Revised Dates
Mar. 22nd, 2013 09:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloApparently the universe is 50 million years older than we thought it was.
Also- according to the latest research- the Neanderthals died out 15,000 years earlier than we'd been thinking. A cache of bones found in Spain that we'd been radio-carbon dating to 34,000 BC- and interpreting as the remains of a late-surviving colony- were contaminated with modern carbon- and new tests (which can filter out the contamination) have given us the new- more distant- dates.* Bother! If this finding holds it means the Neanderthals were long gone by the time our ancestors reached Europe- and a lot of once plausible fictions about the two groups meeting have been demoted into unhistorical fantasies- Boneland and Clan of the Cave Bear among them. On a positive note it means we no longer have to feel bad about wiping them out. Whatever killed them it wasn't us.
*This information comes from World Archaeology #58 which is reporting on an article recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Also- according to the latest research- the Neanderthals died out 15,000 years earlier than we'd been thinking. A cache of bones found in Spain that we'd been radio-carbon dating to 34,000 BC- and interpreting as the remains of a late-surviving colony- were contaminated with modern carbon- and new tests (which can filter out the contamination) have given us the new- more distant- dates.* Bother! If this finding holds it means the Neanderthals were long gone by the time our ancestors reached Europe- and a lot of once plausible fictions about the two groups meeting have been demoted into unhistorical fantasies- Boneland and Clan of the Cave Bear among them. On a positive note it means we no longer have to feel bad about wiping them out. Whatever killed them it wasn't us.
*This information comes from World Archaeology #58 which is reporting on an article recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
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no subject
Date: 2013-03-22 12:19 pm (UTC)