Neanderthals

Recognizing 3D objects in the presence of noise, varying mesh resolution, occlusion and clutter is a very challenging task. This paper presents a novel method named Rotational Projection Statistics (RoPS). It has three major modules: local reference frame (LRF) definition, RoPS feature description and 3D object recognition. We propose a novel technique to define the LRF by calculating the scatter matrix of all points lying on the local surface. RoPS feature descriptors are obtained by rotationally projecting the neighboring points of a feature point onto 2D planes and calculating a set of statistics (including low-order central moments and entropy) of the distribution of these projected points. Using the proposed LRF and RoPS descriptor, we present a hierarchical 3D object recognition algorithm. The performance of the proposed LRF, RoPS descriptor and object recognition algorithm was rigorously tested on a number of popular and publicly available datasets. Our proposed techniques exhibited superior performance compared to existing techniques. We also showed that our method is robust with respect to noise and varying mesh resolution. Our RoPS based algorithm achieved recognition rates of 100, 98.9, 95.4 and 96.0 % respectively when tested on the Bologna, UWA, Queen's and Ca' Foscari Venezia Datasets.

Il presente saggio si propone di fornire un breve exursus sull'attività scientifica di Alberto Carlo Blanc (1906-1960). Blanc fu professore di Etnologia dal 1939 (succedendo a Pettazzoni), di Paletnologia e di Paleontologia Umana all'Università di Roma. Noto soprattuto per la scoperta del cranio neandertaliano del Circeo, interpretato quale prova di cannibalismo rituale, Blanc formulò una nuova teoria riguardo l'evoluzione culturale ("etnolisi"), basata sul'idea di "evoluzione per segregazione". Con il successivo Cosmolisi egli integrò i concetti già espressi con le acquisizioni della genetica, affermando l'idea di una finalismo nell'evoluzione psichica dell'uomo. I lavori etnologici di Blanc ebbero un impatto modesto e una ricezione travagliata e non esente da critiche. Nonostante l'ampia fama raggiunta all'estero, in Italia egli soffrì un certo isolamento accademico, acuitosi dopo la scissione dell'Isipu nel 1953.

After the lapse of five years there is still no communication forthcoming from Heritage Malta on the outcome of the tests that were carried out in the United States on the 1917 taurodont molars from Malta.

This statement upon its own investigation of the molars was made by Heritage Malta in June 2016, by way of a communication in response to the invitation by Svante Paabo, an authority on the Neanderthal genome, to have these unique Maltese molars analysed for ancient DNA in his state of the art laboratory at the Max Planck Institute in Munich, absolutely free of charge.

Paabo is a Swedish biologist who has worked extensively on the Neanderthal genome, and the question he is proposing to answer through aDNA analysis of the Maltese taurodont molars is the following. Were our Palaeolithic Maltese ancestors 'pedigree' Neanderthals who survived into the Late Palaeolithic, like those at Gorham's cave in Gibraltar; or had the genes of our Palaeolithic forefathers been admixed with those of Neanderthals through crossbreeding?

As things stand today regarding this crucial question, Munich was refused and the United States have not been forthcoming.

There has been no response at all by Heritage Malta to the other invitation by the renowned physical anthropologist Aida Gomez Robles to carry out another excavation at the Ghar Dulam cavern in an archaeo-palaeontological context, in order to establish on a more accurate level the relationship between the Maltese Neanderthal Man and his environment, whether this concerned his contemporaries in the animal world, his tool repertoire, his diet or his main activities. Once again this has been offered free of charge. But it has, at least indirectly, been refused.

This attitude by Heritage Malta in refusing expert help from abroad on a voluntary basis contradicts their present motto “to provide a future for our past”; its obligations are not being fulfilled, and the Maltese people are consequently being deprived of their rights to have their past known.

