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When Orcs Were Real

201 points by zimbu668 5y ago

littlestymaar 5y ago
> and carried off and raped our women. (How did you think the Neanderthal DNA got into our genome?) I don't know if Neandertals were rapist, but given the behavior of Sapiens, it wouldn't be completely surprising if it was in fact the opposite: Sapiens abducting Neandertal females and raping them…
- Igelau 5y ago
  That's kind of tricky considering how much stronger and more robust an average Neanderthal would have been compared to an average Sapiens.
  - AbrahamParangi 5y ago
    They were approximately the same size as us. Shorter but wider and on the whole around the same weight.
    - jtms 5y ago
      Size and weight being the same doesn't mean they weren't far strong than homo sapiens. We are quite a bit bigger and heavier than chimps, but chimps are about twice as strong as a typical human.
      - AbrahamParangi 5y ago
        We are also far more closely related to Neanderthals than to chimps. Also it’s not like there’s any correlation between % Neanderthal DNA and physical strength. The probable explanation is that they were extremely human in nearly all respects.
      - littlestymaar 5y ago
        > We are quite a bit bigger and heavier than chimps, but chimps are about twice as strong as a typical human. How is strength measured here? Because that sounds strange for two species that close genetically speaking to have such a big difference on how muscles work. I would expect 1kg of chimp muscle to have roughly the same strength as one 1kg of human muscle, and having a muscle/whole body mass ratio in the same ballpark. But our muscles are localized fairly differently, with much more muscles in our lower body so depending how you measure, you could get really different results. Also, the typical industrial-world-human is pretty weak compared to what the average humans can be under the right conditions so it may bias the measure too.
  - littlestymaar 5y ago
    Ambush, outnumbering, night raiding, etc. War is almost never a matter of who have the upper hand in a one-vs-one fair combat…
- SubiculumCode 5y ago
  Obviously it is both. Rape in nature is extremely common (as defined by female trying to escape, but male pinning it down). There is no reason that both neanderthal and homo-sapient males wouldn't have engaged in this behavior...as it is only cultural taboos, norms, and theory of mind that prevent its occurrence.
- JoeAltmaier 5y ago
  One data point: a Homo Sapiens settlement with a child burial who was 1/8 Neanderthal. May have been born in the settlement? That original mother may have been of the settlement. Anyway three generations of mixed heritage, and still worth burying with reverence.
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shp0ngle 5y ago
The first comment on the substack links to this article, from 2010, that basically refutes this theory and this book. https://blog.waikato.ac.nz/bioblog/2010/10/killer-neandertals-does-this-o/ https://blog.waikato.ac.nz/bioblog/2010/10/killer-neandertal...
- roenxi 5y ago
  "Proves" and "refutes" are both pretty vague words in a historical context. In my experience when historians say "I will prove this to you" they typically mean "not only is it a good story, but unusually I have at least 1 piece of actual evidence". So in the loose world of history where nobody has any idea, maybe the idea is refuted. Realistically, probably both posts are wrong but we'll never know about which aspects. 10,000 years is a long time, there should have been multiple occurrences of the impossible. History is huge, and we only have tattered records for 1 in ~3,000 years events.
  - quietbritishjim 5y ago
    The article linked by the parent is very clear about when things are unknown or suspected but unproven (from real but inconclusive archaeological evidence). In contrast, it shows that the book in question is completely speculative (not based on any archaeological evidence whatsoever) while presenting itself as unequivocally correct. There is no need to beat around the bush. The linked article fully refutes the original one.
    - roenxi 5y ago
      The book is a work of history. Of course it is completely speculative. The point of historical books is to convince people to read them, typically they have a fairly thick dose of spice and storytelling. Thucydides wasn't trying to bore people. The first "evidence that they may have had the technology to make sewn garments" link [0] looks like some dude ran a model. Now it is certainly possible to claim that as conclusive evidence. But probably only in a debate between historians, I wouldn't bank on it. 50,000 years ago is a long time. There is not a lot of confidence about how things happened, and reality defies mixing generalisation and truth. [0] https://anthropology.net/2009/06/26/neanderthals-dried-fresh-meat-wore-tailored-clothing-energy-study/ https://anthropology.net/2009/06/26/neanderthals-dried-fresh...
sgt101 5y ago
If anyone is interested in a more informed and modern take try https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindred_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindred_(book)
- slg 5y ago
  That might be the shortest Wikipedia article I have ever seen. Here[1] is a review from NPR that provides more info. [1] - https://www.npr.org/2020/10/27/927772107/kindred-dismantles-simplistic-views-of-neanderthals https://www.npr.org/2020/10/27/927772107/kindred-dismantles-...
  - sgt101 5y ago
    Yea - I linked it to avoid a link to a bookseller :)
    - slg 5y ago
      Yep, I was doing the exact same thing which is how I ended up at the NPR review despite booksellers being the top 3 results on Google.
fogihujy 5y ago
I'm not sure about the descriptions of Neanderthals presented in this article, but the idea that old tales of orcs and elves originated many millennia ago as descriptions of other human species or other primates isn't that far-fetched.
- BiteCode_dev 5y ago
  I always though that dragons were also sourced from a vague genetic memory passed down from very remote ancestors that met dino descendants.
  - BeniBoy 5y ago
    The other way around is more plausible to me: the way we reconstructed dinosaurs was influenced by the corpus of representations we developed with dragons.
    - littlestymaar 5y ago
      Oh, I never thought of that, but it could explain why the idea of dinosaur with feather sounds weird even though biologically it wouldn't be surprising at all.
  - fogihujy 5y ago
    Well, there's been a number of very large bird and reptile species that humanity has been in contact with since the dawn of man. Many of our forefathers were rather small compared to modern humans, and a gigantic serpent or amphibian would probably be outright terrifying for small early humans armed with rocks and spears. I'm not sure about genetic memory, but human oral tradition is very old, and while I haven't heard about any evidence suggesting it predates modern humans, I wouldn't be surprised if there are stories that turns out to be as old as human language is.
  - KptMarchewa 5y ago
    Or found their skeletons.
layoutIfNeeded 5y ago
Practically every sentence in this article should be prefixed with: “Wouldn’t it be amazing if …”
rebuilder 5y ago
Why do we have to posit non-human monsters as explanations for these myths? After all, there were (and still are) real monsters out there that would kill, rape, kidnap and torture people - people from other communities. Strange danger was serious business back in the day, why could that not evolve into all kinds of boogeymen?
