\doc\web\2000\02\cromag.txt Date sent: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 16:49:57 -0800 From: Floyd Subject: Re: Are Caucasians same as Cro Magnon arthur hu wrote: > Is CroMagnon the same as modern caucasians? Modern Europeans, yes, with the obvious exception of being dead that is. > > > Or are they a common ancestor of Europeans and Asians? Possibly. It's hard to tell with the skin off. The pattern of tool distribution suggests that the folks we call Cro Magnon were the first anatomically modern people in Europe. They seem to have arrived there at about the same time as the first moderns in Asia. It's hard to tell just yet, as work on early moderns in Asia is just beginning. Most Asian archaeology has focused on the Dynastic period. > Can CroMagon > be distinguised from modern Africans? On the basis of their bones, no. On the basis of their tools, yes, definitely. On the basis of their skin color, only because Africans have some and Cro Mag's don't have any. > > > When are the oldest Mongoloids found? Caucasians? The terms "Mongoloid" and "Caucasoid" can only refer to living or historically recorded people. These terms only have meaning _within_ our cultural system. Since th first residents of Asia and Europe did not have the same cultural system of meanings as we do, the first "Mongoloids" and "Caucasoids" lived in about the 15th century A.D., since this is the period when people with close to modern cultural systems in Europe and Asia met each other. However, if you mean "when did modern humans first occupy Asia and Europe?" the answer is much easier, some time between about 60,000 and 50,000 years ago. > > > email response to arthurhu@halcyon.com who has not found the answer > to any of these questions on any TV program or book. Robert Wenke's _Patterns in Prehistory_ is a good place for a non-specialist to start. From there, more complex reading can be found in the _Journal of World Prehistory_, particularly Richard Klein's article in Vol 9 number 2 (1995). The book _The origins of Anatomically Modern Humans_ by Nitecki and Nitecki is also rather advanced, but very informative. email me if you need more references