To Be Or Not To Be Neanderthal, That Is The Question

Allow me to introduce Ralph L. Holloway, Ph.D, physical anthropologist at Columbia University.

Holloway has specialized (among other things) in craniology, producing endocasts of various primate skulls. This turns out to be particularly interesting when studying skulls of defunct species such as Neanderthals. The endocasts permit Holloway to estimate size, shape, anatomy and to a certain extent functions of the missing brains.

On the anatomy of the Neanderthal brain in comparison to the modern human brain, (on which Holloway has written and also acted as technical advisor in a BBC documentary), he states the following:

Measuring the volume of the Neanderthal's brain shows it to be twenty percent bigger than the average for a modern human. First of all it shows the same kind of cerebral symmetry...The second thing you can tell about it is the shape of the frontal lobe is really absolutely no different than what you find in the modern homo sapien's. So the prefrontal portions that are supposed to be dealing with very complex cognitive functioning, and so forth, are thereabout identical between Neanderthals and modern homo sapiens. So this I think should lead to the idea that basically their cognitive abilities are the same as our own.

www.columbia.edu...

So, a brain just as developed as that of modern human beings, just slightly bigger. As I said earlier in this thread, this does not really prove anything. But, there is nothing really to contradict this conclusion other than interpretations of 40 000 + years old stone tools.

Originally posted by Maslo
reply to post by Wyn Hawks

 

But native americans do have neanderthal genetic contribution, according to this article.

...keywords = according to this article...

Originally posted by Maslo
Are you aware that current mainstream theory states that native americans originaly came from Europe through Asia, where neanderthals lived?

...the second full sentence in my initial post says "the ice-bridge theory went to hell decades ago"... you didnt make it that far, huh?...

...i am also aware of other mainstream euro-centric theories... i dont see any of them as viable because, like this study, there are too many presumptions based in bias...

...i didnt mention native americans in my initial post - not once...

...your remarks are about "native americans" - a fairly recent political term that indicates people of federally recognized tribes of the usofa... like this study, that term is based in deception and exclusion but thats another topic to be discussed some other time...

...about those you call native americans... the findings of this study could only apply to those who were conceived after the invasion who are bi-racial or multi-racial but with no contribution from sub-saharan africans... thats a long way from the wide-sweeping generalizations promoted in this article...

...in the article, there a link that leads to this article:
www.sciencemag.org...

We present a draft sequence of the Neandertal genome composed of more than 4 billion nucleotides from three individuals. Comparisons of the Neandertal genome to the genomes of five present-day humans from different parts of the world identify a number of genomic regions that may have been affected by positive selection in ancestral modern humans

...emphasis above are mine...

...unless you've been programmed to not see the obvious, its obvious that the above is both ludicrous and presumptious... a standard disclaimer is even used - "may have been" - but the programmed do not see that disclaimer or dont understand it...

...hope that helps to clear things up...

It got awfully quiet in this thread. Everybody just silently agrees with me?

This article went online one day before I wrote the OP:

Neanderthals Were Outnumbered to Death, Study Shows:
popular-archaeology.com...

And this one day after:

Volume of modern humans infiltrating Europe cited as critical factor in the demise of the Neanderthals:
www.eurekalert.org...

I don't disagree with you.

I do think you are using language to ascribe perceived value.

"I think that Europeans and Asians are smarter, and they share a common link to Neanderthal. So what makes them better must be what was better about Neanderthals." It doesn't actually make sense, but it sounds so purdy.

I could make similar argument that would show how this isn't as great a logical leap as you present. Neanderthals were well muscled, with big bones. Nothing to indicate they had lots of fast twitch happening, but lots to indicate plenty of muscle. Yet Asians and Europeans are not more muscled nor bigger than Africans. In a pure statistical way, you might say that they are smaller and less muscled in general. So perhaps the ancestor sapiens of Asian/Europeans were a feebler human, less desirable and so pushed out. Where the one thing they had going for them, being better than the remnant populations are breeding was their advantage.

Far less a romantic story, but just as likely as your's.

Remnant populations of other closely related humans probably were subsumed all over migratory path from Africa into warmest areas of Europe and Asia. Including in Africa. Maybe especially in Africa.

I suspect when more is discovered, our greatest advantage compared to our co-humans and competitors is going to turn out to be that we are better breeders, and that human women's immune systems have some sort of malfunction that allows for them to carry babies from a greater breadth of species time, and that trait has been advantageous enough to overcompensate for the fact that our reproductive systems tend to kill us.

Originally posted by Aeons
I don't disagree with you.

I do think you are using language to ascribe perceived value.

"I think that Europeans and Asians are smarter, and they share a common link to Neanderthal. So what makes them better must be what was better about Neanderthals." It doesn't actually make sense, but it sounds so purdy.

That's actually not what I said, and I took care not to attach a value such as "better" or "superior" to my reasoning concerning Europeans and Asians, which should be clear if you read my OP again.

