Neanderthal really less advanced than H. Sapiens?

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In some ways they did.

But some research was done recently. MUCH bigger brains but we're finding out now that it really does not equate to higher intelligence and can sometimes mean the brain works less efficiently.

l saw something on Nova with a brain scan of a Neanderthal skull. l cannot remember the exact areas of the brain they said were impaired. l think one was the temporal lobe but the other was something less common l'd never heard of.

They way they described it make it sound like the abilities were highly developed and possibly more so than H.Sapien but that they brain networked VERY poorly.

Communication between different areas of the brain was impaired, so even though complex thought could occur in isolated areas, simple tasks may have been a challenge.

But that isn't necessarily where the difficulty with speech came from. l don't know what more has been done in this area but l read an article from 07 saying that the Neanderthal could only make a few sounds because of an oddly shaped pallet.

l don't know if they knew whether or not something neurological could also play a part at the time.

A recent study questions the conclusion that there was interbreeding between Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/aug/14/study-doubt-human-neanderthal-interbreeding?newsfeed=true

Here's a thought (I noted the article stating that the DNA mix may be a result of an earlier ancestor, but everything is still up in the air) Correct me if I'm wrong:

Evolution has shown in the past that it continually diversifies species. As one kind of bird moves to a new environment, they adapt to better live there. Species divergence is almost a requirement of evolution. But what happens when divergent but compatible animals have offspring? Hybrids. If enough crossbreeding occurs (say, because a super-volcano like Toba erupts and kills most of the populations) then the "standard" is the new hybrid. Given enough homogenization would it be inaccurate to think that this new hybrid could be considered the norm?

Imagine this: If a Caucasian and an African were to have children, the offspring resemble a cross between the two. If Caucasians and Africans then all but died out only hybrids would be left. If those hybrids only mated with other hybrids, then the traits would even out and eventually you would be left with a population of hybrids, which to themselves appear to be the norm because only a smattering of non-hybrids would be left as a result of recessive gene expression. Like African-Americans who have blue eyes as a result of European genes in their blood.

So let's just say (for illustration purposes) for a moment that prior to Toba there were 4 different humans running around. They kept to themselves and didn't mix too often. Then Toba blows and kills 80% of the population off. Now a lonely male of one group wanders until he stumbles upon a female of another group. They are the only viable mating pair they know of. Loneliness alone is probably enough to bring different people together, not to mention the drive to repopulate. So this story happens thousands of times in different parts of the world. By the time humanity has increased in population to interact with previously isolated groups, everyone has become a hybrid of one sort or another.

Now, thousands of years go by, and people are still attracted members of their own group, whether they can tell they are part of the group or not. Why am I attracted so much to redheads? Hmm.... Neanderthals had red hair... So our internal mechanisms are still at work and after all this selective breeding (since we select whom we breed with) evolution is back at work diversifying our genes again. The previously separate human groups are re-emerging from the homogenized species as distinct from each other. In time, perhaps another 50,000 years, we'll have separate groups of homo again.

Why else would we notice such a huge increase in certain kinds of "genetic defects"?

I suggest, much as the "fully functioning Neanderthal" idea does, that many of the defects we find today are actually fully expressed genes that have been bred into homo sapien from other species. If Dwarfism was caused by an error in the genes, then wouldn't it make sense that those with the "disorder" would have a greater variety in body plan? Wouldn't you have people with short arms and long legs or vice versa? Maybe Dwarves used to be a separate population? How about those people you've surely seen on TV or at the market who looked just like an ogre or troll? It would certainly explain why there were tales of Dwarven villages and Ogres in folk lore.

Something like cw's scenario is probably right.

One on one Neanderthal's were just as smart as anatomical moderns.

And one on one a typical neanderthal could beat the crap out of any anatomical modern.

But the anatomical moderns were better at communication.
They were better at group strategic planning. But also they were more prone to forminng kinship ties, non kin alliances, and were more into long distance trade.

