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<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>From the pen of Val Geist. In my
opinion, this is bloody brilliant:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>“<EM>Not Pooch, but Rudolf was Man’s
best Friend!”</EM> </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Reindeer were our salvation as they
allowed us to speed towards complex cultures and obliterate our powerful rival,
Neanderthal man. Without Reindeer, it is not unlikely that we would be still in
a stone-age culture, and Neanderthal would be probably alive and well, and
excluding us from much of <st1:place>Eurasia</st1:place>. In the above paper I
explain step by step how we managed to gain on Neanderthal and ultimately starve
him out. And reindeer were central to that! The paper explains why.</FONT></DIV>
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size=3> </FONT></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3>Why start with that? It’s as good as any point, because human evolution
is tied to it and we can radiate wherever we care to look. </FONT></P>
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size=3> </FONT></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3>In a (big!) nutshell: With the first glacial maximum of the last
glaciation (Wuerm/ Wisconsinian) at about 60,000 BP, Neanderthal shrank back
from the severely aired Mediterranean basin towards the rich European
periglacial zones, allowing desert-adapted Cro-Magnids to escape out of Africa
and move east to at least Australia. Because ocean levels were then at last 100
m lower we know nothing archeologically about this break out. However, we have
reason to assume that boat cultures developed along the ocean shores. At about
40,000 BP, during an interstadial, Cro-Magnids thrust north and split, one
branch going west along the glacial front of the Scandinavian ice sheath. The
other branch heads east towards central <st1:place>Asia</st1:place>. Cro-Magnon
occupies a wedge of land just south of the Scandinavian ice sheath an just north
of Neanderthal geographic distribution which clings close to mountains and
montane glaciers. This situation continues for some five to six thousand years,
till Neanderthal goes extinct. We and they were thus close together for
thousands of years, and the demise of Neanderthal man was slow. Only then did we
occupy all of <st1:place>Europe</st1:place>. There is no evidence for warfare
between us and them. How was prolonged co-existence possible? Why no
interbreeding? What killed off Neanderthal?</FONT></P>
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size=3> </FONT></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3>Examining the Cro-magnids we note that some 95 % of the bones recovered
from their sites are reindeer bones; other species such as mammoth, wooly rhino,
giant deer, are rare in Upper Paleolithic deposits, but common in Neanderthal
sites. Cro-magnids, but not Neanderthal man, distinguish themselves as artists.
However, the cave artists are fascinated not by reindeer, on which they depend
for food, but with dangerous beasts. To make along story short: the evidence
suggests that the painters were young men. They were very courageous young men
for it takes real guts to crawl deep into the earth with the equipment they had
and then paint a scene. Now, Dale Guthrie, who has written a book on this
subject, argues that the paintings reflect the wishes of young men to give an
excellent account of their prowess – by confronting the largest an most
dangerous of the fauna. In short: cave art is bravado by young men. Though they
<I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">ate </I>reindeer, they <I
style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">dreamt</I> mammoth etc.! Reindeer were food;
mammoths were sport! </FONT></P>
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size=3> </FONT></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3>The Cro-magnids grew large, athletic bodies and huge brains!<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>They apparently killed reindeer in
excess, then stored the products. The trick was to catch the reindeer crossing
in a canyon at an acceptable place where they can be killed in excess of need
with hand-thrown attl- attls. To do so regularly, demanded that the hunters had
to predict accurately <U>when</U> the reindeer crossed at what place. Reindeer
migrations are tied to chronologic time and can only be predicted by someone who
could keep track of annual chronologic time, that is, by someone who had a
calendar. Mashack postulated 1972 that the “<I
style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">baton de commandement</I>” made of the
2<SUP>nd</SUP> antler tine of reindeer bulls was a lunar calendar. Since
reindeer cross rivers at predictable places, a calendar allowed one to
anticipate and plan for reindeer migrations. Therefore reindeer could be
exploited to the high level observable. With reindeer meat and products
preserved, Cro magids were free to indulge in other activities for times between
reindeer fall and spring migrations. Hunting for sport large and dangerous
creatures was one option which, besides “glory”, also supplied fresh meat and
welcome relief from dried, smoked and fermented reindeer. </FONT></P>
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size=3> </FONT></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3>Neanderthal was dependent not on reindeer, which he killed occasionally,
but on large-bodied megafauna from the mammoth steppe – mammoth, woolly rhino,
horses, bison, giant deer. He was restricted to the over-wintering areas of
these giants close to large glaciers which, harboring cold pockets, prevented
the icing over of ranges and thus provided predictable winter habitat for the
food of Neanderthal. With the arrival of Cro- Magnon these large creatures begin
to decline. They had not done so when only Neanderthal occupied
<st1:place>Europe</st1:place>. Therefore, the most likely cause of Neanderthal’s
- slow – extinction, was the demise of his favorite megafaunal prey. </FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><o:p><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3> </FONT></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3>Without migratory reindeer, and our ability to accurately predict the
timing of their migrations and kill in excess, we could not have persisted, let
alone developed superlative athletic bodies and a culture that lasted some
25,000 years. </FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><o:p><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3> </FONT></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3>From Neanderthal’s perspective, reindeer were a frustrating beast which
appeared in herds then vanished.</FONT></P>
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size=3> </FONT></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3>However – <U>and this is new </U>– there is another angle: reindeer were
not an <U>appropriate</U> food for Neanderthal! They were distinctly inferior as
food to mammoth, rhino and horses! This why: Neanderthal was a super-athlete, as
he had to be practicing the specialized type of hunting he did. For a human to
be a <U>super athlete</U>, especially one with so large a brain as Neanderthal
possessed, requires a <U>very large supply</U> of Essential Fatty Acids (EFA’s),
which are linnoleic acid (Omega-6) and alpha-linnoleic acid (Omega-3).
