Manga Girls Beware: Extra Large Eyes Caused Neanderthal's Demise 290
An anonymous reader writes "The BBC reports on a new study of prehistoric skulls which suggests that Neanderthals became extinct because they had larger eyes than our species. As a consequence of having extra sized eyes, an average 6 millimeters larger in radius, more of their backside brain volume was devoted to seeing, at the expense of frontal lobe high-level processing of information and emotions. This difference affected their ability to innovate and socialize the way we, modern people (Homo Sapiens Sapiens) do. When the last Ice Age set on 28,000 years ago, Neanderthals had no sewn clothes and no large organized groups to rely on each other, hastening their fall. Yet, they were not stupid, brutish creatures as portrayed in Hollywood films, they were very, very smart, but not quite in the same league as the Homo Sapiens of Cromagnon."
This just in (Score:5, Insightful)
And from the departement of wild speculations we have the following gem...
Re:This just in (Score:4, Interesting)
Wild enough?
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Re:This just in (Score:4, Funny)
Don't go there. [photobucket.com]
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My eyes did NOT need to see that image. I did not click away in time and now it will be floating around for a while. Spot on though.
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Thanks a LOT! Now I have to gouge out my small eyes in a vain attempt to forget that image.
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But, if it's not viable, they can patch it with frog DNA.
Re:This just in (Score:5, Insightful)
More likely they just take a large tissue sample from one well-preserved Neanderthal, do a standard "puree a bunch of cells, scan the DNA fragments, then reassemble the data into a complete genome". It's unlikely that any given section of DNA will be damaged in all, or even most cells. Then you just send the genome to a DNA synthesis lab and get a vial containing fresh new pristine DNA to inject into your target egg. That's a lot easier than trying to piece together a viable genome from multiple disparate individuals.
Of course you still wouldn't have a "true" Neanderthal since it's mitochondria and probably much of it's epigenetics would be inherited from the egg donor, still, we appear to have been able to interbreed with them so the chimeric child would at least probably be viable, and could give us *some* insight into the differences between our species.
Might even turn out that they were actually more intelligent than us, and our advantage was purely a cultural accident. I mean come on - we were all wandering around as the dominant predators in pretty much our current (physical) state for what, 50-100,000 years? But no, instead it's: Oh, this other species with bigger brains than us also had bigger eyes, and clearly using them drained their brainpower. Nevermind that they say nothing about the relative number of photoreceptors (big lenses don't consume brain power), or that there's not a 1:1 correspondance between photoreceptor and nerves signals reaching the brain. Or that visual processing is a complex process, many of whose subsystems actually appear to get re-purposed on demand for abstract reasoning purposes.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Neanderthal brains were larger than modern humans, not smaller.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal_anatomy [wikipedia.org]
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As the part of their brain that's larger should make them more empathic w.r.t. emotions, well we could be breeding our new overlords: the super-politician.
"It's sooooooooo easy to lie convincingly to them..."
Re:This just in (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:This just in (Score:4, Interesting)
And from the departement of wild speculations we have the following gem...
There is a way to test this hypothesis. There is a variation in eyeballs size among modern humans. If this hypothesis is correct, people with bigger eyeballs should be dumber. So get a random sample of people, measure their eyeballs, give them an IQ test, and see if there is any correlation.
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True, but first you would need to confirm that the people with larger eyes have larger visual cortexes.
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I think the latest articles I read, suggested that they did mostly die out. The claim seems to be that we came on the scene late in their decline, and only found time to fornicate with a few of them before they were gone. Or, something like that.
Idle speculation (Score:5, Interesting)
There has been little hard evidence that Neanderthals were any less intelligent than Sapiens, just less evidence found for their intelligence, likely because there were far fewer of them. Studies of their flint knapping abilities show they were at least as skilled at toolmaking as Sapiens.
Anyhow, the article reads ore like a daydream than a piece on science, as evidence for the most important part (percent usage of the brain for eyesight, and the retardation effects of this difference)are omitted.
