From New Dawn 125 (Mar-Apr 2011)
On the 13th of September 2010, in a Swansea, South Wales hospital, an embittered and reclusive man, hailed as a genius by some, yet marginalised by many mainstream scientists and academics, passed away at the age of seventy-eight.1
In his later years Stan Gooch lived “virtually destitute” in “a rented caravan in a nearly abandoned Welsh trailer park – with neither telephone nor computer, his correspondence inked on the backs of galley proofs, and scarce personal contact – wholly lacking family, right at life’s raw edge.”2
This was the sad end for a man who made incredibly original contributions to our understanding of the origins and nature of our own humanity. Colin Wilson once wrote of Gooch, “It has seemed to me for many years that Stan Gooch is one of the most underrated writers of our time.”3 We agree with this assessment.
Born in 1932 among the slums of southern London to working-class parents, Gooch raised himself from his dreary surroundings, ultimately earning a degree in Modern Languages at King’s College, London, and a degree in Psychology at Birkbeck College, London.4 After spending time, between earning his degrees, variously working in the scrap metal business, teaching in Coventry (English Midlands), and serving as “Head of Department” in a London grammar school, in 1964 Gooch was appointed a senior research psychologist at the National Children’s Bureau. He wrote scholarly articles and coauthored books on psychology.
On the surface it seemed that Gooch was off to a respectable and potentially prosperous career.5 However, Gooch’s life would take a different turn, driven by his overwhelming interest in two subjects that on the surface might seem quite distinct, but for Gooch were intimately related: 1) psychical research (the paranormal, or what is now often referred to as parapsychology) and 2) understanding and reconstructing the mental and cultural world of Neanderthals and their bearing on modern humanity.
Ultimately Gooch gave up his secure position, turning down both the directorship of the National Children’s Bureau, and a professorship of Psychology at Brunel University, London, to pursue his research and writing full-time.
Unfortunately for Gooch, his books never had the mass appeal, with the concomitant income, he hoped for. Furthermore, psychical research is a subject that is viewed as fairly marginal at best by most academics, and Gooch’s conclusions concerning Neanderthal mentality and culture diverged so radically from the common conceptions of the time that mainstream scholars systematically ignored his work.
At the time of his death Gooch was depressed, bitter, and even angry that his ideas had not garnered the recognition that he felt they rightfully deserved. Perhaps he was ahead of his time, as many of his ideas about Neanderthals in particular are now being independently confirmed (although still generally without citing or crediting Gooch).
From the Paranormal to Neanderthals
While teaching in Coventry in the late 1950s, Gooch began attending weekly séances, his introduction to the paranormal. This sparked a deep lifelong interest in psychic phenomena. Moreover, Gooch found that he personally had telepathic and mediumistic talents. At one séance Gooch and the other members of the circle became aware of “a crouching, ape-like shape” in the corner of the room that “approximated to most people’s idea of what an ancient cave-man would look like.”6 After a while the figure faded away and the séance continued.
Nearly two decades later Gooch would write,
As regards the figure of the cave-man, which so very much impressed and haunted me both then and afterwards (in a wholly agreeable way, I must add) – I had [not] and could not have had any inkling that one day I would write books about Neanderthal man.7
Gooch summarised his own work during this period as
Looking always for further knowledge about the human condition, I was at the same time prospecting for a framework which could accommodate all the information that was accumulating.8
Ultimately Gooch developed a framework and theory of human personality in terms of dualities, such as unconscious versus consciousness, religion versus science, magic versus logic, dreaming versus waking. In his list are two key comparisons: psychic phenomena versus materialism, and Neanderthal man versus modern man.9
Gooch’s great insight was that while modern humans might manifest occasional psychic phenomena,10 Neanderthals “certainly possessed abilities in respect of the purely paranormal that far exceeded our own.”11 According to Gooch, we modern humans are literally the result of the dualities coming together, the biological interbreeding of Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons (that is so-called “modern humans,” Homo sapiens) and the melding of Neanderthal religious beliefs and cultural practices with Cro-Magnon societal elements even as Cro-Magnons may have come to physically dominate, and even apparently exterminate, the earlier Neanderthals.