- henearkr 5y ago
  This is what I thought when was evoked cannibalism: what if those were the traces of sapiens festing of neanderthalis (and not neanderthalis eating neanderthalis, as seems to be supposed in the text)?
  - DoingIsLearning 5y ago
    As far as I understand Neanderthal genes in Humans don't actually exist in the Y chromosome. That means that only female Neanderthals transmitted their genes down the Sapiens gene tree. This could mean all sort of things. Maybe Neanderthal Males with Female Humans didn't generate viable off-spring. Maybe Our selection process favored non-Neanderthal genes and it was phased out of the Y chromosome gene pool? Maybe as you said Sapiens have a much darker past?
    - saalweachter 5y ago
      Eh, I'd keep "that Y-line just didn't survive the last N0,000 years" as the default assumption. Just out of curiosity do you know if the Neanderthal mitochondrial line survives in humans today?
    - caymanjim 5y ago
      Given how human babies are already at the maximum size a human female can deliver, I suspect you may be on to something. Other species don't have such traumatic births, but human babies barely fit through the birth canal. Neanderthal babies were probably much larger. In particular, their skulls. If a Neanderthal male impregnated a human female, I wouldn't be surprised if it killed her. Conversely, a Neanderthal female probably had an easier time delivering a hybrid baby.
bambax 5y ago
Typo: "... made it highly unlikely that Neanderthals would have been unable to produce quantal speech" -> able
soapdog 5y ago
> Europeans defeated indigenous peoples throughout history, by superior technology and numbers. Oh boi, not this horrible and flawed argument again. People have learned nothing from recent research into the impact of diseases in that history? Popular books like "Guns, Germs, and Steel", and "1491" give you a view into these matters and provide one with references for their sources for research. This idea of "Europe won because it is good at tech" really needs to die. The best weapon Europe had when fighting indigenous people in the Americas was actually various kinds of pox.
- axguscbklp 5y ago
  True, but from what I understand the Europeans would probably have won anyway. In 1500 AD, indigenous Americans had about the same level of technological development that Europeans had had in 1500 BC, so I suspect that unfortunately even had diseases not played a role, it probably would just have been a matter of time before the Europeans managed to bring over enough people to overrun the Americas. It would have taken longer but I doubt that the indigenous Americans would have been able to adopt European technology fast enough and on a large enough scale to beat the Europeans back. Now on the other hand, if Europe had suffered something like 50%+ death from American diseases while indigenous Americans suffered much lower death tolls from European disease - in other words, the reverse of what actually happened - then I figure that all bets would have been off. In that timeline maybe the indigenous Americans would have had enough room to maneuver that they would have been able to adopt European technologies in time to defend their lands.
  - Bayart 5y ago
    >Now on the other hand, if Europe had suffered something like 50%+ death from American diseases while indigenous Americans suffered much lower death tolls from European disease - in other words, the reverse of what actually happened - then I figure that all bets would have been off. The Black Plague killed off 50% of the population in quite a few countries and it didn't result in any invasion. I'm not sure the rationale stands without a technological imbalance as a basis.
    - 5y ago
soufron 5y ago
Every article that begins with "Every human culture" should be considered as BS right away... edit: But after reading, even if most of the article is heavily biased, not prudent, etc. It's still interesting and thought-provoking. I might give the book a go. edit2: A better and most interesting point of view can be found in Julien d'Huy "Cosmogonies", which parallelized the corpus of myths and legends to genetic migrations - with the help of a bit of AI. Once you validate the theory that myths survive better than languages, and that they evolve with time, it's super interesting.
- deleted 5y ago
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fsloth 5y ago
This is cool fanfic but nothing to do with actual anthropological studies.
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sambeau 5y ago
This article also assumes that they were the orcs not us.
- sambeau 5y ago
  By which I mean: if we interbred with neanderthals so would our myths and folklore. As a hypothetical example: if, say, a neanderthal mother brought up interbred children it would be her myths about monsters that would be likely to be passed on.
YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
A nice fairytale. And like all fairytales it doesn't need to be falsifiable to be worth telling. >> If early Greek, Roman, Norse, and Chinese mythologies are anything to go by, the legends spun by early humans centre around an heroic human (almost always a man) who is pitted against an ugly, evil cruel monster with superhuman strength… As a PoGO (Person of Greek Origin) my impression of our ancients' myths and legends is somewhat different. Yes, there was the Titanomachy and the Gigantomachy, but neither Titans nor Giants could be mistaken for "orcs" or "ogres"; the former were nightmare beasts with tentacles and the latter simply had a hundred hands. But most of our mythology is about the sexual lives of the gods, particularly Zeus' transformations to various animals that allowed him to sneak into maidens' beds (no accounting for taste) or the deeds of great heroes like Hercules, who however typically fight chimeric monsters (like the chimera itself, or the sphinx, or the harpies etc) or actual beasts (like the Erymanthian Boar or the Stymphalian Birds) rather than big burly monster men. Where ancient Greek heroes fight beast-men, those are literally beast-men. The Minotaur is the child of a woman and a bull. The centaurs, who are not evil monsters, are a cross between man and horse. The sirens are depicted as birds with human heads. The Sphinx has a lion's body and a woman's head (there was clearly something going on with bestiality in ancient times). The cyclops Polyphemus and the giant Antaeus, slain by Heracles, are porbably the only examples of "orcs" that could be plausibly identified in Greek mythology. And even those are not very orc-like. Why would memories of Neanderthals be recorded in myths and legends as one-eyed giants? Now the tale of Antaeus is an interesting one: Heracles wrestles him and keeps winning but everytime Antaeus bounces back. At length Heracles realises that Antaeus is drawing power from the Earth. He grabs him by the waist and crushes him preventing him from touching the ground, and so he wins. There is a clear symbolism there, of victory over an enemy that draws his strength from the land. But what does it mean? Who was this enemy? It doesn't have to be another species: a more ancient tribe that pre-dated the tale will do fine. It's an interesting question but we will never know the answer. As with the Neanderthals, that should not be license to imagine whatver we fancy, though.
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- wolverine876 5y ago
peeters 5y ago