Re:Idle speculation (Score:5, Insightful)
Homo Sapiens seems quite "stupid and brutish" most of the time. Just saying.
Re:Idle speculation (Score:5, Informative)
Homo Sapiens seems quite "stupid and brutish" most of the time. Just saying.
Actually, even when compared to our closest relatives the great apes, humans get along remarkably well. The frequency of violence in human communities is remarkably low compared to many other species. Chimpls for example have have rates of aggression between two and three orders of magnitude higher than humans. [springer.com].
Forgetting something (Score:2, Interesting)
Human society is organized through violence -- just as in the animal kingdom. It's just that human beings are better at sweeping it under the carpet, or pretending it doesn't exist ("government by the people"). If government was by and for the people, then logically, government wouldn't need guns.
Remember the objective definition of government: it is the organization holding a monopoly on the "right" to employ violence as a means. Everthing government does is founded on either violence or the threat of viol
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There's more to life than competition through violence. Societies organized to solve various problems, only one of which was the problem of how to improve at meting out violence. Ancient societies created irrigation systems, built cities and monuments, kept records, did exploration and research, appeased the gods, and made decisions.
Possibly the ancient society closest to your thinking was the Assyrian Empire. They subjugated all their neighbors through violence. Consequently, they were despised. Whe
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OK so government - bad, justice system - bad. Got it. The right to use violence should be universal.
Removing tongue from cheek for a sec so as to make sure I'm not stabbing a straw man - are you merely saying "it's a shame we need government and a justice system"? If so I guess I agree.
If you're saying that removing people's "right" to violence is somehow tyrannical I'd have to say you were a nut case. ;)
Re:Idle speculation (Score:5, Interesting)
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In certain ways, yes. Chimps are known to torture other chimps, and ape packs are known to go after other packs of the same species and try to kill them all off.
It's been quite some time since you were in high school, hasn't it?
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Re:Idle speculation (Score:5, Insightful)
Animals might be more aggressive, but they sure as fuck aren't as evil as humans...
You're confusing motives with capabilities. Chimps, baboons, etc., are practically psychotic compared to us. If the few of them that are "nice" could build prisons to keep the really dangerous, murderous ones from bothering them and killing their offspring, I expect they certainly would.
Re:Idle speculation (Score:5, Insightful)
Do animals build prisons to hold and torture fellow animals?
There are species of shrimp that keep live starfish alive for months while eating them. Komodo dragons kill with a toxic bite that takes days to die from.
Do animals build concentration camp to hold and kill millions of it's own kind?
No, but pack animals banish members to die of starvation or be killed by others. No other species has built as complex of a societal structure to compare with. So we simply don't know. Most social animals probably wouldn't bother with prisons to begin with, they'd simply kill or banish any drain on the pack or herd, or leave them behind to die. Humans typically don't do this. We take care of our elderly and sick.
Do animals build nuclear bombs to destroy fellow animals far away?
Of course not, they're too fucking stupid to do so. Do animals donate blood or perform surgery so save other members? Do they donate organs to save each others lives? Did they start the Peace Corps? Or donate time to Habitat for Humanity? Have they started shelters to care for homeless humans? Do carnivores and omnivores ever choose to be vegetarians? Have they invented vaccines for chronic illnesses? If they had nuclear weapons to use against their enemies, you can bet your ass there are many species who would.
Animals might be more aggressive, but they sure as fuck aren't as evil as humans...
I'm not sure about evil, as animals don't really think in those terms as far as I can tell. but I would guess that more great ape physical confrontations per incident that end in death than do humans. There are probably less fights over mating in the human world than in the animals. As far as "evil" have you ever seen a cat play with its quarry after it's injured it? Or a Trigger fish eat the eyes of another fish and let it swim aimlessly before eating it? There is plenty of cruelty in the animal kingdom. Don't think for a second that humans are alone in this.
