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You ever met one? Had a conversation? Assessed it’s working memory, capacity for abstract thoughts and manly layered thinking? There is a lot we don’t know. Th
by kobeya 9y ago
You ever met one? Had a conversation? Assessed it’s working memory, capacity for abstract thoughts and manly layered thinking?
There is a lot we don’t know. The fact that Neanderthal buries their dead with some sort of symbolism, cared for elders, and lived in (small!) groups doesn’t really give us firm answers to these questions.
- wallace_f 9y agoYou are right that we don't know, but the user said indistinguishable, which is true. It is interesting that they actually had larger brains than modern humans, as did the Cro Magnon homo sapiens we have also found).
- animal531 9y agoRight, I've read the same. In practice they could very well have been more intelligent than humans. One interesting idea is that humans ultimately triumphed because we had better social connections, we traveled much further and had much larger circles.
- nkozyra 9y agoIf personal interaction/observation is the bar for scientific validity, there's a whole lot of science to be skeptical of.
- saalweachter 9y agoThe evidence we have for Neanderthal development is subject to precisely the same limitations to the evidence we have on the development of other hominids. If you can't meet & talk to humans from 80,000 and 60,000 years ago, are you able to say any change happened 70,000 years ago?
- eru 9y agoWe didn't meet the other humans (Cro Magnon) of the time either. So our evidence is just as good or bad for those guys.