Should we bring back the neanderthal species?

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There are no instances of abstract non-utilitarian thinking among Neanderthals.

By the way, their weapons were uniformly inferior to the weapons made by the Cro-Mags (our immediate forbears).

No Neanderthal art.

They may have had larger cranial capacity, but there is no evidence that they were smarter than our kind of human.

And here is the bottom line. We survived and they did not.

ruveyn

O.K. So Neanderthal was not a stupid brute. But that is not proof of intelligence superior to that of Homo Sapien.

I suspect that it is all just the imagination of people who come up with a conclusion and then look around for evidence to prop up that conclusion, ignoring all to the contrary. They read that the brain capacity of the Neanderthals was slightly greater and jump to the conclusion that they must therefore be more intelligent.

In reality, if brain capacity was the determining factor, then whales would have us all beat. Noone is going to convince me that whales have any significant intellect until they learn to identify whaling ships as a danger and figure out how to warn each other to stay away from the whaling ships. That should be a simple task for an intelligent creature, but there is no sign of which I am aware that whales can actually warn each other of future dangers.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... ence-pike/

we are getting there. slowly but surely. we even share some mtDNA with them.

but even so…




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal_genome_project

No. Instead of wasting efforts into reconstituting the Neanderthal genome I say that we focus our efforts on developing a new species that is significantly smarter than humans(and pretty much ANY human that ever was and ever will be).

Smarter and better. Our species and the chimps both inherited the worst characteristics from our common ancestor.

As Tarzan used to say: Cheetah rip your face off and then throw sh*t at it.

ruveyn

Brain size is not indicative of intelligence. They went extinct in the very land and environment they had been surviving on for nearly 50 thousand years before our species came along. We're the ones that made it, not them. How's that for smarts?

Neanderthal did have a larger brain capacity but the morphology of the skull shows their frontal region had reduced area compared to our species. This is the region that handles cognitive function. This same region is the defining feature through hominid evolution for intelligence... not brain size.

They were stronger yes. Much stronger. However there is one very odd fact: Neanderthal did not use ranged weapons. We have only found close combat spears and evidence of extensive animal caused injuries in the male population. That is extremely strange for a sapient (and they were intelligent there is no doubt) species which hunted large game and had a protein-heavy diet. Many theories try to explain this... from them not being smart enough to make a thrown spear (unlikely..they were plenty smart) to their bodies having some sort of hindrance to throwing (hand-eye coordination, muscle-bone structure in the arms, etc).

There had to be a very specific reason why they didn't...even after our species came along and our hunting kit was available for copying/capturing... they still stuck with their close combat spears.

Neanderthal created flutes, used fire & made complex tools with it... there's even evidence of an extremely complex glue they made through a process that we can only recreate today using lab equipment and precise temperature measuring tools...yet neanderthal routinely made this glue with sticks, stones and herbs. Guess they must've had aspies too

"we survived, and they didn't" Doesn't prove s**t in terms of who's smart and who isn't. Look at the idiocy that came out of the middle ages after the germanic tribes sacked rome. The romans were smarter in terms of technology and knowledge about sanitation, anatomy, and just science and medicine in general... MUCH smarter. In fact, they were so much smarter, that the survival rate of a roman soldier wounded in battle wasn't replicated until world war 1. And yet, they were defeated. Intelligence isn't everything. If it was, you wouldn't have big dumb jocks beating up the nerds in highschool.

Also, there are different kinds of smart, different things to be smart about. If I remember correctly from a special I saw about neanderthals from a while ago, they didn't have the same bones/muscles in the throat to be able to produce all the complex sounds that we can. They weren't as social. They lived in small packs and most likely fought each other for territory... They weren't as organized. So most likely, the cro magnon won because they played a social game of numbers.

Anyway, Yes, I think we should bring back the neanderthal. That would be cool, but I don't know how we'd communicate effectively with one.

Shouldn't be harder than talking to other homosapiens.

AFAIK all the evidence points to the suggestion that they were verbal.

Strength and luck determines who is the winner. Being smart might help in some situations but not all.

We (homo sapien sapien) won the lottery.

ruveyn

No I know, but I remember hearing somewhere that their speech wasn't anywhere near as complex as ours is today.

In Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series they always seemed like perfectly nice people and a benefit to society despite some cultural differences. They also make excellent Croquet players (see: Something Rotten).

The structure of the vocal organs were such as to limit their pitch range. As a result their language would be phonically limited. However this does not limit the language as a vehicle for thought and co-ordination of action. Using dots and dashes one can express ideas as complex as he could if he had a range of three octaves.

ruveyn

If one were to consider what we now call "neandrathals" I'd say no to bringing them back... we already have enough alpha-beta football players.

We overlap for about 20,000 years. At the end everyone dies.

The neanderthal was acustomed to the ice age, hunting in fog and thick brush, and the stabbing spear can be used to hold the game down till it is dead. Something that runs vanishes, it seems they used the stab and lever over method.

The ice withdrew, and between 27,000 and 22,000 years ago it was hot. Several degrees warmer than today, with sea level seven meters higher. The whole hunting complex of the neanderthal was gone, the other animals were also greatly reduced, less food and more bugs.

Some sapiens survived in the north, left oyster middens, marks the old shore line. the whole area we shared was abandoned, Sapiens are also found above the Arctic Circle, in Russia. The Arctic was ice free. More survived below the Black Sea.

It has all the signs of a long drought. 22,000 years ago it started snowing, six inches a day, and continued for a thousand years. All the oyster people died, the last neanderthal, and the people along the Arctic that were beyond the Urals where it did not snow, survived but moved south to the Black Sea,

It killed everyone in Europe, all the large animals, Mammoths, Rhinos, and only scattered herds survived beyond the Urals, which stayed ice free. A thousand years later it was a climate neanderthal and mammoths would have thrived in, But they were gone. Smaller animals came, deer, elk, buffalo, and sapiens with herds of reindeer.

So as far as cloning them, neanderthal and mammoths would not be happy in our climate.

The warm phase returned 8,000 years ago, turned grass, lakes, trees, with very old species of crocidiles, hippos, to bones, and formed the Sahara. It was quick. While the heat went away the desert stayed.

It was then that people moved into Europe, grain farmers with animals.

In 700 Europe froze, the Black Sea, the Nile, and a drought brought the end of the Mayans. By 900 it reached the southwest and the Anasazi ended. The drought ended about 1500. In Europe the Vikings came south in 900 because their crops would not ripen in the cold. For hundreds of years ice covered northen Scotland, The Little Ice Age.

When it warmed up the Black Death spread three times, last in 1666. As the climate warmed and crops ripened year after year from 1500 on, the population increased greatly, and Europe started shipping people all over. The climate was stable, the rains constant, for five hundred years, the oddest period in Geology. Now drought returns, to the Americas.

Will Europe go into a little ice age like last time?

Will it be hot with sea level seven meters higher?

Will it snow six inches a day for a thousand years?

All we know is the change in climate in the past was sudden, From heat to ice age, from grassland to desert, from as warm as southern England to too cold to grow grain in Norway. When drought came to the southwest houses were abandoned, Mayans left cities with huge fields.

Vikings abandoned their homes, took their familes, in a do or die trip south.

The Huns had to leave their homes and migrate into southern Europe from the east.

Climate change is fast. It has happened often in the past, and is somewhat regional. What formed the Sahara, did not affect Europe.

Wait and see, but something is coming.