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    Last modified 02/27/08


        Copyright © by Nila Gaede 2008
The differences between
a paleontologist
and
an anthropologist
I have no idea, Bill!
I really don't know
You're talking to the
wrong guy, stupid! If
you really want to
know, ask me.

    1.0   The definitions of paleontologist and anthropologist

    Normally, an anthropologist studies humans whereas a paleontologist studies prehistoric life forms. This
    is not how I will use these terms here because it does not reflect reality. This site is geared for the average
    person. The layman has little to no interest in whether an unpronounceable bone of the T-Rex anatomy
    was smaller than a comparable one of a Giganotosaurus, or whether Neanderthal used Mousterian tools.
    These are subjects that concern specialists and a claque of amateurs that follow the literature.

    The only subject of any importance for the general public is extinction. People want to know if we have
    Neanderthal blood in us or whether it is true that an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs or whether Woolly
    froze or was hunted to death. Once we answer these questions, we are done with Anthropology and
    Paleontology. The bone professionals need to look for new jobs. The funds presently being diverted to  
    resolve the extinction dispute dry up overnight.

    Therefore, I will define paleontologist and anthropologist in terms of how they relate to extinction. And
    here there is a major difference. A paleontologist studies the far past whereas an anthropologist studies
    the recent past. This confers upon the paleontologist liberties denied to the anthropologist.

    A paleontologist can publish any theory of extinction that comes off the top of his mind as long as it
    doesn't involve a human. This gives him greater confidence when peddling his pet peeve. A
    paleontologist already knows what killed Dimetrodon 280 million years ago. It was a sudden climate
    change. A cold front came in and all the cold blooded creatures couldn't stand it. Elementary stuff; a no-
    brainer. They also know without a shadow of a doubt what killed T-Rex 65 million years ago. It was an
    asteroid. A gigantic rock collided with Earth, spread its debris throughout the atmosphere, and triggered
    an 'impact winter', a long period where the Sun was blotted out. Photosynthesis was outlawed. Plants
    died. Herbivores died. Predators died. What more is there to know? And thank God for that lucky stone,
    they'll add, for otherwise you wouldn't be around today!

    The unfortunate anthropologist doesn't have it remotely as easy. There haven't been any major
    catastrophic accidents in the last 100,000 years that could justify selective extinctions. A supernova
    perhaps? No sign of them! Excess volcanic activity? Come oooon! Disease? Unlikely! There were no
    crowd diseases in those days! Climate change? Well this one together with overkill enjoy popularity, not
    because they are true, but because the lay public has no trouble relating these mechanisms with what we
    witness around us today. The point is that the amount of lies that an anthropologist can tell is not even a
    fraction of those a paleontologist can get away with. Once in a while, you will hear an anthropologist
    confess that he doesn't know. You will never hear those words coming from the mouth of a paleontologist.

    paleontologist: a person who knows exactly what caused ancient extinctions

    anthropologist: a person who has no idea what caused recent extinctions


    2.0   When the experts don't know

    The paleontologists and anthropologists can tell you something about their specialized worlds, but you
    should put little to no weight on their conclusions about extinction. The anthropologists can tell you how
    long a bone is and how it is different from the one next to it. The same anthropologists will not agree on
    whether it belongs to a Neanderthal or to a Cro-Magnon. And both the anthropologist and the
    paleontologist can at best speculate as much as you regarding the disappearance of T-Rex or Woolly.
    Like the mathematicians, who have no authority to tell you anything about Physics, the bone diggers
    have as much authority to tell you about extinctions as the next guy. They simply don't know!

    So it is really tiring to see the media periodically interviewing anthropologists MacPhee and Martin to see
    what they have to say about the extinction of the Mastodon, or publishing sensationalist headlines
    announcing something like 'New studies indicate that Woolly may have been killed by disease' and then
    quoting MacPhee for the millionth time. None of the anthropologists and paleontologists alive today have
    offered new insights for extinction in the last 30 years! None of them have changed their minds and
    switched sides. You read them once. You read them forever.

    You may suspect that the status quo has to do with insufficient data. The evidence is sketchy. The jury is
    still out. Therefore, it's natural for people to draw conflicting conclusions.

    You would be wrong. Four mtDNA and at least one DNA study show that Neanderthal has nothing to do
    with Man. So what did the anthropologists whose religions and funds were suddenly threatened by these
    studies do? Again, they followed the same procedures that their colleagues in relativity use. Unable to
    explain the galactic rotation problem which summarily destroys relativity theory, the mathematicians
    invented dark matter. Now they spend your money looking for inexistent dark matter in addition to
    inexistent black holes, inexistent wormholes, and inexistent dark energy. Likewise, the anthropologists
    who lost the bet refused to concede defeat. The new argument is that mtDNA cannot really tell us
    anything about our relation to Neanderthal. They could have told us before we spent all that money on the
    experiments. Instead, the scholars waited to see if the results confirmed their theories.

    So where are we today? We are on wild goose chases everywhere, that's where we are! The experts who
    do mtDNA analysis promise to do more studies, more carefully, at more cost to you, to resolve some time
    in the future whether Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon really 'did it'. The experts who already made up their
    minds that the two species 'did' it are doing more bone comparisons, at yet more cost to you, and arguing
    that Neanderthal was really no different than us. Sometimes I wonder whether they are right and they do
    in fact descend from the Neanderthals.

