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作者：Anonymous 在 罕见奇谈 发贴, 来自 http://www.hjclub.org
Neanderthals and Modern Humans
A Regional Guide
HOME BOOKS SERIALS MUSEUMS UNIVERSITIES CENTERS LINKS
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Welcome to Neanderthals and Modern Humans -- A Regional Guide!
Click on the map to explore the archeological and fossil evidence from each region where the transition from Neanderthals to modern humans unfolded.
Western Europe | Central/Eastern Europe | Western Asia | Central Asia/Siberia
Here you will find up-to-date information on the prehistoric people of Eurasia known as Neanderthals, and on the early modern humans who succeeded them.
Who were these two groups of people? (see below). How were they related? How did they interact? Where did the first modern humans come from? And what eventually became of the Neanderthals? Final answers to these questions have yet to be found, but this web site allows you to share in the quest for knowledge about this fascinating period of prehistory.
New evidence on the last Neanderthals and first modern humans of Eurasia is constantly pouring in. This web site uses a regional perspective to report these new findings and to help clarify the pattern of human evolution during this exciting epoch. It presents concise, objective summaries of the latest archeological and fossil evidence for each region of Eurasia where these ancient peoples once lived:
Western Europe -- From the Atlantic coast eastward through Germany, Switzerland, and Italy.
Central and Eastern Europe -- From Poland south to the Balkans, and east through western Russia.
Western Asia -- From Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel, east to Afghanistan.
Central Asia and Siberia -- From the Caspian Sea east to southwestern Siberia and western Mongolia.
Click on the DNA to delve into the latest genetic evidence concerning the Neanderthals' relationship to us.
(Picture courtesy of the National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland.)
This site also highlights the genetic evidence that has mushroomed in recent years as scientists apply DNA technology to the study of our past. New discoveries are coming both from studies of present-day DNA from living humans and from analyses of ancient DNA extracted from the bones of Neanderthals and early modern humans. This research is spawning fresh ideas, and also raising additional questions, about the place of Neanderthals in human evolution and their relationship to people living today.
In addition, Neanderthals and Modern Humans -- A Regional Guide provides hundreds of links to publications, museums, universities, labs, institutes, and other places that give further information on the Neanderthals and early modern humans of Eurasia. These links are spread out over six web pages:
Books -- Lists over 70 books from the past 10 years that deal with Neanderthals and early modern humans, with links to publisher or bookseller web pages for most of them.
Serials -- Provides links to web sites of a number of important book and monograph series, more than 60 scientific journals, and nearly a dozen popular magazines, all of which report on Neanderthals and early modern humans.
Museums -- Links to web sites of more than 70 museums, from over 20 countries, all of which deal in some way with Neanderthals and early modern humans.
Universities -- Links to sites of over 80 universities and more than 160 academic departments and affiliated research units, from over a dozen countries, where scholars are researching Neanderthals and early modern humans.
Centers -- Links to more than 40 genetics labs, some two dozen dating labs, and several key government and non-profit institutes, from over 20 countries, all aiding in the study of Neanderthals and early modern humans.
Links -- Links of general interest to researchers, students, and laypeople. Includes links to archeological sites and resources, associations, foundations, science news services, libraries, publishers, and booksellers worldwide.
Neanderthals and Modern Humans -- A Regional Guide will take you as far as you wish into the world of the last Neanderthals and first modern humans of Eurasia. But first, here is some background information on these ancient human groups and the theories concerning their origins and fate.
Who were the Neanderthals and early modern humans?
Comparison of the skulls of the Skhul 5 early modern human (left) and the Amud 1 Neanderthal, both from Israel, reveals some of the physical differences between these two human types.
(Courtesy of: David Pilbeam and the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. [Skhul 5]; the Israel Antiquities Authority, Jerusalem [Amud 1]; and Eric Delson. Reproduction or reposting to another web site prohibited by the owners. Photography by Chester Tarka, American Museum of Natural History.)
The Neanderthals were an ancient race of people who inhabited Europe, the Near East, Central Asia, and probably western Siberia far back in prehistory. The earliest fossil remains of Neanderthals come from Europe and are more than 200,000 years old.
For tens of thousands of years, the Neanderthals roamed as hunters and gatherers over the plains, forests, and mountains of northern and western Eurasia. Then during the middle of the last Ice Age, over a period of about 10 millennia, from roughly 40,000 to 30,000 years ago, a new type of human began to proliferate in the Neanderthals' domain. Researchers refer to these new people as "early modern humans" because their skeletons were generally less robust than those of the Neanderthals and other early humans, approaching the more lightly built anatomy of people living today. Still, their bodies were more primitive than those of present-day Eurasians.
