the Uluzzian are followed by the
Aurignacian, associated with diag-nostic modern human remains at La Quina
and Les Rois.

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The features of the lithic and bone assemblages and the radiocarbon dates
obtained for the La Quina sequence indicate that these remains can be no
older than ca. 38 kyr calBP.
The dental material from the Aurignacian of Brassem-pouy, dated to ca. 37
kyr calBP, is also of modern human, although the issue remains controversial.
On the basis of cultural continuity, it is in any case reasonable to assume that
the same people who manufactured the Aurignacian ca. 38-37 kyr calBP were
also responsible for earlier manifestations of the techno complex.
This inference is certainly consistent with the fact that the Oase .nds place
people of overall modern anatomy in Europe during the earlier part of the
Aurignacian, and with the traditional view of the latter as a long-lasting
archaeological entity united by strong elements of cultural continuity.
New excavations and in-depth technological studies have now vindicated this
view and the validity of the tripar-tite Aurignacian I, II, and IIIIV succession.

Among the sites that yielded Chatelperronian ornaments, the Grotte du

Renne stands out. Following recognition that the human remains from the
corresponding levels were of Neandertals, it was suggested that the
ornaments re-ected trade with or scavenging from abandoned sites of
contemporary Aurignacian modern humans, if not simply intrusion from an
overlying Aurignacian level.
Because most ornaments come from basal level X, not from level VIII, which
is in direct contact with the Aurignacian, these interpretations are inconsistent
with the stratigraphic distribution of the .nds and with the manufacture by
products indicative of the in-situ production of ornaments, bone tools, and
decorated bird bone tubes. Moreover, the often-quoted ca. 32-33 kyr 14Cbp
dates are clearly rejuvenated.

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As indicated by the discrepancy between results for outside and inside

areas of the same levels at Fumane (Italy) and Sesselfels (Germany), the
cause is bone digenesis after occupation, when collapse of the roof
transformed the Rennes inhabited cave porch into an open air site.
The ca. 43 kyr calBP result for level Xb is consistent with the chronology of
the Cha telperronian elsewhere in France and provides the most reliable
indicator of its age here.
Recent developments have strength-ened the view that we are not dealing
with an epigonical Aurignacian-impacted phenomenon restricted to a
peripheral region inhabited by residual Neanderthal survivors.
The notion that incomplete decontamination systematically rejuvenates bone
samples from this time range, especially in the examples given, is now
accepted even by those who most vocally opposed it.
Study of the human teeth confirmed their Neanderthal affinities.
Publication of the lithic assem-blages yielded quantitative data that greatly
strengthen the inconsistency of the hypothesis that the ornaments are
intrusive.
The conclusion that these pierced and grooved teeth, bones, and fossils stand
for the emergence of symbolic behaviour among Neandertals before modern
human immigration is further supported by similar .nds from Quinc ay,where
contamination from later occupations can be completely excluded because
none exists.
Vertical Distribution of the Archaeological Finds in the Grotte du Renne.
Neanderthal. Level Culture Lithics % Ornaments % Bone Awls %
Teeth % VII VIII IX X Aurignacian Chatelperronian 11,901 8763 11,856
62,684 12.50 9.20 12.45 65.84 7 4 4 25 17.50 10.00 10.00 62.50 8 4 5 36
15.09 7.55 9.43 67.92 1 3 25 3.45 10.34 86.21 thus giving a Total of

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95,204 40 53 29
This work has also made it clear that the so-called Proto Aurignacian,
characterized by large numbers of Font-Yves points and Dufour blade-lets of
the long, slender Dufour sub-type, both made on blanks extracted from
unidirectional prismatic cores in the framework of a single, continuous
reduction sequence , previ-ously considered to be a Mediterranean variant of
the classical Aurignacian, is instead a chronological phase.
The recent re-excavation of the key cave site of Isturitz and the revision of
the stratigraphy of Le Pi-age show that, in France, as in Italy or Spain, this
Proto Aurignacian stratigraphic ally precedes the Aurignacian I with splitbased bone points and carinated scrapers.
These developments, combined with detailed critiques of the available corpus
of radiocarbon results, eliminated the apparent discrepancy between
stratigraphic and chronometric patterns: At ca. 42-41 kyr calBP , the
Proto-Aurignacian postdates the Chatelperronian and the Uluzzian.
The Aurig-nacian I is nowhere earlier than ca. 40.5 kyr calBP.
Suggestions that at least some Aurignacian occurrences could actually
predate the Neanderthal-associated early Upper Paleolithic cultures of Europe
are based on four sites only.
At Chatelperron, the claim is that spit B4 of Delportes 1950s excavations
places the Aurignacian beyond 43 kyr calBP. However, that level contained
both Chatelperronian and Aurignacian material and yielded two dates, ca. 41
and ca. 44 kyr calBP. The only reasonable interpretation of this evidence is
that the earlier relates to the Chatelperronian component and the later to the
Aurignacian one. At Willendorf II, Austria, the evidence comes from level 3,
which yielded a small assemblage of artefacts in secondary position sitting on
an eroded surface that yielded selected charcoal dated to ca. 43 kyr calBP.