 21  The article provides an overview of the principle sites, interpretations and knowledge gained in the study of the Middle and early Upper Paleolithic in Croatia. Particular attention is accorded to the results of more recent research and newer interpretations of earlier research essential to the reconstruction of the behavior and adaptations of the Neandertals, their disappearance and the appearance of early modern Europeans. The Neandertals were equally capable of adapting to the different environments in continental (Northwestern) Croatia and Mediterranean Croatia (Dalmatia). Archeological materials from Northwestern Croatia (Vindija Cave) indicate the transition from the Middle to the Upper Paleolithic, the ties of the Neandertals to the initial Upper Paleolithic and possible encounters between Neandertals and early modern humans. On the other hand, there is a 10,000 year gap between the late Middle Paleolithic (Mujina Pećina) and the early Upper Paleolithic (Šandalja II) of the Eastern Adriatic region, with a visible difference in tool production methods and typology. Over the past fifteen years, knowledge on the Paleolithic in Croatia has been considerably supplemented and enhanced, which is the result of research at several sites using cutting-edge methods as well as thorough analyses of materials excavated previously.

This study presents and discusses a methodology to study population contact scenarios among Pleistocene hunter-gatherers. It applies this methodology to the Middle-to-Upper Palaeolithic transition in the Middle Danube region by testing three models for the emergence of the transitional technocomplexes: local evolution, diffusion and stimulus diffusion. A detailed attribute analysis suggests that the local evolution model does not adequately explain the patterns in the archaeological record at the Middle-to-Upper Palaeolithic transition, while the diffusion model that implies direct contact is best supported by the data presented.

The veracity of the carbon isotope dating attempts relating to the rock art in Chauvet Cave is reviewed, together with the merits of their criticisms. The attribution of the cave art to the Aurignacian is validated by several factors and stylistic objections are refuted. The question of the ethnicity of the Aurignacian artists is also considered, leading to the cognisance that they are very unlikely to have been ‘anatomically modern’ humans. There is currently no sound evidence that the ‘Aurignacians’ were not robust Homo sapiens people, i.e. Neanderthals or their descendants. The gracilisation humans experienced in the Final Pleistocene and Holocene is attributed not to evolutionary processes, but to cultural intervention through breeding preferences leading to the neotenous features characterising present-day humans.

Well, I had a chance to "sit down" with the author, Tom Higham, and discuss the field of Anthropology in general, Radio Carbon Dating, and of course, his new book! So to go along with our video, we are going to have a quick, but informative review of the book.

"Due to the central position of diet in determining ecology and behaviour, much research has been devoted to uncovering Neanderthal subsistence strategies. This has included indirect studies inferring diet from habitat reconstruction, ethnographic analogy, or faunal assemblages, and direct methods, such as dental wear and isotope analyses. Recently, studies of dental calculus have provided another rich source of dietary evidence, with much potential. One of the most interesting results to come out of calculus analyses so far is the suggestion that Neanderthals may have been eating non-nutritionally valuable plants for medicinal reasons. Here we offer an alternative hypothesis for the occurrence of non-food plants in Neanderthal calculus based on the modern human ethnographic literature: the
consumption of herbivore stomach contents."

In recent years, postcolonial theories have emerged as one of the significant paradigms of contemporary academia, affecting disciplines throughout the humanities and social sciences. These theories address the complex processes if colonialism on culture and society—with repect to both the colonizers and the colonized—to help us understand the colonial experience in its entirety. The contributors to Archaeology and the Postcolonial Critique present critical syntheses of archaeological and postcolonial studies by examining both Old and New World case studies, and they ask what the ultimate effect of postcolonial theorizing will be on the practice of archaeology in the twenty-first century.

Contributions by Greg Borgstede; Craig N. Cipolla; Praveena Gullapalli; Matthew Liebmann; Ian Lilley; Jaime R. Pagán Jiménez; Thomas C. Patterson; Robert W. Preucel; Reniel Rodriguez Ramos; Uzma Z. Rizvi; Sandra Scham; Sudharshan Seneviratne and Jason Yaeger.