The Neanderthal Question
Who, or what, the Neanderthals were has been a much discussed issue ever since their remains were first recognised in the middle nineteenth century.12 The popular conception of Neanderthals is that of big-browed, short, stocky, stooping, grunting, ape-like cave men (and women) eking out a meagre existence during the harsh conditions of ice age Europe, the Near East, and Southwest Asia.
Classic Neanderthals in Europe date from around 130,000 years ago to perhaps as recently as 24,000 years ago in Gibraltar, but Neanderthal characteristics and antecedents are seen in fossil forms going back to perhaps half a million years ago or earlier.
In many people’s minds Neanderthals are a primitive side branch of the human tree at best, a totally separate species from us, that was driven to extinction by the more intelligent and better armed “Cro-Magnon Man” group (archaic Homo sapiens, essentially the direct ancestors of living humans) who progressively migrated from East Africa into Eurasia during the period of about 60,000 to 30,000 years ago.13
Stan Gooch had a very different view of the place and importance of Neanderthals – in Gooch’s view modern humanity is a result of the intermixing, both biologically and culturally, of Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal elements. In his words,
A biological supernova occurred when Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal man met. We can, if we will listen, still clearly hear the echoes of that explosion and observe its after-effects… [B]ehind these echoes and tendrils we can also then detect the still fainter traces of Neanderthal civilisation itself, and hear the still fainter echoes of falling cities of dreams.14
According to Gooch, Neanderthals possessed an intricate, psychically-charged, magical culture.15 Neanderthals built a long-lasting “high civilisation of dreams.”16 Neanderthal culture, more sophisticated than that of the Cro-Magnons when they first arrived in Europe, served as a primary source for much so-called ancient wisdom.
Gooch argued that Neanderthals were the original creators, the innovators, of high culture, of symbolic values and religious sensibilities, which early modern humans (Cro-Magnons) copied and adopted without genuine understanding. Neanderthal culture was not a civilisation of high technologies, but one of the mind and spirit that survives today in our beliefs, myths, folklore, and religious practices.
Neanderthal Culture
Neanderthals developed in time a culture of the mind of a very high order, but also of a strangeness that is extremely difficult for us to imagine.
Neanderthals, according to Gooch, worshipped the cave bear, the spider, and the serpent – animals with whom they shared their caves. Neanderthals were the first humans to fully develop religious cults, and cave bear worship was their most significant cult. Neanderthals worshipped the number 13, associated with the moon and the lunar calendar, a number that is still considered magical today. Neanderthals developed a profound knowledge of crystals and minerals. According to Gooch, Neanderthals developed their own unique symbols, signs, and sophisticated language systems.17
Neanderthals weaved and sewed embroidery, wore jewellery, painted their faces and bodies, danced, had an elaborate mythology and cosmology, built stone circles, utilised sacred fires, and made ceremonial sacrifices. They had their own grand celebrations and feasts, which were spectacularly colourful and creative performances.
They worshipped the moon and other celestial bodies including constellations still worshipped today worldwide such as The Big Bear, Little Bear, and Draco (the dragon or serpent in the sky). Gooch asserted that Neanderthals had a strong religious life, based on an earth-magic religion, and they believed in the afterlife, practicing complex burial rituals.18
Neanderthals, as Gooch emphasised, were capable of great cultural innovations that included wearing jewellery and decorating their bodies and faces with colourful paints for special ceremonies. There is evidence that the sophisticated Chatelperronian culture of France belonged to the Neanderthals and not, as was formerly believed, to modern humans.19 This culture included symbolic artefacts, such as jewellery. The Uluzzian culture in Italy, also now attributed to Neanderthals, is another example – an innovative culture that included a variety of very sophisticated tools that were similar to modern humans’ tools.20 Neanderthals in Spain were painting perforated shells for decoration, using pigments, and engaged in other ritual behaviour.21 As archaeologist João Zilhão, has stated,
The one thing these finds make clear is that Neanderthals were behaviourally modern. They were not like early modern humans anatomically, but they were cognitively as advanced or more so.22
In many ways Neanderthal culture and Cro-Magnon culture were diametrically opposed. Gooch wrote,
I believe the actuality of Neanderthal man – of whom archaeologists find only a handful of skeletons, a few altars, traces of ritualised burial, a range of flint tools, and an apparent knowledge of herbal remedies – was this: his was a moon-goddess-worshipping, matriarchal, food-gathering society, where women governed all matters. The only tasks delegated specifically to men were those where muscle power was directly and literally required, as in fighting, for example. The structure and nature of Cro-Magnon life was diametrically opposite. This was a patriarchal, hunter-warrior society, of which men governed all aspects, including religious life. Women were mere adjuncts in all things, whose main purpose was to bear sons and to comfort and care for the male. The supreme deity worshipped was the sun god.23
Gooch believed that Neanderthals were a mostly nocturnal species, and came out at night. Observing the skies and the moon for thousands of generations, they had become experts in all phenomena of the stars, having a great understanding of cycles and time, equinoxes and solstices, the phases of the moon.