Unfortunately, these highly reactive fatty acids are degraded in the rumen of
ruminants, so that the fat of ruminants (reindeer are ruminants) has relatively
less of the essential fatty acids. However, these fatty acids are quite abundant
in the fat of what we call mono-gastrics, that is, in herbivores that first
digest their food via a true stomach before it is fermented in the hind gut and
ceacum. Consequently, the soft fats of mammoth, rhino, horses, onagers, but also
of bears and wild pigs was far preferable to Neanderthal than the hard and
nutritionally inferior fats of reindeer and bison. This means that Neanderthal,
as a specialized carnivore, to fulfill its physiological needs, must have chosen
to hunt creatures other than reindeer, and had no particular reason to hunt
reindeer, except as an occasional change in diet. </FONT></P>
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size=3> </FONT></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3>Cro-Magnon, the descendant of coastal people had acquaintance with fish
diets. Fatty fish have a large abundance of Essential Fatty Acids, especially
the rare Omega-3 variety. Cro-Magnon, early on, catches migratory salmon, whose
appearance in rivers can also be predicted by the use of a calendar. Therefore,
any nutritional deficit in reindeer fat could be readily made up by eating some
dried and smoked salmon. Also, all reindeer hunters eat the rumen content of
reindeer, a potential source of some EFA’s. There is no evidence that
Neanderthal caught salmon, but there is such for Upper Paleolithic people in
<st1:place>Europe</st1:place>. There is no evidence that the content of <U>true
stomachs</U> has ever been eaten by hunters. <SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Neanderthal was thus vulnerable as his
athletic physiology required large supplies of volatile fatty acids which he
historically, as a carnivore in food habits, readily obtained from the fat of
the monogastric megafauna. That’s what allowed him to thrive during the many
months of winter when no greenery was in sight.</FONT></P>
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size=3> </FONT></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3>Neanderthal hearths, in the absence of Cro-magnids, are about
1/5<SUP>th</SUP> as frequent as those of the Upper Paleolithic. With
Cro-magnids, greatly out-numbering Neanderthal and thriving on reindeer and
salmon – and – hunting the megafauna for sport, there would an effect on
megafauna abundance, reducing this the staff of live for Neanderthal. And there
was no ready way to counter-adapt, as reindeer were inferior food to
Neanderthal, as Neanderthal had no calendar, and fishing for salmon was
apparently not in. Cro-magnids, which were not war-like and whose recovered
skeletons show no evidence of homicide, were much too smart to confront the
athletically much superior Neanderthal. </FONT></P>
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size=3> </FONT></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3>Hybridization was out as the physically highly demanding way of hunting
by Neanderthal could not be practiced by hybrids. Hybrid disadvantage kept the
gene pools apart.</FONT></P>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF"
PTSIZE="10">----------<BR>Howard Bloom<BR>Author of The Lucifer Principle: A
Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution
of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century<BR>Visiting Scholar-Graduate
Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate
Institute<BR>www.howardbloom.net<BR>www.bigbangtango.net<BR>Founder:
International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution
Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango
Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the
Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political
Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human
Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New
Paradigm book series.<BR>For information on The International Paleopsychology
Project, see: www.paleopsych.org<BR>for two chapters from <BR>The Lucifer
Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see
www.howardbloom.net/lucifer<BR>For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of
Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see
www.howardbloom.net<BR></FONT></DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>