This paper begins by exploring the role of fermented and deliberately rotted (putrefied) meat, fish, and fat in the diet of modern hunters and gatherers throughout the arctic and subarctic. These practices partially 'pre-digest' the high protein and fat content typical of northern forager diets without the need for cooking, and hence without the need for fire or scarce fuel. Because of the peculiar properties of many bacteria, including various lactic acid bacteria (LAB) which rapidly colonize decomposing meat and fish, these foods can be preserved free of pathogens for weeks or even months and remain safe to eat. In addition, aerobic bacteria in the early stages of putrefaction deplete the supply of oxygen in the tissues, creating an anaerobic environment that retards the production of potentially toxic byproducts of lipid autoxidation (rancidity). Moreover, LAB produce B-vitamins, and the anaerobic environment favors the preservation of vitamin C, a critical but scarce micronutrient in heavily meat-based northern diets. If such foods are cooked, vitamin C may be depleted or lost entirely, increasing the threat of scurvy. Psychological studies indicate that the widespread revulsion shown by many Euroamericans to the sight and smell of putrefied meat is not a universal hard-wired response, but a culturally learned reaction that does not emerge in young children until the age of about five or later, too late to protect the infant from pathogens during the highly vulnerable immediate-post-weaning period. Ethnohistoric and ethnographic evidence clearly show that putrefied meat and fish were not used solely as starvation foods, but served instead as ubiquitous, desirable, and nutritionally important components of forager diets throughout these northern environments. In the second part of the paper, I extend these arguments to suggest that putrefied meat, fish, and fat are likely to have been equally important to the lifeways and adaptations of Eurasian Paleolithic hominins inhabiting analogous environments. If such food practices were in fact widespread during the mid-to late Pleistocene, they may help account for aspects of the archaeological record that are presently difficult to comprehend, such as the 'on again, off again' evidence for fire use (and hence cooking) during the Eurasian Middle Paleolithic. Putrefaction also may alter the isotopic composition of the diet. As meat and fish decompose, a variety of volatile compounds are produced, including ammonia. Loss of NH 3 , along with lesser amounts of two other nitrogenous gases—cadaverine and putrescine—would very likely leave rotted meat and fish enriched in 15 N by comparison to the isotopic composition of these foods in their fresh state. Such enrichment may have contributed to the elevated values seen in many Neanderthals, values that are widely taken as prima facie evidence of Neanderthal's status as a 'top predator.' Finally, if Paleolithic foragers relied upon putrefaction to prepare and store meat, archaeologists may have to rethink the way they interpret a number of widely used taphonomic signatures, including the number and distribution of cutmarks, the extent of carnivore damage, the incidence of burning on both animal bones and stone tools, and the frequency and scale of hearths, ash lenses, and other features of combustion. " When we fix salmon head we put it in bucket in ground and we take it out and eat it. We leave it in ten days

This teaching aid reviews the major evolutionary landmarks that over the last sixty million years marked the development of intelligence in Homo sapiens. The discussion begins with social primates and charts the adaptations that ultimately led to the emergence of modern humans including the growth of the brain, increased manual dexterity, and evolution of language. Also considered are adaptations to allow for the digestion of starch, and their impact on early agriculture, the first use of fire and cooking. Discussion includes consideration of the following gene mutations: RNF213 GENE, HAR1 GENE, ARHGAP11B GENE, SLC2A1 GENE, SLC2A4 GENE, HACNS1 GENE, MYH16 GENE, SRGAP2 GENE, FOXP2 GENE, AMY1 GENE

KEYWORDS
ARCHAEOLOGY, BIOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY, HUMAN EVOLUTION, EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY, LANGUAGE, GENETICS, HOMO SAPIEN, HOMO HABILIS, AUSTRALOPITHECINES, PRIMATES, CHIMPANZEE, GORILLA, GELADA, MOYAMOYA DISEASE, CAROTID ARTERY, HOMININ, WONDERWERK CAVE, SOUTH AFRICA, STARCH DIET, MEAT DIET, RNF213 GENE MUTATIONS, HAR1 GENE, ARHGAP11B GENE, SLC2A1 GENE, SLC2A4 GENE, HACNS1 GENE, MYH16 GENE, SRGAP2 GENE, FOXP2 GENE, AMY1 GENE

Andrew Collins proposes that that the giant skeletons reportedly found across the United States over the past 200 years are the remains of human hybrids of extreme height. They are, he argues, an admixture of two types of ancient hominins - most likely Homo sapiens and Denisovans, a new type of hominin identified for the first time from DNA evidence derived from human fossil remains over 40,000 years old found at the Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains of northern Siberia.

