Talk:Neanderthal

Citation of Weyrich et al

The citation of Weyrich et al. 2017 is really questionable. This paper should not have made it through review and it is really shocking that it did. If you look at the detail from an ancient DNA perspective it is extremely weak. The vast majority of DNA reported in this paper is contamination. The rest is too rare to ascertain and is associated with plants and animals we don't have genomes for. There isn't enough reads from plants and fauna of interest to infer consumption. There are lot of problems that are just not dealt with. See Mann, Allison E., et al. "Do I have something in my teeth? The trouble with genetic analyses of diet from archaeological dental calculus." Quaternary International (2020). Aerchasúr (talk) 23:44, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Neanderthal extermination theory -- outdated lead (WP:UNDUE)

Greetings to all.

This section of the talk page concerns the following passage from the lead at Neanderthal:

They most likely went extinct due to competition with, or extermination by, immigrating European early modern humans[13][14][15]

The three sources given for this statement include:

1. Neanderthal extinction by competitive exclusion - a primary source which tests its own hypothesis, published in 2008
4. The Third Chimpanzee - an extremely biased novel, published in 1992, representing a social anthropologist's personal musings. (Note: the author characterizes Neanderthals as "subhumans" on page 44)
6. Rapid ecological turnover and its impact on Neanderthal and other human populations - this reference is a primary source which tests its hypothesis with climate data.

I regard these sources as inadequate, outdated, and inappropriate for the position of Neanderthal "extermination" and out-competition.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Neither the two research papers nor the novel offer any physical evidence for Neanderthal extermination, and the evidence for out-competition is weak, being based on highly theoretical interpretations of climate data; which is WP:UNDUE weight to a primary source's pet theory.

There is also an issue with the publication dates of these references. Crucially, they all pre-date the recovery of autosomal DNA from Neanderthals in the 2010s, followed by the sequencing of a Neanderthal genome, and the discovery that most living people harbor some Neanderthal ancestry. These findings effectively killed the leading theories that preceeded them, including the 'pure replacement' (extermination) theory of Neanderthal extinction, as well as the idea that modern humans out-competed them.

Hence, while the three sources given here might not be inconsistent with the common idea of their time, they are essentially rejected by today's authors. João Zilhão summarizes this shift of opinion in his review article, Neandertal-Modern Human Contact in Western Eurasia:

During the last two decades of the twentieth century, the  debate concerning the emergence of European modern  humans and the fate of the Neandertals revolved around  the polar alternatives of “Multiregionalism” and “Recent  African Origin.” In their original formulations, where  Multiregionalism saw modern humans as principally locally  evolving from ancestral populations of “archaics,” Recent African Origin defined them as a new species originating at least 150,000 years ago in Africa, from where the rest of the world was eventually colonized, with Eurasia’s aboriginal humans, especially the Neandertals, becoming extinct without descent in the process.

A minority position, “Assimilation,” accepted recent Out- of-Africa migration and/or genetic diffusion but viewed Neandertals as a geographical variant of Homo sapiens, not as a different biological species. In this view, the disappearance of Eurasian archaics from the paleontological record after about 40,000 years ago would have been caused by loss of isolation and ensuing integration with the wider human gene pool, that is, by demographic and/or natural selection processes operating in a context of significant population admixture.

Human Paleontology (Trinkaus 2007), Genetics (Hawks 2012) and Archeology (Zilhão 2006a, 2011, 2012) now concur in indicating that such Assimilation models best match the empirical data concerning the replacement of Neandertals by modern humans accumulated over the last 15 years of research developments, briefly summarized below.

So, today's view of Neanderthals is not that they were exterminated, nor that they were outcompeted. Neanderthal populations were genetically merged with Sapiens populations, which were larger of those than Neanderthals. Over time, Neanderthal ancestry was reduced (in some cases quite rapidly), and Neanderthal morphological traits largely vanished. It is indicated that the admixture was driven exclusively by Neanderthal males mating with modern human females.

Another review article by by Villa and Roebroeks reached the same conclusion as Zilhão:

Neandertals are the best-studied of all extinct hominins, with a rich fossil record sampling hundreds of individuals, roughly dating from between 350,000 and 40,000 years ago. Their distinct fossil remains have been retrieved from Portugal in the west to the Altai area in central Asia in the east and from below the waters of the North Sea in the north to a series of caves in Israel in the south. Having thrived in Eurasia for more than 300,000 years, Neandertals vanished from the record around 40,000 years ago, when modern humans entered Europe. Modern humans are usually seen as superior in a wide range of domains, including weaponry and subsistence strategies, which would have led to the demise of Neandertals. This systematic review of the archaeological records of Neandertals and their modern human contemporaries finds no support for such interpretations, as the Neandertal archaeological record is not different enough to explain the demise in terms of inferiority in archaeologically visible domains. Instead, current genetic data suggest that complex processes of interbreeding and assimilation may have been responsible for the disappearance of the specific Neandertal morphology from the fossil record.