So even if we accept everything being said of the Neanderthals, this is left completely undefended: > Why does every culture have legends of monstrous humanoids, and why are they are always depicted as fearsome and dangerous? Because the legends were real. The orcs were real. Is the author really suggesting that these stories are the product of an unbroken chain of 50,000 years of oral tradition? If not, what do events from 50,000 years ago have to do with myths from 2000-6000 years ago?
- gpm 5y ago
  Are you suggesting that there isn't an unbroken chain of oral tradition? That for some generations in the middle every child didn't talk to their parents or other members of the older generation? It's a game of broken telephone no doubt, but I don't see how that chain could not exist.
  - TaupeRanger 5y ago
    I think the salient point is that it's likely, given our imaginations, that we would've concocted stories about monstrous humanoids regardless of whether they actually existed alongside us. It shouldn't be surprising.
  - username90 5y ago
    50k years would be ~2500 generations. I doubt any traces of oral traditions are left after thousands of generations.
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- Ozzie_osman 5y ago
  What we fear is probably a combination of nature and nurture. Our fear of orc-looking people could be a combination of 50K years of oral tradition AND us evolving to be scared of people who look like orcs.
- throwaway316943 5y ago
midjji 5y ago
It makes for a good story to be sure, but probably little else. Much like the popular myth of the noble savage influencing academics of the time, contemporary popular disdain for the people and cultures of the past colors many contemporary academics. Another weird thing, So we have found evidence of the feathers of dinosaurs, but not the fur of something from 40k years ago? that seems rather unlikely. In this case, the absence of evidence for fur is evidence of its absence, much like the absence of worked neanderthal clothing is. A better simpler explanation would be, they had decent subdermal isolation and brown fat. While most people today think humans cant work outside on a typical winter day in northern europe without clothes, they are just wrong. Go to any country with a snowy winter and ask the first person you meet if they have that one friend or acquaintance who goes about in shorts and tshirt during winter, who seems just absurdly resistant to cold in general. They will give you a name. Luck, ample food and cold growing up, and you too could be walking barefoot through the snow with me, feel the refreshing -5 C wind on your chest when snowboarding in a tshirt, and alway be told you everytime you leave somewhere that you arent wearing enough jackets, pants, scarfs, gloves, and hats. Besides its unnecessary for the story being told. Humans lived next to chimps and gorillas for millenia and they are furry, cannibalistic, violent tribal monsters. Fitting the story of orcs and goblins even better. But even that is unnecessary, people just like making shit up, but people are also terrible at actually doing that. So almost everything looks like a human or animal or combination.
- gpm 5y ago
  > So we have found evidence of the feathers of dinosaurs, but not the fur of something from 40k years ago? that seems rather unlikely Does it? Dinosaurs existed for hundreds of millions years, that's a lot of time for things to be preserved. Neanderthals for hundreds of thousands of years, that's not nearly as much. Sure, fur/feathers is less likely to be preserved for 65 million years (+ however far into the mesozioic you go) than 40 thousand years (+ however far back into the history of neanderthals you go), but by how many orders of magnitude? Is it enough to make up for the many orders of magnitude difference in the number of times it could be preserved?
  - evilduck 5y ago
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jamesmishra 5y ago
> The real question is why — why does every civilization have similar myths? Why does every culture have legends of monstrous humanoids, and why are they are always depicted as fearsome and dangerous? I assume that most myths of orcs, elves, dwarves, vampires, etc. were based on ugly-looking Homo sapiens as opposed to other hominid species. Humans have also had a strong incentive to (literally) dehumanize other tribes of humans.
ohples 5y ago
TIL what "InfoGalactic" is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vox_Day#Infogalactic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vox_Day#Infogalactic After clicking some of the links in this article I went to what looked very much like wikipedia, so much so i went on a typical half hour wikipedia-dive, but wasn't actually wikipeida (I have a big monitor and the links I clicked all directed to subsections of articles so I didn't see the info-galactic logo at the top). Really puts this article in a whole new (bad) light.
- turtle_san 5y ago
  I am glad InfoGalactic exists and try to tell other about it. It grows tiring, the character assassinations of right-wing biographies on wikipedia, for example controversies are presented in the opening paragraphs instead of being a sub-section. For example from the opening paragraph of Vox Day: >>Theodore Robert Beale (born August 21, 1968), also known as Vox Day, is an American far-right activist,[2] writer, musician, publisher, and video game designer. He has been described as a white supremacist,[3] a misogynist,[4] and part of the alt-right.[5][6][7] Now I would say InfoGalactic is politically neutral, I have not seen them applying bias against left-wing individuals. But even if they were right-wing that would be fine, even good. Mainstream morals/culture have been captured and manufactured in the image of a modern international leftism. And as someone on the right, it would be nice to see right-wing intellectualism go on the offensive for once and reclaim a sphere of influence. Cheers, I hope you enjoyed your InfoGalactic-dive, seems you liked it fine until Wiki told you not to.
  - HuangYuSan 5y ago
    Okay. I never heard of this guy before, but for someone who has written "The answer for those who support Western civilization, regardless of sex, color, or religion, is to embrace white tribalism, white separatism, and especially white Christian masculine rule", these are exactly the adjectives that shuld be in the opening paragraph of an encyclopaedia article about him. He is politically active and very extreme, which is noteworthy information.
  - reducesuffering 5y ago
AbrahamParangi 5y ago
Sometimes heterodox means “interesting and unfairly dismissed” and sometimes it means “absolutely nuts”. If Neanderthals were alive today I doubt we’d even class them as a separate species.
jablongo 5y ago
This article states that humans were likely pushed to near extinction by Neanderthals, with one figure being the at one point we were reduced to 50 individuals (??!!). How is this possible considering no Neanderthals ever lived in Africa? Were there periods where humans were also absent from that continent? Seems unlikely...
- fsloth 5y ago
  The article is entertaining bs. It's about as scientific as H.P.Lovecrafts "At the mountains of madness".
feliyur 5y ago
Humans have historically had much to fear from furry things with large teeth, so don't need to resort to questionable theories. The word "Orc" itself used to refer to Norse invaders, who did much of the same stuff "real" orcs do and unfortunately more (which is also directly related to what is now called xenophobia, or intolerance to foreigners and their culture). So a strange-looking humanoid with traits of a predatory animal is a natural monster.
