Upper Deck Goodwin Champions made some really cool cards of Jack Johnson in 2019, let's take a look at them. This is one of the most beautiful cards I've ever seen, 2019 Upper Deck Goodwin Champions - Horizontal Turquoise - Jack Johnson.
2024 Historic Autographs -YesterYear - Design 3 - Jack Johnson. I love Historic Autographs cards, they always pack a lot into their sets and it's just a really fun experience.
2010 Ringside Boxing - Turkey Red - Jack Johnson. These cards are really cool, the artwork is just beautiful and this card is actually signed by the artist for this series.
I guess that's about it for the Jack Johnson cards, there are a few I couldn't find the photos to match up with the card so I'm disgusted about it and I'm just going to leave them out. I really enjoy this stuff, the boxing card hobby is so much fun and you rarely get a chance to see the photos that were used for the images we see on some of these famous and legendary cards. I don't know if anyone has ever tried to showcase the photos that were used for these cards but that's what I'm attempting to do here, a kind of museum, it's just really fascinating and cool to see. I short-changed a few fighters, when I first started this little project I was only going to do my favorite cards, but my OCD took over and now I'm going to try to do them all, so I'll have to come back around and get some of the cards I left out at the beginning.
It's a shame that Rocco Tozzo, aka Rocky Kansas, doesn't have a lot of cards, and what he does have is very rare, and the photos that match up with the cards just aren't available. He's one of my favorites, all-time great lightweight, world lightweight champion 1925-26, and I love his aggressive, "go for broke" fighting style. This is one of his cards, the 1925-31 Four-on-One Exhibits Postcards Heinie Groh / Stanley Harris / Jack Dempsey / Rocky Kansas.
Check this out, this is fascinating, this is Shanidar Cave, Shanidar Cave is a famous archaeological site in the Zagros Mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan. Unearthed in the 1950s, it yielded the remains of ten Neanderthals dating from 35,000 to 75,000 years ago. The site revolutionized our understanding of early hominids by revealing evidence of community care, survival of severe injuries, and potential burial practices.
Check out this view from the inside of Shanidar Cave. It's absolutely fascinating to think that our ancestors, early humans, lived inside this cave some 35,000-75,000 years ago, ancient Earth is so fascinating.
Ten separate Neanderthal skeletons that may date back over 50,000 years were found in Shanidar Cave. The remains were first discovered in the mid-1950’s by a team from Columbia University led by Smithsonian anthropologist Ralph Solecki. The first nine skeletons were excavated between 1957 and 1961. The tenth skeleton was discovered in 2006 when an archeologist discovered several bones from the collection that did not match the others. The Shanidar Cave was not the first location of Neanderthal skeleton discovery, but it was the first that shed light on the burial practices and causes of death among Neanderthals. The most interesting of all the skeletons, referred to as Shanidar 1, was carefully excavated and diligently studied because of the damage to his skull and deformities on his leg and arm. It was discovered that the Neanderthal was between the ages 40-50 at the time of his death. The damage to his skull, leg and arm were discovered to have partially healed and were concluded to not have played a role in Shanidar 1’s death. Archeologists believe that Shanidar 1 was taken care of by the other Neanderthals in his social group. It would have been very difficult for him to live long enough for his injuries to partially heal without help from others. At the time, this was a significant discovery, as it lessened the strongly-held belief that Neanderthals were solitary in nature. The Shanidar Cave is not only home to Neanderthal skeletons, but also to over 30 other “proto-Neolithic” skeletons that have been dated to roughly 10,000 years BC. One of these skeletons, Shanidar 3, is on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Shanidar 3 traveled over 6,000 miles from Iraqi Kurdistan to Washington D.C. This is an archival photograph showing the archaeological excavation of Shanidar Cave, the arrows in the image document the location of several Neanderthal remains discovered during excavations led by Ralph Solecki between 1951 and 1960.
Sometimes archaeological excavations can be likened to a detective story, where the detective sets out to find a pickpocket but ends up catching a robber who's burglarized a bank vault. Much the same thing happened to Ralph Solecki when he began excavations in Shanidar Cave in northern Iraq in 1951. Solecki, then a thirty-four-year-old archaeologist at the Smithsonian Institution, was searching for ancient stone tools. Nine years later, the work was completed, and by then he had collected more Neanderthal skeletons than had rarely been found in one place. Eight years later, a new analysis of his finds, conducted thousands of kilometers from Shanidar Cave, revealed that Neanderthals decorated their dead with flowers, leading to a new appreciation of these ancient people. Ralph Solecki began his fruitful excavations in May 1951. For a month, he and his companion, an Iraqi official, explored the rugged Zagros Mountains in northern Iraq. Solecki entered one cave after another (about forty in total), but they were all so small, so damp, or so rocky that they clearly could not have served as human habitation at any time. Solecki then began questioning the mountaineers. This vast region, located at the crossroads of Iraq, Iran, and Turkey, is home to the Kurds. Some are sedentary, others semi-nomadic, moving their sheep and goats from one pasture to another in the spring and fall. They know the geography of Kurdistan like no one else. It was from these shepherds that Solecki learned about "Shkaft Mazin Shanidar"—the Great Shanidar Cave. Solecki found it on the slope of Mount Baradost above the Great Zab River. It met all the archaeologist's requirements. Spacious and well-ventilated (its entrance is eight meters high and twenty-five meters wide), it faced south, and was therefore fully illuminated and warmed by the sun. The floor—earth, not rock—promised untold archaeological treasures. In short, it was, in Solecki's words, "the most magnificent cave of all those we visited during our exploration." This is a photo of one of the early caves that Ralph Solecki explored.
