Slashdot Log In
New Evidence Debunks "Stupid" Neanderthal
Posted by
timothy
on Tue Aug 26, 2008 11:30 AM
from the new-yorker-redrawing-decades-of-cartoons dept.
from the new-yorker-redrawing-decades-of-cartoons dept.
ThinkComp writes "In what could possibly be a major blow to a scientific consensus that has held for decades, recent research suggests that the traditional conception of Neanderthals being "stupider" than Homo sapiens may in fact be misleading. As articles about the research findings state, 'early stone tool technologies developed by our species, Homo sapiens, were no more efficient than those used by Neanderthals.' The data used in the study is available on-line along with a visual description of the process used."
Related Stories
[+]
Computers Emulate Neanderthal Speech 220 comments
Clarence writes "After some 30,000 years of silence, the Neanderthal race is once again speaking thanks to some advanced computer simulation. A Florida Atlantic University professor is using software vocal tract reconstructions to emulate the speech of our long-dead distant relatives. 'He says the ancient human's speech lacked the "quantal vowel" sounds that underlie modern speech. Quantal vowels provide cues that help speakers with different size vocal tracts understand one another, says Robert McCarthy, who was talking at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Columbus, Ohio, on April 11. In the 1970s, linguist Phil Lieberman, of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, inferred the dimensions of the larynx of a Neanderthal based on its skull. His team concluded that Neanderthal speech did not have the subtlety of modern human speech.'"
[+]
Neanderthals and Humans Diverged 660K Years Ago 128 comments
Death Metal Maniac writes "The team analyzed the DNA of 13 genes from Neanderthal mitochondria and found they were distinctly different from modern humans, suggesting Neanderthals never, or rarely, interbred with early humans. The genetic material shows that a Neanderthal 'Eve' lived around 660,000 years ago, when the species last shared a common ancestor with humans. Neanderthal brains were on average larger than those of modern humans."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Well, that's just great. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Well, that's just great. (Score:5, Funny)
Now what am I supposed to call my brother-in-law?
Creationist!
Parent
Re:Well, that's just great. (Score:5, Funny)
I dont think youre trolling.
You, sir, are absolutely right. A creationist is a really stupid evolved monkey.
Parent
Re:Well, that's just great. (Score:5, Funny)
I thought attempting to get marked troll was part of the joke
New scientific research is emerging that trolls are actually descendents of the Neanderthals. They are highly intelligent. And polite. And a productive contributor to any conversation. Who'd a thunk it?
Parent
Stone Tools (Score:5, Funny)
So easy a caveman can do it.
This is refuted by (Score:5, Funny)
Pop culture != scientific consensus (Score:5, Informative)
We have known for a long time that Neanderthal had a larger brain than modern human and a sophisticated culture, including burial rites. There was no scientific consensus that Neandethal was stupid.
Re:Pop culture != scientific consensus (Score:5, Funny)
There was no scientific consensus that Neandethal was stupid.
... there is no scientific consensus that the average homo sapiens is smart, either.
Parent
Re:Pop culture != scientific consensus (Score:5, Funny)
I think this is all just part of Geico's back-pedal campaign.
They realize they screwed up and pissed off a bunch of Neanderthals.
Parent
Re:Pop culture != scientific consensus (Score:5, Interesting)
The intelligence of Neanderthals is not necessarily the driving force of their ability to compete with homosapien. They could have been equally as smart or even smarter on an individual basis. However their collective intelligence, the ability to operate in larger groups, rather than extended family groups, means the while individually they might have been smarter and stronger they ended up being outnumber on the field of conflict.
Also homosapiens were likely to have been more vengeful and fielded a larger group to pursue and Neanderthals after a hunting party skirmishes, which initially the Neanderthals might have won and collected their prize of long pig only to be latter pursued by a far larger group combative homospaiens.
So the difference is not in the individual intelligence but in the social collective intelligence, the group that worked together, that shared an extended tribal awareness and, that were willing to sacrifice themselves, their time and effort in support of the future goals of the group proved to be far more successfully as a group. Pretty much the same as it is today. The societies where the individuals are only out to gain as much as they can for themselves regardless of the harm to the group create more unsuccessful society than those a care, share and are willing to work for the collective good. The ratio between the greedy few and the more aware majority define the nature modern societies more so than the individual intelligence of it's members.
Parent
Re:Pop culture != scientific consensus (Score:5, Informative)
Well, if they couldn't figure out the skull capacity from the skull cap found in 1829 they certainly could from the skull found in 1909. Those 19th century guys had a habit of thinking that white men were the smartest thing going so they probably thought Neanderthal was pretty dumb, but that was hardly a scientific view.
In 1880 Neanderthal remains were found with cultural items and tools. In 1983 a hyoid bone was found that showed Neanderthal vocal capabilities were probably almost identical to modern humans'. The Neanderthal graves at Shanidar were discovered in 1957. These are the famous ones that include pollen.
There has been a lot of controversy over various aspects of Neanderthal culture since their discovery. There really doesn't seem to have ever been a "scientific consensus" regarding their intelligence.
