Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Take that, you filthy Barast!


My friend Melody Friedenthal sent me a link to this story about new evidence that a Homo sapiens speared a Homo neanderthalensis.

In my novel Hominids and its sequels, I argue that our kind of humanity (referred to as Gliksins by the Neanderthals in those books) were responsible for the demise of the Neanderthals (which call themselves Barasts in my books).
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2 Comments:

At July 22, 2009 3:03 PM , Blogger Ron S. Friedman said...

From the article:
"We're not suggesting there was a blitzkrieg, with modern humans marching across the land and executing the Neandertals [aka Neanderthals]. I want to say that loud and clear."


That reminds me that as a high school student, I went for an excavation in the Kebara Cave, northern Israel. (Where I found some flint stone tools)

If I remember correctly, Homo Sapiens and Homo Neanderthalensis lived side by side, only a few hundred meters off each other, for 20,000 years, before the Neanderthals become extinct.

 
At July 22, 2009 3:08 PM , Blogger RobertJSawyer said...

I'm sure you're remembering correctly what you were told, Ron, but there's just no way we know that for sure. Last time I checked, we had evidence of about 400 Neanderthals individuals, and Neanderthals were around for 175,000 years. (Many more individuals obviously existed, but that's how many uniquely identifiable individuals we've found from all that time, based on skulls, or knee caps, or what have you.) There's simply no way to tell if Neanderthals and Homo sapiens lived side by side (that close) simultaneously, or if a band of Neanderthals was in an area from, say, Spring of 38,944 B.C., left, and then a couple of Homo sapiens took up residence somewhere nearby in the fall of 38,942 B.C.

 

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