Workers and early archaeologists used dynamite in Neanderthal caves primarily to break through massive, impenetrable rockfalls and heavy consolidated sediment blocks that prevented them from reaching the ancient, fossil-bearing layers beneath. This is a photo of workers who have just lit the fuse on a stick of dynamite and they're about to get the hell out of dodge before it blows.
A worker at the bottom of an excavation pit. Just look how deep they had to dig to find the neanderthal fossils, this is because of the natural geological process of sediment accumulation over tens of thousands of years.
Check this out, this image shows the original discovery of the Shanidar 1 skull, a 45,000 to 35,000-year-old Neanderthal nicknamed "Nandy". Unearthed in 1957 by Ralph Solecki in the Shanidar Cave, this individual is one of the most famous examples of a Neanderthal who lived into "old age" (approximately 35–45 years) despite severe, life-altering injuries. Just look at it, it's absolutely beautiful. I can't imagine what it must have been like to have unearthed this, to come face-to-face with a being that lived 35,000 to 45,000 years ago, to be the first Homo Sapien to come face-to-face with this Neanderthal.
A look at the entrance to Shanidar Cave today, where excavations still continue. After a 50-year pause, the Shanidar Cave Project was launched in 2014 by researchers from the University of Cambridge, continuing to uncover groundbreaking Neanderthal remains and new insights into their behaviors.
This is the skull of a 75,000-year-old female Neanderthal (dubbed "Shanidar Z") that was discovered in 2018 by researchers from the University of Cambridge and Liverpool John Moores University during renewed excavations at Shanidar Cave. Next to the skull is a model of what she actually looked like. It's absolutely fascinating, the artists that put these models together must be blown away when their work is complete and they come face-to-face with the past, with a Neanderthal that existed 75,000 years ago.
Check this out, this is Gorhams Cave complex, located on the southeastern face of the Rock of Gibraltar, a British Overseas Territory situated on the southern coast of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain). Gorham's Cave complex is internationally renowned as one of the very last known habitations of Neanderthals in Europe. Archaeological deposits within the cave complex show that Neanderthals lived there continuously, dating back around 100,000 years and persisting until approximately 24,000 to 32,000 years ago. Excavations have revealed that Neanderthals hunted marine animals and birds, used feathers for ornamentation, and carved abstract rock engravings, proving advanced cognitive abilities. Recent exploration within the caves has led to the discovery of chambers sealed for over 40,000 years. It's absolutely beautiful and fascinating.
Earth's last Neanderthals lived on the Iberian Peninsula, specifically in the coastal sea caves of Gibraltar. Archaeological evidence indicates these final populations survived in enclaves like Gorham's Cave and Vanguard Cave, long after they had vanished from the rest of Europe. Because the far south of the peninsula maintained a stable, mild climate while the rest of Europe was largely uninhabitable due to glacial periods, this region acted as a final refuge. It's absolutely amazing to think that this was where the last Neanderthals lived before the species began to go extinct.
The X-Files is one of the greatest TV shows in history, I followed the entire series and the movies that were made, it's just one of the greatest stories ever told, Mulder's search for extraterrestrial life and the truth. This is one of my favorite scenes from the franchise, where the Neanderthals have an encounter with hostile extraterrestrial life in a snow cave in 35,000 B.C.
Watching that clip from the X-Files, it's fascinating to think that there could be intelligent life out there that could be technologically advanced far beyond our comprehension and yet here on planet Earth we're in the year 35,000 B.C. It's crazy how time and the universe works, on one planet it can be 1 million B.C. and we're just discovering fire, and on another planet it can be 15,000 A.D. and intelligent life is capable of interstellar travel. It's not entirely impossible that intelligent life could have been visiting our planet when we were just Neanderthals.
Inside the caves at Gorham's. This is the chamber that had been sealed for 40,000 years.