    Therefore, throwing more data at this problem is not going to solve anything. Extinction is not an issue of
    quantity, but of quality. A recent pow wow held by contemporary Neanderthals makes this absolutely
    clear:  

    " Nevertheless, despite the quality and weight of the evidence, there continue to be
       major debates (that have lasted for 150 years) about a number of contentious issues,
       especially whether or not Neanderthals should be included in the same species as
       anatomically modern humans, and what is the precise phylogenetic relationship
       between these two forms. Our inability to agree on these fundamental questions is a
       matter of serious concern for paleoanthropologists: it leads to the inevitable conclu-
       sion that if we are unable to come to a decision about the nature of the relationship
       between Neanderthals and modern humans, how can we have confidence in our
       ability to resolve relationships in the earlier, much more scanty, fossil human record.
       However, the lack of unanimity is unrelated to the quality of the material. It is more a
       consequence of deeper theoretical and conceptual issues that relate to how different
       researchers analyze and interpret the anatomical and genetic evidence, and to the
       manner in which these are ultimately situated in the broader context of how biological
       systems operate in the natural world. If this is the case, then it will take some time
       before a consensus can be reached, regardless of the amount of fossil material
       available for study." [1]

    So what is more data going to resolve? What is the purpose for people like Trinkaus or Martin to collect
    more information at the lab or in the field other than to use it to push their theories? How many times do
    we have to read Martin's overkill theory or Trinkaus's 'admixture' theory in Nature or in books, or watch a
    new documentary of the same theories on the Discovery Channel? We have been investigating extinction
    for well over 100 years now and we keep repeating over and over again, from generation to generation,
    the same theories and proposing the same agents.

    What we need to do, without any further delay, is wipe the slate clean. We need to erase the board and
    start over. There is something fundamentally wrong if at this late stage in the game with so much
    information at hand, we still don't understand how 99% of the species that ever lived on Earth
    disappeared.

    Don't get me wrong. By no means do I claim to be an expert in bones, hominids, or dinosaurs. My
    argument is that I don't need to be. The fact that a professional went through several years of college and
    co-authored a bunch of papers in Nature and Science gives them no edge over you on the subject of
    extinction. The matter at hand is not about jaws, femurs, or Neanderthals. It is about logic, about the
    appalling state of science, and about personal religions. If the experts cannot agree on the basics, if they
    cannot tell us unambiguously whether a bone belongs the Neanderthal or to Man, then they are not
    experts in bones, let alone on the extinction of the species those bones allegedly represent. I don't care
    how many years they warmed a seat at the university! We need to dispose of the notion that there are
    experts on the subject of extinction.

    What we need is new, rational proposals. This site aims to do just that. I propose two NEW rational
    mechanisms for the extinction of species irrespective of habitat or epoch, one for background extinctions
    and another for mass extinctions. Therefore, I can only speculate as much as the experts as to whether
    Woolly died in a background or in a mass extinction. But if Woolly died in a mass extinction, I can
    describe the mechanism and tell you how it happened. Here, I will argue that Neanderthal died in a
    background extinction. Now I'm going to tell you how it happened. Before I do, let's briefly review what is
    wrong with current proposals.


    3.0   Neanderthal died in a background extinction

    The gut feeling among our sages is that Neanderthal sort of withered away gradually, peacefully. The
    mechanisms paleontologists invoke to justify background extinctions are evolution, competition, new
    predators, and scarce resource. These theories are popular because most people can relate to them. A
    lonely investor is trampled during the bull market because he can’t compete against the heavyweights.
    The ‘law of the fittest’ they call it. The Neanderthals slacked off, and faster, keener, or stronger animals
    (we) got the better of him.

    However, we should step back and take a closer look at the reasons paleontologists brainstorm for
    background extinctions. We know, for example, that we can remove scarce resources as a possibility
    right off the bat. When the Neanderthals started their decline and to the very end, Europe was swarming
    with game. The scarcity of resources was not a show-stopper. We can also rule out evolution. Evolve,
    Neanderthal didn’t evolve: we know of no other hominid hiding in bushes and in great numbers. We are
    the last of the hominid dynasty, like Dimetrodon was the last of the finbacks, like Inostrancevia was the
    last of the gorgons, like plesiosaur was the last of the nessies, and like T-Rex was the last of the great
    predatory land dinos. This leaves competition and predation. Here, and until the next graduate proposes a
    new theory involving extraterrestrial agents, we must conclude that Cro-Magnons were the only species
    capable of eliminating or crowding out the Neanderthals. Unfortunately, this suggestion fails because Cro-
    Magnon was weaker, had carved out a different niche, and faced the same climate. What other relation
    besides love and war could we have had with our cousins that would have exterminated them? Hence, if
    we rule out love and war, we must conclude that we had absolutely nothing at all to do with the extinction
    of the Neanderthal.

    Let there be no doubt and let’s settle this once and for all: Neanderthal died all alone. He fizzled away into
    oblivion while other species thrived and danced around him. This ‘selectivity’ is perplexing and does
    require profound thought. We will not resolve this issue by searching for exogenous causes. We can only
    solve the problem with an endogenous cause. There is a single endogenous cause that any species
    faces. That's what I will discuss here. However, before we talk about how Neanderthal disappeared, it
    would be wise to review the contending theories and the justifications their main advocates offer. This will
    enable us to establish a contrast between what they propose and the theory I will expose in this site.