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I once saw a nature show where two male dolphins were holding a female prisoner. When she tried to head for the open sea, one of the males would intercept her. They did that so she would mate with one of them, which means they were rapists! And dolphins are supposed to be nice!
Societal structure (Score:2)
No other species has built as complex of a societal structure to compare with.
Citation needed. I've seen this argument before and I've never seen any real analysis to back up the assertion. Mostly it sounds simply like puffery on our part when we claim this. Complexity is a difficult thing to measure. We have some unique abilities and out societal structure is indeed complex but we barely understand the societal structure of most other animals so it really is difficult to make comparisons that are meaningful.
Re:Idle speculation (Score:4, Funny)
Ahh. See, now you are anthropomorphizing the humans.
They don't like that.
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Do animals build prisons to hold and torture fellow animals?
No, but apparently they post on Slashdot.
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And yes, chimps would nuke each other if they knew how.
Didn't you ever see Planet of The Apes!
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We can be, we can be.
We've also got Medicine sans Frontier, Engineers without Borders, Save the Children, and footprints on the moon.
So we can also be pretty fucking rad when we want to be.
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There may be a homo sapiens fork that produces homo sapiens has-guilt and homo sapiens sociopath-narcissist-psychopath as well.
Some with autistic tendencies (in the spectrum, as it were) want to say that neurotypical people are a different sub-species, too.
Vonnegut said, through his character Bokonon: nice nice very nice, so many people in the same device.
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Re:Idle speculation: Size Matters (Score:4, Funny)
I say BS! Neanderthals died out because the females preferred the larger penis of the Homo Sapiens.
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I say BS! Neanderthals died out because the females preferred the larger penis of the Homo Sapiens.
well.. that would explain the breeding out theory.
Re:Idle speculation: Size Matters (Score:5, Funny)
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Of course they're malnourished, look how small their trunk is! They probably have to eat with their hands. Gross.
Re:Idle speculation (Score:5, Informative)
There are some theories that the Neanderthals were actually quite smart, compassionate, and had a sophisticated social system. This is based on burial sites that indicated that they took care of the elderly. Some evidence points to a myth that Neanderthals were hunched over and ape like. It is also interesting that, except for some groups in Africa, most people have traces of Neanderthal DNA indicating that Neanderthals didn't die out, but were interbred with and absorbed into other populations.
I found this story on NPR that talks about one interesting speculation on how this may have happened.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2013/03/08/173813194/what-happened-when-humans-met-an-alien-intelligence-sex-happened [npr.org]
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Burial sites were typically small things, typically limited to familial units. IIRC if there were burial sites with many Neanderthals, they were 'reused' in series rather than simultaneously used by a larger clan.
In otherwords, they had cooperation, but not complex organization. The closest analog in the animal kingdom would probably be something like the matrilinial grouping of Elephants. Tight knit groups who stay together their entire lives, but with a few exceptions, they don't really join up to form
Re:Idle speculation (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, no kidding. My first response was, "what the fuck?" This is (seemingly typical) bad science.
I'm sorry, there's more than 10mm variability in eye size in existing populations. That variability is kind of how you get stereotypes and things like manga in the first place. Not only that, but extrapolating "they didn't have mental capacity because they had larger eyes" doesn't even begin to follow, logically. Maybe their visual cortex was the same size? Maybe it was actually smaller and significantly more efficient, allowing them to actually process more of what they saw (unlike us, who ignore most of it)? Maybe, just maybe, they used more of their brains - which were actually bigger, despite the "they were stupid by modern standards" stereotypes.
Pretty tiring. It's pretty irritating to see the "science" out of these types.
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Re:Idle speculation (Score:5, Informative)
There are good reasons for that. The eye's diameter's square affects the eye's surface area. The surface area pretty much determines how fast our eyes can move -- our eye's performance is limited by the drag of the tear film. There's no room to grow larger eye muscles to compensate for it. One must remember that in the fast (saccadic) motions of the eyes, the viscous drag is "the" term that matters. The inertia can be ignored. Our eyes would move the same even if they were made of a material 10x as dense as water.