The Guardian
Gibraltar cave chamber discovery could shed light on Neanderthals’ culture
Researchers find space in Gorham’s Cave complex that has been closed off for at least 40,000 years
Researchers excavating a cave network on the Rock of Gibraltar have discovered a new chamber, sealed off from the world for at least 40,000 years, that could shed light on the culture and customs of the Neanderthals who occupied the area for a thousand centuries.
In 2012, experts began examining Vanguard Cave, part of the Gorham’s Cave complex, to determine its true dimensions and to see whether it contained passages and chambers that had been plugged by sand.
Last month the team, led by Prof Clive Finlayson, an evolutionary biologist who serves as director of the Gibraltar National Museum, came across a gap in the sediment, which they widened and crawled through. It led them to a 13-metre space in the roof of the cave where stalactites hung from the ceiling and broken curtains of rock suggested damage from an ancient earthquake.
“It’s quite a chamber,” Finlayson told the Guardian. “In a way, it’s almost like discovering the tomb of Tutankhamun; you’re going into a space that no one’s been into for 40,000 years. It’s quite sobering, really.”
Scattered across the chamber’s surface were the leg bone of a lynx, vertebrae from a spotted hyena, and the large wing bone of a griffon vulture.
“Something dragged things into there a long time ago,” said Finlayson. “We’ve also found six or seven examples of scratched claw marks on the walls of the cave. You’d normally associate that kind of claw mark with bears – and we do have bear remains in the cave, but they look a bit small to me. I wonder whether that lynx whose femur we found was actually scratching on the walls.”
Although the bones – which showed no cuts or marks consistent with human intervention – are interesting in themselves, the team also found a large dog whelk shell that raises tantalising possibilities.
“That bit of the cave is probably 20 metres above sea level today, so clearly somebody took it up there some time before 40,000 years ago,” said the professor. “That’s already a hint that people have been up there.”
Elsewhere in the caves, the team has recovered ample evidence of Neanderthal occupation, from hearths and stone tools to the remains of butchered animals including red deer, ibex, seals and dolphins. Four years ago, the researchers came across the milk tooth of a four-year-old Neanderthal child in an area frequented by hyenas.
“We’re still looking there, but there was no occupation by Neanderthals on that level, so we suspect that the hyenas got the kid and killed him or her and dragged her into the back of the cave,” said Finlayson. “We’re looking to see if there’s more of that child left there.”
The team is hopeful that their dig down from the apex of the cave could lead to side chambers and perhaps even the odd burial site.
“One of the things that we’ve found on many levels of this cave is clear evidence of occupation – campfires and so on,” said Finlayson. “I’m speculating now, but what we haven’t found is where they buried their own. Since we’re speculating, a chamber at the back of a cave could be quite suggestive – it’s total speculation, but you’re not going to bury people in your kitchen or in your living room.”
Efforts to explore and excavate further are being planned, but the researchers believe the new area could yield precious clues about the existence and society of these coastal, Mediterranean Neanderthals.
“These caves have been giving us a great deal of information about the behaviour of these people,” said Finlayson. “And, far from the old view of the brutish, ape-like beings, we’re realising that in every respect they were human, and capable of most of the things that modern humans were capable of doing. We even know that they were interchanging genes.”
For the professor, the search is about more than just finding skeletons: it is about finding out who the Neanderthals were, how they lived, how they died, and how they survived.
“I’m proud to say that I’ve done my test, and I’ve got two-point-something percent Neanderthal DNA in me,” he said. “Arguably, they never went extinct because there’s still a little bit of them in us.”
Check this out, this is a cave at Gorham's where they found hand stencil on one of the cave walls inside, you can see a map of the layout of the cave, and it's unbelievable how far back in the cave they found the stencil. Imagine being a Neanderthal and going that far back into a pitch dark cave with fire. Neanderthals used a combination of controlled hearth fires and animal-fat torches to see in the dark and deep parts of caves. Archaeological evidence reveals extensive use of controlled fire, including embedded fireplaces and built structures illuminated by the flickering flames of prehistoric builders. Navigating deep underground required deliberate artificial lighting, as natural daylight quickly fades in cave systems.
The Altamura Man was discovered in October 1993 by local speleologists exploring the Lamalunga karst cave system, located near the city of Altamura in the Apulia region of southern Italy. The remarkably well-preserved skeleton fell into a prehistoric sinkhole roughly 130,000 to 170,000 years ago. Because the bones are fused to the cave walls by thick layers of calcite (calcium deposits) and are extremely fragile, the skeleton remains untouched inside the cave to this day. Just look at this, the skeleton of Altamura Man encased in calcite, can you just imagine exploring the cave and coming across a 150,000-year-old Neanderthal skeleton like this.
