20 November 2008

Neanderthals were not good baseball players

"Studies of elite handball and baseball players suggest that frequent overhand throwing from an early age permanently rotates the shoulder-end of the humerus toward an athlete's back, compared to people who haven't spent much time hurling.

This bone rotation only occurs in the throwing arm, so a difference between the right and left arm in fossils could be a sign of projectile use, Rhodes says. To find out, she and Churchill measured humerus bones from Neanderthals and ancient and modern humans.

They found some evidence for projectile use in male European humans from around 26,000 to 28,000 years ago – the middle Palaeolithic period – who would have been contemporaries of Neanderthals. Their right humerus bones were generally more rotated toward their back than their left, while Rhodes's team noticed no such asymmetry in Neanderthal arms."

(More details and discussion at New Scientist online)

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