He demonstrates that Denisovan human hybrids entered the Americas as much as 15,000 to 20,000 years ago, and survived through until the Adena period of American history around 1000 BC as elite groups controlling cosmic geography regarding the journey of the soul into the afterlife. The bones of the giants have been found in hundreds of Native American burial mounds, and almost always they date to the Adena period, ca. 1000-300 BC.

These brand new theories revolutionize our views on the reality of the American giant skeletons, allowing them to take their place in science today.

Reading is one of the best ways that we can obtain new information, often times many of us do not have the time to sit down and read a book, but many of us do have the time to listen. So, considering I am interested in Paleoanthropology, what do I think are some of the best Anthropology audiobooks to listen to (or read) in 2022.

Please check my list out, and let me know what some of your choices are!

This will be made into a page on my website in the next few days, but please enjoy this PDF for the time being.

The timing and geographic origin of the common ancestor of modern humans and Neandertals remain controversial. A poor Pleistocene hominin fossil record and the evolutionary complexities introduced by dispersals and regionalisation of lineages have fuelled taxonomic uncertainty, while new ancient genomic data have raised completely new questions. Here, we use maximum likelihood and 3D geometric morphometric methods to predict possible morphologies of the last common ancestor of modern humans and Neandertals from a simplified, fully resolved phylogeny. We describe the fully rendered 3D shapes of the predicted ancestors of humans and Neandertals, and assess their similarity to individual fossils or populations of fossils of Pleistocene age. Our results support models of an Afro-European ancestral population in the Middle Pleistocene (Homo heidelbergensis sensu lato) and further predict an African origin for this ancestral population.

Focal topics for volumes in the series will include systematic paleontology of all vertebrates (from agnathans to humans), phylogeny reconstruction, functional morphology, Paleolithic archaeology, taphonomy, geochronology, historical biogeography, and biostratigraphy. Other fields (e.g., paleoclimatology, paleoecology, ancient DNA, total organismal community structure) may be considered if the volume theme emphasizes paleobiology (or archaeology). Fields such as modeling of physical processes, genetic methodology, nonvertebrates or neontology are out of our scope.

Persistence and change are necessary for the stability and development of both the human individual and the human society, since the beginnings of human history. Man needs a static framework, which, related to his self-awareness, defines a topocentric system of perception, evaluation, order, and meaning. He also requires a dynamic impetus, which allows exceeding the limits of special world views, shifting of perspectives and transformations of individual as well as social approaches to life. Travelling especially helped to broaden man’s horizon and mind. Accross cultures voyages guided by the skies are linked with practical concepts of exploring and domesticating time and space, but also figuratively with the life’s journey and with other worlds, being expressed by mythic, ritual and later scientific language.

