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Neanderthal, 50 thousand years ago, survived into his forties with disability

Denyse O'Leary
October 25, 2017
Human evolution, Intelligent Design
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blow to head/Erik Trinkaus

From ScienceDaily:

“More than his loss of a forearm, bad limp and other injuries, his deafness would have made him easy prey for the ubiquitous carnivores in his environment and dependent on other members of his social group for survival,” said Erik Trinkaus, study co-author and professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

Fellow Neanderthals did not eat him either, even during hard times.

“The debilities of Shanidar 1, and especially his hearing loss, thereby reinforce the basic humanity of these much maligned archaic humans, the Neanderthals,” said Trinkaus, the Mary Tileston Hemenway Professor. Paper. (public access) – Erik Trinkaus, Sébastien Villotte. External auditory exostoses and hearing loss in the Shanidar 1 Neandertal. PLOS ONE, 2017; 12 (10): e0186684 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0186684 More.

It’s still legal to stop listening to Darwinists.

See also: Neanderthal genes promote daytime napping and smoking 😉 😉 (and gambling and watching soap operas… ) 😉 😉

Neanderthal Man: The long-lost relative turns up again, this time with documents

and

A deep and abiding need for Neanderthals to be stupid. Why?

Comments
50k RCCF calibrated = about 3800 YA most of the way through The ice age. also RCCF what looks like 40 based on modern maturity rates was over 80 years old under the entropy rates present during the ice age. RCCF framework for understanding science in max avail context. Pearlman
The presence of a social system isn't hugely surprising. Humans have always been social. Two other things in the article strike me as worth thinking about. (1) If these tribes were actually hunter-gatherers and nomads, they wouldn't have been ABLE to sustain unproductive elders. Maybe they more like villagers and farmers. (2) The article mentions that MANY of the known skeletons show significant diseases and amputations well before death. How did they survive at all? Did Neanderthals have competent healers who knew how to use herbs to fight sepsis? polistra

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