The Fate of the "Classic" Neanderthals: A Consideration of Hominid Catastrophism [and Comments and Reply]
Citations Over TimeTop 1% of 1964 papers
Abstract
The Current View That the "Classic" Neanderthals Were an aberrant, specialized, or otherwise peculiar side branch which eventually became extinct without descendants has its origins in anti-evolutionary interpretations placed upon the available hominid fossils by the french palaeontologist marcellin boule in the early part of the current century. The theoretical bases of boule's thinking stem from the early nineteenth century position of George Cuvier who attempted to explain sequence in the fossil record by a series of catastrophes with their attendant extinctions and subsequent invasions. Without specifically labelling it as such, Boule applied the concept of catastrophism to explain the sequence of forms in the hominid fossil record, assuming that none of the fossil men discovered which differed from modern man could be regarded as ancestral to modern man. The proof of this assumption lay in the claim that modern forms of man already existed as exemplified by the Grimaldi skeletons. Although these skeletons were shown to be more recent than the Neanderthals, the conviction remained that ancient moderns would be found, and, guided by the ideals of what is here labelled hominid catastrophism, a disproportionate amount of the efforts of subsequent prehistorians has been devoted to their discovery. In fact, far more time has been expended in the attempt to deny the evidence for human evolution than in trying to show how man could have evolved. attempts to interpret the available hominid fossils from a frankly evolutionary point of view have been offered by Schwalbe, Weinert, Weidenreich, and Hrdlicka, but because of the eclipse of German anthropology as a result of the First World War and subsequent political history, both Schwalbe's and Weinert's views have been ignored. Hrdlicka and Weidenreich were museum men and failed to have the impact on anthropological thinking which was enjoyed by the views of Boule via Keith, Hooton, Vallois, and their numerous students. As a result, the Neanderthals are denied any role in the ancestry of modern man despite the fact that all of the candidates for ancient moderns are open to serious doubts-either of date or morphology or both. Recognizing the Australopithecines as the earliest ancestors of modern man, this paper suggests that the initial three stage scheme of Gustav Schwalbe be expanded to four stages with the Australopithecines as the first stage, the Pithecanthropines as the second, the Neanderthals as the third, and finally modern man as the result. Changes in brain size are related to the supposed selective advantage conferred by cerebral increase, while progressive reduction of the dentition and hence the entire facial skeleton is related to the suspension of the advantage in possessing a large face which occurred as a result of increasingly effective cultural adaptation-particularly refinements in cutting tools in the later part of human cultural and physical evolution.
Related Papers
- → Refutação do Argumento Ontológico, ou Filosofia Crítica versus Filosofia Dogmática(2011)1 cited
- → Critica e historia na filosofia de Kant(2009)
- Susquehanna Chorale Spring Concert "Roots and Wings"(2017)
- O conceito de cristianismo na filosofia de Søren Kierkegaard(2012)