The Neanderthal theory, your thoughts?

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When I was very young (2-4), I was told of an incident where older teenage cousins tried to get me to sit on a running motorcycle, and I was frantically, inexplicably afraid. Yet, getting in or around cars never bothered me.

Still to this day, I love slow moving water, or steady streamed waterfalls. I've seen the same thing in my son too: fascination with waterfalls and streams. Calming and entranced he is by them. AND he always looks or notices motorcycles with a fixed and mixed perplexed look; the same look he affords large animals.

If you ask me, its normal people who are lacking in evolutionary benefits.

Personally, I have problems with the Neanderthal theory:

• From an ethical perspective, it seems to have racist overtones. Race refers, from an evolutionary perspective, to any physical traits of a particular population. The assumption is that these traits continued because they helped that population survive. For instance, aside from the usual focus on skin pigmentation and the Asian eye fold, persons from the Himalayan Mountains tend to have, on average, larger lung capacity. Those from colder climates have, on average, shorter arms. However, no reputable scientist would then correlate these evolutionary adaptations (natural selection) with behavioral traits. Herbert Spencer's Social Darwinism was rejected long ago. The Neanderthal theory, however, seems to me to do just that.

I thought the interesting thing about the paper was the implication that Autism spectrum conditions could be a result of speciation. In other words, the difference are because of species, not because of mutation or of defect.

I still have ethical problems with the idea. Accusations of being a different "species" have also, at various times, been made, in the U.S., against African Americans and others.

Scientifically, I see it as hugely speculative and probably untestable, which is why I have focused on the ethical dimension.

I really don't think this paper holds any weight. I've actually read this before.

I don't either, but some people do. I think it provides ammunition to those who do not want to take aspies seriously.

nominalist wrote:

Allow me to clarify. Or more accurately expand my thought. For most of the "modern human race's history, there were two other human species on the planet, Neanderthals and Homo Erectus, three if you count the "hobbits" as an actual species, I think the jury is still out on that one. IF any other "human" were discovered today, in some deep jungle cave, we would treat them as human, with the protections they deserve, or so I hope. For now, I'd think we have to stick to the old "talk and build a fire" rule that H. Beam Piper proposed, to define intelligence. Chimps signal each other, have "culture", pass on information to their group members and use tools. Recently I saw another news story on one group of chimps using wooden spears they'd made to hunt other primates. However, they are near extinction, and given virtually no protections. They are not sapient beings.

IF, and this is an unlikely but POSSIBLE if, Aspie's turned out to be a speciation of Homo sapiens sapiens, more accurately a sub-species, still fully fertile with the dominant branch of the species, we are STILL HUMAN. Just because we may be different does not make us less human, nor does it make us "lesser or greater" than any other. Just different. After all, I talk... too much most of the time, and I build fires, I have one going in my fireplace at the moment. If humanity ever manages to establish colonies on other worlds, and they become isolated, then we will probably see actual speciation. For that matter, a catastrophic event on Earth could accomplish it, war, asteroid strike, pandemic. There are many ways we could bottleneck the population again, and it may accomplish the same thing. Any resulting species, would still be "human".

I suppose I see it as speculative metaphysics. IMO, Asperger's autism is simply a humanly devised category for certain observed variation in individuals. The Neanderthal theory, aside from its Social Darwinism, is also essentialist.

I have seen people in this forum use the Neanderthal theory as a justification for a kind of racism (i.e., superior physical traits), but perhaps that idea was not in the mind of the person who proposed it.

If I saw her on the street I would not give it a second thought. I have seen worse looking people in real life. I do not think she is ugly. She is not Vogue pretty but she is not puppy dog ugly either. Looks like anyone else to me. Of course she is like so having a bad hair day but, we are all entitled to those.

I've seen much the same basic idea, except they classify NT's as "old form modern humans" and Aspie's as the mutation that created civilizations, through the technological improvements they provided. I think it was hinting at the same thing you're suggesting, except the "elitism" was based upon Aspie's being an "improvement on modern humans" rather than a Neanderthal holdover.

