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Ancestor wins new stature
neanderthal from E1 “Because of this Neanderthal
buffer, it seems very unlikely that the southern Italy Neanderthals learned from the more-modern humans,” he said. “They needed to change, and did, apparently by themselves.” He says this finding — along
with recent investigations that have determined that between 1 and 4 percent of the human genome in Europe and Asia has Neanderthal genes—means that these often disparaged humans are actually “more like our broth- ers and sisters than even our cousins.”
Handsome redheads? Neanderthals roamed Eurasia
from current-day Portugal to Si- beriaandfrom England to Jordan for almost 200,000 years. With brain sizes comparable to mod- ern humans and bodies more barrel-chested but otherwise similar, they thrived during a time of relatively stable climate. They were not known to be ad- vanced in toolmaking, but some argue that was because their surroundings didn’t require it. Named after the Neanderthal,
the German valley where their remains were first excavated in 1856, they evolved from the Afri- can hominid Homo erectus. They were stockier than Homo sapiens and had thicker bones and pro- truding foreheads. Early study of Neanderthals described them as very hairy, brutish, unable to talk or walk like more-modern hu- mans. Later discoveries over- turned those views, and recent finds suggestquite a fewincentral Europewere handsome redheads. More-modern humans began entering the same area from Afri- ca 40,000 to 50,000 years ago and, within 10,000 years, the Ne- anderthals largely disappeared as a subspecies. This led many researchers to conclude that the Neanderthals were unable to change and compete with mod- ern humans and as a result dwin- dled and died out. More-recent thinking suggests that they faced a number of
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TUESDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2010 URBAN JUNGLE The changing natural world at our doorsteps. An animal’s final escort
Fall weather yields fewer calls for Lonnie Wade Jr., and the cooler air gives him an extended grace period, but before his targets get too rank, he must thread his orange truck through city streets in response to requests for dead animal pickup.
Wade, 56, was a furniture mover for 30 years before he took a pay cut just so he could have the job. Tat was six years ago.
It’s a good fit for Wade. He has had a lifetime of experience with animals and wants to be of service. “I have a lot of love for my work,” he says, “and have no intention of changing jobs.”
JOE MCNALLY/GETTY IMAGES
Recent archaeological research has shown thatNeanderthals developed tools and weapons that allowed them to adapt well to their environment. But climate change and other factors posed major challenges.
Research has determined that up to 4 percent of the current human genome in Europe and Asia has clearly Neanderthal genes.
challenges between 40,000 and 30,000 years ago, not all of which came from the newcomers.
Stressful conditions The long hot and cold cycles
that had prevailed in Eurasia for centuries sped up during this time, making it more necessary and more difficult to adapt. In addition, a series of major volca- noes erupted in Italy and what is now Eastern Europe, further de- grading the environment. And finally, faced with the ap-
pearance of newcomers skilled in some ways they were not, the Neanderthals began to mate with them. BecauseNeanderthal num- bers were low to begin with, Riel-Salvatore said, itwaseasy for them and their genomes to seem- ingly disappear into the popula- tion of more-modern humans. “We have found no signs of
conflict between the Neander- thals and the modern humans, but we do know the conditions that they lived in became more stressful,” he said. “Neanderthals in southern Italy adapted well on their own for quite a long time, but ultimately succumbed.” At archaeological sites associ-
ated with the southern Italian Neanderthals, who are called Uluzzians, researchers have found pointed weapons, tools madefrom bones, ochre for color- ing and possibly implements for fishing and small-game hunting — artifacts not previously associ- ated withNeanderthals. Research debunking the posi-
tion thatNeanderthals were “cog- nitively inferior” comes from Daniel Adler of the University of Connecticut and Metin Eren of SouthernMethodistUniversity. In 2006, Adler described evi-
dence that Neanderthals hunted just as well asHomosapiens, even if their weapons were less sophis- ticated. In 2007, Eren replicated the making of Neanderthal disc- shaped tools, or “flakes,” and found they were in some ways more efficient than Homo sapi- ens’ blade-based tools. Both re- searchers said that while the Ne- anderthals did notmake the tran- sition to more advanced tools — which generations of researchers saw as proof of Homo sapiens’ superiority—they were nonethe- less well adapted to their environ- ment. “For many, the term ‘Neander-
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thal’ is still synonymous with ‘knuckle-dragging thuggish brute,’ ” Adler said at the time. “We’re going back and rehabili- tating the image of the Neander- thals.” The research he conducted
with an Israeli team focused on Neanderthal populations in the southern Caucasus. They found that the Neanderthals were able to hunt Caucasian tur, large mountain goats that took consid- erable skill to capture.They based their conclusion that Neander- thal and Homo sapiens weapons were roughly comparable in part on the fact that the tur killed by theNeanderthals were adults, the most difficult to track and bring down. But while Adler argues strong-
ly that late Neanderthals were more capable than traditionally believed, he is not convinced by Riel-Salvatore’s scenario in Italy. He said the data described are limited, and he does not believe the southern group was uniform- lyNeanderthal. “At the moment, the trend in
our field is to think of the Nean- derthals as being more like our- selves rather than the quintessen- tial ‘other,’ ” he said. “Julien’s pa- per follows that trend, but it claims more than the data can actually deliver.”
