Reasons for Extreme Neanderthal 50,000-Year Isolation

“Ancient DNA Reveals Neanderthal Group Was Isolated for 50,000 Years,” from Smithsonian Magazine:

“After separating from other Neanderthals, the evidence suggests that group remained isolated for the next 50,000 years.

This discovery raises new questions. Why was this group cut off from other Neanderthals? And did their separation ultimately contribute to the species’ extinction some 40,000 years ago?

“How can we imagine populations that lived for 50 millennia in isolation while they are only two weeks’ walk from each other?” says study co-author Ludovic Slimak, an archaeologist at France’s National Center for Scientific Research and Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, to Live Science’s Kristina Killgrove. “All processes need to be rethought.”

• Why should we walk all the way over to their valley, when we have my own perfectly good valley over here? There is simply no need for second valley

• One river, one cave, one big tree, a few smaller trees, six animals, four fruits, one plant for medicine, one plant for poison, nine relatives, nothing else necessary for happiness

• If their valley is so close to ours, why don’t they visit?

• Local gift/trinket economy complex enough already with Thad

• Have to remember too many names as it is

• Meeting new people likely to spur further exchange of tools and information. I like the tools and information I already have

• Still embarrassed over not having developed new technologies or lithic innovation since last meeting 30,000 years ago

• Outsiders might not understand our unique use of pigment and line-specific marks and patterns. Reluctant to explain our art

• Conflicts with group plan on dying out slowly over the next 10,000 years

• Recently discovered “rectangle” keeping everybody in clan pretty busy

• What if they want our big shell? We need it

• No point in learning new names if they’re dying out too

• Self-conscious about wearing pattern on upper teeth

• Really focused on funerary traditions and bear cult rituals lately

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