Remember: we're blind during a saccade - as the image blurs on the retina, it is suppressed. Fast saccades are a useful thing to have :)
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OK, an interesting statistic. I have to laugh at it, and you for quoting it, though: citation needed, after all.
Reason still bellies these supposed 'findings': if the eye grows rapidly to 22.5-23mm, and grows no further past age 13, why is it that while the eyes are their largest in proportion to the human's skull the human undergoes the most extensive emotional and intellectual development of their lives?
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Eye size here refers to eyeball size, not size of the opening around the eye. A white adult and an east-asian adult have the same (or nearly) eye size, even if the size of the eye opening is different.
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This is my Theory also, we were bred away, there was even a report about breeding between the two. I still feel that we are missing important parts of this puzzle because we don't all look the same, I think there is a lot more that has to be discovered and some of it may even offend people.
There was also a story here that suggested we have stopped evolving. I disagree, I think people in warmer climates will eventually evolve to be completely hairless. Just imagine the potential market for Wig makers.
Article is brain-dead (Score:2)
Since the visual region of a species' brain will tend to grow to be exactly as large as it needs to be, I do not see how this would lead to cannibalization of other organs. What is important is whether or not the other organs of the brain exist in the first place. Once they do exist, natural selection will tend to expand them appropriately. The notion that birth canal places a limit on the size of the human brain, implying a competition for space in the skull, does not appear to be correct. There is nothing
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There is nothing limiting the width of the birth canal
Wait what? I don't believe that. It is estimated that historically 1/100 childbirths resulted in the death of the mother (not even counting death of the child). Granted not all of those deaths are the result of a narrow birth canal, but even if only a fraction of them were, that would be a HUGE evolutionary pressure.
If there were no limits, then we would not be seeing so many deaths as a result of narrow birth canals. So there MUST be something limi
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Well, at least we finally know why the Chinese kids are so good in school.
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Personally, I'm more partial to the theory that we *are* Neanderthals (hybrids) and that they didn't 'die out', but were simply bred away...
This is an outdated theory (I used to like it myself though). There is evidence of gene flow between H. s. sapiens and H. s. neanderthalensis, but not very much. Theories that modern humans simply outbred them and replaced them are viable, but not ones that propose that the two species interbred to form a new single hybrid.
Consider this recent article: http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.1002947 [plosgenetics.org] .
A key quote: "Although mitochondrial DNA from multiple Neandertals has shown that
But...... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:But...... (Score:5, Funny)
And feelers. Lots and lots of feelers.
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This has me picturing a group of Neanderthals sitting around sending Tweets. #urkclubmastodon
Tabloid headlines (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you please stop the tabloid headlines. "Extra Large Eyes Caused Neanderthal's Demise" would have been just fine, thanks. No need to try and sex it up with some manga girls. BTW, manga boys have big eyes too.
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Actually, "Extra Large Eyes Caused Neanderthal's Demise" is terribly tabloid in itself. It's not about the size of the eyes (eyeballs) but the percentage of the brain used for visual processing.
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Basically, it all boils down to a wild ass guess. They are guessing about allocation of brain for visual processing based on measurements of eye sockets in skulls and conjecture about evolutionary response to the environment.
Bigger than their stomachs? (Score:4, Funny)
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It amazes me that comments like this, with so little data to make such a conjecture, can be taken seriously by people who scoff at religion.
We can't scoff at both?? :)
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. - Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Seneca the Younger), ca. 4 BC - 65 AD
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Ah, Seneca said it. Must be correct. How did he determine who the wise were, those who agreed with him?
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I don't scoff at religion. To create religion you need to have a vivid imagination. Neanderthals didn't bury trinkets in their graves like Homo Sapiens did, which suggests they didn't have anything like a religion because they didn't have a very good imagination.
