Researchers: Neanderthals were not inferior to modern humans

The scientific evidence continues to pile up: Researchers conclude Neanderthals were not inferior "cave men".

In an extensive review of recent Neanderthal research, University of Colorado Boulder researcher Paola Villa and co-author Wil Roebroeks, an archaeologist at Leiden University in the Netherlands, make the case that the available evidence does not support the opinion that Neanderthals were less advanced than anatomically modern humans.

Neandert hals were not inferior to modern humans

If Neanderthals were capable of cultural rituals and symbolic communication, what else were they capable of? Depending on their capabilities, "civilization" may go back tens of thousands of years older than we have been willing to admit.

New finds in the caves of Spain raise the question of whether Neanderthals made art

Neanderthals Wore Jewelry and Makeup

a reply to: Chronon

Pretty interesting, thanks for sharing.

I'm no paleoanthropologist, but I'm going to have to disagree. While they may not have been as cave manny as commonly assumed. It stands to reason that if they we not inferior they would still be around. Since they are not around any more, that would lead us to believe they were unable to adapt to their changing environment. Making them less fit for continued existence. Hence inferior.

Maybe I'm missing something.

a reply to: watchitburn

Perhaps its nothing to do with inferiority or superiority but more that their bodies were equipped for colder climates and as the world has warmed and they interbred (I think that is correct as I read somewhere that our dna is linked) the actual Neadnerthal simply phased out. We loose a lot of different species yearly so there is no reason why human species that cannot adapt, yet interbreed would not simply transform into more adaptable models.

I do dislike the idea of one type of human being superior to another, their brains were larger than ours and because of the time lapse from when they walked the earth, a lot of their traces have been lost. Sometimes we learn, when demolishing something and intending to build of the plot again, that the original builders worked on archaeological sites that were never recognised as such.

a reply to: Chronon

They were very similar to Homo Sapiens: lived in groups, were hunters-gatherers, skilled, etc. But we are very good at procreating and they lacked that:

"Instead, there is evidence that Neanderthals worked together to hunt and may have participated in cultural rituals, becoming extinct as a result of a gene that made them less fertile than human ancestors."
(america.aljazeera.com...).

"According to archeologists Villa and Roebroeks, the best explanation now is familiar to anyone who's acquainted with the Borg, a ruthless collective of cybernetic beings from Star Trek. Neanderthals were assimilated... by us. That's right: Humanity is the Borg."
(www.realclearscience.com...)

news.discovery.com...

No I don't think they died out. As stated above they didn't breed as fast as we did, and they were suited for a colder icier Europe. The borg note is also apt as we simply assimilated them into our own species.

I believe they were actually superior to modern humans in every regard except one.... the Homo sapiens had them outnumbered.

The Mousterian tools and spear points have been proven to be more advanced than any contemporary Homo Sapien technology. Even now Mousterian spear points are nearly impossible to replicate.

Fact is, Neanderthals were more intelligent and better adapted to their environment. There is an agenda being pushed, that has been pushed for many years, to propagate the idea that they were inferior.

originally posted by: watchitburn
a reply to: Chronon

Pretty interesting, thanks for sharing.

I'm no paleoanthropologist, but I'm going to have to disagree. While they may not have been as cave manny as commonly assumed. It stands to reason that if they we not inferior they would still be around. Since they are not around any more, that would lead us to believe they were unable to adapt to their changing environment. Making them less fit for continued existence. Hence inferior.

Maybe I'm missing something.

You're wrong, and ignorant to boot. Don't speak out your ass on subjects you know nothing of. It is proven that Neanderthal Mousterian tools were superior to contemporary "human" tools and their spear points were lighter, less brittle, and sharper.

All Europeans have at least 1-6% Neanderthal DNA, so they didn't "die out".