Neanderthals of Europe, who had evolved by about 200,000 years ago, had to endure winter cold and even ice ages. A short, broad body shape helped to retain heat, which is useful in cold environments like those inhabited by Neanderthals. The lower arm and leg bones in this Neanderthal skeleton are short compared to the upper arm and leg bones, a feature that also reduced heat loss. This skeleton is reconstructed based on the La Ferrassie 1 and Kebara 1 Neanderthal skeletons discovered in 1909 in the Dordogne Valley in southwestern France, they are some of the most complete Neanderthal skeletons ever discovered.
This is the male Neanderthal skeleton La Ferrassie 1 housed at the Musee de I'Homme in Paris, France. It's just unbelievable how complete this skeleton is.
Human evolution is fascinating, and you can see that Neanderthals, or their scientific name of Homo Neanderthalensis, is the last link in the chain before we evolved.
Comparison of a Neanderthal skeleton to that of a modern human. It's obvious that a Neanderthal would have a clear power advantage over a modern human. Neanderthals were generally slightly shorter than modern humans, but they were significantly heavier and more heavily muscled. They were strong, very strong. A Neanderthal would likely have enough physical strength to break a modern human's leg with their bare hands.
Could a Modern Human Beat a Neanderthal in a Fight? It’s hypothetical conflict, but who would emerge the victor?
By: Rachel Nuwer
October 25, 2012
If a modern man came face-to-face with a Neanderthal, who would emerge the victor in a fight? Slate ponders this hypothetical conflict:
A Neanderthal would have a clear power advantage over his Homo sapiens opponent. Many of the Neanderthals archaeologists have recovered had Popeye forearms, possibly the result of a life spent stabbing wooly mammoths and straight-tusked elephants to death and dismantling their carcasses. Neanderthals also developed strong trapezius, deltoid, and tricep muscles by dragging 50 pounds of meat 30 miles home to their families. A Neanderthal had a wider pelvis and lower center of gravity than Homo sapiens, which would have made him a powerful grappler.
But humans, don’t resign yourselves to defeat just yet.
Homo sapiens probably has a longer reach, on average, than Neanderthals did, and more stamina. Most importantly, we could deploy these advantages to maximum effect using our superior wits. It’s obviously speculative, but a modern man of above-average build would have an excellent chance of defeating a Neanderthal in hand-to-hand combat if he could keep his opponent at arm’s length, survive the initial onslaught, and wear him down.
Other factors to consider: each individual’s particular intellectual and physical abilities, as well as training. Neanderthals gussied themselves up with paints and shells and might have played a sort of primitive flute—they weren’t without creativity. Of course, if a Neanderthal of any size was thrown into the ring with a trained MMA fighter or martial artist, he would be at an extreme disadvantage since the expert fighter would know just where to strike to inflict most damage.
Slate concludes that there’s no way of knowing who would win this battle but cautions that against other potential enemies—such as Homo heidelbergensis, who grew more than seven feet tall and had a tendency towards cannibalism, or Paranthropus boisei, who is described as “a gorilla head on a human body”—a human’s odds likely wouldn’t be quite as high, regardless of wit and training.
In a hypothetical scenario, a fight between a Neanderthal and a modern man of above average height and build, one thing's for sure, if the Neanderthal got ahold of one of your limbs, it's pretty much over, snap. It's kind of hard to fight back when you got a compound fracture and the bone is protruding from your arm.
You see, I'm trying to envision this in my mind, a Neanderthal and a modern man in a donnybrook. Not only could Neanderthals sprint, but scientific evidence suggests they were actually built more like sprinters than modern long-distance runners. With a compact, muscular physique, they likely relied on short, powerful bursts of speed to ambush prey in dense woodlands. If you're in a fight with one of them, he's likely to sprint at you, charge you aggressively, as if he was ambushing prey, grabbing at you, grabbing at you, and more than likely he's going to overpower you and get ahold of one of your limbs. No, I don't like it, our chances here aren't good.
One room and 50,000 years ago. A reproduction of a Neanderthal family and cave in which they lived 50,000 years ago. These are the first authoritative life-size reproductions of the Neanderthal and are on exhibit at the Field Museum of Natural History at Chicago, Illinois.
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2014 Panini Golden Age - Hobby Box Bottom 3-card Panels - Croft's Swiss Milk Cocoa Red Singles Jack Johnson.
2014 Panini Golden Age - Darby Chocolates - Box Toppers - 3-Card Panel - Jack Johnson/Joe Louis/Jake LaMotta.
Upper Deck Goodwin Champions made some really cool cards of Jack Johnson in 2019, let's take a look at them. This is one of the most beautiful cards I've ever seen, 2019 Upper Deck Goodwin Champions - Horizontal Turquoise - Jack Johnson.
2019 Upper Deck Goodwin Champions - Splash of Color - Royal Blue - Jack Johnson.
2019 Upper Deck Goodwin Champions - Base - Turquoise - Jack Johnson.
1979-81 Panarizon Jack Johnson. This is a really cool looking card.