Actually, I believe just last week a news article indicated that they did bury trinkets.
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Natural evolution is an unguided process, as such it has no goals, therefore we don't have any evolving to do.
Personally I am of the opinion that natural human evolution will end by the end of the 22nd century at the latest, by that time all new humans will be genetically engineered. Instead of relying on chance to pass the best genes from parents to their offspring, parents will engineer the embryo to have the best genes at least for the most important attributes, and in some cases, modified genes to preve
Breeding (Score:5, Informative)
They were bred out - this has been shown by DNA analysis. Early homo sapiens bred with them, and the homo sapiens traits were more effective.
Demise? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Perhaps you'd be intrerested in a Chickenosaurus [ted.com]?
Just so stories (Score:3)
Really, these are "just so stories," not much better than fairy tales. If further research revealed that the neanderthals actually had smaller eyes, then you can be sure that someone (maybe the same people) would come out with a theory that neanderthals went extinct because they couldn't see as well as humans.
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Am I the only one? (Score:5, Funny)
Poster unfamiliar with manga? (Score:2)
Manga guys usually have big eyes too.
Big-eyed manga girls == Flies?! (Score:2)
Manga guys usually have big eyes too.
Yeah, but from what I've seen (I'm not a manga/anime fanatic), I've noticed that when they do go too far with the "big eyes == cute" anime thing, (especially with overly "cutesy" and/or soft-porn oriented pictures), it's with the pictures of girls and woman.
It's true that larger eyes -> protectiveness-inducing attractiveness up to a point. But aside from the fact that overdoing this can have a "too much" saccharin effect, some of those pictures go beyond that, and (to me) the eyes are so large they sta
Hrm (Score:4, Interesting)
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I thought it was already proven that Europeans are the ancestors of Neanderthals through DNA sequencing?
Eh, not exactly. There is evidence to indicate that after leaving Africa, modern humans bred with Neanderthals and at least 1 other archaic species, [wikipedia.org] but to call Neanderthals "the ancestors" of Europeans is somewhat inappropriate, as we share no mitochondrial DNA and the quantity of admixture is ~%4 at most.
And it's this very DNA responsible for a strong immune system in people with large amounts of Neanderthal DNA.
You're thinking of this story [slashdot.org]. There is evidence to indicate that some immune-system-related genes were passed from Neanderthal's etc., which gave those receiving the genes an advantage in their new env
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as we share no mitochondrial DNA and the quantity of admixture is ~%4 at most.
That would only indicate that Homo Sapien women were either promiscuous or raped by Neanderthal males, and then the women raised the offspring as their own. Mitochondrial DNA is passed down directly from the mother to the child, so it basically says that Neanderthal men were not welcome in the Homo Sapien society in general, but that cross breading still happened. Whether or not Homo Sapien male DNA was shared with Neanderthal women is yet to be determined, as far as I know. It probably worked both ways but
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as we share no mitochondrial DNA and the quantity of admixture is ~%4 at most.
That would only indicate that Homo Sapien women were either promiscuous or raped by Neanderthal males, and then the women raised the offspring as their own. Mitochondrial DNA is passed down directly from the mother to the child, so it basically says that Neanderthal men were not welcome in the Homo Sapien society in general, but that cross breading still happened.
That's a possible theory, and cultural factors surely had an impact on hybridization between the two groups. However, it is also likely that only male Neanderthal's mating with modern human females were able to produce fertile offspring. [hypothesisjournal.com] The absence of Neanderthal Mitochondrial DNA seems unlikely to have been due to cultural factors alone.
Brain Size == Simplistic Drivel (Score:5, Insightful)
Equating intelligence with brain size has always been both stupid and puzzling to me, particularly since there's no good evidence to support it that can't be countered by contra-evidence that at least as good or better.
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This would seem to disagree...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein's_brain [wikipedia.org]
You make Grug cry (Score:2)
Grug mom say Grug look cool. Grug may no have fancy sewn clothes, but Grug have feelings.