Cro-Magnons would have come to know Neanderthal religion and knowledge initially through secret observation during 10,000 years (or more) of co-existence. When Cro-Magnons arrived in Europe they were shocked by the knowledgeable Neanderthals, and wanted the Neanderthal magic for themselves; so, they slowly and carefully spied on Neanderthals, copied them, and in the process stole all of their knowledge and wisdom, including writing systems and rituals.
The meeting of Classic Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons in Europe some 35,000 years ago was an immense culture shock for both parties… The two species were culturally opposite to each other in every way.24 At the purely psychological/cultural level,… Neanderthal dealt Cro-Magnon a culture-shock of such magnitude that its consequences are still with us today. Though it left little physical trace, there is in fact… not one aspect of our present lives, our attitudes and our institutions which does not today bear that ancient [Neanderthal] culture’s stamp.25
According to Gooch, Cro-Magnon was dazzled by the religious rituals, symbolism, cosmology, and deep intimate knowledge of the natural world the Neanderthals possessed.
Cro-Magnon took over all the ‘magic’ and ritual of Neanderthal for his own. But he took it over without any real understanding of most of it, and also with certain appropriate changes to suit his own world view, his own existing social structure, his own biological imperatives. He took over essentially empty forms, while losing the priceless content.26
The Cerebrum and Cerebellum
The vertebrate brain includes the cerebrum and the cerebellum. In modern humans the cerebrum consists of the cerebral hemispheres that fill most of the skull. In humans the cerebellum is smaller than the cerebrum and situated at the back of the head tucked behind and under the cerebrum. Gooch points out that essentially the cerebrum and the cerebellum are two different brains (“we are each of us ‘in two minds’”27) that correspond to two different ways of approaching the world (“Two Brains – and Two Universes”28). The cerebrum is associated with “logical” and “rational” thinking, versus the cerebellum is associated with “dreaming” and “magic.”
[T]he cerebellum… is responsible for trance states, for dreams, for telepathy, for psychic healing, for spontaneous wounds, for poltergeist phenomena, and all other such matters. It is also the source of and the impetus for religious belief.29
Here we have the anatomical/physiological explanation for the duality of human personality. The Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal brains both consisted of larger cerebrums and smaller cerebellums, but the Neanderthal brain had a much larger and more powerful cerebellum than that found in Cro-Magnons. The more developed Neanderthal cerebellum gave rise to their “high civilisation of dreams.”30
Neanderthals developed a deep understanding of the natural world, but they did not necessarily do so in the rational, logical, “scientific” manner that modern humans have come to expect and accept. “I think that they [the ancients, Neanderthals]” Gooch stated, “obtained their knowledge not logically and scientifically but intuitively.”31
Hybridisation Between Neanderthals & Cro-Magnons
The taxonomic status of Neanderthals has long been debated. Were they a species distinct from modern humans? Even if they were a distinct species, could they have interbred with our species, at least to a limited extent?32 Or were Neanderthals simply a subspecies or variety of our own species? Is the grouping of fossil forms currently labelled “Neanderthals” actually a collection of different types of humans, perhaps different species or varieties or races? Gooch believed there were several different varieties of Neanderthals, separated geographically and temporally, in Europe, Africa,33 the Middle East, and Asia. Furthermore, a key point of his thesis is that Neanderthals, at least some Neanderthals, could and did interbreed with our direct ancestors, the Cro-Magnons.