Parent
Not Aggressive enough (Score:5, Insightful)
It's pretty simple. They weren't aggressive enough and we wiped them out through brute force like we do everything else that's different.
Big shock.
Re:Not Aggressive enough (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, because Europe has a long history of peace and tranquility.
Africa currently lives in perfect communion with one another.
Russia is a paragon of pacifism.
And Asians are known for their brotherly love.
No brutal kidnappings and murder in Mexico.
And no death squads in South America.
Face it, humans are fundamentally flawed.
At least Antarctica is peaceful (but shrinking).
Parent
Re:Not Aggressive enough (Score:5, Insightful)
There are quite a few. We're just smart enough to build weapons, and we have the hands for it. Spiders, tasmanian devils, and blue jays aren't really capable of mining metal and forging weapons. Chimps sometimes organize to kill other chimps (and sometimes other neighboring apes).
Why do so many people think that nature is peaceful?
Parent
Re:Not Aggressive enough (Score:5, Informative)
I can only think of a couple of other species that are as warlike as homo sapiens, and that's bacteria or virii. Many animals are territorial and will kill their own. But we have taken it to an entirely new level.
Parent
Debunk? (Score:5, Insightful)
Finding evidence that may alter the "scientific consensus that has held for decades" is not debunking. It is the normal process of science. Debunking is the process of correcting misconceptions and exposing false, unscientific, or non-evidence based claims.
Re:Debunk? (Score:5, Interesting)
Finding evidence that may alter the "scientific consensus that has held for decades" is not debunking. It is the normal process of science. Debunking is the process of correcting misconceptions and exposing false, unscientific, or non-evidence based claims.
Furthermore, it's been a very long time since there was any scientific consensus about the "stupid Neanderthal" anyway. As another poster said, popular culture != science. The American Museum of Natural History has a now decades-old depiction of a Neanderthal in a suit & tie as part of an exhibit debunking the old popular-science depiction of Neanderthals as unsavoury brutes.
I recently read one of the more interesting ideas about how Neanderthals' brains differs from ours; this idea is due to Steven Mithen's The Prehistory of the Mind as described in Britain BC by Francis Pryor. Basically, his idea from interpreting Neanderthal art and tools is that they were no less intelligent but more "domain specific" than we are; they could excel at specialized tasks but fail to seize upon those very important cross-disciplinary insights involving multiple disparate fields of endeavour, which provide the basis for all our inventions.
In Britain BC, Pryor paints a picture of Neanderthals as a bunch of obsessive and overspecialized collectors. In reading about these somewhat Aspergian-sounding traits, I remember thinking that these guys would probably have made great coders! (Though maybe not project managers.)
Parent
Collectively stupid? (Score:5, Insightful)
We tend to try to compare individual intelligence but this is probably meaningless. The real reason for our species' success is not that we're individually brilliant, but that we are very good at dividing up large problems to solve collectively. This works thanks to our social instincts: respect for authority, sense of fairness, competitiveness, group belonging, etc. etc. The whole gamut, the reason why we read and post to Slashdot, because we're a social species and bloody good at it.
Neanderthals, larger, individually smarter, were presumably generalists that could do more by themselves but could not compete as well a group of modern humans, when it came to hunting and perhaps fighting.
Of course I'm defining "intelligence" very much in the sense of "how humanity thinks and solves problems". It's easy to claim superiority when one is the species writing history.
Its not that they were dumber (Score:5, Funny)
Language made the difference (Score:5, Informative)
The conclusions of this study are not exactly news. It's been known for some time that early homo sapiens tools were no more advanced than Neanderthal tools. But at some point, there was an explosion of creativity and inventiveness in modern man that the Neanderthals could not equal, probably due to home sapiens having superior language skills and capabilities, and the ability to share and communicate ideas in ways the Neanderthals could not. Modern man then evolved superior cultures and technologies that surpassed the Neanderthals.
One on one, raised without the benefit of language and culture, a modern man would probably be no brighter, and in fact considerably physically weaker, than a Neanderthal. But collectively, Neanderthals were no match for modern men with their more advanced languages, societies, and weapons.
Re:They went extinct because... (Score:5, Funny)
Netcraft confirms it: the Neanderthal is dead!
Parent
Re:i mis-read title... (Score:5, Funny)
That's stoned, not stupid :)
Parent
Re:Developing stone tools... (Score:5, Interesting)
I see an error on thier logic.
Parent
Re:Developing stone tools... (Score:5, Informative)
That's not really analogous at all. Sticks may very well be the optimum way of getting insects out of nests. But in the case of more advanced tool kits, there are certainly better kinds of tools for hunting and dismembering. The difference between the Paleolithic and Neolithic tool kits is substantial. The later stone tool kits used by modern humans included barbed fish hooks, spearheads and the like, innovations that simply did not exist among bipedal hominids. More importantly, compared to the hundreds of thousands of years that a tool kit might hang around during the Paleolithic with little or no change, the Neolithic saw radical innovations at a relatively fast pace.
Parent
Re:Obviously... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent