Word: shanidar
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...learn the cause of Shanidar 3's wound, Churchill and his team used a specially designed crossbow to fire stone-age projectiles at precise velocities at pig carcasses (a pig's skin and ribs are believed to be roughly as tough as a Neanderthal's). When he stabbed a pig carcass with the force of a thrust spear, Churchill found that the pig's ribs "were busted to hell. The high kinetic energy had caused a lot of damage in the area." But Shanidar 3 had a solitary rib puncture with no such damage. (See pictures: Happy 200th Darwin...
Using modern-day forensics, Steven Churchill, an associate professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University, has determined that Shanidar 3's wound was most likely caused by a thrown spear. At the time of his death, only humans, who had adapted their hunting techniques to the open plains of Africa, had developed projectile weapons; Neanderthals, who hunted in the close quarters of forests, used thrusting spears. (Read "What Makes Us Different...
...kinetic energies consistent with a thrown spear, the pig's rib bore damage resembling Shanidar 3's isolated rib puncture. What's more, Churchill found that the weapon that killed Shanidar 3 entered at about a 45-degree downward angle. According to Churchill, "That's consistent with the ballistic trajectory of a thrown weapon, assuming that Shanidar 3 - who was about 5 ft. 6 in. [1.67 m] tall - was standing." Churchill also found that Shanidar 3's rib had started healing before he died. By comparing the wound with wounds documented in medical records from the American Civil...
While Churchill's research may have shed more light on the cause of Shanidar 3's death, the reasons for his species' fate remain a mystery. Some scientists believe that Neanderthals went extinct after a particularly volatile period of climate change shrank their arboreal hunting grounds. Others suggest they may have interbred with humans. A newer theory focuses on a violent end at the hands of Homo sapiens. Earlier this year, Fernando Rozzi, an anthropologist at Paris's Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, found a Neanderthal jawbone that had been butchered in precisely the same way that humans...
...over the place, much like the European colonizers had different interaction with other races. In some places the interaction was peaceful and there was interbreeding and cultural exchange, and in other places it was pretty violent." In other words, the Neanderthals may have disappeared, but the species that Shanidar 3 came into contact with in his Iraqi home - a creature capable of both cooperation and violent confrontation - is most certainly the same species that dominates the globe today...