In recent decades it has become apparent that human diversity tens of thousands of years ago was much more complex than previously believed. Some 50,000 to 30,000 years ago, for instance, there may have been half a dozen or more distinct species of humans inhabiting Earth. Besides Cro-Magnons (archaic Homo sapiens) and Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) in Eurasia, in what is now modern Indonesia there was the diminutive “hobbit” form Homo floresiensis34 as well as apparently the last remnant populations of Homo erectus.35 In southern Africa were found the Boskop people, Homo capensis, reputedly with brains 25 to 35 percent larger than those of modern humans.36 In Siberia about the same time there was another population of humans, who may have been a species distinct from those listed above (though perhaps most closely related to Neanderthals), at present simply referred to as the “Denisovans.”37 To add to the list, the indigenous aboriginal Homo sapiens populations of Australia and New Guinea may have been relatively isolated for the last 50,000 years or more.38
Leaving aside at this time the issue of the numerous other human species (how they interacted with one another, and what contributions they made to the modern human lineage, remain open questions), Gooch believed that aggressive and battle-skilled Cro-Magnons both massively exterminated some populations of Neanderthals and also interbred with them. He wrote,
The genetic crossing of Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal produced not just (a) highly gifted individuals (‘the mighty men of old, the men of renown’) but (b) an entirely new species of human – ourselves…. [T]his new product was… either entirely or very largely due to Cro-Magnon men fertilising Neanderthal women – not the other way around. These offspring would have been accepted into Cro-Magnon groups…. And so Neanderthal genes were introduced into the Cro-Magnon gene pool…39
This was a radical, unconventional view – to believe that Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals interbred and therefore Neanderthal genes should still be found among us. However, recent studies of the Neanderthal genome reveal that today an estimated 1% to 4% of the modern Eurasian genome appears to come from Neanderthals.40 That is, Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons must have interbred. Gooch’s ideas appear to be corroborated! (As an aside, we can also point out Gooch suggested that at least some Neanderthals may have been redheaded, another prediction since corroborated by modern science.41)
Gooch also asserted that Neanderthals never fully went extinct, writing,
[A]ctual Neanderthals at this very moment in time – that is, now, today – still survive and live at the edges of our civilisation…42
Gooch cites, for instance, the research of anthropologist Myra Shackley, who tantalisingly suggests that the legendary Almas (“wildmen”) of the Caucasus and Outer Mongolia may in fact represent relict Neanderthals.43 In one famous account a female Almas was captured in the nineteenth century. She was described as having skin of “a grayish-black colour, covered with reddish hair, longer on her head than elsewhere… She had a large face with big cheek bones, muzzle-like prognathous jaw and large eyebrows, big white teeth and a ‘fierce expression’.”44 She sounds very much like a Neanderthal! First kept for some years in a stone enclosure, she later was kept in a cage, and finally in a house. She learned to obey simple orders and used branches and stones as tools. She became pregnant by her captors and while her first several infants died, she subsequently gave birth to two sons and two daughters who in turn produced children of their own via mating with other humans. This is all in line with Gooch’s hypotheses concerning Neanderthals. Note that the “primitive” state of the Almas may be because they are relict populations who have degenerated from the Neanderthal prime of 50,000 or so years ago.
The Neanderthal Legacy
The Neanderthals left us a lasting legacy, one that remains an undercurrent of modern human psychology, society, and culture. It is important, even critical, to understand this Neanderthal legacy – and the work of Stan Gooch may provide the fundamental key to unlocking the secrets of the Neanderthals.
We are personally further exploring, testing, and developing Gooch’s ideas concerning Neanderthal culture, including through first-hand study of the evidence, such as sites visited and used by Neanderthals. Thus during the summer of 2010 we mounted a small expedition to Neanderthal territory, including caves where Neanderthal remains have been found, in the Bucegi Mountains region of Romania. Rather than hypothetically reconstruct Neanderthal lifestyles and modes of thinking purely intellectually, our aim is to actually experience (as much as possible) what it was like to have been a Neanderthal. Future potential research includes attempting to reconstruct Neanderthal rituals and cave usage, for instance. This may be a tall order, but we are sanguine about the prospects.