It is widely known that traditional northern hunter–gatherers such as the Inuit included putrid meat, fish, and fat in their diet, although the ubiquity and dietary importance of decomposing animal foods seem often to have been underappreciated. There is no evidence that these arctic and subarctic foragers suffered from major outbreaks of botulism (Clostridium botulinum), or from the toxic metabolites of other pathogens such as Listeria monocytogenes or Salmonella spp., until the 1970s and 1980s when Euroamericans introduced more "sanitary" methods for putrefying native foods. While many ethnologists, nutritionists, and public health officials working in these high-latitude regions are generally aware of the importance of putrefied foods among such peoples, most scholars, regardless of discipline, would not expect similar practices to have been commonplace in the tropics, especially in hot, humid environments like the lowland rainforests of the Congo Basin. And yet a "deep dive" into the ethnohistoric literature of sub-Saharan Africa, and elsewhere in the tropics and sub-tropics of the Old and New World, shows that both hunter–gatherers and traditional small-scale rural farmers commonly ate thoroughly putrefied meat, fish, and fat with relative impunity, consuming some of it raw, frequently cooking it, but often barely so. Not only did tropical peoples regularly eat putrefied animal foods, these ethnohistoric accounts make it clear that, at least in many regions, the Indigenous populations generally preferred it that way. Equally surprising, perhaps, is the fact that this preference for putrid meat remained widespread in equatorial Africa and in many other tropical and sub-tropical regions well into the first quarter of the 20th century, only fading from view around the time of WWI or thereabouts. Combining the insights gained by looking at the consumption of putrid meat in both northern and tropical environments, several interesting implications become evident. First, it is clear that the disgust response with regard to the taste, smell, and sight of rotten meat and maggots is not a hardwired human universal, but more likely a learned cultural response, one that is closely linked to European colonization, Westernization, urbanization, and industrialization. Second, the capacity for both northern and tropical peoples to consume putrid meat with impunity suggests that their ability to resist the toxic effects of the metabolites of C. botulinum and other pathogens most likely stems in large part from the environmental priming of their gut floras and immune systems through early childhood exposure to pathogens rather than from genetic factors. This conclusion fits well with findings from recent microbiome studies, including studies of the gut floras of monozygotic twins living in different households. Third, putrefaction provides many of the same benefits that one gets by cooking, because it effectively "pre-digests" meat and fat prior to ingesting them. Moreover, in tropical environments putrefaction occurs very rapidly and automatically, and requires little investment of time and energy on the part of the consumer. Finally, we suggest that, by eating putrid meat and fat, early hominins could have acquired many of the benefits of cooking, but at much lower cost, and quite likely long before they gained control of fire.

Zuraina Majid, Ang Bee Huat and Jaffrie Ignatius (1998). Late Pleistocene-Holocene Sites in Pahang: Excavations of Gua Sagu and Gua Tenggek:IN (Editor: Zuraina Majid) Archaeological Research and Museums In Malaysia. Malaysia Museums Journal, Volume 34: Pages 65 - 115.

Algonquian language-speaking groups of the Great Lakes and St Lawrence River region of North America preserve traditions regarding the Animiki´, generally translated into English as " thunderbird, " " thunderers " or " thunder people. " Primarily these are sky manitous (spirits), who bring forth lightning, thunder and rain storms. However, separate traditions held by these peoples talk about the Animiki´being shape-shifting giants birds that can assume human form by removing their " feather blankets,' and even have mortal families. The author proposes that earthly Animikiáre a memory of Denisovan and arguably Denisovan-Neanderthal-modern human groups that thrived in parts of North America through until the first millennia BC, when they became the extremely tall ruling elites and shamans of the Adena mound-building culture (the so-called " Adena elite " theory). Knowledge that modern Algonquian language-speaking populations such as the Ojibwa and Cree likely possess Denisovan ancestry, while the Denisovans themselves are now thought to have been of large stature, adds weight to these suggestions.

Abstract: A tiny bone plaque found at the Pre-Pottery Neolithic site of Göbekli Tepe in southeast Turkey, and currently on display in nearby Sanliurfa Museum, shows the first recorded depiction of the site’s familiar T-shaped pillars. In addition to this, the etching on its surface might well be the earliest known use of a 3D perspective in prehistoric art. The plaque’s finely carved imagery also reignites the debate over the axial orientation of the site’s main enclosures and any potential astronomical targets during the epoch of their construction.