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However, as recently acknowledged by the sites researchers, dating small

charcoal fragments dispersed in soli.ucted layers must be avoided because
of the lateral supply of older charcoal fragments.
Such a supply clearly explains the anomalous results, which simply provide a
terminus post quem for the Lithics, the af.nities of which lie with the
Aurignacian I.
A related situation exists at Keilberg-Kirche, Germany, where most .nds
come from surface collections and displaced deposits.
The mixed lithic assemblage contains Middle Paleolithic and early Upper
Paleolithic items (blattspitzen). The charcoal dated to ca. 43 kyr calBP likely
relates to one of these components, as further indicated by the fact that the
Aurignacian diagnostics are carinated burins characteristic of the Evolved
Aurignacian (II-IV), every-where else dated to <ca. 37.5 kyr calBP.
Where the Geissenklosterle is concerned, the controversies2,40 surrounding
the denition and age of its lower Aurignacian level are now settled, with all
parties involved agreeing that the level dates to ca. 40.5 kyr calBP, in good
accord with the Au-rignacian I af.nities of the Lithics.
A recent proposition is that the pre-Aurignacian Upper Paleolithic entities of
central and eastern Europe, such as the Bachokirian of Bulgaria or the
Bohunician of Moravia and Poland, which are dated to the ca. 44-42 kyr calBP
interval, represent a precocious extension of the modern human range into
the Danubian basin.
This scenario is based on perceived similarities with a Levantine entity, the
Emirian or Initial Upper Paleo-lithic (IUP), assumed to be a product of modern
human culture. The assumption is reasonable, but the link with the Danube is
extremely weak. It rests on the observation that Levallois blade production is
unknown in Moravia before the Bohunician, and that the latters reduction

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strategy of aiming at the extraction of morpho-logically Levallois points via

non-Le-vallois prismatic methods is akin to that in the basal levels of Boker
Tachtit, Israel.
These arguments assume that the technological transition observed at Boker
Tachtit is a unique event, but the independent emergence and disappearance
of prismatic blade technologies is recorded at different moments in time and
space over the last 200,000 years. Moreover, the diffusion of technologies
can occur with no migration being involved. In fact, the apparently intrusive
nature of the Bohunician in Moravia simply rejects the large time gap currently
separating it from the local Micoquian.
In nearby southern Poland, the sites of Piekary IIa and Ksiecia Jozefa
document the in-situ development of volumetric Upper Paleolithic methods of
blade debitage out of Levallois .

. The latest evidence of Neandertals north of the Ebro divide and the IUP
Bohunician hypothesis of a Danubian wedge of modern human settlement ca.
45 ka calBP.
The cultural continuity between the Bohunician and the regional Middle
Paleolithic contradicts the hypothesis, but the issue remains open due to the
lack of associated human remains.
Parsimony dictates that there is no need to look into the Middle East for the
source of the Bohunician if a better local alternative is available.
Given the lack of associated human remains, the authorship of the Bohunician
must remain an open issue, but the evidence for cultural continuity with the
regional Middle Paleolithic suggests that it relates to Neandertals

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. The same reasoning pertains to the Bachokirian of Bulgaria.