daltont 5y ago
Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eaters_of_the_Dead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eaters_of_the_Dead or the movie adaptation, "The 13th Warrior" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120657/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120657/)
Smithalicious 5y ago
I am very skeptical - they have 99.7% identical DNA, but supposedly an extremely different phenotype.
- krapp 5y ago
  The similarity between human and chimpanzee DNA is about the same IIRC.
  - gpm 5y ago
    Googled this, quite a bit less is shared with a chimp. https://thednatests.com/how-much-dna-do-humans-share-with-other-animals/ https://thednatests.com/how-much-dna-do-humans-share-with-ot...
    - krapp 5y ago
      If you consider 98.8% to be quite a bit less than 99.7% then fair enough. It's still a lot.
- gpm 5y ago
  Eh, it's not that different. Humans have ineffective fur, and disorders exist that create a lot more of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertrichosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertrichosis Claims about skeletal differences are probably pretty well supported by physical evidence, and again, it's a reasonably small difference in size and scale. Differences in facial structure seem likely just from differences in skeletal structure, our face maps pretty closely to skeptical structure. But also, we can see pretty wide genetic variation in facial structure in humans, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Pastrana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Pastrana Humans are pretty cannibalistic already, I don't buy his evidence that neanderthals were, but a human could survive on an almost entirely meat diet, no reason to think neanderthals weren't more inclined to. Pupil shape seems like the farthest out there, but there is variation in pupil shape within the human population too. It's plausible... again I don't really buy his evidence as proof https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coloboma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coloboma In general I don't think this article is meant to say "they looked exactly like this", but "they probably looked monstrous", if it turns out there pupils were the same as humans, but also they had sharper more claw like nails, the point wouldn't change in the slightest.
simonh 5y ago
We've got plenty of examples of ordinary humans in documented history being mistaken for gods or supernatural beings. People report seeing ghosts, monsters, aliens and such all the time even now. There are low budget documentary TV shows about these sightings on the schedule constantly.
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rando112358 5y ago
The work of Stanislaw Szukalski adds some interesting info to this topic. https://web.archive.org/web/20080208204506re_/najmita.150m.com/szukalski/macimowa/yetisyny_ang.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20080208204506re_/najmita.150m.c...
chadlavi 5y ago
If this is being presented as a work of speculative fiction, it's pretty neat. If it's being presented as serious academic work, it's asinine bullshit.
Rohpakle 5y ago
Orcs were the primary foot soldiers of the Dark Lords' armies and sometimes the weakest (but most numerous) of their servants. They were created by the first Dark Lord, Morgoth, before the First Age and served him and later his successor in their quest to dominate Middle-earth and you cannot convince me otherwise.
SamBam 5y ago
I feel like either I am very confused about something, or the author is: > the population of humans dropped to as few as 50 individuals. Something terrible happened to the human race. > When did this population bottleneck occur? A number of teams have analyzed mutation rates to find out. The mutation rate in our Y chromosomes suggests the bottleneck occurred 37,000 to 49,000 years ago. Is the author really suggesting that the human population was down to 50 individuals 50,000 years ago? How on earth does this square with human migration? Humans were already spreading near Australia 50,000 years ago, let alone Europe and Asia. Is he suggesting that all the fossils throughout Eurasia and near Oceania were deposited by earlier humans, then nearly every human on the planet died at the same time, and then the survivors all re-spread to those areas, without leaving any archeological evidence of this?
- rjsw 5y ago
  > Is the author really suggesting that the human population was down to 50 individuals 50,000 years ago? The theory [1] has been around for a while. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory
  - SamBam 5y ago
    10,000 humans across the globe following a large volcanic event is quite different from a huddling tribe of 50 humans following Neanderthal predation.
  - realsimplesynd 5y ago
    I've heard it used as an explanation for our species level sense of camaraderie and cooperation. A near extinction event may have been one of the best things to ever happen to us. (I don't entirely agree, but it's an interesting thought)
- 3r8riacz 5y ago
  This part almost feels like confirming Noah's Ark
orcasushi 5y ago
I think many comments (and also researchers in the comment articles) are rejecting the idea of an troll like neanderthal too fast. Yes, some details are rather fantasy then based on real research, but the overall idea makes sense. Controversy around why the neanderthal went extinct exists for a while now. I think it is very unlikely that a successful human-like species goes extinct without a fight. They where stronger and bigger then homo sapiens. If it is true that they replaced homo sapiens as the dominant species for a while then maybe they are not the friendly giants they are thought to be. Even homo sapiens cannibalize, so that some physically stronger Neanderthals would also do this seems not unlikely. The last neanderthals might have lived in relic populations in north eurasia until several thousand years ago without leaving much archeological evidence. Also oral traditions might survive for very very long. But yeah, maybe it is not so politically correct to 'talk bad' about a race that fell victim to genocide. We rather focus on the positive things about them.
midjji 5y ago
One really cool thing with global warming is the old stuff frozen in the glaciers and ice slowly being unearthed. There might just be a neanderthal or two, or some of the other early hominids. It would answer a great many questions and provide invaluable material for genetic modification.
openasocket 5y ago
So I think this argument can be broken up into two parts: (1) that all of these different myths and legends across cultures (Cyclops, bugbear, ogre, oni, etc.) have a common root, and (2) that Neanderthals are the source of this common root. This article, and most of the criticism, are focused on the second part of that argument, largely because that's where most of the concrete evidence and facts can be considered. But there's a lot to criticize about the first part of that argument as well. There's so many differences between all of these different stories that I can't really imagine there is a common origin point going back tens of thousands of years. I mean the only common thread here is a large humanoid creature that eats people, and even that vague description leaves out more than a few of the mythological creatures referenced in the article. Is it so hard to believe that people could come up with such an idea on their own, independently and without a real-life example to work with?

