Re: New: Tooth scan reveals Neanderthal mobility.

gregwrld wrote:

On Feb 11, 11:48 am, The Last Conformist <andre...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Feb 11, 2:47 pm, Robert Carnegie <rja.carne...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:



On 10 Feb, 12:02, The Last Conformist <andre...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Feb 10, 11:39 am, Ye Old One <use...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:> Tooth scan
reveals Neanderthal mobility

[snip]

Is there or was there any evidence *for* extreme immobility in
Neanderthals? It seems to me the null hypothesis should be they
approximated moderns in mobility.

"Like hell", says this bicyclist.

Mobility isn't an end in itself. You go until you get to somewhere
good, then you stop. A seaside cave with good fishinng and a fresh
water supply could count as "somewhere good". The trouble with the
hunter-gatherer life is the hunting part.

The same applies to modern hunter-gatherers, yet they're NOT extremely
immobile, as a rule. They move around quite a bit, and not out of a
dedication to mobility as an end in itself but for the very simple
reason that few places are resource-rich enough to feed a band of
hunter-gatherers year-round from just a few square miles. Why should
the *starting*assumption* be that this was different for Neanderthals?

Then again...
Human settleing-down is supposed to have started with farming, yes?
Agriculture and/or animal husbandry.

Some coastal paleolithic groups, living in places extraordinarily rich
in seafood, are thought to have been more or less sedentary. Even for
them, though, I'd be surprised if they didn't regularly travel more
than 20km away. I mean, we're talking of a few hours' walk!

Wouldn't Neandertals have a range, like many other mobile animals?

Wouldn't the boundaries of this range be determined by the presence
of other hominid groups?

Partly. But the range has to be big enough to provide enough food for the
group. Solitary mountain lions (similar in weight to humans) have a range
on the order of 100 square miles. So a tribe of Neandertals (I don't know
the size but I'm assuming at least 20 adults) would have to have a
considerably larger range - perhaps 5 times that size, considering we are
omnivores and not carnivores. That gives a figure of about 22 miles from
one end of the range to the other.

Now we need to factor in the avoidance of inbreeding - which presumably
involved males or females or both traveling between tribes. So it would
seem that 12.5 miles would be more like the absolute minimum distance an
individual Neandertal would move in a lifetime.


--
Yours, Bill Morse

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