From: tcbruno@athena.mit.edu (Tom Bruno)
Newsgroups: sci.archaeology
Subject: Re: LIVEING NEANDERTHALS?
Date: 17 Apr 92 16:45:01 GMT
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

In article <668.704.uupcb@matrix.sbs.com>, terry.mccombs@matrix.sbs.com (Terry Mccombs) writes:
|> 
|>   Has anyone heard about the suggestion made by archaeologist Myra
|> Shackley that there could be a small bend of liveing Neanderthals
|> liveing in the mountainins of Outer Mongolia?
|>   She claims to have found modern stone tools that look like those
|> known to have been made by Neanderthals along the edge of the Gobi
|> desert near the Altai Mountains, asking local herders who made the
|> objects the answer was always the same, she says she was told they
|> were made by the Almas, a people that live in high in the mountain
|> caves and have been seen hunting for food.
|>   This report was found in the archaeology journal Antiquity, in which
|> Shackley said "The idea that modern man can be the only surviving
|> hominid species is outmoded biological arrogance."
|>                        

This reminds me of the palaeoanthropology class I'm taking right now.  
A month ago, we were talking about the beginning of stone tool use among
early hominids- specifically, the times right before the Oldowan Industry
(2.4 to 1.5 million years BP).  The development and use of tools is credited
to Homo habilis, the first in the line of the genus Homo (as far as we know).
However, at least two species of Australopithecines were living at the same
time as Homo- is it possible that they, too, may have been early tool-users?

Well, the common censensus is 'no.'  The reasoning behind the answer is that
in the scheme of evolution, each specific niche of adaptation can accomodate but
one species, so that no niche can be occupied by two species for long- one will
run the other one out of business within a very short amount of time.  Thus,
since tool use among the genus Homo neatly fills the slot of the 'tool using'
adaptation, both Homo and Australopithecines could not have been tool users,
since it would have put the two in direct competition and resulted in a quick
extinction of one of the heriditary lines.  

But look at the two other living hominid species of the time- Australopithecus
robustus and boisei, two large ('robust') species which were specifically
adapted to different environments and diets than H. habilis- couldn't tool use
then be possible, if each tool-using adaptation fills a specific econiche?
(Consider the chimpanzees and their 'termite-fishing' tools.  Clearly, the early
hominid use of comparable wooden and reed devices did not drive the chimps to
extinction.)  In addition, the H. habilis cranial capacity (780cc) is not
incredibly larger than that of the robust Australoptihecines (550-600cc).
Finally, many stone tool sites in Africa are found without any hominid remains- 
thus, it is in many cases only an assumption that H. habilis was indeed 
responsible.  Could it be the same sort of 'outmoded biological arrogance' to
assume that the survival of the tool-using genus Homo to modernity 'clearly'
indicates that Homo was the only tool-using hominid genus?  Palaeoanthropology
is riddled with assumptions and biases left over from the turn of the century-
a kind of 'humanocentricism' that envisions the process of human evolution as
a grand progression and culmination of Darwinian forces- the superior creature
called Mankind.  Not so sure if I subscribe to all those assumptions, really.
Call me a skeptic if you will...  =)

tom bruno
department of archaeology
mit