Who apparently made the oldest known string:
Before this find, the oldest known string came from 19,000 years ago. This was discovered in the Ohalo II site near the Sea of Galilee, Israel, and is associated with modern humans. But Hardy says the newly found string was made by Neanderthals, as there were no modern humans in this part of Europe at this time.
This raises the question of whether modern humans learned some of their skills from Neanderthals, says Wragg Sykes.
Hardy thinks the string shows that Neanderthals were as smart as us. They were very similar to us, says Emma Pomeroy at the University of Cambridge, whose team has found evidence that Neanderthals buried their dead. “Neanderthals engaged in complex behaviours that we thought they weren’t capable of ,” she says.
Bruce Bower, “This is the oldest known string. It was made by a Neandertal” at ScienceNews
Neanderthals also fished, we are told elsewhere, but let’s go back to the string for a moment.
Here’s New Scientist on the topic:
A piece of 50,000-year-old string found in a cave in France is the oldest ever discovered. It suggests that Neanderthals knew how to twist fibres together to make cords – and, if so, they might have been able to craft ropes, clothes, bags and nets. “None can be done without that initial step,” says Bruce Hardy at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. “Twisted fibres are a foundational technology.” …
Hardy thinks the string shows that Neanderthals were as smart as us. They were very similar to us, says Emma Pomeroy at the University of Cambridge, whose team has found evidence that Neanderthals buried their dead. “Neanderthals engaged in complex behaviours that we thought they weren’t capable of ,” she says.
Michael Le Page, “Oldest ever piece of string was made by Neanderthals 50,000 years ago” at New Scientist
Paper. (open access)
So will we now formally amend our opinion that Neanderthals were somehow a subhuman or a missing link? The trouble is, Darwinism needs a subhuman; otherise, the human race has no Darwinian beginning.
Is this any help?:
Is this any help?:
New research adds to growing evidence that our ancestors interbred with Neanderthals at multiple times in history
In recent years, scientists have uncovered evidence that modern humans and Neanderthals share a tangled past. In the course of human history, these two species of hominins interbred not just once, but at multiple times, the thinking goes.
A new study supports this notion, finding that people in Eurasia today have genetic material linked to Neanderthals from the Altai mountains in modern-day Siberia. This is noteworthy because past research has shown that Neanderthals connected to a different, distant location — the Vindija Cave in modern-day Croatia — have also contributed DNA to modern-day Eurasian populations.
University at Buffalo, “Modern humans, Neanderthals share a tangled genetic history, study affirms” at ScienceDaily
Any thoughts as to who will be voted the next subhuman?
See also: Homo erectus skull conclusively dated to 2 million years ago, “nearly human-like” We heard this “nearly human-like” stuff about the Neanderthals for decades and now we are catching up with all these stories about them braiding string, drawing symbols, and burying their dead. How do we know it’s true this time, as opposed to an artifact of not enough excavation yet?