Well, both species existed during the last Ice Age, but one (Neaandrathal, predates it by quite a bit, so I would think WE would be the species less suited for post glaciation at ;east in regards the incomplete data we have on hand now:

Cooling. Though the time at which the Eemian interglacial ended is subject to some uncertainty (it was probably around 110,000 years ago), what does seem evident from the sediment records that cross this boundary is that it was a relatively sudden event and not a gradual slide into colder conditions taking many thousands of years. The recent high-resolution Atlantic sediment record of Adkins et al (1997) suggests that the move from interglacial to much colder-than-present glacial conditions occurred over a period of less than 400 years (with the limitations on the resolution of the sediment record leaving open the possibility that the change was in fact very much more rapid than this).

Neanderthals are generally classified by palaeontologists as the species Homo neanderthalensis, but a minority consider them to be a subspecies of Homo sapiens (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis).[8] The first humans with proto-Neanderthal traits are believed to have existed in Europe as early as 600,000–350,000 years ago.[9]

Homo Sapiens Sapiens: Homo sapiens sapiens:

Homo sapiens sapiens: from 90,000 years ago

The first traces of modern humans are now dated tentatively as far back as 90,000 years ago in the Middle East. In Europe, where they first appear about 35,000 years ago, they are known as Cro-Magnon from the place in the Dordogne, in France, where remains of them are first discovered in a cave in 1868.


I guess the question is whether or not Neandrathal was any more or less capable than modern humans and there are some indicators that in fact they were possibly superior in some regards:

• Neanderthals had shorter, wider humeri (upper arms), which combined with the shoulders, suggests substantial rotator cuff muscularity. And, get this; the bones in their forearms were actually bowed from muscles that must have powered a grip that could crush stone.

• All of this upper body musculature was anchored on a solid foundation of massive quads that specialized in explosive power and side-to-side movement."
www.tmuscle.com...

"This would have made Neanderthal fingers and thumbs upwards of twice the strength of modern humans" Lumely-Woodyear 1973;

"Thus Neanderthals were probably better at throwing (Debenath and Tournepiche 1992) than their modern contemporaries"

Overall Neanderthals were shorter, stockier, and had more muscle mass then today's humans. They no doubt were much stronger then the average human.

However, humans were better suited to long distance running and were more agile. The strength advantage for Neanderthals came at a cost.

How about brain capacity?

We can restate the question more precisely: "How do we resolve this with the fact that the Neanderthal individual was probably more intelligent than a modern human individual?" The cranial capacity tells us something about the individuals' mental abilities, but it tells us almost nothing about the social aspects of life.
Studying the inventiveness of Homo Sapiens scientists have found that literally all the major innovations that have changed the way we live, from the use of fire, to agriculture, to writing etc., have developed only in a few places. For example agriculture appeared independently only in around seven places on the entire planet. All the rest of human populations that engaged in farming did it because they had learned it from somebody. Therefore, the most important aspect of inventiveness is not the ability to invent, but the ability to transmit and to preserve innovations.

This gives us an important clue to why Neanderthals failed in the competition with Homo Sapiens. One of the most important means by which innovations are preserved and transmitted is language. Neanderthals had language themselves. This was proven in 1983 when a Neanderthal hyoid bone was found at the Kebara Cave in Israel. The hyoid is a small bone that holds the root of the tongue in place, a requirement to human speech and, therefore, its presence seems to imply some ability to speak. Recent studies found that due to the physical characteristics of Neanderthals' hyoid and the fact that their larynx was stouter than that of modern man, the average note emitted by Neanderthals were high pitched and sharper than that of modern man. This contradicts the stereotype of Neanderthals having ape-like grunts. However, the base of the Neanderthal tongue

So in the end analysis, suggesting that they did not express socially through arts, technology etc..., or that they succumbed to climate change due to their capacity within said change is pretty shallow IMO. I believe as another couple posters pointed out DNA suggests assimilation between species to some extent.

