Introduce Neanderthal into your life!

2000/04/01 Araolaza, Oier - Elhuyar Zientziaren Komunikazioa Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Anatomia/Fisiologia

Paleoanthropologists have few questions and answers about the time when the men of Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon lived together in Europe. Was there contact between the two groups? And any relationship? Did they exchange ideas and technologies? Did they take the human trace? Why did the Neanderthals disappear?Portuguese archaeologist Joao Zilhao has tried to build his house taking advantage of the vacuum in this plot of questions and few answers. From this time when the men of Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon lived together, numerous theories have been published. There are those who believe that both groups, although they lived in similar territories, occupied residences at different times and therefore had no relationship. Other researchers agree that the Neanderthals were isolated for thousands of years by the Würm glaciations, so they did not resemble human beings of the same species. According to the third interpretation, humans Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon would try to exchange and multiply ideas and technologies, but intuit that the isolation of Neanderthal would provoke an attempt at sterile reproduction.

There is a fourth proposal that Joao Zilho wants to promote. Accordingly, both groups would successfully achieve reproduction and a new group of hybrid men would emerge. It is therefore proposed that Neanderthal participate in the evolution of the execution of modern man. This clashes with the theory accepted by most paleoanthropologists, who argue that the Neanderthals disappeared without offspring.

In December 1998, the team of archaeologists led by Zilhao discovered the skeleton of a 4-year-old boy in the Lapedo Valley, Portugal. The so-called "child of Lapedo" has the physical characteristics of the men of Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon, according to Zilhao. For example, the gag and teeth seem to belong to the modern man and the femur and the tibia as the Neanderthals had. According to the data, the child would live some 24,500 years ago. That is, 3,000 years after the disappearance of the Neanderthals. According to Zilhao, the Lapedo child would be a descendant of the human hybrid group formed by the union and mixture of humans Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon. There are those who have taken the hypothesis as a barbarity and the debate has calurado a lot.

The main problem the car has to move forward is data scarcity. Bear in mind that Neandenthal humans lived in Europe for 100,000 years to 30,000. They remained therefore for at least 70,000 years, although to date only 100 clues have been found on this human group. But they are not 100 complete bodies, but bone fragments corresponding to 100 men. There are only 5 faces of the Neanderthal Man, 3 quite whole skeletons and 5 more fragments. The rest are only some parts of the skeleton.

Now we only have the skeleton of a 4-year-old to decide whether or not there was a hybrid human group. It seems difficult to sustain a theory that explains a whole human group from such a small sample.