This paper, which was published in 2008, predicted that modern lineages from outside sub-Saharan Africa would have a small admixture of Neanderthal genes (up to 4%, as it turns out, from recent analyses of the Neanderthal genome) from contact with gracile Levantine Neanderthals, but would have almost none from more robust cold-weather Neanderthals to the north. The discovery that non-African lineages have some Neanderthal genes is not nearly as surprising, given the existence of fossils that show some hybridization, as the fact that all those lineages apparently have similar low amounts of Neanderthal genes. This suggests that the genes entered modern genomes after the root population of anatomically modern humans (AMHs) had left Africa around 70,000 years ago, but before it had split into separate Eurasiatic and Australian branches, during the brief period when AMHs were still limited to the relatively warm Middle East.
What’s even more surprising is that the descendants of branches that expanded northwards after the initial contact with Neanderthals did not continue to accumulate their genes to a significant degree, since some of those branches continued to have contact with our archaic cousins tens of thousands of years after AMH populations, which stayed around the Indian Ocean. That should have been plenty of time for Caucasians, for example, to acquire a much larger dose of Neanderthal genes. But Europeans have only a little more Neanderthal inheritance than do Polynesians, Australian Aborigines, or American Indians.
What could have prevented northern Moderns from adding significantly to their Neanderthal inheritance once they began encountering cold-weather Neanderthals rather than warm-weather ones?
The answer probably lies in the difference between the bones of Levantine Neanderthals, which are fairly gracile, and their cold-weather cousins, which are much more robust. They are so different that the two Neanderthal populations should probably be divided into two races or even sub-species: a Middle-Eastern one adapted to temperate conditions and the other to "hyper-arctic" conditions involving severe wind chill factors.
If the osteological and other analyses detailed in this paper are correct, then the northern Neanderthal population must have had more extreme thermoregulatory adaptations than the southern one, which would have been adapted to almost the same range of temperatures as the even more gracile AMHs coming out of Africa. Just as the similarity between the thermo-regulatory controls of southern Neanderthals and AMHs could explain why they could occasionally hybridize, the different biological approaches to temperature of AMHs and northern Neanderthals could explain why there is so little evidence that they cross-bred.
I hypothesized that the only way for AMHs and cold-weather Neanderthals to maintain such different thermoregulatory adaptations would have been for each population to have its own conservative sexual preferences. AMH preferences would have maintained whole-body cooling systems based on sweat and bald bodies, which could only be insulated against glacial conditions with seamed clothing, while northern Neanderthal preferences ensured that each new generation was equipped with bodies that grew winter insulation in the form of sub-cutaneous fat and fur, which would have required the addition of nothing more than draped clothing. The fact that AMHs and northern Neanderthals were so invested in such contrasting thermoregulatory solutions would have locked them into preferences that prevented much hybridization and the survival of many hybrids.
But the corresponding fact that neither AMHs nor the Levantine Neanderthals they encountered before 60,000 years ago were invested in biological adaptations to extreme cold - with their incompatible sets of sexual cues - would have opened the path to limited cross-breeding in the Middle East, just as the latest genetic results have demonstrated.

Defining varying spatial and temporal analytical scales is essential before evaluating the responses of late Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens to Abrupt Environmental Transitions (AETs) and environmental disasters for the period 130-25 ka. Recent advances in addressing the population histories and interactions (using both genetic and archaeological evidence) of Neanderthals and H. sapiens have encouraged consideration of more subtle dynamics of archaeological change. Descriptions of change based on methodologies pioneered some 160 years ago are no longer adequate to explain the patterning we now see in the record. New chronological results, using multiple dating methods, allow us to begin to unpick the spatial and temporal scales of change. Isochronic markers (such as specific volcanic eruptions) can be used to create temporal frameworks (lattices), and results from other dating techniques compared against them. A combination of chronological lattices and direct dating of diagnostic artefacts and human fossils permits us, for the first time, to have greater confidence in connecting human (recent hominin) species and their behavioural responses to environmental conditions, and in quantifying scales of change
over time and space (time-transgression). The timing of innovations, particularly those in bone, antler and ivory, can be directly quantified and tested, and used to re-evaluate longstanding models of cultural change. This paper also uses these new chronologies to explore the ecologies of late Neanderthals and early H. sapiens: their population densities, mobilities, resources exploited and possible interactions.
Environmental productivity estimates are used to generate new questions of potential population densities and mobilities, and thus the sensitivity of these groups to environmental perturbations. Scales and intensities of effect on environments from natural disasters and AETs (notably Heinrich Events and the Campanian Ignimbrite eruption) are defined as a scale from “proximal” to “distal,” with local conditions (topographic shelter or exposure) serving to intensify or mitigate those effects.