One thing I did see, repeated by several people was mitochondial DNA evidence showed no holdovers from Neanderthal's in modern human populations. The only thing that struck me about that was, it only applies to matrilineal lines. It doesn't prevent either "Y" OR "X" chromosome contributions from ancient populations. Either way, without a lot better capabilities at analysis, and a lot more viable samples to test, it's ALL speculative.

I have read that Neanderthal DNA was extracted, we were one about 250,000 years ago.

Their was no closer connection. no hybreds. The main differance, as they are us, was thicker bones, and more power. they are figured to be three times stronger than a big modern human. They still got injured on the hunt, so it seems they used brute force.

In an unrelated story two guys were busted in Texas with a live deer in the trunk. It froze in the headlights, and they tackled it. Neanderthal might have used the same, from their upper body injuries, the same as rodeo riders. Leaping from a rock or tree onto game.

Their skeletons are about half way between modern humans and bears. They were some tough guys.

While there was a period of overlap between them and modern humands of 10,000 years in Europe, Neanderthal tech did not change, like Homo Erectus, they made the same tools from beginnig to end.

Modern humans were constant in technological change.

Thirty-five years ago Julian Jaynes specualated about the differance between the Illiad, and Odessey. in "The Origens of conciousness and the breakdown of the bicameral mind.

I hold an oppisite view. He proposes a unified mind, that blamed everything on the gods, which split, and credited human guile with being the driving force of history.

As I see it, the early mind was anything but unified. The Lizard Brain, the animal hunter, would have been developed strongly when living by the hunt was all. Traces of advancing technology show some people were making improved weapons, and as toolmaking takes skill, it is likely an older toolmaker made for the group.

So his/her brain would have developed another skill. I cannot say for sure, but it is called right brain toolmaking.

The emotional center thinks mostly about sex.

I do not think any of these people had an intergrated brain.

What Jaynes does point out is the rise of the frontal lobe, for the writings of the time do go into dialog. Our heros start talking sports. How two met and spoke is written like something new and powerful.

So this forebrain centered life starts with Greece, and continues through Rome. There is not a lot from builders, artists, inventors, but the blather of Statesmen is well recorded.

Of course the common folk take on the ways of their betters, and for forebrain, style over substance, rises. It leads to a lack of subtance, and a long dark age. The oldest I know is Bede, about 900, writing a bit about his time, then Chaucer, writing down stories, and on through Shakespere, translations from Italian, and still the storytelling form.

Subtance has a long way to go in the West. The early 1800s still had not caught up with the Greeks.

I doubt that the early Greek artists, technicians, talked sports, they talked metal, foundry, and working. They had obsessions.

Those we can know of, more or less, Tesla, Babbage, were not social, and did not live the political life. Like the Greeks that were written of, they had obsessions.

So I see technology as being exclusive from the political forebrain, where style and appearance, social standing, and other illusions, are practiced.

If you cannot dazzel them with brillence, baffel them with bullsh+t.

The main field of study was Retoric, to persuade by speaking.

This elevation of the con man over the discover/manufacturer of things useful, has been responsable for the last few thousand years.

In our own time, a knowledge of football, and male socialization, is no longer a ticket to management.

Manipulation is giving way to the technological, and this has caused the rise of autistic thinking becomeing a success model.

The non-social doer is on the move. I see it as no different than left and right handed, both have always been around, but if things change like now, lefties are going to rise.

We can learn to socialize, at least a bit on WP, but Bubba who played College ball cannot adapt to mid brain thinking. The football frat ladder to business is crumbling, and the geekey are taking over.

Bubba got a degree in marketing and communication, and has been replaced by a computer. Other Bubba's shipped the factories off shore, so no industrial jobs.

So no wonder the rise of organizations like , "Supress Autism Now." The only answer that will return them to power, is exterminating the geeks.

