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.
Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.
Sunday, April 26, 2015
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