Although aspects of size, shape, and crown morphology align the dental
material from the type-site with modern humans, this conclusion only applies
to the Aurignacian levels, the single human remain from the Bachokirian ones
being a taxonomically un-diagnostic left mandibular fragment with deciduous
1.rst molar. Moreover, the recent review of the relevant collections fully
confirmed previous reservations concerning the diagnosis of the relevant
assemblages from Bacho Kiro and Temnata as Aurignacian or preAurignacian.
In fact, technologically, these are Middle Paleolithic assemblages where, in
contrast with the IUP and the Bohunician, blade production is fully within the
Levallois concept.
This evidence indicates that Europe remained entirely a Neanderthal
continent until ca. 43 kyr calBP and that, south western Iberia excluded
contact was established and subsequent interaction was resolved within the
one or two millennia centred around 42 kyr cal B .,broadly coinciding with the
onset of Greenland Interstadial (GIS).
In terms of archaeological entities, these conclusions have two corollaries of
crucial importance:
1. Any manifestations of human behaviour predating the 43rd millennium BP
must be attributed to Neandertals, who were therefore the authors of the
Chatelperronian, the Uluzzian, the Bohunician, and equivalent early Upper
Paleolithic cultures of Europe dis-playing features of regional continuity with
the preceding Middle Paleolithic.

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2. Any manifestations of human behaviour postdating the 41st millennium BP

must be attributed to modern humans, who were therefore the authors of the
Aurignacian I and the Aurigna-cian II, including at Vindija, where level G1 is a
palimpsest covering an extended interval of time. The Neanderthal remains
are in all likelihood associated with that levels Szeletian material, not with the
split-based point also found there.
INTERACTION
Given the preceding, ambiguity is now restricted to the particular
archaeological entity that available dates place in the exact interval during
which, by whatever mechanism, Ne-andertals were replaced by modern
humans, the Proto Aurignacian. In fact, depending on potentially regionally
variable patterns of interbreeding (extensive, negligible, or non-existent),
manifestations of human behaviour from the time of contact may relate to
modern humans, Neandertals, or variously mixed populations.
That the dispersal of modern humans into Europe is clearly involved in the
emergence of the ProtoAurignacian, is suggested by several lines of evidence:
1.
Technologically and typologi-cally, the ProtoAurignacian is virtually
indistinguishable from the Early Ah-marian of the Levant. Its Font-Yves points,
for instance, are exactly the same thing as the latters El-Wad points.
2.
Chronologically, the two entities are broadly contemporary. At Ksar Akil, in
Lebanon, the Early Ahmarian is undated but lies between the Aurignacian and
the IUP; U cag.izli, in southern Turkey, provides a solid chronological
framework for the IUP66 and thus, indirectly, a terminus post quem of ca. 4341 kyr calBP for the Early Ahmarian that is consistent with the single reliable
date for Kebara (ca. 40.5 kyr calBP, on hearth charcoal).

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3.
The now lost juvenile skeleton from the Early Ahmarian of Ksar Akil (Egbert)
is modern and, given the preceding, of the same age as the Oase fossils.
4.
In marked contrast with the geographical fragmentation of the immediately
preceding Neandertal-associated techno complexes, the ProtoAurignacian
extends uniformly across Europe, from Romania (Trinova) and Austria
(Krems-Hundsteig) in the east to Cantabrian Spain (Morin) in the west.
A further point of cultural similarity resides in the fact that the two entities
feature marine shell beads as orna-ments.
One species in particular, Nassarius ( Arcularia) gibbosula, represents 40%
of all beads in the Early Ahmarian of Ksar Akil and is also well represented
among ProtoAurignacian marine shell ornaments; the latters range of taxa is
broader, but all are of pretty much the same size and shape.
Nassarius beads are also about 90% of the several hundred ornaments now
known from the IUP of U cag.izli, suggesting cultural continuity between the
two.
In fact, the earliest African ornaments, those from the ca. 75,000-year-old Still
Bay levels of Blombos, are marine shell beads.
Since the single species used, Nassarius kraussianus, is very similar to
Nassarius gibbosula, it is not unreasonable to speculate that the IUP, the
Early Ahmarian, and the ProtoAurignacian are lithic technological expressions
of a single deeply rooted cultural tradition extending all the way back into the
Middle Stone Age of southern Africa and, therefore, modern human-related.
Such speculations are in any case fully consistent with the evidence of the
long-term stability of traditions of personal ornamentation, which, throughout

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the Upper Paleolithic, often remain unchanged for tens of millennia.70

