The time line being developed on this blog puts much of speech’s origins occurring before the time around 500 thousands years ago when one part of the Homo line split toward the Neanderthal and another part moved toward Homo sapiens. After the split the sapiens line went its own way, possibly developed adolescence and ceremonial speech. But this story line would be rather different if Neanderthals and sapiens joined up again after a divorce of half a million years, with each contributing something to the final product.
It had seemed as though the matter was in the process of being settled. Neanderthals and humans: never the twain did meet (at least not for hanky panky). But lately there has been noise on the line and the story is getting tangled again. Last November Babel’s Dawn reported on a computation that a gene had entered the human genome through Neanderthals (see: Way Out of Africa) and now the news from the fossil world is going into full contradictory mode.
Jan. 11: Science magazine reports that a team led by the Russian Academy of Sciences and the University of Colorado at Boulder has found “modern human” remains from 45,000 years ago on the Asian steppe, south of Moscow. Evidence of who occupied the site is based on teeth “which [says the report] are notoriously difficult to assign to specific human types,” but because of the associated artifacts the investigators feel confident about assigning the remains to modern humans.
Jan. 12: An article appears in Science magazine reporting analysis of a human skull found 50 years ago in South Africa. The skull was determined to be 36,000 years old and to show strong similarities with similarly ancient skulls found in Europe. This evidence is taken as support for a theory that modern humans arose on the African continent and spread to Europe and Asia. The theory had strong genetic support, but only now is there a fossil showing that humans at the tip of southern Africa and in central Europe were anatomically members of the same species.
So things seemed to be going in favor of the divorce, but:
Jan. 15: An article appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences analyzing a Romanian fossil dating back about 35,000 years ago, making this fellow a contemporary of the South African skull. (What’s a difference of a thousand years, when we are talking of events so long ago?) The authors were from Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Bristol. They found that while the fossil was mostly modern it did have some archaic features that suggest some degree of mixture with Neandertals. The Washington University team’s spokesman, Erik Triknkaus, says, “I think that what this find really shows is the ongoing nature of human evolution. Technically, this skull is a modern human, but humans as we know them today have evolved considerably since then.” In other words: the out-of-Africa theory said, only three days earlier, to have been reinforced is here rejected.
The University of Bristol put out even more bold claims, beginning their press release with the statement, “Humans continued to evolve significantly long after they were established in Europe, and interbred with Neandertals as they settled across the continent.” When pressed for comment, however, Bristol’s professor João Zilhão was only willing to say the fossils “could” indicate modern human and Neandertal mixing.
As a loudmouth at a party, my tendency is to look on this as a certain amount of last gasp tossing of pixie dust in the eyes, but as a blogger reporting on what’s going on I have to say in all humility that I am in no position to question or endorse any of this stuff. Looking objectively at the evidence I would rate
the teeth: weak. The artifacts found with the teeth are interesting but cannot be shown to be modern on the basis of the teeth. The investigators went in thinking artifacts mean modern humans and they did not change their mind.
South African skull: strong; however, nobody thinks Neanderthals were down Cape Town way, so its contribution to the debate is limited.
Romanian skull: ambiguous. I think the Neanderthal fans are hanging on by the ends of their fingers. But, admit it, they are still hanging on.
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