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+--- Thread: Blame the dog (/thread-595.html)
Blame the dog - C C - Mar 3, 2015
http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/blame-the-dog/
EXCERPT: [...] Scientists, much like Sherlock Holmes, try never to theorize in advance of the facts, but nevertheless, something happened to the continent of Eurasia right before all its megafauna – including its resident species of human being [Neanderthals] – disappeared.
Modern humans happened. Homo sapiens arrived in Eurasia roughly 45,000 years ago, and very shortly thereafter, virtually every large species of prey animal and competing predator was gone. The patently obvious deduction is that Homo sapiens intentionally and methodically wiped out all those other species.
But science teaches the invaluable habit of distrusting the patently obvious, and so retired anthropology professor Pat Shipman takes very little for granted in her endlessly fascinating new book The Invaders: How Humans and Their Dogs Drove Neanderthals to Extinction. In fact, she has her own hypothesis to put forward as to a key factor that hastened the Neanderthals’ demise. Perhaps you spotted it in her book’s subtitle.
Shipman theorizes that it was a feat Neanderthals couldn’t match. “Whatever abilities modern humans used to capture and apparently domesticate wolves into wolf-dogs,” she writes, “were either unknown to Neanderthals or beyond their capabilities.”...