If anything, I wanted to liberate the Neanderthal from similar values, such as 'extinct', therefore 'inferior' to modern man, or 'precursory', therefore 'less developed'. As uva3021 already mentioned in this thread, a species can be perfectly adapted to it's environment and be on top of the food-chain, and still go extinct because of a environmental cataclysm or something similar.

So the point was, the Neanderthal could have been as intelligent and developed as us, our match in more than one sense, but one factor or another could have led to his demise.

As to what and how much of the Neanderthals Europeans and Asians got, well that's up for debate.

Neanderthal man is no missin link, it still amazes me how people can be so ignorant all in the name of evolution. The same people employ the whole "i'm smarter than u" character when asked about what they're believin in, talk about blind faith.

reply to post by Wyn Hawks

...the second full sentence in my initial post says "the ice-bridge theory went to hell decades ago"... you didnt make it that far, huh?...

Source, please. As far as I know, it is current scientific consensus that indigenous people of the Americas came from Asia, and thus it makes sense for them to have neanderthal genetic contribution.

I think people have to realise how similar cro magnon man and neandertal would have actaully been. The difference would have not been much greater than the difference between to different races of modern man. In the animal world any to organisms that can breed and produce fertile offspring are one and the same species. It is only due to the fact evolutionary anthropologists want to make a name for themselves that we have so many subdiviosns of the human species.

Neantherthals were more robust, stronger and slower whereas cro magnon man was gracile, not as strong, but faster and probably needed much less resources to survive. I'm sure there would have been a a large number of wars but I'd say on the whole the Neanthal were simply bred out. I'd hazard a guess that due to the hasher European environment there would have been far less nanderthal than cro magnons , and over time their distinct genetic heritage just slowly became watered down. I favor this theory over anything to do with fertility rates as it makes more sense. If you look at early man in Europe the popultions were always fairly low until they were invaded and became 'civilised'. The high fertility rates in sub-Saharan Africa probably has a lot more to do with the amount of unprotected sex that goes on, the fact that their culture on the whole is a lot less 'prudish', and the fact that they are probably exposed to a lot less chemicals and carcinogens than people living in 1st world countries.

Civilization only arises out of need. Note that many of the greatest early civilisations sprung initially from the deserts of the Middle East and then spread to the colder climes of Europe. Humans in such places simply needed to become more organised to survive in any great numbers.

Culture as associated with race generally spreads laterally across the globe following areas of similar climatic environment. This is why there are Caucasians all the way from Ireland to Siberia. But below the Caucasian domain there are Arabs, Indians and Asians. This is because what worked in the UK also works in Russia. Similar cultural ideas (especially regarding survival) would not work however in the Arabian deserts, India, or the tropics of Asia.

The point of what I said in the last two paragraphs is that Africans (and this also fits with other cultures that were once deemed 'primitive' e.g the Americas or Australia) did not form civilisations simply cos there was no need, and the areas they lived in did not allow for culture to spread laterally as Africa, Australia and the Americas are isolated entities.

As for skin colour, there are 3 main ways that a species can change, or evolve:

*Natural Selection, where a species develops a trait that is beneficial to its survival.

*Sexual selection, where a species develops a trait which gives it a higher chance of successfully scoring a mate. This is most prominantly seen in birds e.g peacocks

*Parental Selection, where offspring are born with trait which encourages its parents to look after more than other offspring. This is now the leading theory of how humans became hairless.

It is believed when humans migrated to the northern hemishere the last 2 were the main causal factors for humans becoming lighter skinned. Vitamin D may play a minor role but keep in mind by the time humans reached Europe they were covered in skins and furs to keep warm, so this sort of discounts this theory. Not at all trying to be racist, but many leading evolutionary anthropologist now believe that early Europeans for whatever reason favoured lighter skin. Obviously this wasn't the case in Africa or Asia as there's nothing attractive about a sunburnt whitey.

Finally I highly doubt any comparison study between Caucasians, Asians and Africans would shed any useful info regarding Neanderthals. Any discernible culture they may have had would long since have been lost as culture changes so quickly - better to look at the archaeological evidence. Mental ability is a product of both nature and nurture, and varies highly even amongst individuals with very similar physical and cultural backgrounds. Physical characteristics maybe, but most of it has long since been watered down. One would probably glean far more information from from studying their physical remains and their genetic code.

Originally posted by Maslo
reply to post by Wyn Hawks

 

...the second full sentence in my initial post says "the ice-bridge theory went to hell decades ago"... you didnt make it that far, huh?...

Source, please.

...say what?... ...you ask for a source to validate my opinion but dont supply a source to back up your own opinion?... ...okay, well, thats really funny in a passive agressive kind of way...

Originally posted by Maslo
As far as I know, it is current scientific consensus that indigenous people of the Americas came from Asia, and thus it makes sense for them to have neanderthal genetic contribution.

...no... thats the consensus of the one-way-only bunch who either dismissed the reality or never considered the reality that an ice-bridge (which has never been proven to have existed) could have facilitated migration in both directions, not just one...