So each anatomical modern could be wise with the wisdom of others and use tools made by others and weapons made by others and had access to distant rescources (sea shells, flint outcroppings, yew trees for long bows etc). And they could rally more troops to the battlefield.

Being able to rely on technology and cooperation enabled anatomical moderns to exploit the environment with less physical strength. Which mean they could become more gracile and less heavy which mean that each human required less biomass to support from the environment. Which meant that more anatomical moderns could live in the same land are per acre.

They simply crowded the neanderhals out.

Neanderthal tribes fought neaderthal tribes, and AMs fought AMs, but when they fought each other the kill ratio in the AM's favor. But there was no continental wide program for genoicide. Like stone age hunter-gathering tribes of today both groups lived in small groups who thought that the valley they lived in was the whole universe, and they were xenophobic towards their neighbors regardless of which subspecies their neighbors were.

Neanderthal were driven to the margins and into the uplands and finnaly died out. But there had been some hanky panky between the groups. So modern europeans have some vanishing smidgens of neanderthal DNA. The word "hybrid" implies an even mix or close to it. The ancestors of modern europeans were hardly an even mix. They were anatomical moderns who aquired just a tincture of the local archaic DNA ( one to five percent DNA in modern europeans). Its an open question if a legacy of the tiny admixture is the autism spectrum. But there is a certain logic to it. Modern people who are impaired socially might be exhibiting neanderthal behavior encoded in their genes, or not.

If the recent research holds up, it pretty much drives a steak through the heart of the neanderthal theory of autism. It was interesting that a person on the spectrum outside of the autism science field came up with that idea, but there is another individual that was a member of this site, Andrew Lehmann, the founder of Shift Journal, that developed a theory of milder forms of autism based on the balance of hormonal influence and culture, from his own observations and patterns he observed in his life experience. That theory struck a chord with me in my observations from my life experience from decades ago as an anthropology major in college.

The free book can be found on his neoteny.org website, but until recently there hasn't been any scientific evidence to back his theory up. In my opinion the two links below provide some evidence to back up his theory, that was in opposition to Simon Baron Cohen's initial "Extreme Male Brain" theory as applied to all individuals with ASD's.

The full spectrum of autism likely has many causal factors, some of which in part are co-morbids as they may contribute to the behaviors observed by psychiatrists as what they describe and define as autism spectrum disorders, from observing behavior.

There is the possibility that for some individuals the abnormal brain growth seen specific in males with regressive autism, the immune systems issues, fragile X syndrome, the mitochondrial dysfunction issues, and these many other type of issues, that are indeed disorders, play a role in what is observed as the full spectrum of ASD's.

The studies below have been specific to Asperger's Syndrome, and while studies have not been done like these two studies below on other subgroups of ASD's, I personally don't expect they will provide the same results, as Michelle Dawson's research showed an inverse relationship in autism disorder and Aspergers syndrome in standard IQ tests, that measure verbal intelligence and performance intelligence.

While the behavioral impairments described and defined in the DSM5 may be used as criteria to define one Autism Spectrum Disorder, the Spectrum and the underlying biological/environmental factors may result in some conditions that are more of a natural evolutionary process of shifts in hormonal balance and other conditions determined potentially by these and/or other biological/environmental factors.

In my opinion the fragmentation in the larger Autism Community is not just a philosophical one, it may also be a biological/environmental one as well. I am a fan of Andrew Lehmann's work above and beyond all others, and it did not come from a place of strict science, it came from a place that tried to understand itself and others through personal life experience/observations, and one that could determine that the viewpoint was not necessarily applicable to everyone on the spectrum. Now it appears that autism science is catching up to his theory.

It is likely that some of the viewpoints of Parents have merit per their children on the spectrum and some other individuals on the spectrum have different merits in their viewpoints, as a diagnosis of an ASD does not provide the full story of the underlying factors associated with the behaviors observed.

http://www.ajnr.org/content/33/1/83.full

http://m.bjp.rcpsych.org/content/early/2012/03/28/bjp.bp.111.097899.abstract