201 points by zimbu668 5y ago

> and carried off and raped our women. (How did you think the Neanderthal DNA got into our genome?) I don't know if Neandertals were rapist, but given the behavior of Sapiens, it wouldn't be completely surprising if it was in fact the opposite: Sapiens abducting Neandertal females and raping them…

Igelau 5y ago
That's kind of tricky considering how much stronger and more robust an average Neanderthal would have been compared to an average Sapiens.
- AbrahamParangi 5y ago
  They were approximately the same size as us. Shorter but wider and on the whole around the same weight.
  - jtms 5y ago
    Size and weight being the same doesn't mean they weren't far strong than homo sapiens. We are quite a bit bigger and heavier than chimps, but chimps are about twice as strong as a typical human.
    - AbrahamParangi 5y ago
      We are also far more closely related to Neanderthals than to chimps. Also it’s not like there’s any correlation between % Neanderthal DNA and physical strength. The probable explanation is that they were extremely human in nearly all respects.
    - littlestymaar 5y ago
      > We are quite a bit bigger and heavier than chimps, but chimps are about twice as strong as a typical human. How is strength measured here? Because that sounds strange for two species that close genetically speaking to have such a big difference on how muscles work. I would expect 1kg of chimp muscle to have roughly the same strength as one 1kg of human muscle, and having a muscle/whole body mass ratio in the same ballpark. But our muscles are localized fairly differently, with much more muscles in our lower body so depending how you measure, you could get really different results. Also, the typical industrial-world-human is pretty weak compared to what the average humans can be under the right conditions so it may bias the measure too.
- littlestymaar 5y ago
  Ambush, outnumbering, night raiding, etc. War is almost never a matter of who have the upper hand in a one-vs-one fair combat…
SubiculumCode 5y ago
Obviously it is both. Rape in nature is extremely common (as defined by female trying to escape, but male pinning it down). There is no reason that both neanderthal and homo-sapient males wouldn't have engaged in this behavior...as it is only cultural taboos, norms, and theory of mind that prevent its occurrence.
JoeAltmaier 5y ago
One data point: a Homo Sapiens settlement with a child burial who was 1/8 Neanderthal. May have been born in the settlement? That original mother may have been of the settlement. Anyway three generations of mixed heritage, and still worth burying with reverence.
- deleted 5y ago
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shp0ngle 5y ago

The first comment on the substack links to this article, from 2010, that basically refutes this theory and this book. https://blog.waikato.ac.nz/bioblog/2010/10/killer-neandertals-does-this-o/ https://blog.waikato.ac.nz/bioblog/2010/10/killer-neandertal...

roenxi 5y ago
"Proves" and "refutes" are both pretty vague words in a historical context. In my experience when historians say "I will prove this to you" they typically mean "not only is it a good story, but unusually I have at least 1 piece of actual evidence". So in the loose world of history where nobody has any idea, maybe the idea is refuted. Realistically, probably both posts are wrong but we'll never know about which aspects. 10,000 years is a long time, there should have been multiple occurrences of the impossible. History is huge, and we only have tattered records for 1 in ~3,000 years events.
- quietbritishjim 5y ago
  The article linked by the parent is very clear about when things are unknown or suspected but unproven (from real but inconclusive archaeological evidence). In contrast, it shows that the book in question is completely speculative (not based on any archaeological evidence whatsoever) while presenting itself as unequivocally correct. There is no need to beat around the bush. The linked article fully refutes the original one.
  - roenxi 5y ago
    The book is a work of history. Of course it is completely speculative. The point of historical books is to convince people to read them, typically they have a fairly thick dose of spice and storytelling. Thucydides wasn't trying to bore people. The first "evidence that they may have had the technology to make sewn garments" link [0] looks like some dude ran a model. Now it is certainly possible to claim that as conclusive evidence. But probably only in a debate between historians, I wouldn't bank on it. 50,000 years ago is a long time. There is not a lot of confidence about how things happened, and reality defies mixing generalisation and truth. [0] https://anthropology.net/2009/06/26/neanderthals-dried-fresh-meat-wore-tailored-clothing-energy-study/ https://anthropology.net/2009/06/26/neanderthals-dried-fresh...

sgt101 5y ago

If anyone is interested in a more informed and modern take try https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindred_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindred_(book)

slg 5y ago
That might be the shortest Wikipedia article I have ever seen. Here[1] is a review from NPR that provides more info. [1] - https://www.npr.org/2020/10/27/927772107/kindred-dismantles-simplistic-views-of-neanderthals https://www.npr.org/2020/10/27/927772107/kindred-dismantles-...
- sgt101 5y ago
  Yea - I linked it to avoid a link to a bookseller :)
  - slg 5y ago
    Yep, I was doing the exact same thing which is how I ended up at the NPR review despite booksellers being the top 3 results on Google.

fogihujy 5y ago

I'm not sure about the descriptions of Neanderthals presented in this article, but the idea that old tales of orcs and elves originated many millennia ago as descriptions of other human species or other primates isn't that far-fetched.

BiteCode_dev 5y ago
I always though that dragons were also sourced from a vague genetic memory passed down from very remote ancestors that met dino descendants.
- BeniBoy 5y ago
  The other way around is more plausible to me: the way we reconstructed dinosaurs was influenced by the corpus of representations we developed with dragons.
  - littlestymaar 5y ago
    Oh, I never thought of that, but it could explain why the idea of dinosaur with feather sounds weird even though biologically it wouldn't be surprising at all.
- fogihujy 5y ago
  Well, there's been a number of very large bird and reptile species that humanity has been in contact with since the dawn of man. Many of our forefathers were rather small compared to modern humans, and a gigantic serpent or amphibian would probably be outright terrifying for small early humans armed with rocks and spears. I'm not sure about genetic memory, but human oral tradition is very old, and while I haven't heard about any evidence suggesting it predates modern humans, I wouldn't be surprised if there are stories that turns out to be as old as human language is.
- KptMarchewa 5y ago
  Or found their skeletons.

