The Hand. The Demise of the Neanderthal.

The book will leave you pondering its premise long after you have finished reading it.

This long-gone relative was more sophisticated than you might think.

I hope it has a sequel. It would make a good movie. Kindle Edition , pages.

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Lists with This Book. This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Oct 27, Jim Kratzok rated it liked it Shelves: There were aspects of this story that were very fanciful and creative and I enjoyed those.

The Hand. The Demise of the Neanderthal. by Nick Meyer

The interplay between the modern day characters was fairly well done. The depiction of the "Neanderthals" was nicely done and they were portrayed as a much nicer branch of humanity. Their mutant offspring that would be us, folks come across much more harshly. The feeling I came away with was Neanderthals are Cool.

Rethinking Neanderthals

Modern Humans are a bunch of bloodthirsty assholes This may sound petty but I a There were aspects of this story that were very fanciful and creative and I enjoyed those. This may sound petty but I am really finding it annoying when one of the major characters, former Senator Peter Edward Shaw, is constantly referred to as "Sir Peter Edward Shaw! That's almost like an American referring to Queen Elizabeth as "Mrs. Another issue I have is that the older hairy race seem to refer to themselves and to be thought of as "Neanderthals" by the violent "hairless ones" who would be modern humans.

That's just plain stupid. Neanderthal is a name we made up in the s because of bones discovered in the Neander Valley in Germany. It's not a name that would have had any linguistic meaning 45, years ago. The author really wasn't thinking that through.

I guess as stories go, this was pretty creative and worth reading from that point of view. According to a press release , like trees, stalagmites grow thin new layers each year. Temperature influences the size and chemical composition of the calcium carbonate layers. Each layer includes isotope data about rainfall, soil bacteria that reveals the fertility of the land and other information that can help create a detailed annual climate record.

In this case, the cave formations provided the most detailed record of climate change in Europe available so far. Ritter reports that the new palaeoclimate records show that a particularly cold, dry period began about 44, years ago and lasted 1, years.

Another cold dry period began, 40, years ago, lasting about years. It was cold enough that average temperatures dropped to below zero, creating year-round permafrost. Those climate disruptions correspond to the archaeological record, which shows that at the same time Neanderthals began to disappear from the Danube River Valley and in France, the heart of their territory, while early signs of modern humans begin to appear.

The paper appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. The double-dose of super-cold weather likely radically changed the environment, transforming the open woodlands of central Europe into Arctic-like steppes, reports Ariel David at Haaretz.

See a Problem?

Early humans with more adaptable strategies likely moved into former Neanderthal territory and did not actively kill the species off. There is some evidence that there was violence between the species. But David reports that in the latest known Neanderthal bones were re-dated and found to be 40, years old, not 30, years old as previously believed. So, instead of having a 15, year window to outcompete and exterminate Nenderthals, humans, who only entered Europe 45, years ago, only had a few thousands years to make contact and wipe out the species.

That scenario is unlikely, meaning that another factor, like climate change, probably also had a hand in reducing Neanderthal numbers.

Neanderthals Used Their Hands for Precision, Not Just Power

When the second one happened, the remaining small bands of Neanderthals were likely absorbed into human populations, as evidenced by the Neanderthal DNA in the genome of modern humans. So why did Neanderthals die out during these climate shifts while modern humans survived? The researchers suggest that because Neanderthals relied heavily on protein from large game animals they had trouble adapting when climate change impacted populations of those animals.

Homo sapiens, on the other hand, were more adaptive, eating a variety of plants, fish and meat, meaning they could survive on the cold steppe. The new paper offers much to contemplate about how it occurred. Not everyone is convinced by the research. He also questions whether the climate record from caves in Romania can accurately represent all of Europe, saying there is evidence that other parts of the continent had a mild climate in the same period.