Both the ProtoAurignacian and the subsequent Aurignacian I however, also
have other types of personal ornaments, ones that are as completely
unknown in the Early Ahmarian and the IUP of the Levant as in the Middle
Stone Age of Africa, which, besides the perforated Nassarius, only contains
ostrich eggshell beads. The novelties are Dentalium tubes, pierced and
grooved animal teeth, and beads made of bone, ivory, soft stone, or fossils.
Their absence from any modern human cultural complex of preceding times
obviously cannot be attributed to raw-material availability, and can only relate
to cultural preference.
It is thus of great significance that those ProtoAurignacian novelties
correspond precisely to the only kinds of personal ornaments recorded in the
Bachokirian, the Uluzzian, and the Chatelperronian; that is, to the kinds of
personal ornaments in use among the Neanderthal societies that immigrating
modern humans encountered in Europe.
The conclusion that the ProtoAurignacian represents the blending of two
separate traditions of personal ornamentation thus seems inescapable.
In any other archaeological or anthropological context, few would question it.
Clearly, the alternative view that, after 30,000 years of total and absolute
conservatism, moderns would have suddenly decided to adopt such kinds of
ornaments at precisely the time of contact with the Neandertals, but
in-dependently of any influence from them, amounts to a virtually impossible
coincidence.
COGNITION
A corollary of the chronological patterns I have reviewed is that fully symbolic
sapiens behaviour, as measured by exactly the same standards currently
used to assess the African evidence, emerged in Europe when the continent

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was still exclusively inhabited by Neandertals.

Many have attempted to suggest specially modern human behaviour as
opposed to a specially Neanderthal behaviour, and all have met with a
similar result: No such evidence exists that does not end up with data that
some modern humans as behaviourally Neanderthal and some Neanderthal
groups as behaviourally modern.
In the realm of subsistence, for in-stance, early OIS-3 Neandertals were
logistically organized hunters at Sal-zgitter-Lebenstedt, in northern Ger-many,
where they exploited reindeer in exactly the same manner as the
Ahrensbourgians who recolonized the area 40,000 years later.
In the Le-vant, however, they had a broad-spectrum economy, including
signi.cant .
Many have attempted to de.ne a specially modern human behaviour as
opposed to a specially Neanderthal behaviour, and all have met with a
similar result: No such de.nition exists that does not end up de.ning some
modern humans as behaviourally Neanderthal and some Neanderthal groups
as behaviourally modern.
Exploitation of small mammals and plant foods, as revealed by recent studies
of phytoliths and macro plant remains from Kebara, Amud, and Tor Faraj.
In areas of the Iberian Peninsula where the present-day coastline is
sufficiently close to theirs, such as the Bay of Malaga, late OIS-3 Neanderthal
groups left sites featuring shell-midden accumulations that differ from those of
the Late Upper Paleo-lithic and Mesolithic only in that their lithic component is
Mousterian. In sum, Neanderthal adaptations ranged through the entire gamut
of ethno-graphically documented settlement-subsistence strategies.
There is no such thing as Neanderthal behaviour.

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It has been argued that modern cognition depended on the acquisition of

enhanced working memory (EWM), a cognitive feature associated with the
emergence of language and related to the ability to hold in mind
representations currently not held in view.
This feature is apparent in paleotechnic systems reacting remote action and
contingency planning, such as the production of artificial raw materials
requiring procurement in disparate sources and careful control of chemical
variables throughout a complex chain of technical operations.
Although the proponents of this view claim that such evidence does not
ap-pear in the archaeological record until about 5,000 years ago, the birchbark pitch found in the Micoquian site of Konigsaue, in Germany, fully
matches their requirements for EWM in the archaeological record: It was
produced through a several-hour smouldering process that required a strict
manufacture protocol under exclusion of oxygen and at a tightly controlled
temperature between 340C and 400C.80.
One can hardly imagine how such Pleistocene high-tech could have been
developed, transmitted, and maintained in the absence of symbolic thinking
and language as we know them.
In a nutshell, when only technological systems are considered, the hallmark
of cognitive modernity is documented among Neandertals 40,000 years
before comparable examples are offered by modern human societies.
In this regard, one must also note that the widespread notion that the first
modern humans in Europe were in fact astonishingly precocious artists
mis-represents the facts.
After 150 years of intensive archaeological research, evidence to that effect is
actually non-existent. Where both mobiliary and parietal art are concerned,
the earliest anywhere in the world are the .gurines of the German

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Aurigna-cian82 and the Chauvet cave paint-ings.

