Sunday, April 26, 2015

Man’s best friend may have been the Neanderthal’s downfall

Why did Neanderthals, our ancestral cousins, disappear from the Earth? There are already plenty of theories, from climate change to lack of intelligence. Now you can add dogs to the list. Pat Shipman, a retired professor of anthropology at Penn State, used new anthropological findings to argue in her new book, “The Invaders,” that the partnership between modern humans and their domesticated wolf-dogs hastened the extinction of Neanderthals.  Modern humans were physically smaller and weaker than Neanderthals, but were still able to push their larger cousins out of the way. Shipman says they did this through cooperative hunting with the wolf-dogs, otherwise knows as canids, in which they shared the tasks of finding prey, chasing it down and killing it.  Cooperation benefitted both partners with more efficient hunting and less risk, she says, which gave humans the edge to outcompete the Neanderthals as the apex predator on land.  The fossils of more than 40 individual wolf-dogs — which can be distinguished from wolves thanks to new research methods — have been identified from various sites of modern human existence in Central and Eastern Europe. None turn up where Neanderthals existed, Shipman says...more


The author is mistaken.  The Neanderthals are not extinct. They've found a home in Washington D.C. and are working full time to bring the wolf back.  So keep your wolf-dog healthy and handy.  You shouldn't need any help in selecting the prey.

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