We will close with a final tantalising note on the life and death of Stan Gooch. At the end of his last book, Gooch writes
The number thirteen figures centrally in my work because it is the most important number of the moon religion [according to Gooch, the religion of the Neanderthals]. And it just so happens that I was born on June 13 [1932]. And the day, it just so happens, was a Monday. And Monday is, of course, Moon Day.45
Gooch died on 13 September 2010, which also just happened to be a Moon Day. “Well, well, well…” (as Gooch himself might have written46).
The above was co-authored by OANA R. GHIOCEL who received an M.A. in Documentary and Audio Production from Emerson College and she holds previous degrees in screenwriting and filmmaking. Born in Bucharest, Romania, she is an award-winning media producer, consultant, and screenwriter, and currently the Vice-President of Hyperion Media Inc. She has done extensive research on Neanderthals.
Books by Stan Gooch:
Total Man, Allen Lane, 1972.
Personality and Evolution, Wildwood House, 1973.
The Neanderthal Question, Wildwood House, 1977.
The Paranormal, Harper and Row, 1978.
Cities of Dreams (subtitle on the cover of the 2001 paperback edition: When Women Ruled the Earth), Aulis Books, 1995, reprinted 2001.
The Dream Culture of the Neanderthals: Guardians of the Ancient Wisdom, Inner Traditions, 2006.
The Origins of Psychic Phenomena: Poltergeists, Incubi, Succubi, and the Unconscious Mind, Inner Traditions, 2007.
The Neanderthal Legacy: Reawakening Our Genetic and Cultural Origins, Inner Traditions, 2008.
Footnotes
1. Anonymous, “Stan Gooch 1932-2010”, posted at www.aulis.com/index.html (Accessed 23 October 2010); Geoff Ward, “A Sad End for Reclusive Writer Stan Gooch”, posted 26 October 2010, www.suite101.com/content/a-sad-end-for-reclusive-writer-a301122 (Accessed 20 November 2010).
2. Brent Logan, “An Urgent Appeal to Help the Acclaimed Author, Stan Gooch”, posted at www.brentlogan.net/sg/stan_gooch.htm (Accessed 8 June 2009).
3. Colin Wilson, posted 11 September 2007 under the title “Colin Wilson writes about me”, posted on a Stan Gooch blog at www.myspace.com/stangooch/blog/308876837 (Accessed 9 June 2009); for other comments by Wilson on Gooch, see for instance: Colin Wilson, Atlantis and the Kingdom of the Neanderthals: 100,000 Years of Lost History, Rochester, Vermont: Bear and Company, 2006 (pp. 272-277, 281), and various remarks in Colin Wilson, Mysteries, New York: A Wideview/Perigee Book, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1978/1980.
4. For biographical details, see: Brent Logan, “Stan Gooch, Biography”, posted at www.brentlogan.net/sg/bio.htm (Accessed 8 June 2009); “Colin Wilson writes about me” (note 3, above); and autobiographical comments in Stan Gooch, The Paranormal, New York: Harper and Row, 1978.
5. Of the time around during which he was at the National Children’s Bureau, Gooch comments dryly, “I was also married and divorced. So there were events enough to take up my days.” (The Paranormal [note 4], 17)
6. Gooch, The Paranormal, 7.
7. Gooch, The Paranormal, 8.
8. Gooch, The Paranormal, 17.
9. Gooch, The Paranormal, 18; Gooch outlined his theory of human personality in the following trilogy: Stan Gooch, Total Man, London: Allen Lane, 1972; Stan Gooch, Personality and Evolution, London: Wildwood House, 1973; and Stan Gooch, The Neanderthal Question, London: Wildwood House, 1977.
10. For a review of Gooch’s ideas on the paranormal, see Louis Proud, “Forces of the Unconscious Mind: Exploring the Work of Stan Gooch”, New Dawn 105 (November-December 2007), posted at www.newdawnmagazine.com/Article/Forces_of_the_Unconscious_Mind.html (Accessed 15 December 2008); see also Stan Gooch, The Origins of Psychic Phenomena: Poltergeists, Incubi, Succubi, and the Unconscious Mind, Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 2007 (Originally published under the title Creatures from Inner Space, London: Rider, 1984).
