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There's so much that jumps out at me in this article. It asks - 'Do neanderthals have a spiritual life?'. Some questions: Do we (in the here and now) have a

There's so much that jumps out at me in this article. It asks - 'Do neanderthals have a spiritual life?'. Some questions: Do we (in the here and now) have a 'spiritual life'? What does it mean to have a 'spiritual life'? How could we possible know whether Neanderthals had one? How do we even know what Neanderthals were even like? Did they really live for 350,000 years? So much speculation. The reality is we cannot know anything much beyond our present experience. History cannot really teach us anything. It is a politicised story - his-story - the story written by the victors, whoever they are. All history is an interpretative act. When we look back at the past, it is all speculation. We are NOT being presented with facts. We find whatever we want to find in ourselves in the present; we use some artefacts (genuine or false ones) as a basis for exploring our current situation. So, IMO, truth has little to do with it, but it can make for an interesting investigation anyway!

tokai 6y ago
Discussions about epistemology becomes very tiresome when shoehorned into everything.
- feralimal 6y ago
  "Can't we just assume the standard narrative is correct, and work with that? What harm can it do?"
  - gameswithgo 6y ago
    saying we can’t know much about neanderthal spiritual life is probably correct, but poster went on to claim nothing can be learned from history which is the sort of obviously nonsense viewpoint people adopt when the lessons of history don’t agree with what they want to be true, currently
    - feralimal 6y ago
      You are right, very little can be learned from history, IMO. We get a very skewed and biased view of history on anything that matters. If you want an example, take a look at star forts. These forts are often beautiful. And they are all over the world - UK, US (the statue of Liberty has one for its base), Canada, Japan, Russia. They are least 3-400 years old. I never learnt about these in school. But there they are. Who built them? Why did they build them like that? http://starforts.com/ http://starforts.com/
      - InfiniteRand 6y ago
        That link has a very reasonable theory about the why "The design of the starfort did away with "dead zones," or areas in which an attacker cannot be brought under fire, by the use of triangular bastions which command all approaches."
        feralimal 6y ago
        Yes - but which society created all these similarly designed forts 100s of years ago, across the world? They weren't thrown up by a small group of pilgrims - they were brilliantly engineered and took effort to make. But I didn't learn anything about these castles at school. And we did do castles in history - it was my favourite thing. So what are we missing or misunderstanding.
- disown 6y ago
  It's also tiresome when people try to shoehorn big philosophy words they just incorrectly learned to stifle discussion. OP was pointing out the speculative nature of the article. It's a question about evidence, facts and agenda. Epistemology is a philosophic inquiry into the nature of knowledge. Calling out speculative nature of an article isn't the same as trying to dismiss it with by epistemology.
FranzFerdiNaN 6y ago
History is interpretation , yes, but that doesn’t mean that facts don’t exist.
- throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
  How does one establish the 'fact' that "neanderthals [had] a spiritual life". We just can't. I don't doubt they did but that's my belief not fact.
keiferski 6y ago
It’s really not that complicated. Anthropologists study ways that current and ancient humans enacted spiritual beliefs, then see if there is evidence for Neanderthals having similar practices. The problem with skepticism (and relativism, for that matter) is that it’s entirely unproductive. Yes yes, we can’t really know anything, but that doesn’t change the fact that you need to wake up and experience the world every day, driven in part by a cultural/biological drive to find the ‘truth.’

tokai 6y ago

Discussions about epistemology becomes very tiresome when shoehorned into everything.

feralimal 6y ago
"Can't we just assume the standard narrative is correct, and work with that? What harm can it do?"
- gameswithgo 6y ago
  saying we can’t know much about neanderthal spiritual life is probably correct, but poster went on to claim nothing can be learned from history which is the sort of obviously nonsense viewpoint people adopt when the lessons of history don’t agree with what they want to be true, currently
  - feralimal 6y ago
    You are right, very little can be learned from history, IMO. We get a very skewed and biased view of history on anything that matters. If you want an example, take a look at star forts. These forts are often beautiful. And they are all over the world - UK, US (the statue of Liberty has one for its base), Canada, Japan, Russia. They are least 3-400 years old. I never learnt about these in school. But there they are. Who built them? Why did they build them like that? http://starforts.com/ http://starforts.com/
    - InfiniteRand 6y ago
      That link has a very reasonable theory about the why "The design of the starfort did away with "dead zones," or areas in which an attacker cannot be brought under fire, by the use of triangular bastions which command all approaches."
      - feralimal 6y ago
        Yes - but which society created all these similarly designed forts 100s of years ago, across the world? They weren't thrown up by a small group of pilgrims - they were brilliantly engineered and took effort to make. But I didn't learn anything about these castles at school. And we did do castles in history - it was my favourite thing. So what are we missing or misunderstanding.
disown 6y ago
It's also tiresome when people try to shoehorn big philosophy words they just incorrectly learned to stifle discussion. OP was pointing out the speculative nature of the article. It's a question about evidence, facts and agenda. Epistemology is a philosophic inquiry into the nature of knowledge. Calling out speculative nature of an article isn't the same as trying to dismiss it with by epistemology.

FranzFerdiNaN 6y ago

History is interpretation , yes, but that doesn’t mean that facts don’t exist.

throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
How does one establish the 'fact' that "neanderthals [had] a spiritual life". We just can't. I don't doubt they did but that's my belief not fact.

keiferski 6y ago

It’s really not that complicated. Anthropologists study ways that current and ancient humans enacted spiritual beliefs, then see if there is evidence for Neanderthals having similar practices. The problem with skepticism (and relativism, for that matter) is that it’s entirely unproductive. Yes yes, we can’t really know anything, but that doesn’t change the fact that you need to wake up and experience the world every day, driven in part by a cultural/biological drive to find the ‘truth.’