New Evidence Debunks "Stupid" Neanderthal 505
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."
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.
Obviously... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Obviously... (Score:5, Informative)
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: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.
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.
Old News (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Debunk? (Score:4, Informative)
[citation needed]
the great global swindle the 'documentary' has been debunked repeatedly, hell channel4 even got a bitchslap from OFCOM (equivilent of fcc). And its not like scientists are rich powerful men that can manipulate the media like the neocons
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.
Re:Language made the difference (Score:4, Informative)
Actually my understanding is that it is a less strict dietary requirements that allowed humans to survive while the neanderthals died off during an ice age. The idea is that humans would eat anything (omnivores) - greens, roots, fish, insects, meat, eggs, whatever and that the neanderthals were quite strict carnivores. When the source of food becomes scarce, those who are more diverse eaters will have an advantage.
Re:Obviously... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Debunk? (Score:3, Informative)
While scientists may not be "rich powerful men who can manipulate the media", many of the public voices for global warming alarmism are (not all persons who advocate for action against global warming are alarmists, but many of the most prominent one's are. for example, Al Gore).
Re:Pop culture != scientific consensus (Score:2, Informative)
People also like to point out that Einstein did not have a "large" brain - it was pretty average sized - but areas within his brain were larger than most other people. It appears his brain was organized a little differently than most people's.
Brain size is very important. I control or covary for it (or total intracranial volume) all the time in my research.
So yes, you are correct. Brain size does not equal intelligence but they are significantly correlated.
Debunking is part of the normal scientific process (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Pop culture != scientific consensus (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, you're wrong. Brain size does correlate with intelligence, fairly well between species but even a bit within a species: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_and_intelligence [wikipedia.org]
Brain size, given a particular body mass, is a good first approximation of relative intelligence. Yes, disease is a confounder, and brain size is not as good a guide within a species.
However, when species A and B are pretty close in body mass and species B has a bigger brain, you'd better be really careful saying species B is dumber than species A.
Re:Well, that's just great. (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, we don't know (Score:5, Informative)
Actually we don't know that Homo Sapiens hunted down Neanderthals either.
Warfare only appeared in Homo Sapiens around the time we discovered bows and arrows, about 20,000 years ago, in Africa. It's hard to tell if that was cause or effect or just a spurious correlation, but suddenly we get mass graves of people with arrow heads embedded in their bones and cave paintings of groups of archers shooting at each other.
At any rate:
1. There is no evidence of warfare before that. Neither in Homo Sapiens, nor in Neanderthals.
2. By the time missile weapons arrived in Europe, the Neanderthals were going extinct on their own. The long decline in numbers and area had happened before that.
Vengeful we may be, but killing someone in melee is actually an extremely traumatic thing. Unless you're a sociopath, you're still wired like an animal to not kill members of the same species. Overcoming that is very traumatic. The Romans for example recognized that and rotated the rows of a legion, so the soldiers would get some time to recover in the middle of a fight. Ranged killing seems to actually be easier, and it puts a wall of plausible deniability between you and the victim. Maybe it wasn't your arrow that killed that guy, after all.
From there we learned to manipulate people and use group-think to make them kill each other even in melee. But it took an awfully long time to get there, and the Neanderthals were already extinct by then.
Furthermore, Neanderthals were, if you'll pardon the bad WoW metaphors, all survival-spec hunters. Melee hunters. _Everyone_ hunted with spears, including the women. And they seemed pretty capable to cooperate in a group. Plus, see that thing about using the women too. If someone actually managed to start a war back then between a tribe of Homo Sapiens and one of Neanderthals, I wouldn't be surprised if the latter would have had the upper hand.
Exactly why they went extinct... now that's still a good question.
One theory was that they were strictly carnivore and their prey was going extinct due to both climate change _and_ over-hunting. Another one is that they just couldn't compete with us. The Homo Sapiens were hunters _and_ gatherers, and could survive and continue hunting a species into extinction even past the point where predator-prey balance would normally allow the prey to rebound. The Neanderthals relying only on that prey, would have been royally shafted.
Me, I'm wonder if we didn't kill them sexually, so to speak. Consider the following:
A. See, one way to get a species of, say, insects extinct, is to release lots and lots of sterile males. If enough females of that species mate with those, the population drops very fast.
B. There seem to be _no_ genes we inherited from Neanderthals. Considering that the areas for us and them overlapped for thousands of years, I find it unlikely that _no_ horny male of one species wouldn't find a female of the other species attractive enough, or viceversa. I mean, so they were short and stout lasses with sloped foreheads. A lot of people screw worse looking women nowadays. And conversely going to the pub and getting laid by a neanderthal is still a tradition for some girls ;)
It is very likely that the offspring of Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals were either sterile or non-viable. Plenty of closely related species produce sterile offspring when crossed. E.g., lion and tiger, horse and donkey, etc.
C. The sterile case is actually the funniest, because it may not be immediately obvious that it's a dead end. And in a lot of species such hybrids are bigger and stronger (a liger is twice the weight of a tiger, for example), so for a primitive sentient species it may even look like giving your children more chances of survival that way.
D. Both species had a chronic shortage of women, due to a life expectancy disparity. Death in birth or from resulting complications took a heavy toll.
So _if_ they were desirable enough (e.g., because Homo Sapiens tribes