11. Stan Gooch, The Dream Culture of the Neanderthals: Guardians of the Ancient Wisdom, Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 2006, 105 (Originally published under the title Guardians of the Ancient Wisdom, London: Wildwood House, 1979).
12. Neanderthal is alternatively spelled Neandertal. The species Homo neanderthalensis was named in 1864 (see William King, “The Reputed Fossil Man of Neanderthal”, The Quarterly Journal of Science, 1, 88-97 with two lithographic plates [January 1864]) based on a skullcap found in the Neander Valley, Germany, in 1856 and first described in 1857, although remains subsequently recognized as Neanderthal had been found earlier in Belgium and Gibraltar. For general information on Neanderthals, see the following (and references cited therein): Clive Finlayson, The Humans Who Went Extinct: Why Neanderthals Died Out and We Survived, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009; C. David Kreger, “Homo neanderthalensis”, posted at www.archaeologyinfo.com/homoneaderthalensis.htm (Accessed 5 January 2011); Dennis O’Neil, “Evolution of Modern Humans: Neandertals”, posted at anthro.palomar.edu/homo2/mod_homo_2.htm (Accessed 5 January 2011); James Shreeve, The Neanderthal Enigma: Solving the Mystery of Modern Human Origins, New York: Harper Perennial, 1996; Robert Munro, “The Rise and Progress of Anthropology” (Address delivered 7 May 1894), Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 20, 215-244 with a plate (1895).
13. For background information, see discussion in Erik Trinkaus, “European early modern humans and the fate of the Neandertals”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104 (18), 7367-7372 (1 May 2007).
14. Stan Gooch, Cities of Dreams (subtitle on the cover of the 2001 paperback edition: When Women Ruled the Earth), London: Aulis Books, 1995, reprinted 2001, 7 (first published as Cities of Dreams [subtitle on the dust jacket of the hardback edition: The rich legacy of Neanderthal Man which shaped our civilisation], London: Rider [An imprint of Century Hutchinson], 1989).
15. Our summary of Gooch’s ideas concerning Neanderthals is based primarily on his books The Neanderthal Question (note 9), The Dream Culture of the Neanderthals (note 11), Cities of Dreams (note 14), and Stan Gooch, The Neanderthal Legacy: Reawakening Our Genetic and Cultural Origins, Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 2008.
16. Gooch, Cities of Dreams, 242 (Chapter 16 title).
17. Paleogeneticist Carles Lalueza-Fox discovered that modern humans and Neanderthals share a version of a gene called FOXP2, associated with language abilities. Most likely Neanderthals were able to speak their own languages, exactly as Gooch predicted. See Zach Zorich, “Should We Clone Neanderthals? The Scientific, Legal, and Ethical Obstacles”, Archaeology 63 (2) (March/ April 2010), available from www.archaeology.org/1003/etc/neanderthals.html (Accessed 6 January 2011).
18. For instance, Neanderthal burials with flowers were discovered at Shanidar Cave in Northern Iraq, indicating complex mortuary rituals. See Ralph Solecki, Shanidar: The First Flower People, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971; Owen Edwards, “Beyond Bones: A Rare Cache of Hominid Fossils Offers a Window on Neanderthal Culture”, Smithsonian (March 2010).
19. See discussion in Paul Mellars,Brad Gravina,and Christopher Bronk Ramsey, “Confirmation of Neanderthal/modern human interstratification at the Chatelperronian type-site”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104 (9): 3657–3662 (27 February 2007), available from www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1805566/ (Accessed 7 January 2011).
20. Ann Wuyts, “Rehabilitating the Neanderthals – Accusations Uluzzian Man Took H. Sapiens Tools Prove False”, 22 September 2010, posted at heritage-key.com/blogs/ann/rehabilitating-neanderthals-accusations-uluzzian-man-took-h-sapiens-tools-prove-false (Accessed 7 January 2011); Julien Riel-Salvatore, “A Niche Construction Perspective on the Middle–Upper Paleolithic Transition in Italy”, Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 17 (4), 323-355 (2010), available from www.springerlink.com/content/t6g625nx3744766x/ (Accessed 7 January 2011); Anonymous, “Neanderthals More Advanced Than Previously Thought: They Innovated, Adapted Like Modern Humans, Research Shows”, ScienceDaily (22 September 2010), posted at www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100921171412.htm (Accessed 6 January 2011).