Dirty and smelly, but . . . In 2007, Erik Trinkaus of
WashingtonUniversity in St.Lou- is published research into prehis- toric fossil remains in Europe that showed a significant number of attributes associated with both theNeanderthals and more-mod- ern humans. “Both groups would seem to us
dirty and smelly, but, cleaned up, we would understand both to be human,” he said when the paper was released in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sci- ences. “There’s good reason to think that they did as well.” Subsequent research this year concluded that 1 to 4 percent of the modern human genome comes from Neanderthals, mak- ing the link tighter. And while the percentage may seem small, Riel- Salvatore says it has to be under- stood in context. Neanderthals, he said, probably never reached a total population greater than hundreds of thousands, while Homosapiens came in far greater numbers. “At one point I would imagine
the amount of Neanderthal in modern humans was much great- er,” he said. “But with the num- bers and generations, that per- centage declined. Still, most Ne- anderthals were gone from the Earth by 28,000 years ago, but clearly some of them remain in many of us.”
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Wade oſten knocks on the doors of the addresses that called in the request, either to get help in locating the animal or to acknowledge that he has picked up a beloved pet that someone has boxed or bagged and placed at the curb.
“I will sit and pray with people who are in pain over the loss of their loved ones,” he says. “Sometimes that dog or cat was all they had.”
Wade also has compassion for the numerous fly-covered rats he removes from behind dumpsters, under cars or out of the gutter. “Tey were just trying to live their lives like the rest of us,” he says. “I feel for them.”
Wade has picked up the remains of foxes, snakes, opossums, raccoons, birds, deer — even a tiny pet goldfish. On rare occasions, he’ll deliver an animal’s corpse to the morgue for a police investigation.
Skip the following paragraph if you’re squeamish:
During the warm months, flies always seem to get to the animal first, and the carcass may be alive with maggots by the time Wade is on the scene. If body fluids have leaked out onto the sidewalk or street, Wade sanitizes the stains with bleach. “We don’t want children touching that, or dogs licking it,” he says. Wade scoops up most carcasses with a pitchfork, but he has shovels, a broom and white coveralls for bigger jobs, such as deer.
Deer frequently get hit by cars, but fences take their toll. “Sometimes a deer will stick its head through the bars of an iron fence, the rest of it can’t squeeze through, and then its head gets stuck,” says Wade. More gruesome are the failed attempts of deer trying to leap over spiked or barbed-wire fences.
Te pickup truck
Te Department of Public Works operates two trucks to transport animal carcasses, which are collected from public property, placed in sanitized barrels, refrigerated during transit and frozen at day’s end. A private contractor cremates the remains.
Hazard lights Hydraulic liſt Mask
Rubber gloves
Barrel lined with plastic bag
Carcass calls
It’s difficult to pin down why some parts of the city generate more requests for dead animal pickup than do others. People who are more closely connected to their neighborhoods may be more likely to notice a carcass and call it in.
Wade suggests that vehicular traffic may kill a lot of animals traveling between wooded areas. He notes that in some spots “people are sloppy with their cleaning,” and strewn garbage attracts raccoons and rats. Certain restaurants and student group houses are notorious for that, he says.
“And anywhere there’s construction,” says Wade, “you find a lot of dead animals [nearby]. It stirs them up.”
29
Frequency of calls for dead animal pickup 2,048 calls (for 2009)
LowHigh Parks Military 0
2 VA. D.C.
Calls By month (2009)
66 300 200 100 0 JJJA SO ND FM MA
SOURCES: D.C. Department of PublicWorks; Nancee Lyons,DPW
SUITLAND PKWY.
295 To learn more, go to
washingtonpost.com/urbanjungle.
PATTERSON CLARK; MAP BY DAN KEATING AND MARY KATE CANNISTRA/THE WASHINGTON POST
clarkp@washpost.com
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Disinfectants are applied to paved surfaces, mixed with water in the bottoms of barrels and bags, and used to clean out the truck at the end of the day.
Refrigeration unit
LonnieWade Jr. was born and raised in the District. His father, formerly a South Carolina farmer, “brought the farm to the city,” saysWade, whogrewup in the NoMa/Sursum Corda neighborhood, tending hogs, rabbits, chickens and pigeons. The family even had a smokehouse.
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