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Nonetheless, Neanderthal were smart/skillful enough to survive in Europe during the Ice Ages. That's not the mild climate of today, but a harsh place that will
by crpatino 11y ago
Nonetheless, Neanderthal were smart/skillful enough to survive in Europe during the Ice Ages. That's not the mild climate of today, but a harsh place that will kill you in hours unless you go in with some serious know-how and preparations.
Neanderthals were baddass, they probably made better tools out of stone than homo sapiens sapiens typically did. But their minds were kind of... too narrowly focused. AFAIK, you could draw a plausible parallel between them and the dwarves of Tolkien fantasy.
- Scriptor 11y agoTrue, although the harshness of Ice Age Europe varied over time. It wasn't some hellish landscape but a thriving ecosystem with all sorts of wildlife and other food sources. The difference is that Neanderthals had hundreds of thousands of years to adapt to the environment of Ice Age Europe. They had even evolved actual physical adaptations to help them with the cold. But the humans who moved into the Arctic only had a few thousand years at most to adapt, if that. Neanderthals certainly weren't dumb and primitive, but as you said they were narrowly focused. Modern humans were able to rapidly adapt their lifestyles and technology to allow them to thrive in extreme environments such as the Arctic.