In good agreement with the nature of the associated lithics, the range of
dates falls, in both cases, entirely within the Aurignacian II and thus postdates
by some 5,000 years the arrival of moderns in Europe.
This art, therefore, holds the same relevance for the explanation of patterns
of cultural interaction at the time of Neanderthal-modern human contact as do
PowerPoint presentations for the explanation of the rise of Sumerian
civilization.
DEMOGRAPHY
Even if a certain level of long-distance stimulus generated by contacts along
the frontier with contemporary, presumably modern human societies of the
Levant was involved in these processes, the conclusion is obvious:
Neandertals and moderns featured similar levels of cognitive development
and behavioural modernity.
Such issues can thus be effectively re-moved from any further consideration
as potential barriers to admixture. But if the eventual disappearance of
anatomically archaic but behaviourally modern Neandertals was not due to a
putative biologically based competitive disadvantage, how do we then explain
it?
That no Neanderthal mtDNA survives today simply indicates that a particular
maternal lineage that existed 50,000 years ago is no more, but tells us little
about when and why it disappeared.
In fact, given that founder analysis places the actual immigration of the most
ancient European groups of today only after 30 kyr calBP,84 accepting the
premises and conclusions of extant mtDNA studies carries the implication that
the lineages to which the earliest European moderns belonged are as extinct
as the Neandertals.

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That this may well be the case should come as no surprise. Although much
attention has been paid to the environmental impact of the frequent and
dramatic climatic oscillations recorded in the climate proxies of Oxygen
Isotope Stage 3 (OIS-3), their demographic corollaries are often overlooked.
Most assessments of mtDNA histories through the critical period before and
after the time of contact only consider two population scenarios, stability and
expansion. It is clear, however, that contractions must also have occurred,
producing bottlenecks that must go a long way toward explaining patterns of
lineage loss and survival.
A case in point with major implications for the issues at stake here is the
environmental crisis associated with the emergence of the Aurignacian I in the
archaeological record, soon after moderns are .first documented in Europe
. At this timeHeinrich Event 4, ca. 40-39 kyr calBPextremely cold
conditions prevailed, imposing on human populations the highest level of
climatic stress recorded in the entire Upper Pleistocene.
Its effects must have been compounded by the catastrophic explosion, ca. kyr
calBP, of the Phlegraean Fields caldera. As a result, the area available for
human settlement in Europe must have contracted by as much as 30%,
implying a major population crash.
No modelling of the genetic history of OIS-3 Europe and of the role that
Neandertals played in it can be considered realistic if it does not account for a
demographic crisis of such significance.
The population crash, however, does not explain why it was those particular
lineages that went extinct, whereas others that existed at the same time in
Africa and western Asia are still extant; nor does it explain why the biological
contribution of Neandertals, still visible in skeletal traits of people dated to
within 5,000 years of contact, seemingly all but vanished by ca. 30 kyr calBP.

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Selection and contingency may well have played a role in the process, but the
most parsimo-nious explanation is demography, which suffices to propose a
broad his-torical reconstruction of the process.
Europe is one-third of Africas size, and during glacial times only a narrow belt
of the continent south of 53 N was available for settlement, the loss to
mountain glaciation compensated for by the exposure of extended areas of
the present-day continental platform. Moreover, as in todays subarctic areas,
European territories would have had lower carrying capacities than the
subtropical savannahs of Africa, with attendant implications for human
population density.
In sum, because modern humans were African and Neandertals European,
the modern human gene reservoir must have been many times larger than the
Neanderthal one. As long as the two reservoirs remained largely isolated,
Neanderthalensis could be and was maintained. But once populations
expanded in the two continents as a result of technological im-provements
that led to major gains in the inefficiency of resource exploitation, signi.cant
contact and interaction would have begun along what previously had been a
largely impermeable frontier.
At that time, the two reservoirs effectively merged. In such a situation, even a
minor edge of moderns in demographic parameters other than simple
numbers, such as fertility, would, in less than one millennium, suffice to bring
about the demise of the Neandertals, especially if inter-breeding was common.
One millennium is the empirically observed interval during which the
interaction game was resolved.
As different authors have discussed the technic innovations is best explained
by population growth requiring increased levels of inter-group and intragroup
social interaction eventually resulting in the emergence of systems of personal