layoutIfNeeded 5y ago

Practically every sentence in this article should be prefixed with: “Wouldn’t it be amazing if …”

rebuilder 5y ago

Why do we have to posit non-human monsters as explanations for these myths? After all, there were (and still are) real monsters out there that would kill, rape, kidnap and torture people - people from other communities. Strange danger was serious business back in the day, why could that not evolve into all kinds of boogeymen?

henearkr 5y ago
This is what I thought when was evoked cannibalism: what if those were the traces of sapiens festing of neanderthalis (and not neanderthalis eating neanderthalis, as seems to be supposed in the text)?
- DoingIsLearning 5y ago
  As far as I understand Neanderthal genes in Humans don't actually exist in the Y chromosome. That means that only female Neanderthals transmitted their genes down the Sapiens gene tree. This could mean all sort of things. Maybe Neanderthal Males with Female Humans didn't generate viable off-spring. Maybe Our selection process favored non-Neanderthal genes and it was phased out of the Y chromosome gene pool? Maybe as you said Sapiens have a much darker past?
  - saalweachter 5y ago
    Eh, I'd keep "that Y-line just didn't survive the last N0,000 years" as the default assumption. Just out of curiosity do you know if the Neanderthal mitochondrial line survives in humans today?
  - caymanjim 5y ago
    Given how human babies are already at the maximum size a human female can deliver, I suspect you may be on to something. Other species don't have such traumatic births, but human babies barely fit through the birth canal. Neanderthal babies were probably much larger. In particular, their skulls. If a Neanderthal male impregnated a human female, I wouldn't be surprised if it killed her. Conversely, a Neanderthal female probably had an easier time delivering a hybrid baby.

bambax 5y ago

Typo: "... made it highly unlikely that Neanderthals would have been unable to produce quantal speech" -> able

soapdog 5y ago

> Europeans defeated indigenous peoples throughout history, by superior technology and numbers. Oh boi, not this horrible and flawed argument again. People have learned nothing from recent research into the impact of diseases in that history? Popular books like "Guns, Germs, and Steel", and "1491" give you a view into these matters and provide one with references for their sources for research. This idea of "Europe won because it is good at tech" really needs to die. The best weapon Europe had when fighting indigenous people in the Americas was actually various kinds of pox.

axguscbklp 5y ago
True, but from what I understand the Europeans would probably have won anyway. In 1500 AD, indigenous Americans had about the same level of technological development that Europeans had had in 1500 BC, so I suspect that unfortunately even had diseases not played a role, it probably would just have been a matter of time before the Europeans managed to bring over enough people to overrun the Americas. It would have taken longer but I doubt that the indigenous Americans would have been able to adopt European technology fast enough and on a large enough scale to beat the Europeans back. Now on the other hand, if Europe had suffered something like 50%+ death from American diseases while indigenous Americans suffered much lower death tolls from European disease - in other words, the reverse of what actually happened - then I figure that all bets would have been off. In that timeline maybe the indigenous Americans would have had enough room to maneuver that they would have been able to adopt European technologies in time to defend their lands.
- Bayart 5y ago
  >Now on the other hand, if Europe had suffered something like 50%+ death from American diseases while indigenous Americans suffered much lower death tolls from European disease - in other words, the reverse of what actually happened - then I figure that all bets would have been off. The Black Plague killed off 50% of the population in quite a few countries and it didn't result in any invasion. I'm not sure the rationale stands without a technological imbalance as a basis.
  - 5y ago

soufron 5y ago

Every article that begins with "Every human culture" should be considered as BS right away... edit: But after reading, even if most of the article is heavily biased, not prudent, etc. It's still interesting and thought-provoking. I might give the book a go. edit2: A better and most interesting point of view can be found in Julien d'Huy "Cosmogonies", which parallelized the corpus of myths and legends to genetic migrations - with the help of a bit of AI. Once you validate the theory that myths survive better than languages, and that they evolve with time, it's super interesting.

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fsloth 5y ago

This is cool fanfic but nothing to do with actual anthropological studies.

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sambeau 5y ago

This article also assumes that they were the orcs not us.

sambeau 5y ago
By which I mean: if we interbred with neanderthals so would our myths and folklore. As a hypothetical example: if, say, a neanderthal mother brought up interbred children it would be her myths about monsters that would be likely to be passed on.

YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago

A nice fairytale. And like all fairytales it doesn't need to be falsifiable to be worth telling. >> If early Greek, Roman, Norse, and Chinese mythologies are anything to go by, the legends spun by early humans centre around an heroic human (almost always a man) who is pitted against an ugly, evil cruel monster with superhuman strength… As a PoGO (Person of Greek Origin) my impression of our ancients' myths and legends is somewhat different. Yes, there was the Titanomachy and the Gigantomachy, but neither Titans nor Giants could be mistaken for "orcs" or "ogres"; the former were nightmare beasts with tentacles and the latter simply had a hundred hands. But most of our mythology is about the sexual lives of the gods, particularly Zeus' transformations to various animals that allowed him to sneak into maidens' beds (no accounting for taste) or the deeds of great heroes like Hercules, who however typically fight chimeric monsters (like the chimera itself, or the sphinx, or the harpies etc) or actual beasts (like the Erymanthian Boar or the Stymphalian Birds) rather than big burly monster men. Where ancient Greek heroes fight beast-men, those are literally beast-men. The Minotaur is the child of a woman and a bull. The centaurs, who are not evil monsters, are a cross between man and horse. The sirens are depicted as birds with human heads. The Sphinx has a lion's body and a woman's head (there was clearly something going on with bestiality in ancient times). The cyclops Polyphemus and the giant Antaeus, slain by Heracles, are porbably the only examples of "orcs" that could be plausibly identified in Greek mythology. And even those are not very orc-like. Why would memories of Neanderthals be recorded in myths and legends as one-eyed giants? Now the tale of Antaeus is an interesting one: Heracles wrestles him and keeps winning but everytime Antaeus bounces back. At length Heracles realises that Antaeus is drawing power from the Earth. He grabs him by the waist and crushes him preventing him from touching the ground, and so he wins. There is a clear symbolism there, of victory over an enemy that draws his strength from the land. But what does it mean? Who was this enemy? It doesn't have to be another species: a more ancient tribe that pre-dated the tale will do fine. It's an interesting question but we will never know the answer. As with the Neanderthals, that should not be license to imagine whatver we fancy, though.