Neanderthals are a Late Pleistocene hominin adapted to cool high-latitudes environments. Popular views on how Neanderthals adapted to these environments have changed over time. While once thought of as a largely scavenging hominin, Neanderthals are now accepted to be competent hunters who sourced a major part of their nutrition from ungulates. Neanderthal diet appears to be highly terrestrial but there are difficulties ruling out a contribution of marine foods in many regions. While the important role of large and medium ungulates in debates about Neanderthal diet has largely been settled, recent discussions about Neanderthal diet have explored the extent of their diet varied, the role of minor foods (plant, small mammal and marine foods) and dietary flexibility.

Contents:
Preface
About my first paper
About “Behaar Al Anwaar”
Divine Project for Adam Creation
An Important notification
An enlightenment on the theory
Who are Homo Sapiens?
THEY ARE NOT HUMAN!
The Jinn (Homo Sapiens) in Koran
Notification
Some important facts in the first 13 verses of “Jinn chapter” of Koran
Homo Sapiens’ Specifications in the view of Science and knowledge
Scientific justification of the theory
An important advice
New discoveries, new enlightenment
These Ancient Elongated Skulls ARE NOT HUMAN
Extremely bizarre skulls
The Star child Project
DNA is the math of biology
Nephilim Skulls Found In Mexico
About the Author
Some of documentary links in this case

Defining varying spatial and temporal analytical scales is essential before evaluating the responses of late Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens to Abrupt Environmental Transitions (AETs) and environmental disasters for the period 130e25 ka. Recent advances in addressing the population histories and interactions (using both genetic and archaeological evidence) of Neanderthals and H. sapiens have encouraged consideration of more subtle dynamics of archaeological change. Descriptions of change based on methodologies pioneered some 160 years ago are no longer adequate to explain the patterning we now see in the record. New chronological results, using multiple dating methods, allow us to begin to unpick the spatial and temporal scales of change. Isochronic markers (such as specific volcanic eruptions) can be used to create temporal frameworks (lattices), and results from other dating techniques compared against them. A combination of chronological lattices and direct dating of diagnostic artefacts and human fossils permits us, for the first time, to have greater confidence in connecting human (recent hominin) species and their behavioural responses to environmental conditions, and in quantifying scales of change over time and space (time-transgression). The timing of innovations, particularly those in bone, antler and ivory, can be directly quantified and tested, and used to re-evaluate longstanding models of cultural change. This paper also uses these new chronologies to explore the ecologies of late Neanderthals and early H. sapiens: their population densities, mobilities, resources exploited and possible interactions. Environmental productivity estimates are used to generate new questions of potential population densities and mobilities, and thus the sensitivity of these groups to environmental perturbations. Scales and intensities of effect on environments from natural disasters and AETs (notably Heinrich Events and the Campanian Ignimbrite eruption) are defined as a scale from "proximal" to "distal," with local conditions (topographic shelter or exposure) serving to intensify or mitigate those effects.

Magic at Mira?
Who came up with the fi rst rules of conduct and why
How the fi rst inhabitants of Kostenki made their adornments
Micoquian strides eastward

Магия в Мире?
Кто и зачем придумал первые правила поведения
Как делали украшения первые костёнковцы
Микок шагает на восток

Homo sapiens were quite unremarkable until they met the highly sophisticated Neanderthals. Assimilating the Neanderthal led to the Upper Palaeolithic Revolution since it caused a drastic increase in Homo sapiens’ brain size and consequently brought about their rapid evolution by combining the creativity, resourcefulness and inquisitive spirit of Neanderthals, who were of an individual nature, with the ambition and networking skills of Homo sapiens who were of a social nature.

Since the Neanderthal assimilation most Homo sapiens have retained their predominantly social nature and tend to ostracise those of a predominantly individual nature who, beginning in the 1940s, are being pathologised with the label of autism.

However, human progress is driven by autistic individuals because of their original thinking, lack of conformity, immunity to group dynamics and peer pressure, scepticism of authority and discontentment with the status quo.

The type, combination and manifestation of Neanderthal genes, and their level of acceptability in society, determine whether somebody qualifies for an autism diagnosis.