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Re:You make Grug cry (Score:4, Funny)
While size does matter... (Score:5, Insightful)
While size does matter, larger eye sockets does not automatically mean more of their brain was used for processing visual stimuli. For that to be valid, one would need to know what the size of the pupil and retina was, not the eye socket. It is quite possible that Neanderthals has more muscular eyes, just like they had more muscular bodies, but the actual visual portion of their eyes, the part that actually sees, was not significantly different than homo sapiens. Another explanation could also be that when Neanderthal developed, during the ice age, light levels were lower in the climates that they inhabited and the larger eyes were an adaptation, which again would not indicate more of their brain was used to process visual stimuli, but instead the larger eye was simply to enable more light gathering capability than their ancestors near the equator.
Without having an actual Neanderthal brains and eyes to examine, one cannot simply make this determination simply based on the size of the eye socket.
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This theory seems very subje
A waste of time and money. (Score:2)
Neanderthal Parallax indeed... (Score:2)
Suck it, Robert J. Sawyer [wikipedia.org]!
Ben Bova had the Best Explanation (Score:3)
I like Ben Bova's explanations better in his series of Orion's books. Basically, these superevolved humans created a special killer called Orion, and he teleports a bunch of Genghis Khan's men back in time to kill all the dinosaurs and the Neanderthals. The Neanderthals were actually smarter than humans, but lacked that killer instinct of the Mongols.
The Neanderthal Parallax (Score:2)
Ha! Take that, Robert J. Sawyer!
Must be early (Score:2)
I read brutish as British.
Diet (Score:2)
More convincing is that the Neanderthal metabolism required more meat. They were not as omnivorous as H Sap. Neanderthals suffered and lost children when H Sap flourished and had many. They were out-competed that way.
That's not the complete nature of the brain (Score:4)
That the human brain generally works a particular way is no indication of how the neanderthal brain worked.
We know, for example (thanks to a slashdot story) that a man with like 1/4th of a brain's normal volume (http://news.softpedia.com/news/A-Quarter-Brained-Man-60542.shtml) can lead a pretty normal life. We also know that brains route around damage and adapt. So what is it with this obsessive belief that brain size is equated with X, Y and Z of intelligence and behavior?
While the article presents an interesting hypothesis which fits in with why humans would have dominated neanderthals (better group behavior/communications), it can't really be said for sure based on the size of the eyes. There's a WHOLE lot of assumption and speculation going on there.
I find it interesting that the notion of being "really smart" (based on brain size) but without good communication skills. This would imply they were effectively advanced apes... unable to learn from one another, but able to learn on their own and through mimmickry. (No stored knowledge means no building or accumulation of knowledge.)
The true question (Score:2)
I think the true question is : could they see better than us with those bigger eyes?
The rest seems to be wild conjectures.
Neanderthals were smart and unemotional- geeks! (Score:2)
OK, smaller eyes and more emotional brains allowed us to socialize and survive, but what explains our recent stupefaction, and how much longer can we last?
To hell with your "science" (Score:2)
Anyone who's seen the movie Speed knows Neanderthal DNA is still with us. Google for pics of that bus driver. If he had a club instead of a steering wheel, he could get a job in a museum as a stand-in.
Re:Radius vs. Diameter (Score:5, Interesting)
Yep. From the article:
Ms Pearce found that Neanderthals had significantly larger eye sockets - by an average of 6mm from top to bottom.
From the summary:
As a consequence of having extra sized eyes, an average 6 millimeters larger in radius,
Submitter must be a science reporter...
Precious Moments (Score:2)
Head size (Score:2)
This theory only works if there was a barrier in the size of the skull
There are three barriers. In no particular order, they are how big of a head the neck muscles can hold up, how much energy the digestive system can supply to a larger brain, and how big the hole in mommy's hips has to be in order to let baby's head through. Too big and one ends up like Pop-Tarts boy [youtube.com].
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