"Neanderthals and Human Population Bottleneck 70K Years Ago" Topic

Interesting articles on a very critical point in our distant past:

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I wonder if existing Neanderthals were also affected by this event, precipitating their demise!!!

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Additional articles on this Toba Supervolcano event:

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Cacique

From the Discover magazine site

'The ultimate fate of the Neanderthals still remains a mystery. Some archaeologists have suggested that they were absorbed into the population of modern humans. A recent study by Katerina Harvati of New York University that compares the skull morphology of Neanderthals and modern humans suggests, however, that Neanderthals did not make a significant contribution to the modern human gene pool. If Harvati is right, the last Neanderthals may have starved to death on the fringes of Europe as more efficient groups of modern human hunters invaded their territory and ultimately became masters of the world.'

so I'd say the answer was 'yes' they were affected!

My personal theory is that give the existence of prion disease resistance/evidence of cannabilism, the last Neanderthals were probably killed and eaten by the human population.

'not neanderthal for lunch again!'

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Any look at a bouncer will tell you neanderthals are still among us. ;)

Hey now, Scurv, I resemble that remark. :P

- Monk

You are the exception to the rule Monk. :)

Heh- considering I'm 6' 1 1/2" tall, and have a 6' 9 1/2" armspan, fingertip to fingertip, I'm not so sure. :)

- Monk

"Weaving the strands of evidence together, the authors show that some time during the migration and expansion out of Africa—and after the separation from Sub-Saharan African populations—no more than 50 individuals probably gave rise to most of the modern northern European gene pool."

Fascinating stuff!

Hey, now Scurvy – I'm a bouncer, too, going on eight years now…

Don't you go maligning my noble profession!

In their final days, I can see Neanderthals raiding "modern" humans for females, but not the other way around.

Wouldn't that mean that mitochondrial (female inherited?) DNA is the wrong way to go to test for Neanderthal material?

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Cacique, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. I could see a Cro-Magnon chief with a Neanderthal trophy wife. Heh!

"In their final days, I can see Neanderthals raiding "modern" humans for females, but not the other way around."

I was not thinking about appearance but, instead, of how repopulating "modern" humans may have had sufficient females and dying out Neanderthals not.

However, now that you mention it . . .

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jpattern2,

Dude, you worry some times! LOL

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**Don't you go maligning my noble profession!**

Only if you dont throw me down the stairs on the way out of your pub.

Interesting comparison of Neanderthals and moderns by the BBC:

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Floresiensis, and other Australasian survivors of early man (Java, Peking) must have also been affected by this bottleneck from 70,000 years ago:

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They were, after all, much closer to the source:

Toba: picture
Flores: link
Indonesian volcanoes:
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And yet, Floresiensis survived until 38,000 to 13,000 years ago.

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This is fantastic information on H. Erectus and H. Floresiensis and the Toba volcano:

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"They were, after all, much closer to the source:"

The bulk of the estimated 800km^3 of ash fell to the west of the Toba caldera so while Flores probably got some ash, most of the fallout was in the other direction.

This diagram is taken from "Dispersal of ash in the great Toba eruption, 75 ka" by W.I. Rose and C.A. Chesner, 1987
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There is a 2000 paper describing ash deposits to the east but the server won't let me in right now. I'll try tommorow at work. Hopefully that paper contains a nicer map

Wow. Interesting implications.

We might be finding many more Floresiensis artifacts under all the ash that fell to the west then!

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I managed to get that paper at work. They used oxygen isotope analysis to date the ash layer they found to between 79,300 and 64,100 years old, consitent with the most recent Toba eruption. Rare earth element analysis showed the ash they found was similar to the Toba ash, further indicating it was form the same source. The paper doesn't say how thick the ash layer is, only that it is 15.58M below the current sea floor.

Here's the updated map:

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MD972151 is the core they found Toba ash in.
YTT is "Youngest Toba Tuff" Tuff is a rock composed of volcanic ash.
Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) site 758 is what they compared their samples to.

From:
Song, S.R., Chen, C.H., Lee, M.Y., Yang, T.F., Iizuka, Y., Wei, K.Y., 2000. Newly discovered eastern dispersal of the youngest Toba Tuff. Marine Geology 167, 303-312.

Jimbomar: "My personal theory is that give the existence of prion disease resistance/evidence of cannabilism, the last Neanderthals were probably killed and eaten by the human population.
'not neanderthal for lunch again!'"

Disturbing as it might be, that's a reasonable theory for a simultaneous rapid decline in the Neanderthals and the rapid expansion of Sapiens.

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Interesting articles on this subject:

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This must have "encouraged" the Proto-Australians to head Southeast, don't you think?

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I hope others have found something more recent than the articles I keep finding.

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This couldn't have been good for the few remaining survivors . . .

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Nevertheless, people still migrated to Australia and the New World, however few they were!

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Maybe one Neanderthal told a Sapien "I'm not a fighter, I'm a lover":

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Some groups of people can coexist peacefully with other groups, no matter how different they are. I suspect that there were many times over the tens of thousands of years in which Neanderthals and Sapiens coexisted that they came together peacefully, possibly even merging tribes at times, especially in areas in which resources were plentiful.

Of course, there are also those who hate everyone and anyone who is outside the "tribe", so I suspect that there were many clashes and skirmishes between Neanderthals and Sapiens, too.

I wish I understood genetics better . . .

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