...their conclusions are based upon: 1 - the out of africa premise - which is full of holes / predetermined non-scientific conclusions - and - 2 - that there were not already people here in the americas, which is why they intentionally mis-date our ancient ruins...

reply to post by Wyn Hawks


You seem very keen on discrediting almost everything that has been mentioned by other posters with sarcastic comments while offering up very little in return aside from some vague references to a wierd 'Out of America' theory.

Possibly you should explain not only where your knowledge base comes from but why anyone should listen to your opinion. And also possibly offer up some alternative theory since you seem discount most of the mainstream ones.....

Originally posted by 1littlewolf
reply to post by Wyn Hawks

 

you should explain not only where your knowledge base comes from but why anyone should listen to your opinion. And also possibly offer up some alternative theory since you seem discount most of the mainstream ones.....

...my alternative opinions are what set you off on this little hissy fit and you want more... find someone else to feed your sadomasochistic tendencies... i'm not interested...

Originally posted by Wyn Hawks

...my alternative opinions are what set you off on this little hissy fit and you want more... find someone else to feed your sadomasochistic tendencies... i'm not interested...

Hey your probably right........if I really wanted to get into an argument that involved a lot of sarcasm and put downs but no real substance or facts i'd just go talk to my mom........

reply to post by Wyn Hawks

...say what?... ...you ask for a source to validate my opinion but dont supply a source to back up your own opinion?... ...okay, well, thats really funny in a passive agressive kind of way...

Out of Africa and Asian origin of indigenous people of American is current scientific consensus, not just my opinion. If you want to see sources, just type it into google, there will be plenty of them.

...no... thats the consensus of the one-way-only bunch who either dismissed the reality or never considered the reality that an ice-bridge (which has never been proven to have existed) could have facilitated migration in both directions, not just one... ...their conclusions are based upon: 1 - the out of africa premise - which is full of holes / predetermined non-scientific conclusions - and - 2 - that there were not already people here in the americas, which is why they intentionally mis-date our ancient ruins...

All right. But I have yet to see any source to support your ideas. Why should I believe you over mainstream science?

Originally posted by Maslo
But I have yet to see any source to support your ideas.

...there are no terms and conditions on ats that require a poster to back-up their personal opinion via a source... do you state a source everytime you post your opinion?... no, of course not... so, you should ask yourself why you are demanding something from me that you dont do yourself...

Originally posted by Maslo
Why should I believe you over mainstream science?

...who says you have to?... no one...

reply to post by Heliocentric


Well, the scientists are correct; a larger brain does not necessarily mean "more intelligent." it's largely dependent on which portions were enlarged. Now I could be wrong, but the enlargement of the Meandertal brain was towards the rear, the occipital lobe (this the "occipital bun" on hte skull). This would imply that neanderthals utilized their larger brain to process visual information more than their sapiens contemporaries.

Given that evidence suggests the Neandertals were active pursuit carnivores, this makes sense - a predator needs to have good vision to find and keep focus on his prey.

As for why htey went extinct, well, competition and interbreeding with sapiens, paired with a severe climactic shift that left only a few isolated and inbreeding pockets of the European population seems a likely cause. It's also possible that "modern" humans brought zoonotic diseases such as malaria with them out of Africa to which the Neanderthals would have had no resistance (it wouldn't have been viral diseases, as most of those came from animal husbandry)

On the topic of ethnicity... When we're talking about humans who were milling around hundreds of thousands years ago, debating what race they were is... well... kind of stupid. There were none of today's races or ethnicities; they had a whole different basket of looks and features than we do today. The neanderthals and Cro-magnons may have had paler skin than their contemporaries in southern latitudes, but this hardly pegs them into any modern classification; they were no more "caucasian" than their forefathers were "negros"

Trying to turn the racial ideologies of today into something of import a hundred thousand years ago just gets silly

Just chanced upon this info on the web, and came by here for more info. I never heard of this! How interesting! Now I will need to go see if we have DNA analysis of other ancestors also.

Here is also a video that I found about Neanderthal Genome Sequencing.

Very cool post, and it makes perfect sense. I'm not sure why the one guy is so hellbent on debunking this. It's proven via genetics, and has nothing to do with one race being smarter than another. Having a bigger brain does not always indicate more intelligence. This sure explains a lot!

reply to post by Barcs


I know it does explain a lot! And I imagine that they will find that humans came from a mishmash of different ancestors. Which would explain the different races.

Did you know that neanderthals had an extra chromosome? Which in present day would correlate with downs syndrome or apes.

Up until recently, it was considered that Neanderthals weren't 'into art', in effect were not responsible for any of the cave paintings left behind in Europe. Some researchers therefore speculated that Neanderthals lacked 'artistic imagination', which they baked into the overall concept of the Neanderthal as 'inferior' to modern man.

Well, it turns out that they may actually have invented 'art':

gizmodo.com...