2015 Sport Kings Gum Jack Johnson.
1995 Angar International - Who's Who - Jack Johnson.
2024 Historic Autographs -YesterYear - Design 3 - Jack Johnson. I love Historic Autographs cards, they always pack a lot into their sets and it's just a really fun experience.
2025 Historic Autographs - Famous Americans - Jack Johnson.
2002 Rockwell - The Great Heavyweights - Jack Johnson, large and mini variations.
2010 Ringside Boxing - Turkey Red - Jack Johnson. These cards are really cool, the artwork is just beautiful and this card is actually signed by the artist for this series.
I guess that's about it for the Jack Johnson cards, there are a few I couldn't find the photos to match up with the card so I'm disgusted about it and I'm just going to leave them out. I really enjoy this stuff, the boxing card hobby is so much fun and you rarely get a chance to see the photos that were used for the images we see on some of these famous and legendary cards. I don't know if anyone has ever tried to showcase the photos that were used for these cards but that's what I'm attempting to do here, a kind of museum, it's just really fascinating and cool to see. I short-changed a few fighters, when I first started this little project I was only going to do my favorite cards, but my OCD took over and now I'm going to try to do them all, so I'll have to come back around and get some of the cards I left out at the beginning.
It's a shame that Rocco Tozzo, aka Rocky Kansas, doesn't have a lot of cards, and what he does have is very rare, and the photos that match up with the cards just aren't available. He's one of my favorites, all-time great lightweight, world lightweight champion 1925-26, and I love his aggressive, "go for broke" fighting style. This is one of his cards, the 1925-31 Four-on-One Exhibits Postcards Heinie Groh / Stanley Harris / Jack Dempsey / Rocky Kansas.
1920s Romeo Y Julieta Rocky Kansas.
1936 La Salle Hats - Rocky Kansas.
1920 W519 Strip card - Rocky Kansas, regular and reverse image variations.
Check this out, this is fascinating, this is Shanidar Cave, Shanidar Cave is a famous archaeological site in the Zagros Mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan. Unearthed in the 1950s, it yielded the remains of ten Neanderthals dating from 35,000 to 75,000 years ago. The site revolutionized our understanding of early hominids by revealing evidence of community care, survival of severe injuries, and potential burial practices.
A view from the inside of Shanidar Cave, looking outward.
Check out this view from the inside of Shanidar Cave. It's absolutely fascinating to think that our ancestors, early humans, lived inside this cave some 35,000-75,000 years ago, ancient Earth is so fascinating.
Ten separate Neanderthal skeletons that may date back over 50,000 years were found in Shanidar Cave. The remains were first discovered in the mid-1950’s by a team from Columbia University led by Smithsonian anthropologist Ralph Solecki. The first nine skeletons were excavated between 1957 and 1961. The tenth skeleton was discovered in 2006 when an archeologist discovered several bones from the collection that did not match the others. The Shanidar Cave was not the first location of Neanderthal skeleton discovery, but it was the first that shed light on the burial practices and causes of death among Neanderthals. The most interesting of all the skeletons, referred to as Shanidar 1, was carefully excavated and diligently studied because of the damage to his skull and deformities on his leg and arm. It was discovered that the Neanderthal was between the ages 40-50 at the time of his death. The damage to his skull, leg and arm were discovered to have partially healed and were concluded to not have played a role in Shanidar 1’s death. Archeologists believe that Shanidar 1 was taken care of by the other Neanderthals in his social group. It would have been very difficult for him to live long enough for his injuries to partially heal without help from others. At the time, this was a significant discovery, as it lessened the strongly-held belief that Neanderthals were solitary in nature. The Shanidar Cave is not only home to Neanderthal skeletons, but also to over 30 other “proto-Neolithic” skeletons that have been dated to roughly 10,000 years BC. One of these skeletons, Shanidar 3, is on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Shanidar 3 traveled over 6,000 miles from Iraqi Kurdistan to Washington D.C. This is an archival photograph showing the archaeological excavation of Shanidar Cave, the arrows in the image document the location of several Neanderthal remains discovered during excavations led by Ralph Solecki between 1951 and 1960.
