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New light on Neanderthals: Extremely good at recycling

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File:La Cotte dé Saint Brélade du Ouaisné Saint Brélade Jèrri b.jpg
paleolithic site, Jersey/Man vyi

In “Neanderthal survival story revealed in Jersey caves” (BBC News , August 30, 2011), Becky Evans reports,

New investigations at an iconic cave site on the Channel Island of Jersey have led archaeologists to believe the Neanderthals have been widely under-estimated.

“Neanderthals were travelling to Jersey already equipped with good quality flint tools, then reworking them, very, very carefully so as not to waste anything. They were extremely good at recycling.”

Neanderthal as new logo for recycling program? They could also be the new logo for authentic feminism because, apparently, women as well as men hunted. That implies that women had some sort of equality (because, in societies where women do the same jobs as men, they tend to have more equality).

La Cotte’s collapsed cave system contains intact ice age sediments spanning a quarter of a million years, revealing a detailed sequence of Neanderthal occupation and occasional abandonment, against a background of changing climate.

It would be interesting to see if and how Neanderthal culture changed.

At La Cotte, we get to see far more than a glimpse of their behaviour, we get to see generation upon generation of Neanderthals returning to the same place under lots of different environmental conditions.”

If we don’t want to play by Darwin’s rules any more, let’s keep in mind that the chief reason for underestimating the Neanderthals was a huge, unmet need for subhuman humans, to be the “missing link.” People who could half-reason.

Black Africans refused this role, for which they were cast en masse a century ago, leaving the Darwinist to search through the dusty past. Neanderthal man seemed like a good bet, but is not so far working out.

See also: We are all human now, and the missing link is still missing.

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