In addition to having fewer of the primitive traits common among early humans, these first modern Eurasians also lacked many non-primitive, or derived, features that had evolved uniquely among the Neanderthals. Their physical distinction from Neanderthals was not total, however, since some derived Neanderthal traits did occur among them.
Scholars have long debated whether these early modern Eurasians might have evolved from Neanderthals. New dating results indicate, however, that early modern humans and Neanderthals coexisted in Eurasia for several thousand years, which argues against the idea that the Neanderthals gave rise to the moderns. As a result of these dates, the majority of researchers now believe that the early modern Eurasians were a new type of human that migrated into the realm of the Neanderthals and ultimately replaced them.
This reconstruction depicts the adult male Neanderthal unearthed at the Amud cave site in Israel, who lived more than 50,000 years ago. His skull appears in the previous figure.
(Courtesy of the Neanderthal Museum, Mettmann, Germany.)
Most of these scientists think the first modern Eurasians originated in Africa, moved first to the Near East, and then spread throughout the Neanderthals' range. Many do not accept the view that early modern Eurasians had certain Neanderthal traits. Those that do accept this idea explain it as the result of interbreeding between early modern humans and Neanderthals, although opinions differ about the extent of this interbreeding.
This scenario of replacement of Neanderthals by early modern humans is complicated, however, by evidence that the Neanderthals themselves were gradually evolving a modern physique. This raises some intriguing questions: If early modern humans had never existed, would Neanderthals eventually have evolved into a modern form? Is it possible that some Neanderthals actually did evolve into modern humans?
Although early modern humans expanded throughout Eurasia some time between 30,000 and 40,000 years ago, not enough evidence yet exists to prove where they originated or how extensive their expansion may have been. Perhaps Neanderthals in some areas were replaced by modern humans, while those in other regions evolved into modern humans on their own. And if Neanderthals in certain regions were replaced, perhaps some, or maybe even all, of the modern human groups that replaced them had evolved not in Africa, but somewhere in Eurasia, from a Neanderthal stock.
These different possibilities concerning the transition from Neanderthals to modern humans in Eurasia tie into a wider debate on the origin of modern humans in general. Researchers have been puzzling over modern human origins for decades. Numerous explanations have been put forward, but these have tended to lean toward one or the other of two competing theories:
One theory posits that modern humans arose as early as 200,000 years ago in Africa, then spread to the Near East, and then colonized the rest of the Old World. This "Out-of Africa" theory claims that these early modern Africans replaced all indigenous populations of archaic humans, including the Neanderthals, by about 30,000 years ago and that all people living today are descended from these Africans. Support for this theory comes from the fact that fossils of modern humans from Africa and the Near East are much older than those found elsewhere. These fossils are 100,000 to 120,000 years old, and some may be even older. This is long before the period 30,000 to 40,000 years ago when modern humans began appearing in other regions. These early modern Africans and Near Easterners could therefore have served as source populations for subsequent migrations of modern humans.
Numerous genetic studies of DNA from living people also appear to support the "Out-of-Africa" theory (see Present-Day DNA web page). These studies indicate a relatively recent common ancestry for all the far-flung peoples inhabiting the globe today. They also consistently show present-day Africans to be the most genetically divergent, and therefore the most ancient, branch of humanity. These findings point toward a recent African origin for modern humans. These studies have recently been enhanced by analyses of ancient DNA from actual Neanderthal remains (see Ancient DNA web page). The scientists studying this DNA have reported that the Neanderthal DNA differs significantly from our own, which they see as support for the Out-of-Africa theory.
The competing theory of modern human origins, the "multiregional evolution" theory, argues that present-day humans are descended not from a new type of humanity that appeared in Africa a mere 200,000 years ago, but from much earlier African emigrants.
The early modern humans of Europe produced beautiful works of art, such as this mammoth-ivory figurine from Volgelherd, Germany.
(Courtesy of the Town of Niederstotzingen, Germany.)
This theory posits that our ancestry goes back to the hominids known as Homo erectus or Homo ergaster. These were the first hominids to spread out from Africa into Eurasia, beginning 1 to 2 million years ago, and they spawned the various archaic Homo sapiens populations of the Old World. The theory holds that these archaic Homo sapiens groups, including the Neanderthals, all evolved into modern humans within their own geographic regions. It sees this as the primary mechanism by which modern humans appeared, although it does not rule out the possibility of some migration between regions.
As support for their view of localized, regional evolution, multiregionalists claim that in each region of the Old World, certain distinctive traits can be identified in fossil bones from some of the earliest archaic humans to occupy the region. These traits then continue to show up in modified forms in subsequent human remains from the same region, down to the present day.