Sometimes archaeological excavations can be likened to a detective story, where the detective sets out to find a pickpocket but ends up catching a robber who's burglarized a bank vault. Much the same thing happened to Ralph Solecki when he began excavations in Shanidar Cave in northern Iraq in 1951. Solecki, then a thirty-four-year-old archaeologist at the Smithsonian Institution, was searching for ancient stone tools. Nine years later, the work was completed, and by then he had collected more Neanderthal skeletons than had rarely been found in one place. Eight years later, a new analysis of his finds, conducted thousands of kilometers from Shanidar Cave, revealed that Neanderthals decorated their dead with flowers, leading to a new appreciation of these ancient people. Ralph Solecki began his fruitful excavations in May 1951. For a month, he and his companion, an Iraqi official, explored the rugged Zagros Mountains in northern Iraq. Solecki entered one cave after another (about forty in total), but they were all so small, so damp, or so rocky that they clearly could not have served as human habitation at any time. Solecki then began questioning the mountaineers. This vast region, located at the crossroads of Iraq, Iran, and Turkey, is home to the Kurds. Some are sedentary, others semi-nomadic, moving their sheep and goats from one pasture to another in the spring and fall. They know the geography of Kurdistan like no one else. It was from these shepherds that Solecki learned about "Shkaft Mazin Shanidar"—the Great Shanidar Cave. Solecki found it on the slope of Mount Baradost above the Great Zab River. It met all the archaeologist's requirements. Spacious and well-ventilated (its entrance is eight meters high and twenty-five meters wide), it faced south, and was therefore fully illuminated and warmed by the sun. The floor—earth, not rock—promised untold archaeological treasures. In short, it was, in Solecki's words, "the most magnificent cave of all those we visited during our exploration." This is a photo of one of the early caves that Ralph Solecki explored.
Workers excavating at Shanidar cave, using a mechanical lift to remove the dirt.
Workers and early archaeologists used dynamite in Neanderthal caves primarily to break through massive, impenetrable rockfalls and heavy consolidated sediment blocks that prevented them from reaching the ancient, fossil-bearing layers beneath. This is a photo of workers who have just lit the fuse on a stick of dynamite and they're about to get the hell out of dodge before it blows.
A worker at the bottom of an excavation pit. Just look how deep they had to dig to find the neanderthal fossils, this is because of the natural geological process of sediment accumulation over tens of thousands of years.
Check this out, this image shows the original discovery of the Shanidar 1 skull, a 45,000 to 35,000-year-old Neanderthal nicknamed "Nandy". Unearthed in 1957 by Ralph Solecki in the Shanidar Cave, this individual is one of the most famous examples of a Neanderthal who lived into "old age" (approximately 35–45 years) despite severe, life-altering injuries. Just look at it, it's absolutely beautiful. I can't imagine what it must have been like to have unearthed this, to come face-to-face with a being that lived 35,000 to 45,000 years ago, to be the first Homo Sapien to come face-to-face with this Neanderthal.
Ralph Solecki at Shanidar Cave in the 1950s.
A look at the entrance to Shanidar Cave today, where excavations still continue. After a 50-year pause, the Shanidar Cave Project was launched in 2014 by researchers from the University of Cambridge, continuing to uncover groundbreaking Neanderthal remains and new insights into their behaviors.
This is the skull of a 75,000-year-old female Neanderthal (dubbed "Shanidar Z") that was discovered in 2018 by researchers from the University of Cambridge and Liverpool John Moores University during renewed excavations at Shanidar Cave. Next to the skull is a model of what she actually looked like. It's absolutely fascinating, the artists that put these models together must be blown away when their work is complete and they come face-to-face with the past, with a Neanderthal that existed 75,000 years ago.
Check this out, this is Gorhams Cave complex, located on the southeastern face of the Rock of Gibraltar, a British Overseas Territory situated on the southern coast of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain). Gorham's Cave complex is internationally renowned as one of the very last known habitations of Neanderthals in Europe. Archaeological deposits within the cave complex show that Neanderthals lived there continuously, dating back around 100,000 years and persisting until approximately 24,000 to 32,000 years ago. Excavations have revealed that Neanderthals hunted marine animals and birds, used feathers for ornamentation, and carved abstract rock engravings, proving advanced cognitive abilities. Recent exploration within the caves has led to the discovery of chambers sealed for over 40,000 years. It's absolutely beautiful and fascinating.
Some great shots of Gorhams Cave complex.
Earth's last Neanderthals lived on the Iberian Peninsula, specifically in the coastal sea caves of Gibraltar. Archaeological evidence indicates these final populations survived in enclaves like Gorham's Cave and Vanguard Cave, long after they had vanished from the rest of Europe. Because the far south of the peninsula maintained a stable, mild climate while the rest of Europe was largely uninhabitable due to glacial periods, this region acted as a final refuge. It's absolutely amazing to think that this was where the last Neanderthals lived before the species began to go extinct.
A view looking out from the caves at Gorhams Cave complex.
The X-Files is one of the greatest TV shows in history, I followed the entire series and the movies that were made, it's just one of the greatest stories ever told, Mulder's search for extraterrestrial life and the truth. This is one of my favorite scenes from the franchise, where the Neanderthals have an encounter with hostile extraterrestrial life in a snow cave in 35,000 B.C.