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wolverine876 5y ago

peeters 5y ago

So even if we accept everything being said of the Neanderthals, this is left completely undefended: > Why does every culture have legends of monstrous humanoids, and why are they are always depicted as fearsome and dangerous? Because the legends were real. The orcs were real. Is the author really suggesting that these stories are the product of an unbroken chain of 50,000 years of oral tradition? If not, what do events from 50,000 years ago have to do with myths from 2000-6000 years ago?

gpm 5y ago
Are you suggesting that there isn't an unbroken chain of oral tradition? That for some generations in the middle every child didn't talk to their parents or other members of the older generation? It's a game of broken telephone no doubt, but I don't see how that chain could not exist.
- TaupeRanger 5y ago
  I think the salient point is that it's likely, given our imaginations, that we would've concocted stories about monstrous humanoids regardless of whether they actually existed alongside us. It shouldn't be surprising.
- username90 5y ago
  50k years would be ~2500 generations. I doubt any traces of oral traditions are left after thousands of generations.
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Ozzie_osman 5y ago
What we fear is probably a combination of nature and nurture. Our fear of orc-looking people could be a combination of 50K years of oral tradition AND us evolving to be scared of people who look like orcs.
throwaway316943 5y ago

midjji 5y ago

It makes for a good story to be sure, but probably little else. Much like the popular myth of the noble savage influencing academics of the time, contemporary popular disdain for the people and cultures of the past colors many contemporary academics. Another weird thing, So we have found evidence of the feathers of dinosaurs, but not the fur of something from 40k years ago? that seems rather unlikely. In this case, the absence of evidence for fur is evidence of its absence, much like the absence of worked neanderthal clothing is. A better simpler explanation would be, they had decent subdermal isolation and brown fat. While most people today think humans cant work outside on a typical winter day in northern europe without clothes, they are just wrong. Go to any country with a snowy winter and ask the first person you meet if they have that one friend or acquaintance who goes about in shorts and tshirt during winter, who seems just absurdly resistant to cold in general. They will give you a name. Luck, ample food and cold growing up, and you too could be walking barefoot through the snow with me, feel the refreshing -5 C wind on your chest when snowboarding in a tshirt, and alway be told you everytime you leave somewhere that you arent wearing enough jackets, pants, scarfs, gloves, and hats. Besides its unnecessary for the story being told. Humans lived next to chimps and gorillas for millenia and they are furry, cannibalistic, violent tribal monsters. Fitting the story of orcs and goblins even better. But even that is unnecessary, people just like making shit up, but people are also terrible at actually doing that. So almost everything looks like a human or animal or combination.

gpm 5y ago
> So we have found evidence of the feathers of dinosaurs, but not the fur of something from 40k years ago? that seems rather unlikely Does it? Dinosaurs existed for hundreds of millions years, that's a lot of time for things to be preserved. Neanderthals for hundreds of thousands of years, that's not nearly as much. Sure, fur/feathers is less likely to be preserved for 65 million years (+ however far into the mesozioic you go) than 40 thousand years (+ however far back into the history of neanderthals you go), but by how many orders of magnitude? Is it enough to make up for the many orders of magnitude difference in the number of times it could be preserved?
- evilduck 5y ago

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jamesmishra 5y ago

> The real question is why — why does every civilization have similar myths? Why does every culture have legends of monstrous humanoids, and why are they are always depicted as fearsome and dangerous? I assume that most myths of orcs, elves, dwarves, vampires, etc. were based on ugly-looking Homo sapiens as opposed to other hominid species. Humans have also had a strong incentive to (literally) dehumanize other tribes of humans.

ohples 5y ago

TIL what "InfoGalactic" is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vox_Day#Infogalactic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vox_Day#Infogalactic After clicking some of the links in this article I went to what looked very much like wikipedia, so much so i went on a typical half hour wikipedia-dive, but wasn't actually wikipeida (I have a big monitor and the links I clicked all directed to subsections of articles so I didn't see the info-galactic logo at the top). Really puts this article in a whole new (bad) light.

turtle_san 5y ago
I am glad InfoGalactic exists and try to tell other about it. It grows tiring, the character assassinations of right-wing biographies on wikipedia, for example controversies are presented in the opening paragraphs instead of being a sub-section. For example from the opening paragraph of Vox Day: >>Theodore Robert Beale (born August 21, 1968), also known as Vox Day, is an American far-right activist,[2] writer, musician, publisher, and video game designer. He has been described as a white supremacist,[3] a misogynist,[4] and part of the alt-right.[5][6][7] Now I would say InfoGalactic is politically neutral, I have not seen them applying bias against left-wing individuals. But even if they were right-wing that would be fine, even good. Mainstream morals/culture have been captured and manufactured in the image of a modern international leftism. And as someone on the right, it would be nice to see right-wing intellectualism go on the offensive for once and reclaim a sphere of influence. Cheers, I hope you enjoyed your InfoGalactic-dive, seems you liked it fine until Wiki told you not to.
- HuangYuSan 5y ago
  Okay. I never heard of this guy before, but for someone who has written "The answer for those who support Western civilization, regardless of sex, color, or religion, is to embrace white tribalism, white separatism, and especially white Christian masculine rule", these are exactly the adjectives that shuld be in the opening paragraph of an encyclopaedia article about him. He is politically active and very extreme, which is noteworthy information.
- reducesuffering 5y ago

AbrahamParangi 5y ago

Sometimes heterodox means “interesting and unfairly dismissed” and sometimes it means “absolutely nuts”. If Neanderthals were alive today I doubt we’d even class them as a separate species.

jablongo 5y ago

This article states that humans were likely pushed to near extinction by Neanderthals, with one figure being the at one point we were reduced to 50 individuals (??!!). How is this possible considering no Neanderthals ever lived in Africa? Were there periods where humans were also absent from that continent? Seems unlikely...

fsloth 5y ago
The article is entertaining bs. It's about as scientific as H.P.Lovecrafts "At the mountains of madness".

