Wednesday, September 29, 2010

"Neandertals blasted out of existence, archaeologists propose"- Science News, September 24, 2010.

download The Neandertals that existed around 40,000 years ago in western Asia and Europe, archaeologists say they were wiped out due to at least three volcanic explosions. A group of archaeologists lead by Luibov Golovanova, of the ANO Laboratory of Prehistory in St. Petersburg, Russia discovered that these "human-like hominids" were rapidly extinguished from these particular areas. They found, in the Mezmaikaya Cave, an ancient cave in the Russian Caucasus Mountains, these pendants made from animal teeth that appeared right after the volcanic explosions.

The group proposed that the modern humans were not affected by the explosions since they were living in Africa and the southwestern part of Asia, away from the range of the volcanic ashes. As many other archaeologists had assumed, the Homo sapiens, about two thousand years later, went to the Neandertals' land that they were before and did not have to compete for food or anything because for their good luck, the Neandertals were gone. The eruptions devastated their habitats and their populations that were already small.

“For the first time, we have identified evidence that the disappearance of Neandertals in the Caucasus coincides with a volcanic eruption approximately 40,000 years ago,” Golovanova says.

The excavation of this cave started in 1987, but in Golovanova's new studies, he will search for more evidence, seeking for animal bones, stone tools, and focus more on the soil and pollen found in the cave. Studies on the soil of the cave, demonstrate that there were different ash layers found in it, from separate volcanic explosions between 45,000 and 40,000 years ago. The pollen investigations that were carried out, demonstrate that there were very cold and dry conditions in the area of the cave around the time that the ash layers were formed.

Another group of scientists, lead by an anthropologist of the University of Naples in Italy, called Francesco Fedele, discovered that around the same time a massive volcano explosion occurred that caused a "volcanic winter" that destroyed the ecology in the southern and eastern parts of Europe. Research affirms that the Neandertals' populations were severely affected by the first volcanic eruption and wiped out by the second. In the cave there were no signs of animal bones or stone tools made by the Neandertals. The Homo sapiens came about at approximately 38,000 or 37,000 years ago, just after the entire population of Neandertals was gone.

Geologist Biagio Giaccio of the Institute of Environmental Geology and Geoengineering in Rome led excavations in other caves around four southern Mediterranean caves and found some interesting data that challenged Golonova's explanations. He found modern human tools that are somewhat older than the ash layers from the volcanic eruption in Italy 40,000 years ago.

"Further work is needed to confirm that Neandertals abandoned Mezmaiskaya Cave before modern humans showed up in the region," Giaccio says.

What interested me about this article was the fact that it was about two topics that interest me a lot, anthropology and archaeology. I find these two topics very fascinating since they are the studies of how humans evolved and the study of the ancient civilizations. I think that the evolution of man is very interesting since it shows us how we were formed and born and how the ancient forms of us, humans, were.