Watching that clip from the X-Files, it's fascinating to think that there could be intelligent life out there that could be technologically advanced far beyond our comprehension and yet here on planet Earth we're in the year 35,000 B.C. It's crazy how time and the universe works, on one planet it can be 1 million B.C. and we're just discovering fire, and on another planet it can be 15,000 A.D. and intelligent life is capable of interstellar travel. It's not entirely impossible that intelligent life could have been visiting our planet when we were just Neanderthals.
More views looking out of the caves at Gorham's Neanderthal cave complex.
Inside the caves at Gorham's. This is the chamber that had been sealed for 40,000 years.
The Guardian
Gibraltar cave chamber discovery could shed light on Neanderthals’ culture
Researchers find space in Gorham’s Cave complex that has been closed off for at least 40,000 years
Researchers excavating a cave network on the Rock of Gibraltar have discovered a new chamber, sealed off from the world for at least 40,000 years, that could shed light on the culture and customs of the Neanderthals who occupied the area for a thousand centuries.
In 2012, experts began examining Vanguard Cave, part of the Gorham’s Cave complex, to determine its true dimensions and to see whether it contained passages and chambers that had been plugged by sand.
Last month the team, led by Prof Clive Finlayson, an evolutionary biologist who serves as director of the Gibraltar National Museum, came across a gap in the sediment, which they widened and crawled through. It led them to a 13-metre space in the roof of the cave where stalactites hung from the ceiling and broken curtains of rock suggested damage from an ancient earthquake.
“It’s quite a chamber,” Finlayson told the Guardian. “In a way, it’s almost like discovering the tomb of Tutankhamun; you’re going into a space that no one’s been into for 40,000 years. It’s quite sobering, really.”
Scattered across the chamber’s surface were the leg bone of a lynx, vertebrae from a spotted hyena, and the large wing bone of a griffon vulture.
“Something dragged things into there a long time ago,” said Finlayson. “We’ve also found six or seven examples of scratched claw marks on the walls of the cave. You’d normally associate that kind of claw mark with bears – and we do have bear remains in the cave, but they look a bit small to me. I wonder whether that lynx whose femur we found was actually scratching on the walls.”
Although the bones – which showed no cuts or marks consistent with human intervention – are interesting in themselves, the team also found a large dog whelk shell that raises tantalising possibilities.
“That bit of the cave is probably 20 metres above sea level today, so clearly somebody took it up there some time before 40,000 years ago,” said the professor. “That’s already a hint that people have been up there.”
Elsewhere in the caves, the team has recovered ample evidence of Neanderthal occupation, from hearths and stone tools to the remains of butchered animals including red deer, ibex, seals and dolphins. Four years ago, the researchers came across the milk tooth of a four-year-old Neanderthal child in an area frequented by hyenas.
“We’re still looking there, but there was no occupation by Neanderthals on that level, so we suspect that the hyenas got the kid and killed him or her and dragged her into the back of the cave,” said Finlayson. “We’re looking to see if there’s more of that child left there.”
The team is hopeful that their dig down from the apex of the cave could lead to side chambers and perhaps even the odd burial site.
“One of the things that we’ve found on many levels of this cave is clear evidence of occupation – campfires and so on,” said Finlayson. “I’m speculating now, but what we haven’t found is where they buried their own. Since we’re speculating, a chamber at the back of a cave could be quite suggestive – it’s total speculation, but you’re not going to bury people in your kitchen or in your living room.”
Efforts to explore and excavate further are being planned, but the researchers believe the new area could yield precious clues about the existence and society of these coastal, Mediterranean Neanderthals.
“These caves have been giving us a great deal of information about the behaviour of these people,” said Finlayson. “And, far from the old view of the brutish, ape-like beings, we’re realising that in every respect they were human, and capable of most of the things that modern humans were capable of doing. We even know that they were interchanging genes.”
For the professor, the search is about more than just finding skeletons: it is about finding out who the Neanderthals were, how they lived, how they died, and how they survived.
“I’m proud to say that I’ve done my test, and I’ve got two-point-something percent Neanderthal DNA in me,” he said. “Arguably, they never went extinct because there’s still a little bit of them in us.”
Check this out, this is a cave at Gorham's where they found hand stencil on one of the cave walls inside, you can see a map of the layout of the cave, and it's unbelievable how far back in the cave they found the stencil. Imagine being a Neanderthal and going that far back into a pitch dark cave with fire. Neanderthals used a combination of controlled hearth fires and animal-fat torches to see in the dark and deep parts of caves. Archaeological evidence reveals extensive use of controlled fire, including embedded fireplaces and built structures illuminated by the flickering flames of prehistoric builders. Navigating deep underground required deliberate artificial lighting, as natural daylight quickly fades in cave systems.
