There were violent volcanic activity 40,000 years ago which eventually took their toll on our predecessors on Earth - Neanderthals.
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It is in any case the theory of the Russian archaeologist Liubov Golovanova, writes USA Today web site science fair. Her theories will be presented broadly in a forthcoming issue of Current Archeology.
Dust kills
For approximately 30,000 years ago to stop the fossil traces of the Neanderthals, and they are followed by creatures that resemble much more on us. More widespread theories - than Golovanovas - has been that Neanderthals became extinct in the struggle for birth of new human species, or simply at war.
HUNTING: Neanderthals were very powerful in relation to the present people. It meant that they are not so easily got frostbite, and that because of their strength to cope with rough tools than present people. There is nothing to suggest that they were less intelligent than the present man, when you know that it took many millennia in our species displace them.
But the Russian archaeologist and her team have found volcanic ash in a cave in the Caucasus, which point to a massive ecological disaster caused by volcanic eruption and subsequent ash clouds and ditto fallout.
Suddenly winter
According to the Russian study shows ash, pollen and weapons left behind in the cave that “volcanic eruption had an unusual and devastating effect on the ecological system, and forced the extreme climatic deterioration - a so-called” volcanic winter - in the northern hemisphere. ”
They point out further on circumstantial evidence that there was a violent outbreak in Italy for about 40,000 years ago, and besides a minor in the Caucasus earlier.
From the report
- Based on these data, we make the hypothesis that this is why the Neanderthals disappeared suddenly
(In relation to a geological timetable) for about 40,000 years ago, after the most powerful volcanic eruption in Eurasia in their history.
- We also comes with the hypothesis that the disaster not only destroyed the Neanderthals ecological niches, but led to a massive avbefolkning in most of their residential areas in contemporary Europe and the Middle East. This loss of a viable core population may have contributed significantly to the final extinction of the species in all their areas, is written in the scientific report.
Neanderthals were once dependent on hunting big game such as bison and reindeer. When these species were affected by climate it created major problems for hunting people.
Resistance
Report meetings - virtually of course in an academic environment - resistance. Professor at the anthropological museum in Naples, Italy, FG Fedele, writes in a commentary that the conclusions of Golovanova is “shaky.” He thinks they have upgraded the disaster in order to create a convenient destruction that made the landscape opened up to other species - hominids (including Homo sapiens predecessors).
Archaeologist and paleontologist John Hoffecker of the University of Colorado comes with a comment that suggests that there is not much new in the latest report. To the distress of these outbreaks were contributors to the extinction of Neanderthals. Some places - Spain and the Caucasus - some tribes survived long after the blast in Italy, according to him.