So in 1994 we get labeled with something that has only description. Not a disability, defect, disorder, with no known cause, no approved treatment. Imaginary Geek Syndrome.

It is the Bubbas, making the world safe for football, christianity, and living in the forebrain.

Ask the Native Americans about what the Bubbas will do to own everything and be in charge.

That one or two percent of the population can own the technological future is discussed in locker rooms, churchs, and while watching football. When Bubbas have problems they tend to blame anyone but themselves. It's those AfroAmericans taking our jobs, but what about the 15,000,000 illegals, well they are just to keep the blacks down. The same for shipping jobs offshore, it keeps them out of middle class neighborhoods, and sending their kids to good colleges.

They acted to keep relative position, blocking the way up. Those geeks did an end run on them, and when they go to college for computers, they learn to use Windows 95, but not to think about where it is going, for they just cannot do that, and keep the forebrain centered life.

In Germany the Bubbas noticed that technology and finance were Jewish. Like all people refused life in the mainstream, they started their own businesses, developed skills, as German Bubbas held beer drinking contests. War showed that vital industries were in the hands of non-Bubbas. They had invented, developed, because they were not allowed in the beer drinking contests.

Raceism is only the cover story, it is money, power, and political rule that causes genocide to be the answer. I see Autism Speaks as looking to put a medical cover over exterminating the geeks. It would not suprise me to find the Christian Right in the DSM business, and supporting a progressive demonizatin of a type of thinking they cannot control.

Science would look at the whole spectrum, they are focused on low functioning, and want to use that as an excuse to abort all geeks.

So I happen to agree that any Neanderthal, or any other defect that can be exterminated, is just part of Bubba's Marketing and Communication plan. We get a lot of well planned trolls here.

I find what is called autism is just making a fuller use of the brain, and that takes longer to develop, as all human improvments have. We have very long childhoods. The point being, Neonatelism, that people are growing in the direction of not maturing, keeping baby faces, that childhood, with it's related learning period has been expanding. Autism is people who keep the childhood learning, and become lifetime learners. Other people seem to mature out, become fixed, and stop learning.

In a short time I expect autism to be the norm. The information is rolling in. What I learned at the University is not outdated, it is anctient history. I consider my top of the line five year old technology to be outdated. At 61 I am looking at what is new. I am a kid. I have never lost the wonder of it, or the love of learning.

Longer childhoods, do seem to produce longer lives. 100 years a student seems to be the direction we are heading. I look young, feel young, think young. Why are their no studies on adult autism? Lots on correcting chiildren, with nothing on mature outcomes?

I will keep watching.

I think I'd call it a scientific hypothesis, which, by their nature, are speculative.



Isn't pretty much everything simply a humanly devised category for certain observed variation in <fill in the blank>?



Isn't it really just Darwinism?



What?



So? The fact that someone uses something to try to justify racism does not invalidate it.

I think the main problem with it is that it is very non PC. The prevailing intellectual climate does not like theories that suggest significant genetic/intellectual/whathaveyou differences between groups of people. Personally, I don't give a damn. My only concern is with what is true. If nature turns out to be a non PC beotch, so be it.

That's not to say that I believe the Neanderthal Theory. I find it intriguing. Fascinating, even. It has a strange explanatory power that jives with personal experience and a variety of circumstantial data. It also has a few questionable assertions, but overall I think that there's enough substance for it to be taken seriously. At the end of the paper there is a section called "How to prove or refute the theory." There are a lot of good ideas there. In the coming years we will have much more genetic data, and hopefully a much better idea if there is anything to this.

I must respond to this last posting...

Last edited by Alphawolf on 05 Jan 2008, 8:29 am, edited 1 time in total.