21. João Zilhão, Diego E. Angelucci, Ernestina Badal-García, Francesco d’Errico,Floréal Daniel, Laure Dayet, Katerina Douka, Thomas F. G. Higham, María José Martínez-Sánchez, Ricardo Montes-Bernárdez, Sonia Murcia-Mascarós, Carmen Pérez-Sirvent, Clodoaldo Roldán-García, Marian Vanhaeren, Valentín Villaverde, Rachel Wood, and Josefina Zapata, “Symbolic use of marine shells and mineral pigments by Iberian Neandertals”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Published online before print January 11, 2010, www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/01/06/0914088107 (Accessed 7 January 2011); see also supporting material posted at www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2010/01/07/0914088107.DCSupplemental/pnas.200914088SI.pdf (Accessed 7 January 2011).
22. João Zilhão [interview with], “Did Neandertals Think Like Us?”, Scientific American, June 2010, pp. 72-75 (quotation from p. 75); for online version see www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=did-neandertals-think-like-us (Accessed 6 January 2011); PDF of the article available from www.bris.ac.uk/archanth/staff/zilhao/scientificamericanjune2010.pdf (Accessed 10 January 2011).
23. Gooch, The Dream Culture of the Neanderthals, 56.
24. Gooch, The Neanderthal Legacy, 59, italics in the original.
25. Gooch, Cities of Dreams, 5, italics in the original.
26. Gooch, Cities of Dreams, 37.
27. Gooch, The Neanderthal Legacy, 118.
28. Gooch, The Neanderthal Legacy, 118 (Chapter 11 title).
29. Gooch, The Neanderthal Legacy, 131, italics in the original.
30. Gooch, Cities of Dreams, 242 (Chapter 16 title).
31. Gooch, The Dream Culture of the Neanderthals, 92.
32. Note that in some cases well-established species can on occasion interbreed and produce fertile offspring, such as lions and tigers producing hybrids.
33. Gooch considered “Rhodesian Man”, for instance, to be a Neanderthal representative (The Neanderthal Legacy, 11).
34. P. Brown, T. Sutikna, M. J. Morwood, R. P. Soejono, Jatmiko, E. Wayhu Saptomo, and Rokus Awe Due, “A new small-bodied hominin from the Late Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia,” Nature 431, 1055-1061 (28 October 2004); available from www-personal.une.edu.au/~pbrown3/nature02999.pdf (Accessed 11 January 2011); see www.nature.com/nature/journal/v431/n7012/full/nature02999.html (Accessed 29 July 2010).
35. Mark Rose, “Homo erectus Survival”, Archaeology 50 (2) (March/April 1997), available from www.archaeology.org/9703/newsbriefs/h.erectus.html (Accessed 2 January 2011); Hillary Mayell, “Java Skull Raises Questions on Human Family Tree” (27 February 2003), posted at news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/02/0227_030227_javaskull.html (Accessed 6 January 2011); note that, as often used, Homo erectus may be a taxon that includes a collection of closely related species and subspecies.
36. R. Broom, “The Evidence Afforded by the Boskop Skull of a New Species of Primitive Man (Homo capensis)”, Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History 23 (2): 63–79 (1918), available from digitallibrary.amnh.org/dspace/bitstream/2246/287/1/A023a02.pdf (Accessed 10 January 2011); Gary Lynch and Richard Granger, Big Brain: The Origins and Future of Human Intelligence, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008; note that there is disagreement as to whether or not Homo capensis represents a distinct species or variety.
37. Anonymous, “Denisovans? Fossil Discovery Is Neither Modern Human Nor Neanderthal”, 22 December 2010, posted at www.science20.com/news_articles/denisovans_fossil_discovery_neither_modern_human_nor_neanderthal (Accessed 28 December 2010); Carl Zimmer, “Siberian Fossils Were Neanderthals’ Eastern Cousins, DNA Reveals”, New York Times, 22 December 2010, available from www.nytimes.com/2010/12/23/science/23ancestor.html (Accessed 28 December 2010).
