Post by L Roebuck on Oct 19, 2008 7:08:46 GMT -5
Neanderthals ate fish sticks. Who knew?
By By Scott Dobson-Mitchell
My anthropology class recently watched a documentary about Neanderthals. One of the discoveries that was highlighted in the documentary was a site called Shanidar, in Iraq, which showed evidence of a Neanderthal burial- complete with funeral flowers. This led anthropologists to conclude that Neanderthals, contrary to the ‘brute’ stereotype, were capable of showing compassion.
Or maybe, as a classmate sitting next to me said, “They stuck the dead guy in a hole because he stunk.”
Then there’s the site called Grotte XVI, a cave in southwestern France, where archaeologists found a bunch of fish bones and some residue of smoke. From those two bits of ‘evidence,’ anthropologists assumed that Neanderthals must have had the mental capacity to plan ahead, or even the ability to imagine the future. Apparently, some ash on the side of a cave and a couple of fish skulls imply that Neanderthals deliberately preserved the fish that they caught for future consumption.
Full Text
By By Scott Dobson-Mitchell
My anthropology class recently watched a documentary about Neanderthals. One of the discoveries that was highlighted in the documentary was a site called Shanidar, in Iraq, which showed evidence of a Neanderthal burial- complete with funeral flowers. This led anthropologists to conclude that Neanderthals, contrary to the ‘brute’ stereotype, were capable of showing compassion.
Or maybe, as a classmate sitting next to me said, “They stuck the dead guy in a hole because he stunk.”
Then there’s the site called Grotte XVI, a cave in southwestern France, where archaeologists found a bunch of fish bones and some residue of smoke. From those two bits of ‘evidence,’ anthropologists assumed that Neanderthals must have had the mental capacity to plan ahead, or even the ability to imagine the future. Apparently, some ash on the side of a cave and a couple of fish skulls imply that Neanderthals deliberately preserved the fish that they caught for future consumption.
Full Text