Researchers in Leipzig are compiling a ground-breaking digital archive of artefacts from around the world. Created to compare Neanderthals with modern man, the archive could revolutionise their field — which is exactly why many oppose it.
Visitors to Tel Aviv University are greeted by three skulls with seashells in their eye sockets and on a table behind them, a student completes a detailed drawing of the teeth in a human jaw. The bone chamber lies behind a simple steel door on the ground floor, located right next to the delivery entrance of the anatomy institute at Tel Aviv University, what looks like a simple storeroom is actually one of the world’s largest repositories of human history.
These are one-of-a-kind fossils that reveal a key episode in the history of the human species. Paleoanthropologists have excavated the bones of some three dozen individuals from the rocks in sites in northern Israel such as the Qesem cave. What is truly unique about their find is that the bones come from two different species of man. They indicate that modern man and Neanderthals once lived hardly a stone’s throw away from each other.
This raises a number of questions: Did the two cousins live here at the same time? Did they interact? Did the two rival species have their first confrontation in an evolutionary battle for world domination here in the Levant?
Last year’s decoding of the Neanderthal’s genetic make-up provided strong evidence in support of this thesis. Researchers working under Svante Paabo, the director of the Department of Genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, found that modern Eurasians inherited a small portion of their DNA sequence from Neanderthals. This suggests that the two species must have had sexual intercourse.
What’s more, the genetic researchers were also able to narrow down the time-frame of this momentous genetic intermingling. According to their findings, the intercourse took place between 65,000 and 90,000 years after modern man set foot on the Eurasian landmass, presumably on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean.
Scientists are now trying to determine the exact relationship the inhabitants of caves in Israel had with the forefathers of modern-day Eurasians. In particular, they are examining the fossil remains to see if there are traces of the interaction between the two species.
Jean-Jacques Hublin becomes almost sentimental as he carefully lifts the skull and jaw bones from their drawers. “As far as I’m concerned, they belong — so to speak — to my family,” says the 57-year-old paleoanthropologist from the Max Planck Institute.
Hublin, who has become one of the leaders in his field, has now returned to Israel in the hope of unlocking the secrets of the finds he once helped to salvage and to aid scientists in deciphering the enigmatic creature known as the Neanderthal.
When Hublin arrived in Israel from Leipzig, the custodians of these precious fossils regarded him with both awe and suspicion. Of course, they had grown used to having visitors in the form of scholars travelling here from all over the world to inspect the most famous pieces in the collection. But this time was different.
Hublin and his team of researchers didn’t arrive with sketch pads and sliding calipers instead, their luggage was packed with hi-tech devices weighing tons. Their plan was to use a mobile computer tomography machine to make digital images of as many of the fossils as they could.
Hublin predicts that doing so “will fundamentally alter paleoanthropology.” Instead of having to travel from museum to museum, researchers could soon be able to examine finds from around the world from their home computers. What’s more, the images often even allow them to recognize details that would have escaped notice under the naked eye.
Hublin has already travelled with his equipment to South Africa, Kenya, Morocco, Croatia and Russia to X-ray all the fossils of human ancestors and prehistoric man he could get his hands on. Piece by piece, his team are assembling a 3D digital archive of the family history of Homo sapiens.
Patrick Schonfeld spends his days in the cramped, frostily air-conditioned chamber inside the container. The system technician’s job is to calibrate the tomographs. Through a display panel, he can follow how the X-ray is scanning the slowly spinning fossils. The procedure can last four, six and sometimes up to eight hours.
The software eventually transforms the massive amount of data into an image of the fossil that is accurate to a few thousandths of a millimetre.
However, paleoanthropologists can disagree, and not all of Hublin’s colleagues have welcomed his vision of digitised research on prehistoric humans. Israel Hershkovitz, for example, the curator of the collection in Tel Aviv, cannot hide his unease about the project.
Hershkovitz’s office desk is surrounded by dozens of skulls. The Israeli anthropologist views his field as a treasure trove of fascinating stories and he doubts whether the expensive equipment and sophisticated software of the Max Planck researchers are really necessary to unlock them.
Hershkovitz adds that he isn’t completely opposed to the project. In a region as volatile as the Middle East, he thinks it is a good thing to create digital copies as a safety precaution. Hershkovitz does agree that digitally scanning fragile items could prevent them from getting damaged during any future handling.
Despite these positive aspects, Hershkovitz insists he is still a fan of the old-school way of doing things. He views the work of his colleagues in Leipzig as “all too virtual.”
Indeed, Hershkovitz sees himself as a champion of the archaeologists who have amassed all the priceless relics in his collection. Most of them have toiled away in the field for years or even decades, Hershkovitz explains, before finally being able to bring home a handful of bones. And now others are supposed to use virtual copies to harvest the scientific fruits of their labour? In Hershkovitz’s mind, anthropologists are merely “scavengers who feed off the sweat of archaeologists.”
Most importantly, though, the Israeli curator feels uneasy about the influence of his Leipzig-based colleagues. “We have seen the rise of a mega-centre of prehistoric man research,” Hershkovitz says, and one that is increasingly setting the direction of new trends in paleoanthropology. “Too much power in a single place can be dangerous,” he says.
For his part, Hublin has grown used to this kind of resistance. In fact, he is extremely proud of the rapidly rising influence of his institute. “Fifteen years ago,” he says, “Leipzig had yet to establish a firm place on the map of paleoanthropology. Today, it’s home to what just might be the greatest institute in the world.”
This new era is currently visible in the Tel Aviv bone chamber, where Max Planck researchers are conducting painstaking detective work to assemble a more and more Submitted by coldrum.. Read more to see what studies of these bones has told researchers about the Neanderthal>> http://www.pasthorizonspr.com.
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