38. Hamish Clarke, “DNA confirms Aboriginal Australian origins”, Cosmos Magazine (8 May 2007), available from www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/1286/dna-confirms-aboriginal-australian-origins (Accessed 6 January 2011).
39. Gooch, The Neanderthal Legacy, 72, italics in the original.
40. Richard E. Green, Johannes Krause, Adrian W. Briggs, Tomislav Maricic, Udo Stenzel, Martin Kircher, Nick Patterson, Heng Li, Weiwei Zhai, Markus Hsi-Yang Fritz, Nancy F. Hansen, Eric Y. Durand, Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas, Jeffrey D. Jensen, Tomas Marques-Bonet, Can Alkan, Kay Prüfer, Matthias Meyer, Hernán A. Burbano, Jeffrey M. Good, Rigo Schultz, Ayinuer Aximu-Petri, Anne Butthof, Barbara Höber, Barbara Höffner, Madlen Siegemund, Antje Weihmann, Chad Nusbaum, Eric S. Lander, Carsten Russ, Nathaniel Novod, Jason Affourtit, Michael Egholm, Christine Verna, Pavao Rudan, Dejana Brajkovic, Zeljko Kucan, Ivan Gušic, Vladimir B. Doronichev, Liubov V. Golovanova, Carles Lalueza-Fox, Marco de la Rasilla, Javier Fortea, Antonio Rosas, Ralf W. Schmitz, Philip L. F. Johnson, Evan E. Eichler, Daniel Falush, Ewan Birney, James C. Mullikin, Montgomery Slatkin, Rasmus Nielsen, Janet Kelso, Michael Lachmann, David Reich, and Svante Pääbo, “A Draft Sequence of the Neandertal Genome,” Science 328 (5979), 710-722 (7 May 2010), available from www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/328/5979/710.pdf (Accessed 7 January 2011); Paul Rincon, “Neanderthal genes ‘survive in us’ ”, BBC News (6 May 2010), posted at news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8660940.stm (Accessed 6 January 2011).
41. Paul Rincon, “Neanderthals ‘were flame-haired’ ”, BBC News (25 October 2007), posted at news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7062415.stm (Accessed 7 January 2011); Anonymous, “Ancient DNA Reveals That Some Neanderthals Were Redheads”, ScienceDaily (26 October 2010), posted at www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071025143311.htm (Accessed 7 January 2011).
42. Gooch, The Neanderthal Legacy, 33, italics in the original.
43. Myra Shackley, Still Living? Yeti, Sasquatch and the Neanderthal Enigma, New York: Thames and Hudson, 1983 [Paperback edition, 1986], 161-164.
44. Shackley, Still Living?, 112; this particular Almas, also referred to as an abnauayu, was named Zana and she is further described in: Igor Bourtsev, “A Skeleton Still Buried and a Skull Unearthed: The Story of Zana” (From: In the Footsteps of the Russian Snowman by Dmitri Bayanov, 1996, Moscow, Russia: Crypto-Logos, pp. 46-52), available from www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/zana.htm (Accessed 10 January 2011).
45. Gooch, The Neanderthal Legacy, 132.
46. Gooch’s last three closing words (before the appendices) of The Neanderthal Legacy (page 132). Besides his work on Neanderthals, Gooch made other contributions to the study of ancient history, such as his quite rational suggestion that the ancients could have figured out, based on its approximately 50-year “wobble” (and possibly using simple lenses), that Sirius has a small, dark, heavy companion star (The Dream Culture of the Neanderthals, 227-240). This information was passed down, for instance to the Dogon tribe of Africa, and despite various sensational claims (see Robert Temple, The Sirius Mystery: New Scientific Evidence of Alien Contact 5,000 Years Ago, Rochester, Vermont: Destiny Books, 1998; see also Blair MacKenzie Blake, “Dark Seed: The ABCs of the Sirius Mystery”, Darklore 5, 117-133 [2010]) no alien contact was required.
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