Standing up to evil tools that can be easily fashioned into the most evil hate has nothing to do with Political Correctness. Adopf Hitler brought the science of Racist Theory to its Zenith in the 20th century. Adolf Hitler was able to justify the extermination type murder of over six million human beings based on the findings of flaky science. The seemingly innocent art of suggesting that there is significant genetic / intellectual / what-have-you differences between groups of people led to a perversion of souls that resulted in three Holocaust's. America has had two Holocaust's of its very own. The first American Holocaust occured when this nation all but exterminated native american peoples and their ways of life only to surplant them with what we know today as American culture. The white man considered the extermination of the indian \ native american a divine right of manifest destiny. Horrace Greely a popular newspaper pundant of the times suggested Go West Young Man. This advice was thinly veiled racism that urged settlers to go west invade native american lands, destroy the buffalo which kept native peoples independent. Settlers on cue invaded native lands doing everything to destroy dignity culure and sense of self of native american peoples. Behind all this murder the justification innocently suggesting that there is significant genetic / intellectual / what-have-you differences between groups of people oh WOW!

The second American Holocaust was called Slavery of black and brown african people. In this second Holocaust millions of black people where brought from Africa to America and other places by white's whose pop science said they WERE RACIALLY SUPERIOR to ALL black and brown people they murdered and enslaved.

Hear how the logic of hate got further weaved into the fabric of our society by the US surpreme courts own words.

Dred Scott v. Sandford,[1] 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1856) also known as the "'Dred Scott Case" or "Dred Scott Decision", was a lawsuit, pivotal in the history of the United States, decided by the United States Supreme Court in 1857 that ruled that people of African descent, whether or not they were slaves, could never be citizens of the United States, and that Congress had no authority to prohibit slavery in federal territories. It was also ruled that slaves could not sue in court, and that slaves were private property, and, being private property, can't be taken away from their owners without due process. The decision for the court was written by Chief Justice Roger Taney.

The decision sided with border ruffians in the Bleeding Kansas dispute who were afraid a free Kansas would be a haven for runaway slaves from Missouri. It enraged abolitionists. The polarization of the slavery debate is considered to be one of many factors leading to the American Civil War.

This Second American Holocaust shipped then forced black people to serve against their will in bondage all because of innocent widely held suggestions that there is significant genetic / intellectual / what-have-you differences between groups of people. The same mass market pop science of hate was used to entice whites in an orgy of hate that justified debased racist slavery and vile jim crow era laws and vulgar mentalities that followed. For Slavery to be supported media must advance the notion that a certain race (in this case all whites) belong to a scientifically proven better race than those they wish to enslave. The science of hate must then be effectively mass marketed. One of the most effective tools's for the idea that whites were superior to blacks is typified by that sparkling edifice to evil D. W. Griffen's movie "Birth of a Nation" which is a racist manifesto if ever there was one. Of course all the stepin fetch-it type roles in subsequent movies reinforced this vile black as an inferior race stereotype. The core message in Birth of a Nation was one that innocently suggested there is significant genetic / intellectual / what-have-you differences between groups of people. WOW same theme associated with the murder of more innocent people. WOW!

Next there was the Third and easily the best known Holocaust. In the third Holocaust of the modern era Jews, gays, THE DISABLED OR DEFECTIVE and other's were SUMMARILY exterminated for the crime of being different. German science MADE THE SUGGESTION THAT there is significant genetic / intellectual / what-have-you differences between groups of people a STATE SANCTIONED LAW used to great effect in exterminating millions of so called undesirables with the cold callous ruthless methods and assembly line percision. Again mass marketing of the ugliest vile forms of hate were needed to convince the german nation to happily embark on an orgy of murder and hate. Of course the call was answered.

Movie Name: The Eternal Jew.
Directed by Fritz Hippler
Written by Eberhard Taubert
Release date(s) 1940
Running time 62 minutes
Language German

I personally have this movie on DVD and having watched it I say from experience, no more patently nausiating a pack of lies have I ever seen or am I likely to see in all my days. Here is what Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia has to say on the movie.

