How many of you often feel that there was a lot more to the Neanderthal / Cro-Magnon interplay?
Common knowledge has the two races co-existing for a period of time with the Neanderthal "vanishing" in the end. Well now it is fairly well accepted that Neanderthal did not so much vanish as integrated to make modern Homo-sapiens what the are today.
Now it appears that Neanderthal had a lot more to offer early man than genetic material. Mounting evidence has shown that Neanderthal showed early humans how to construct sophisticated bone tools.
Now this is not the first time that cultural traditions and others have been believed to have originated with Neanderthal to then influence Homo-Sapiens. The tradition of burying the dead is one dramatic example. But in general, according to the posting in New Scientist, most researchers think that the bulk of cultural exchange passed the other way, from humans to Neanderthals.
From the article:
- "It is just about possible, says Fred Coolidge at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, that over tens of thousands of years Neanderthals thought up a way of doing one thing – making these tools – that humans hadn't thought of before,"
Check out the NewScientist article HERE