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and ethnic identification. The ornaments from Blombos show the mechanism
in action in southern Africa ca. 75 kyr ago. The lack of evidence for the next
30,000 years suggests that the system may have subsequently collapsed, but
by 45,000 calBP we see it again in eastern Africa as well as, for the first time,
in the Near East and Europe. The marked differences in the choice of
emblems and the biological evidence of reduced contact between Europe and
Africa provided by the very fact of Neanderthalensis suggest that the
European process was largely independent, and there is no reason to
suppose that it was not dictated by similar underlying causes.
In fact, vast areas deserted during OIS-4 times, including southern England,
Belgium, Germany, and Poland, feature a relatively dense network of OIS-3
sites that, in central Europe, are clearly related to each other by a shared,
very particular technology, the Micoquian.
This simultaneous emergence or re-emergence of personal ornamentation
can thus be taken as a proxy for levels of population increase leading to the
crossing of a demographic threshold and precipitating contact, followed by
admixture and, eventually, absorption of the smaller population by the larger
one.
CONCLUSION
When modern humans entered Europe, they encountered people with the
same cognitive capabilities and featuring identical levels of cultural
achievement. In such a situation, the entire gamut of interaction situations,
from contact to mutual avoidance and full admixture, must have ensued at the
local and regional level. But the overall result in the long-term continental
perspective was that of biological and cultural blending, the imbalance in the
size of the gene reservoirs involved explaining the eventual loss of
Neanderthal mtDNA lineages among later and extant humans.

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It could be argued that such losses are of little or no consequence to the heart
of the matter, in that they do not change the basic conclusions derived from
genetic studies that a contribution of Neandertals to present Europeans is
currently undetectable and, therefore, must be negligible, and that patterns of
extant humans ancestry are essentially related to the recent Out-of-Africa
dispersal of anatomically modern people.
The European evidence, however, does have a major implication for studies
of modern human origins where issues of symbolism, language, and cognition
are concerned. The Blombos cave .nds effectively refuted the notion that the
appearance of ornaments and art could be explained by cognitive
developments precipitated by a genetic mutation occurring ca. 50 kyr calBP.
By the same token, if Neanderthal-associated archaeological cultures
featuring all elements of behavioural modernity existed in Europe many
millennia before the arrival of modern humans, and if contact entailed
significant levels of interaction and admixture, then the acquisition of fully
sapiens behaviour cannot be construed as the outcome of an genetic bio
cultural process restricted to the African Homo heidelbergensis lineage.
The ultimate implication of the European evidence, thus, is that the hardware
requirements for symbolic thinking must have been in place before the Middle
Pleistocene divergence of the Neanderthal lineage. This conclusion has three
corollaries: .first, that the much later appearance of personal ornaments and
art represents a qualitative leap in culture, the operation of demographic and
social factors triggered by technological improvements and adaptive success;
second, that it is highly unlikely that the Neanderthal-sapiens split involved
differentiation at the bio-species level; and third, that the search for the
genetic and cognitive processes underly-ing the emergence of language and
symbolism in the human lineage needs to be refocused on aspects of the

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Lower Pleistocene emergence and evolution of Homo erectus people.

It is easy to see that the above research is more in depth than the first
example and as far as I am concerned accurate and presents the evidence
well. Below I have placed some of the mentioned artefacts for reference
linked to the second part of the example research above.

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Note the small shells used for decoration.

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I am not concerned that I have not been able to include all the photographic
material connected to the Neanderthals of Europe because not only would it
take up many page spaces but there is always the risk that some of the
photographic data may be wrong. I have therefore included only a small
selection that I feel is more related to this research of mine.

Skull from France

Tools from France

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A TABLE FOR GUIDENCE NEANDERTHAL MAN.

THE KNOWN BONES OF THE NEANDERTHALS.

This of course includes skulls and at times locations but as an end to my
research I needed to include many of the graphics for comparison and
reference.
Where possible I have left a comment on a graphic that I feel is important and
interesting for the reader to follow up on as desired. My thanks here for all the
people who helped with the research and also made constructive comments.