The movie (The Eternal Jew) is done in the style of a documentary, the central thesis being the immutable racial personality traits that characterize the Jew as a wandering cultural parasite. Throughout the film, these traits are contrasted to the Nazi state ideal: while Aryan men find satisfaction in physical labor and the creation of value, Jews only find pleasure in money and a hedonist lifestyle. While members of the Aryan race have a need for aesthetic living, rich Jews live in bug-infested and dirty homes, even though they could afford better. While Western man has an appreciation for Northern culture and imagery, Jews only find satisfaction in the grotesque and decadent. Many things that run contrary to Nazi doctrine are associated with Jewish influence, such as modern art, (cultural) relativism, anarchic and socialist movements, as well as sexual liberation.

The whole film had been created as a means to an end. Viewers are shown pictures that depict people of the Jewish ethnicity as low, vile, and parasitic, and they are constantly referred to as rats.

I found the most basic premise of movie The Eternal Jew is a simple innocent suggestion that there is significant genetic / intellectual / what-have-you differences between groups of people that confer blanket superiority to one race and total inferiority to another. This superior versus inferior racial ideal itself sick is then twisted and manipulated by crafty media types to justify any manner of genocide the times require. Heeding the call to hate media tools of the day create racist matra's like "manifest destiny" or "go west young man" crafted to justify extermination of millions of native americans. Heeding the call to hate media tools of the day create racist manifestos like "D W Griffen's Birth of A Nation" a work specifically crafted to justify enslavement and extermination of millions of black americans. Black american's were often refered to as "The White Man's Burden". Heeding the call to hate media tools of the day create racist matra's like the filthy hate movie called, "The Eternal Jew" a work specifically crafted to justify enslavement and extermination of millions of European jews and others deemed unworthy of life or a parasitic drain of vital resources of the so called great Nazi state.

Suggesting that there is significant genetic / intellectual / what-have-you differences between groups of people is an innocent enough statement when seen alone. Unfortunately excellent spin doctors like Adoph Hitler among others living and dead easily pervert the suggestion that there is significant genetic / intellectual / what-have-you differences between groups of people to accomplish amazing feats of mob rule mass murder. For all the reasons I state herein I find any idea suggesting there is significant genetic / intellectual / what-have-you differences between groups of people a potential cancer of the soul that should be avoided at all costs. I think we as unique individuals are all different from everyone else but not better than anyone else. I feel diversity is a good thing. I think any attempt to create classes of superior versus inferior beings makes all involved evil racists by default. The goal of racists is to use any tool to encourage civilization to decend in mass by commiting the most foul loathesome evil's against the human rights and dignities of others this world has ever known. I am sure this post will get me removed kicked out but, I had to answer this suggestion that there is significant genetic / intellectual / what-have-you differences between groups of people. People are people each of us have the exact same value no matter what our differences thats my point and if I am wrong for stating this ideal here so be it I gladly submit to any punishment the powers that be see fit!

A Good Wolf that fails to stand up for the rights of all humans is no Good Wolf at all!

Hypotheses are testable. One does not need to guess on how to test them. The methodology for doing so is included in the research design. I do not think that the Neanderthal theory is grounded, i.e., grounded in supported hypotheses.



Everything, yes.



No, because Charles Darwin did not correlate natural selection with behavior. However, Herbert Spencer, who coined the term "survival of the fittest," did precisely that.

Actually, the term Social Darwinism is a bit of a misnomer. It has nothing to do with Darwin. Spencer developed the idea prior to Darwin's publication of his research. Darwin rejected that aspect of Spencer's work.



Essentialism refers to idea, now largely rejected by scientists and academics, that there is some kind of ontological essence, a universal form, which transcends particular things. From an essentialist standpoint, Asperger's autism or (name the trait) can be treated as a real thing.



The problem is that, because the theory is not grounded (i.e., is more philosophy than science), people are free to speculate. However, IMO, the basic assumption of the "Neanderthal theory" is a racist one. Singling out a human population for behavioral traits which the author clearly regarded as desirable is, IMO, racist.



As I said, the reason I focused on the ethical dimension is because I don't think it is testable.



Perhaps, but it is not testable now, which is why I said it was speculative.