Our daughter just did that 23&me genetic testing. She's adopted and we have no info on her birth family and this was a good way to get medical information. The testing included how much Neanderthal DNA you have. Her's came back 2.4% which is in the average zone. So most of us have around that much neanderthal DNA in us. I found that rather interesting ...

a reply to: watchitburn

They were a more or less equal species but they had one major flaw, there larger musculature meant they had a higher metabolic rate and required far more callories than a modern human or our even more efficiant hunter gatherer ancestor's required, this meant they had less time for the accoutrement's of culture when the game was becoming scarce as they also ate far more meat then we do but they were certainly not the bumbling idiot's saying "ug" that popular victorian fiction made out and buried there dead with red ochre so had religion and ceremony, they made tool's and what survives is only the stone so we truly do not know how advanced there wood craft may have been and I have to agree that it means that especially during more plentiful times some tribe's or offshoot's of the neanderthal race's may indeed have been capable of civilization but so far we have not identified any neanderthal city's of town's though there are supposedly remnants of 500 thousand year of three sided beach hut's in japan which may have had a animal skin of fabric fourth side, there wide distribution around the world also suggests they where capable of navigation of water though land bridges are the only provable path to survive for our ruminations.

As for city's and town's there are many enigmatic structures and anomoly's around the world from rock wall texas to many other sites, most of the northern hemisphere has suffered severe glaciation so that would have scoured many possible interglacial sites and when it was at the height of glaciation given that they may also have fished there possible sites would be in areas now submerged while the windswept hinterland were we now live as it was then was not really a desirable location except for there more primitive tribes of hunters and gatherer's.
Cro magnon was probably faster, lighter and had a higher birth rate, there ability to move around on less calories made them superior hunters and they thrived eventually displacing or starving off the remaining neanderthal tribes, this lower calorific requirement also meant cro magnon had more time for art and culture with the accompanying ceremony and society's.
The bones of a neanderthal were far thicker and there musculature far larger, they often had broken bone's but cared for there sick so they healed and we find that often they lived even when they could no longer hunt so they were simply people whom cared about one another like many tribal people of today, There more rudimentary stone work may simply be down to if it works why change it when you do not have time to do much other then hunt and when we look at them we really should see ourselves in there lives.
When modern mans' ancestors encountered them it appears both community's copyed off of one another though modern man was truly in many way's superior, more efficiant metabolism meaning longer hunting expedition's and better tool use to make up for there weaker build and as time progressed modern man gained larger brains on average though today you will find many people with brains smaller than the larger neanderthal cranium's could hold and not dim whitted modern people either.
Where is seem's we differed mentally is not so much in the size of our brains but in our expression of art and most cave painting's can undeniably be traced to out of africa cro magnon people's and art is a form of abstract expression that maybe the neanderthal where capable of understanding but not emulating, with that came our other abstract idea's.

Physic's, advanced mathematic's, astrology, and religion (which the neanderthal's seem to have had so maybe this is wrong) all seem to have benefited as did planning and organization from this shared artistic trait (the use of make up by neanderthal would also seem to disprove this as well so?) and as has been pointed out we are a hybrid descendant so in truth the neanderthal are not extinct at all and may be right here, now where did I put that club (they probably used stone/flint tipped spears but the bow seem's to have originated long after there time) there is a nice tasty mastodon outside.

I think it is very possible that homo sapiens was simply more violent. The the two types crossed paths and the Neanders lost the fight.

originally posted by: Gallowglaich
...Fact is, Neanderthals were more intelligent and better adapted to their environment. There is an agenda being pushed, that has been pushed for many years, to propagate the idea that they were inferior.

The agenda is to propagate the idea that we are superior.

S&

a reply to: Gallowglaich

Not sure why you're so hostile, but do you have any sources to back up that information? I'm not saying it's not right, I would just like to read about it.