Since the statement in the current lead doesn't seem to reflect any modern review articles exploring the fate of Neanderthals, my mind says it should be removed and replaced with a new affirmation of more comprehensive, up-to-date materials. I look forward to your contributions to the article and this talk page, and I truly appreciate your consideration. Have a great day. Hunan201p (talk) 13:01, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

I added assimilation but I wouldn't call it the new consensus since the archeological basis for their arguments hinges on the assignment of the Chatelperronean to Neanderthals learning from modern human cultures   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  18:49, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

Pat Shipman's Neanderthal eye white theory

Pat Shipman's theory that Neanderthals didn't have eye whites, and that modern humans evolved to have eye whites through communicating with wolves, is a fringe theory that is not based on a testable hypothesis. It has been described as conjectural by at least one reviewer, and I'm sure it's been criticized by others. I don't think it merits any mentioning in the article much less a whole paragraph. Hunan201p (talk) 13:25, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, that was only in there because I was told I needed to include more books, but I'm curious why you deleted the entire section but kept disease and climate change   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  19:17, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

Bruniquel

This isn't to question Neanderthals in Europe around the period, but despite the Bruniquel discovery being somewhat old when I recently searched about this I found hypotheses that these could have been made by Neanderthals, a study to date when the stalagmites broke, but when searching about developments like if evidence of sout and human artefacts were found it was more difficult. I then wondered how WP:DUE it is in this article. If there were more recent developments showing it wasn't natural or made by other animals (i.e. carnivores are known to pile up debris), it would alternatively be nice to update the section. Thanks, —PaleoNeonate – 23:11, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

Bruniquel Cave preserves burned bones, highly unlikely to have occurred naturally because how would a forest fire get so deep in a cave?   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  02:11, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, burnt bones are definitely an important finding that should be mentioned. —PaleoNeonate – 11:34, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

You don't need anyone's permission to add it   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  22:04, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Since the default link only showed a few sentences of an abstract I initially believed searching for more sources was necessary, but the pubmed abstract was more complete and already mentioned fire and burnt bones (added). Thanks again, —PaleoNeonate – 03:31, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

This page has become filled with speculation, if not outright fantasy. You see "[Neanderthals] may have...", "might have...", "could have" entirely too many times to approach the content seriously. The Neanderthal page used to be based on sound, scientific, peer-reviewed, evidence-based fact and theory. Now it appears to be one person's idealized fantasy of the Neanderthal. The page has also become long-winded, and shows a peculiar fixation on comparisons between Neanderthals and Anatomically Modern Humans. The same constant comparisons are not made between chimpanzees and bonobos, elephants and mammoths or even between remarkably similar bird species in their respective pages, and thus it seems as if there is a motive and bias in the writing. This bias becomes clear when one reaches the end of the page and sees the statement "resurgence of the multiregional hypothesis", when in fact, there has been no such resurgence in the scientific community.

Neanderthals might have cooked food by boiling...but there is literally no evidence anywhere on earth that they did. No stone or ceramic pots or eating/drinking/cooking vessels have been found and attributed to Neanderthals. They haven't even been unearthed at modern human sites prior to the late Paleolithic.

Neanderthals might have decorated themselves with red ochre...but again, there is no evidence, just speculation.

Neanderthals might have painted cave walls...no evidence. The "evidence" is a single cave that was occupied by Anatomically Modern Humans, and the date is disputed. More speculation.

Neanderthals might have had language...but the position of the hyoid bone, lack of figurative art, lack of engraving, and reduced brain areas associated with language, critical thought and emotion strongly suggest they did not have any type of language as we associate language with modern humans. Crows and dolphins are known to communicate, but we don't generally refer to their communication as "language". Any suggestion that Neanderthals had a fully developed language is speculative at best. So yet again, speculation without evidence.

Neanderthals might have made music...No evidence. All "evidence" for Neanderthal art, body decoration and music are contemporary with modern human presence in Europe. Lots of speculation...no proof.

In no other Wikipedia page is so much fantasy allowed to pass. Let's stick to the FACTS. Citing one researcher's speculation is not a substitution for a legitimate peer-reviewed source.

Wikipedia pages should be un-biased and objective. This page is not. In fact, it's dangerously close to "original research" in it's heavy use/citation of what is literally original research.

Earth Tones In Autumn (talk) 01:39, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

This is standard for any article on an extinct anything. For example, you can't say "T. rex was 8 metric tons on average," you can only say "T. rex is estimated to have been 8 metric tons on average" because there's no way of verifying things like these. You can't go back in a time machine, so all we really have is speculation, especially in anthropology. There is a huge debate on if Neanderthals had language and all the other items you mentioned; it doesn't matter which side of the debate you personally favor, to omit it would leave the article incomplete   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  02:02, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

citation of john d hawks

Anthropologist John D. Hawks has argued that the genetic similarity to Neanderthals may be the result of both common ancestry and interbreeding, as opposed to just one or the other. doi=10.1146/annurev-anthro-092412-155548, Significance of Neandertal and Denisovan genomes in human evolution

This line seemed really weird to me because there's no sense in arguing that some aspect of genetic similarity between two species of the same genus have common ancestry unless you don't understand taxonomy, so I took a look at the paper. It's an annual review and makes no argument, and furthermore does not actually seem to address the topic: he mentions common ancestry once, in order to give background to his section on the research around direct ancestry. Since the line is superfluous and the citation does not support the line I have removed both.

romnempire (talk) 14:52, 23 May 2021 (UTC)