The Autistic Neanderthal Theory is the only unifying theory of autism since it is able to explain every facet as well as the heterogeneity of autism.

"Les recherches menées en Belgique depuis 1829 ont mis au jour d’importantes traces du Paléolithique moyen, majoritairement sous forme de témoins lithiques, parfois accompagnés de vestiges enmatière dure animale porteurs d’une action anthropique (ossements brûlés, découpés ou fracturés, retouchoirs). Certains de ces sites bénéficient de données paléoenvironnementales. Les restes humains relatifs à cette période sont quant à eux beaucoup plus rares, quoique le karst du Bassin mosan belge compose une des zones européennes majeures en la matière, tant sur le plan historique que par l’intérêt des sites qui permettent le développement de programmes interdisciplinaires modernes.

Dans le cadre d’une thèse de doctorat (Di Modica, 2010), dont cet article constitue une version légèrement résumée et actualisée de l’un des aspects, un inventaire des sites du Paléolithique ancien a été réalisé grâce surtout à une recherche bibliographique à visée exhaustive. à ce jour, 442 points de découvertes rapportables au Paléolithique ancien ont été identifiés sur l’ensemble du territoire belge (fig. 1). Cet aspect essentiellement livresque de l’investigation constitue la limite de cet inventaire puisque les données non publiées et dont nous n’avons pas eu connaissance y ont échappé. Le décompte s’appuie notamment sur des inventaires partiels réalisés auparavant et a pour vocation de s’enrichir avec le temps.

Un minutieux travail de collecte directement dans les réserves des musées et dans les collections d’amateurs, notamment, s’imposerait afin de compléter le panorama. Par cet inventaire, nous souhaitions présenter la totalité de la documentation disponible car les sites principaux ne recouvrent pas nécessairement toute la variabilité des productions lithiques. Ainsi, certaines pièces isolées, habituellement non prises en compte en raison d’un potentiel informatif limité, revêtent-elles parfois un intérêt particulier en fonction de la nature du matériau dans lequel elles sont façonnées, de leur contexte chronologique ou de leurs caractéristiques techno-typologiques."

In the last ten years, new fossil, archaeological, and genetic data have significantly altered our understanding of the peopling of the Old World in the Late Pleistocene. Scholars have long been challenged to define humanity’s place in evolution and to trace our phylogeny. Differences in the skeletal morphology of hominin fossils have often led to the naming of distinct new species, but recent genetic findings have challenged the traditional perspective by demonstrating that modern human DNA contains genes inherited from Neanderthals and Denisovans, thus questioning their status as separate species. The recent discovery of Homo floresiensis from Flores Island has also raised interesting queries about how much genetic and morphological diversity was present during the Late Pleistocene. This paper discusses the nature and implications of the evidence with respect to Homo floresiensis, Neanderthals, and Denisovans and briefly reviews major Late Pleistocene discoveries from the last ten years of research in the Old World and their significance to the study of human evolution.

The unusual nature of the Neanderthal archaeological record has attracted the attention of archaeologists for the past 150 years. On the one hand, the technical skill apparent in their lithic technology, the practice of symbolic cultural behaviours (such as burials), and their successful survival in harsh environmental conditions for more than 200,000 years demonstrate the adaptive success and underlying humanity of the Neanderthal populations. On the other hand, the apparent lack of abundant and repeated use of symbolic material culture has resulted in a number of researchers arguing that these populations were largely incapable of symbolism - a conclusion with significant implications for social organisation. This paper reviews ideas regarding the use of ‘place’ or ‘landscape’ by Neanderthals and argues that the identified differences between the archaeological records of Neanderthals and late Pleistocene Modern Humans is not so much the result of significant variance in cognitive capacities, but rather the use of contrasting approaches to interaction with the physical landscape. ‘Landscape socialisation’ is a Modern Human universal, but what if Neanderthals did not participate in this kind of landscape interaction? Would this difference in behaviour result in the apparently contradictory archaeological record which has been created? The ideas presented in this paper are drawn together as a hypothesis to be developed and tested.