Neanderthals died because of brisk trade

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Ye Olde You Stupid Relativist

"Okay, you win, slick Cro! I give for your gal the dead Woolly,
my dumb squaw and, yes, what the hell, I'll pitch in my
club as well..."

    African ivory for European meat

    The Disney Fantasy History Channel presents one surrealistic Hollywood scene where early modern humans
    trade with each other. The narrator candidly states:

    "It appears they [CroMagnons] had an organized trade system."...

    At that point Max Planck Institute Paleontologist Katerina Harvati steps in and puts the weight of her degree
    behind the claim:

    "There is evidence of long distance transfer of materials such as raw materials for making
    special tools for instance which happens much more frequently with early modern humans
    than with previous groups such as Neanderthals."

    Is she serious?

    If so, the questions take on a different tone altogether. How can this poor woman be a paleontologist? Who
    ever gave her a degree? Where did she get the notion that basal hunter-gatherers such as the CroMagnons
    developed trade? Did she ever take Anthropology 101? Has she lost her mind? Has she ever tried to use her
    brain? Is this what she was told to memorize for the test, or did she come up with this nonsense all by herself?

    Maybe she got her ideas from Richard Horan, a mathemagician who rushed to be the first to suggest that the
    CroMagnon outwitted and drove the Neanderthal apes to extinction by developing trade...

    "Scenario B involves complete specialization; skilled hunters hunt while unskilled hunters
    produce the other goods. Skilled hunters benefit because the relative price of other goods
    falls. With unskilled hunters specializing in their comparative-advantage activity, they obtain
    meat at a lower cost than in Scenario A or the no-trade case. Their meat consumption
    goes up. A similar result arises in Scenario C but for a different reason. Here skilled
    hunters produce both meat and other goods because their numbers are plentiful; the
    unskilled hunters only make other goods. The skilled hunters do not benefit from trade
    because the relative prices they face have not changed from the no-trading case. The
    unskilled hunters do benefit, however. Since unskilled hunters again specialize in other
    goods, the skilled hunters still devote more time to hunting and produce more meat than
    would be produced under no-trading or Scenario B. All extra meat goes to unskilled hunters."



    Is there any common sense left at the monasteries where these individuals get their divinity diplomas?

    So, what were the early unskilled Cro-Magnon hunter-gatherers trading for meat? What was the currency?

    Horan says that early humans used Fred Flintstone rocks that, like the cartoon character, they mined with
    dinosaurs at the quarry: they used ivory and sea shells presumably as coins. And presumably specialized
    transportation companies carefully packaged and shipped all these goods from Africa, perhaps via the
    migrating herds of Woolly Rhinos. I'm neither kidding nor exaggerating.

    Where did Horan get such nonsense?

    It turns out that he relies on paleo-eminence Ian Tattersall whom Horan references in his article:

    "Widespread evidence of long-distance trade in stone, ivory, and fossil and marine shells
    attest to the social and cognitive complexity of Aurignations to a much greater extent than
    in either the Mousterian [Neanderthals] or the Chatelperronian [Neanderthals]” (Tattersall
    et al., p. 64)"

    I. Tattersall, J. Schwartz, Extinct Humans,
    Westview Press, New York (2000)

    Just in case, in the Hollywood fantasy Clash of the Cavemen, Tattersall confirms his theory and adds that
    we probably traded our goods with the Neanderthal predators as well:

    "The Chatelperronian probably was the work of Neanderthals. So how did the Neanderthals
    acquire these particular CroMagnon features of their technology? It's been suggested that
    trade was involved. It was trade that was something peaceful in the interaction."


    John Hawks adds the sine qua non evidence -- so necessary in contemporary Mathemagix -- to persuade
    the snake oil buyers that he is doing 'science'...

    "When you can study the composition of the rocks that they’re using at different sites and
    you survey half of the continent to find the raw material sources of these, you begin to
    realize that they’re trading things over long distances of hundreds of kilometers. Before
    you would look at this and say, well there’s some exotic stone in here. Now we can say
    where it came from. Neanderthals, in a couple of cases, are trading shells that came from
    fossil deposits, fossil shells that come from a particular place, and they trade them over
    long distances."

    Well, we could go on and on with reference founded on reference. The point is that if big name celebrities
    of Paleontology such a Ian Tattersall and John Hawks actually believe and entertain the possibility that
    basal hunter-gatherers such as CroMagnons and Neanderthals engaged in trade and that this gave our
    forefathers the decisive advantage that did away with Neanderthal apes, then the entire discipline has lost
    its marbles and its way. These people should be removed from Paleontology and be prevented from giving
    lectures to the new generation. They should instead take an introductory course in Anthropology before
    pulling straws from the pile of nonsense. These 'scholars' have no clue whatsoever. Just as disturbing is
    that they even lack the street smartness to realize that what they're saying is idiotic. Should we laugh at
    clowns or cry for the state of Paleontology?

    If the leading paleontologists come up with such nonsense as trade to explain the demise of our cousins
    and the rest of the crowd just nods, we have to erase the board entirely and start all over again. The
    paleontologists have gone in circles around extinction so much now that they have regressed into the Dark
    Ages. Rational folk should walk out of their presentations rather than stay and listen to poppycock. No more
    needs to be said.
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How Woolly died