feliyur 5y ago

Humans have historically had much to fear from furry things with large teeth, so don't need to resort to questionable theories. The word "Orc" itself used to refer to Norse invaders, who did much of the same stuff "real" orcs do and unfortunately more (which is also directly related to what is now called xenophobia, or intolerance to foreigners and their culture). So a strange-looking humanoid with traits of a predatory animal is a natural monster.

daltont 5y ago

Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eaters_of_the_Dead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eaters_of_the_Dead or the movie adaptation, "The 13th Warrior" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120657/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120657/)

Smithalicious 5y ago

I am very skeptical - they have 99.7% identical DNA, but supposedly an extremely different phenotype.

krapp 5y ago
The similarity between human and chimpanzee DNA is about the same IIRC.
- gpm 5y ago
  Googled this, quite a bit less is shared with a chimp. https://thednatests.com/how-much-dna-do-humans-share-with-other-animals/ https://thednatests.com/how-much-dna-do-humans-share-with-ot...
  - krapp 5y ago
    If you consider 98.8% to be quite a bit less than 99.7% then fair enough. It's still a lot.
gpm 5y ago
Eh, it's not that different. Humans have ineffective fur, and disorders exist that create a lot more of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertrichosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertrichosis Claims about skeletal differences are probably pretty well supported by physical evidence, and again, it's a reasonably small difference in size and scale. Differences in facial structure seem likely just from differences in skeletal structure, our face maps pretty closely to skeptical structure. But also, we can see pretty wide genetic variation in facial structure in humans, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Pastrana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Pastrana Humans are pretty cannibalistic already, I don't buy his evidence that neanderthals were, but a human could survive on an almost entirely meat diet, no reason to think neanderthals weren't more inclined to. Pupil shape seems like the farthest out there, but there is variation in pupil shape within the human population too. It's plausible... again I don't really buy his evidence as proof https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coloboma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coloboma In general I don't think this article is meant to say "they looked exactly like this", but "they probably looked monstrous", if it turns out there pupils were the same as humans, but also they had sharper more claw like nails, the point wouldn't change in the slightest.

simonh 5y ago

We've got plenty of examples of ordinary humans in documented history being mistaken for gods or supernatural beings. People report seeing ghosts, monsters, aliens and such all the time even now. There are low budget documentary TV shows about these sightings on the schedule constantly.

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rando112358 5y ago

The work of Stanislaw Szukalski adds some interesting info to this topic. https://web.archive.org/web/20080208204506re_/najmita.150m.com/szukalski/macimowa/yetisyny_ang.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20080208204506re_/najmita.150m.c...

chadlavi 5y ago

If this is being presented as a work of speculative fiction, it's pretty neat. If it's being presented as serious academic work, it's asinine bullshit.

Rohpakle 5y ago

Orcs were the primary foot soldiers of the Dark Lords' armies and sometimes the weakest (but most numerous) of their servants. They were created by the first Dark Lord, Morgoth, before the First Age and served him and later his successor in their quest to dominate Middle-earth and you cannot convince me otherwise.

SamBam 5y ago

I feel like either I am very confused about something, or the author is: > the population of humans dropped to as few as 50 individuals. Something terrible happened to the human race. > When did this population bottleneck occur? A number of teams have analyzed mutation rates to find out. The mutation rate in our Y chromosomes suggests the bottleneck occurred 37,000 to 49,000 years ago. Is the author really suggesting that the human population was down to 50 individuals 50,000 years ago? How on earth does this square with human migration? Humans were already spreading near Australia 50,000 years ago, let alone Europe and Asia. Is he suggesting that all the fossils throughout Eurasia and near Oceania were deposited by earlier humans, then nearly every human on the planet died at the same time, and then the survivors all re-spread to those areas, without leaving any archeological evidence of this?

rjsw 5y ago
> Is the author really suggesting that the human population was down to 50 individuals 50,000 years ago? The theory [1] has been around for a while. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory
- SamBam 5y ago
  10,000 humans across the globe following a large volcanic event is quite different from a huddling tribe of 50 humans following Neanderthal predation.
- realsimplesynd 5y ago
  I've heard it used as an explanation for our species level sense of camaraderie and cooperation. A near extinction event may have been one of the best things to ever happen to us. (I don't entirely agree, but it's an interesting thought)
3r8riacz 5y ago
This part almost feels like confirming Noah's Ark

orcasushi 5y ago

I think many comments (and also researchers in the comment articles) are rejecting the idea of an troll like neanderthal too fast. Yes, some details are rather fantasy then based on real research, but the overall idea makes sense. Controversy around why the neanderthal went extinct exists for a while now. I think it is very unlikely that a successful human-like species goes extinct without a fight. They where stronger and bigger then homo sapiens. If it is true that they replaced homo sapiens as the dominant species for a while then maybe they are not the friendly giants they are thought to be. Even homo sapiens cannibalize, so that some physically stronger Neanderthals would also do this seems not unlikely. The last neanderthals might have lived in relic populations in north eurasia until several thousand years ago without leaving much archeological evidence. Also oral traditions might survive for very very long. But yeah, maybe it is not so politically correct to 'talk bad' about a race that fell victim to genocide. We rather focus on the positive things about them.

midjji 5y ago

One really cool thing with global warming is the old stuff frozen in the glaciers and ice slowly being unearthed. There might just be a neanderthal or two, or some of the other early hominids. It would answer a great many questions and provide invaluable material for genetic modification.

openasocket 5y ago

So I think this argument can be broken up into two parts: (1) that all of these different myths and legends across cultures (Cyclops, bugbear, ogre, oni, etc.) have a common root, and (2) that Neanderthals are the source of this common root. This article, and most of the criticism, are focused on the second part of that argument, largely because that's where most of the concrete evidence and facts can be considered. But there's a lot to criticize about the first part of that argument as well. There's so many differences between all of these different stories that I can't really imagine there is a common origin point going back tens of thousands of years. I mean the only common thread here is a large humanoid creature that eats people, and even that vague description leaves out more than a few of the mythological creatures referenced in the article. Is it so hard to believe that people could come up with such an idea on their own, independently and without a real-life example to work with?