Advocates of the multiregional theory suggest two basic mechanisms by which distinct populations that were widely separated geographically could move along the same evolutionary path over a long period of time: (1) All the populations were experiencing similar technological advances in their ways of life, which exerted similar evolutionary effects on the human body in diverse geographic regions. (2) Each population was exchanging genes with neighboring groups. Even at this early time, people were connected in a type of genetic world-wide web. Through this web, widely separated groups were able to maintain enough genetic ties to evolve in the same general direction. But at the same time, they preserved certain distinctive regional traits.
The exceptionally early presence of so-called "modern" humans in Africa and the Near East does not impress multiregionalists. To them, modern humans are not a separate species that evolved in one place at a given time. They see all fossil humans, both "modern" and "archaic," as part of a single humanity evolving toward us, and they would expect the exact nature of this evolution to differ regionally. In their view, a time would inevitably have come, perhaps 100,000 years ago, when some groups or individuals would have evolved features similar enough to ours to cause some scholars to call them "modern," while other groups or individuals would not yet have reached that threshold. But that does not mean that these others, whom we call "archaic," occupied a side branch of evolution, separate from ours.
Proponents of the multiregional theory also downplay the genetic studies cited in support of the Out-of-Africa theory. They claim that the genetic data gleaned from living people do not rule out the possibility that pre-modern humans from outside of Africa contributed to our genes. In fact, some recent studies of DNA from cell nuclei indicate that certain DNA sequences present in people today originated in archaic humans who lived in Eurasia before the first modern humans appeared (see Present-Day DNA web page).
The multiregional theory finds further support from a recent study in which scientists extracted DNA from cell mitochondria from the bones of an early modern human who lived 62,000 years ago in Australia (see Ancient DNA web page). This individual's DNA, like that of the Neanderthals', differs significantly from our own. His DNA sequence is more primitive than the DNA sequences which, according to the calculations of Out-of-Africa theorists, must have existed in the early modern Africans who were supposedly our ancestors. These findings both decrease the genetic divide between Neanderthals and early modern humans and increase the likelihood that early modern humans outside Africa had non-African roots. All of this makes it more likely that Neanderthals and other archaic non-Africans were among the ancestors of modern humans.
Regardless of how the first modern humans may have come to populate the earth, by 30,000 years ago they clearly dominated all parts of the Old World, including the Neanderthals' domain within Eurasia. Neanderthals may have hung on in certain areas until as recently as 27,000 years ago, but after that, humans with a strictly Neanderthal anatomy no longer existed.
For more details about how this amazing transformation may have occurred within each region of Eurasia, please explore the remaining pages of this web site.
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Neanderthals and Modern Humans -- A Regional Guide is written, designed, created and maintained by Scott J. Brown.
E-mail: [email protected]
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Check out these accolades and awards for Neanderthals and Modern Humans -- A Regional Guide:
"...a well-written and quite accurate overview of the Neanderthals and alternative views of modern human origins. ...high-quality illustrations... ...Highly recommended."
Dr. Eric Delson, Paleoanthropologist, City University of New York
(Choice magazine, April 2001)
"...offers the clearest, best explanation for the layperson that we've seen of... the relationship between modern humans and Neanderthals."
David Charbonneau
(The Scout Report for Social Sciences,
October 31, 2000)
Selected as a "high quality Internet resource relating to the natural world."
(Natural Selection, Natural History Museum, London,
May 21, 2001)
Winner of a 2002 Sci/Tech Web Award.
(ScientificAmerican.com,
June 3, 2002)
"...a balanced and well-structured introduction to the ...theories regarding the ...archaic human species known as Neanderthal man and modern Homo sapiens."
(ISI Current Web Contents,
June 11, 2002)
Ranked among the 20 "best or top web sites."
( FOCUS on the BEST on the NET, November 7, 2000) "This extensive introduction and guide to ...Neanderthals and early modern humans brings together just about all you could want to know. ... Recommended!"
(Archaeological Resource Guide for Europe, May 23, 2001)
"...a fascinating exploration of the relationship between Neanderthal man and modern humans."
(BBC WebGuide of "the best non-BBC websites," Natural History section,
January 15, 2001)
"...Brown has attempted to evenhandedly summarize evidence from Europe and Asia..." A "well-referenced site."
Jocelyn Kaiser
("Neandertal Nook," NetWatch,
Science, October 13, 2000)
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作者：Anonymous 在 罕见奇谈 发贴, 来自 http://www.hjclub.org |
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