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BONES AND MORE BONES.

Fossil Hominids from Kenya dating 1 and 2 million years ago

H. habilis, H.erectus (Early) and robust Paranthropus.
The above is from Africa and is shown just for reference to the shapes of
skulls and bones from there. It is not possible that what we see above and
what we know of the Neanderthals in Europe that Neanderthals were ever in
Africa as such, the close locations would be Turkey and Iraq then north into
Europe.

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Found in the Arago cave in France and dated at 400,000 years old.
The fragments are made up of front of a skull, two lower jaws and a left hip
bone.

This skull is from Steinheim in Germany and shows a very prominent brow
ridge. However I need to point out that this skull is small if I compare it with
other Neanderthal skulls. The sunken cheek is I am sure of, is due to
distortion and not a natural feature but damage during the fossilization
process.

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The Saccopastore skull from Italy.

Petralona skull Greece 300,000 years.

120,000 years old. Small brain.

Looks like a Neanderthal.

The skull at the back however H.erectus.

The Saint-Cesaire skeleton in a rock shelter. France.

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From the French sites of La Chapelle-aux Saints.

Gibraltar

Croatia

Two female Neanderthal skulls is from Krapina in Croatia and on left is the
Gibraltar skull. The data is in the research file above.

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St. Cesaire French skull.

36,0000 years

Modern human pelvis

Neanderthal hand

Neanderthal pelvis

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As many of the remains of the Neanderthals are found in caves, sometimes at

a depth of a metre or more, the bones may be just a heap all thrown together
or in some cases laid out as in a ritual form though may not in fact be this.
What is also needed is consideration of bones being brought to a cave by wild
animals of the time, carnivores of all types, and a skull or bone found on its
own points directly to this possibility.
Damage to Neanderthal remains may be post mortem and therefore care
needs to be taken in interpretation of damage to bones or skull. Mistakes are
and can be made when bones are recovered and show damage and this
includes missing bones. All bones found should be examined closely before
and after cleaning otherwise good evidence can be lost. Any soil or mud
around and on the remains should also be checked for pollen grains and
insect casings as well.
The person who examines the bones and skulls must be confident in his or
her identification of Neanderthal bones because this would beyond the scope

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of a student or archaeology field worker unless they have had training in such.

Skull major points modern human.

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The above is a guide what you should be looking

for either in part or a full Skeleton. A little or fragments of bones is much
better than none at all.
Bone disease must also be looked for and this is more than likely in the case
of the Neanderthals but again I should stress needs to come under the scope
of someone with good Osteology knowledge and practice.
Fractures may also be present and if before death and the victim lived then
there should be evidence of bone hardening at where the fracture took place
and more so with the long bones. Such fractures therefore could be the result
of falls and tumbles onto a hard surface, a large animal attack like a bear or
other large carnivore, fights between groups, or a type of brittle bone disease.
All the evidence gathered from bones can then be logged and filed for later
reference.

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To finish of this research I have placed here suggested timelines by others .

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THE READING LIST AND RESEARCH BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR THIS

RESEARCH. 2012
In Search Of The Neanderthals; Stringer and Gamble.
Collins Archaeology Dictionary.
Archaeology; Renfrew and Bahn.
Origins Reconsidered; Leakey and Lewin.
The Human Past, Thames and Hudson publishers.
Open University Library.
Study of Man; J.Z Young.
Mismeasurement Of Man; Gold.
Wisdom Of Bones; Walker and Shipman.
OTHER READING RESEARCH SOURCES.
Biblical Archaeology.
K.Kris Hirst, Archaeology on line.
World Atlas Of Archaeology.

MY THANKS TO;
Mangala, Mandala Yoga Ashram Wales. For Guidance.
Swami Krishnalpremananda, For putting up with me.
Swami Shiva Priya, for being a good listener, her library and researcher.
Swami G, for his kindness, the room to work and his cheese.
The people involved in the Gnome Neanderthal Project and data.
Staff at the University of England Library for their kindness.
Open University Library Staff for directions to data.
PDF data from Queens University of Belfast, Galway University, Co Galway
Ireland, Ulster University Belfast, Lampeter University, Wales and many
others who kept me on my toes over the years.

Ronnie Carlton 2011

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