The Altamura Man was discovered in October 1993 by local speleologists exploring the Lamalunga karst cave system, located near the city of Altamura in the Apulia region of southern Italy. The remarkably well-preserved skeleton fell into a prehistoric sinkhole roughly 130,000 to 170,000 years ago. Because the bones are fused to the cave walls by thick layers of calcite (calcium deposits) and are extremely fragile, the skeleton remains untouched inside the cave to this day. Just look at this, the skeleton of Altamura Man encased in calcite, can you just imagine exploring the cave and coming across a 150,000-year-old Neanderthal skeleton like this.
Workers in the Lamalunga karst cave system taking samples around the fossils of Altamura Man.
Neanderthals of Europe, who had evolved by about 200,000 years ago, had to endure winter cold and even ice ages. A short, broad body shape helped to retain heat, which is useful in cold environments like those inhabited by Neanderthals. The lower arm and leg bones in this Neanderthal skeleton are short compared to the upper arm and leg bones, a feature that also reduced heat loss. This skeleton is reconstructed based on the La Ferrassie 1 and Kebara 1 Neanderthal skeletons discovered in 1909 in the Dordogne Valley in southwestern France, they are some of the most complete Neanderthal skeletons ever discovered.
This is the male Neanderthal skeleton La Ferrassie 1 housed at the Musee de I'Homme in Paris, France. It's just unbelievable how complete this skeleton is.
Human evolution is fascinating, and you can see that Neanderthals, or their scientific name of Homo Neanderthalensis, is the last link in the chain before we evolved.
Comparison of a Neanderthal skeleton to that of a modern human. It's obvious that a Neanderthal would have a clear power advantage over a modern human. Neanderthals were generally slightly shorter than modern humans, but they were significantly heavier and more heavily muscled. They were strong, very strong. A Neanderthal would likely have enough physical strength to break a modern human's leg with their bare hands.
This is absolute gold.
Could a Modern Human Beat a Neanderthal in a Fight? It’s hypothetical conflict, but who would emerge the victor?
By: Rachel Nuwer
October 25, 2012
If a modern man came face-to-face with a Neanderthal, who would emerge the victor in a fight? Slate ponders this hypothetical conflict:
A Neanderthal would have a clear power advantage over his Homo sapiens opponent. Many of the Neanderthals archaeologists have recovered had Popeye forearms, possibly the result of a life spent stabbing wooly mammoths and straight-tusked elephants to death and dismantling their carcasses. Neanderthals also developed strong trapezius, deltoid, and tricep muscles by dragging 50 pounds of meat 30 miles home to their families. A Neanderthal had a wider pelvis and lower center of gravity than Homo sapiens, which would have made him a powerful grappler.
But humans, don’t resign yourselves to defeat just yet.
Homo sapiens probably has a longer reach, on average, than Neanderthals did, and more stamina. Most importantly, we could deploy these advantages to maximum effect using our superior wits. It’s obviously speculative, but a modern man of above-average build would have an excellent chance of defeating a Neanderthal in hand-to-hand combat if he could keep his opponent at arm’s length, survive the initial onslaught, and wear him down.
Other factors to consider: each individual’s particular intellectual and physical abilities, as well as training. Neanderthals gussied themselves up with paints and shells and might have played a sort of primitive flute—they weren’t without creativity. Of course, if a Neanderthal of any size was thrown into the ring with a trained MMA fighter or martial artist, he would be at an extreme disadvantage since the expert fighter would know just where to strike to inflict most damage.
Slate concludes that there’s no way of knowing who would win this battle but cautions that against other potential enemies—such as Homo heidelbergensis, who grew more than seven feet tall and had a tendency towards cannibalism, or Paranthropus boisei, who is described as “a gorilla head on a human body”—a human’s odds likely wouldn’t be quite as high, regardless of wit and training.
In a hypothetical scenario, a fight between a Neanderthal and a modern man of above average height and build, one thing's for sure, if the Neanderthal got ahold of one of your limbs, it's pretty much over, snap. It's kind of hard to fight back when you got a compound fracture and the bone is protruding from your arm.
You see, I'm trying to envision this in my mind, a Neanderthal and a modern man in a donnybrook. Not only could Neanderthals sprint, but scientific evidence suggests they were actually built more like sprinters than modern long-distance runners. With a compact, muscular physique, they likely relied on short, powerful bursts of speed to ambush prey in dense woodlands. If you're in a fight with one of them, he's likely to sprint at you, charge you aggressively, as if he was ambushing prey, grabbing at you, grabbing at you, and more than likely he's going to overpower you and get ahold of one of your limbs. No, I don't like it, our chances here aren't good.
A reconstruction of a Neanderthal.
One room and 50,000 years ago. A reproduction of a Neanderthal family and cave in which they lived 50,000 years ago. These are the first authoritative life-size reproductions of the Neanderthal and are on exhibit at the Field Museum of Natural History at Chicago, Illinois.