The Problem with Evolution

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See http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 203924.htm

Neanderthals apparently were quite intelligent. Perhaps they were not as vicious as Homo sapiens.

Neanderthals may simply have had larger cranial capacity because it has better thermal characteristics for cold climates (low surface area, large volume).

As for technology, on the one hand, prior to the upper paleolithic revolution H. sapiens distinguished itself little in sophistication from the neanderthal, on the other hand, the neanderthals had been using the same one for some 200K-300K years prior to that. But the more important point is that there simply lacks concrete evidence of neanderthals even competing in technological ability with behaviorily modern humans, let alone being smarter.

Convenient, given that we had a very similar tool industry until 30K years ago or so. And of course given the way that tool advancements tend to characterize hominid evolution as they get smarter, it seems a tad odd.


I have heard little like that. The emergence of cultural features and abstract thought is a pretty good indicator of brains in many people's books. I mean, they can't make tools, and they have no culture. How are we supposed to conclude they were smarter in any meaningful way?

Uh huh. Could be that they were adept at ambushes, but that doesn't tell us diddly squat about how "smart" they were as compared to us. Cats are awesome ambush predators, but what does that give us?

It is certainly interesting. But many people latch onto whatever they hear about neanderthals being "smart", I've noticed, and my impression is often that the data is being selected rather unevenly. Of course "Neanderthals were smart" is going to be plastered all over pop science news resources; it's controversial ergo it's interesting. Yes, they *could* have been the brains of the stone age, but that has generally not been the impression that has been gathered for the most part.

By your logic, since Neanderthals were not smart, they deserved to be slaughtered out of existence. As we are now doing with all the other major primates. Does not that say something about humanity?

I haven't even suggested that they were qualitatively different from us in intelligence, let alone that not being as smart as "us" implies we can slaughter them out of existence. I mean, I don't support genocide of people with low IQs...

I'm not slaughtering or supporting the slaughter of endangered species. I have tried to be a vegetarian before too, but that didn't work out too well with my parents. Are you slaughtering the primates? Using the word "we" isn't appropriate. Blame the people actually at fault.

Twoshots; remember, they weren't sapien. Measuring them by sapien standards will reach biased results. Besides, they didn't have no culture, they just didn't have one featuring idols and pointless (for the time, again) customs. As for the "convenient" tools argument, it isn't, really - would you expect a sentient alien race that has a body shape nothing like man to use human tools?
It was the same with Neanderthals. They had a different approach; they could not use distance tools, so they did other things to achieve results. Did you know evidence shows they were the first to train dogs and horses? In fact; they were largely responsible for the seperation of dogs from wolves. Obviously, that was passed onto sapiens before territorial sapiens forced Neanderthals away from their ranges to starve.

By using "we" I am speaking of us as a species. There are, of course, peculiar variations of humans that disdain eating meat and are kind to animals and even treat old people and children decently. But one cannot ignore or claim separation from humanity in general unless one actively moves to stop the horrific slaughter of other species, destruction of habitable environment etc. As Burke remarked, "For evil to triumph, it is only necessary for good men to do nothing". If you do nothing, you too are responsible.

You can't have biased results here. "Who's smarter" isn't an objective question.

It's a little difficult to judge when we can scarcely find anything.

But I would certainly be confused if I found them using Mousterian hand axes.

Now we just need to find a way to establish their intelligence when they've decided they don't want to play by our rules. I mean, people claim dolphins are really intelligent, and who knows they might be, but there lacks a way to evaluate that when they can't do what we do. Besides, their crappy tool kit isn't the only thing that people hold against them.

Citation plz? I mean, dogs weren't domesticated until some 15,000 years after neanderthals went extinct...

Frankly all this stuff sounds pretty conjectural, fringe, or emerging.

Didn't the neanderthals have less physical sofisticated brain before the "modern" homo sapiens came in?

Has anybody been able to analyze a Neanderthal brain to compare it to Homo Sapiens? I had heard that they had a larger cranial cavity but the actual nerve configuration might have been somewhat different. It has recently been discovered that birds have a totally different brain configuration so that their markedly smaller brains can do things comparable to intelligent mammals with larger brains.

They were in fact somewhat larger than modern humans, but this of course does not prove much (primary microcephalic humans can have brains on par with chimps in volume but are still apparently smarter, IIRC)

Like I said, twoshots, not my theory - but whilst earliest evidence of a domesticated dog appeared, as you suggest, 15,000 years after Neanderthals went extinct (time frame, please? The specific periods are being constantly revised as more evidence unfolds) seperation of wolves and dogs began with, most likely, neanderthals - wolf remains have been found in their encampments. Not yet a true domesticated dog; that would take thousands of years. Theory is that humans took over this practice in the final few millenia of co-existance, before pushing Neanderthals to extinction.

The Neanderthal was truly democratic. Their women would go around tackling prey, not like the homo sapient who forced their women to knit or collect harvest.

Scary females they must have been.

By your specific information I assume you have dated a few female Neanderthal football players. Tackling ostriches and penguins might be practical since bipeds can be thrown off balance but a smilodon is a bit more stable and unlikely to be successfully tackled.
Tackling a mammoth is certainly a challenge and if not indicative of Neanderthal intellect it certainly indicates feistiness.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc2GME6M7zM[/youtube]

I apologize for the language. No animals were harmed in the making of this film.


Now, would we see aliens granted evolution and its timeline is reality? It would require some type of FTL travel, but lets assume that's not impossible.

Sorry, Iamnotaparakeet, I have linguistic interpretation difficulties, and no idea what you mean.