The only information I'm finding is that it's not really conclusive one way or the other:

Humans, however, one-upped the neanderthals in many aspects. Although they didn’t produce the levallois cores like neanderthals, they were able to create blades of a similar – if not better – quality than the flakes neanderthals were make. Further, the human blade techniques were able to create bladelets. These are small blades, offering two key advantages. First you can get more of them from the same amount of stone, increasing efficiency. Secondly, they’re smaller so are weight less allowing you to make lighter projectiles without sacrificing killing power.

Source - evoanth.wordpress.com...

Granted, it did have this just before, so perhaps you're sort of correct:

Whilst other industries and hominins also utilised the levallois technique, the neanderthals were the best at it. Even today only a handful of experimental archaeologists are capable of approaching the skill level neanderthals were exhibiting.

So, as far as I can tell the neanderthals were better at that particular technique, but still homo sapiens produced better blades.

My personal theory is that Neanderthals had a much lower number of psychotics/geniuses in their population. Humanity is known for periodically having some incredible genius pop up who has crazy visions but is also so smart they can figure out how to create writing, and mathematics, and religious mythology tied to laws that codify morals and ethics.

I have a feeling Neanderthals were more like other kinds of animals in that regard. The strange ones died or were killed too keep the population more homogeneous.

the theory that I hold is that Neanderthals, and a few other primitives scattered across earth, were the only humans left after a near-extinction event.....tens, if not hundreds of thousands of years ago.

a reply to: jimmyx

there are multiple of such events over the course of time.

Our genetic history shows such bottlenecks.

If one thinks about the time it must have taken for the ancients tgo have worked out the precession of the equinoxes (virtually 25,000 years the zodiac which they used to date and the care they took concerning the luna cycles, Venus cycles etc someone in the past had a terrific knowledge of mathematics and cosmology. That took a long time to put together and whoever were responsible for those calculations were extremely clever and aware of their environment.

I think its more that we have taken a long time to work out things like pi which I was told, was a measurement used in constructing the pyramids.

originally posted by: Gallowglaich
I believe they were actually superior to modern humans in every regard except one.... the Homo sapiens had them outnumbered.

The Mousterian tools and spear points have been proven to be more advanced than any contemporary Homo Sapien technology. Even now Mousterian spear points are nearly impossible to replicate.

Fact is, Neanderthals were more intelligent and better adapted to their environment. There is an agenda being pushed, that has been pushed for many years, to propagate the idea that they were inferior.

Im genuinely interested to hear your theory about this.

originally posted by: Gallowglaich

You're wrong, and ignorant to boot. Don't speak out your ass on subjects you know nothing of.

Oh come on now... your on ATS, youll never get that to stop happening

Neanderthals had bigger brains than us.
They had stronger bones/muscles.
European/middle eastern human DNA is a small percentage neaderthal.
That would suggest no small amount of cro magnon/neanderthal saturday night action.
Our ancestors had relations with them enough that they are a part of us even today.

I like the fact that I am part neaderthal-Its a good thing.
But its sad that our couisins didn't survive as a species in their own right IMO.
And that is the fault or design of us,the descendants of cro magnons.

Imagine what an advanced alien observer may think if they watched our planet..

Alien recon scout report:

"Good grief look at them-they were hunting Mammoth 20 000 earth years ago,and by now they've killed off their nearest couisins,have split the atom and learned about the universal code(DNA).
But they have gone crazy-they kill each other over percieved ownership of resourses and made up ideologies when they already know how to feed and give free energy to all...lets leave this place an come back in another 250 000 years and see if these humans have grown up or totalled themselves-Initiate dimensional warp in 5.4.3.etc"

a reply to: Silcone Synapse

Some late neanderthal skull's (possible not pure neanderthal) approach 1800 cubic centilitres while modern human skulls can be in excess of 2400 cubic centiliters but it is probably true that at the time they had approximately the same mass of brain tissue as the then extand other human species the cro magnon man.
This is dated information I read decades ago so may be out of date now.