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There’s a theory that Neanderthals didn’t have very strong language skills. So just like you can communicate with the dog reasonably well, maybe we could have s
by thehappypm 5y ago
There’s a theory that Neanderthals didn’t have very strong language skills. So just like you can communicate with the dog reasonably well, maybe we could have sort of communicated with Neanderthals. But nothing resembling the rich conversation that Homo sapiens is capable of. Bearing that theory in mind, the humans would have just been much more able to out-compete, deceive, and defeat Neanderthals little by little over time.
“Winter is coming. Should we migrate down to the coast? Last winter, there were lots of crabs, but my dad said many winters ago there was a terrible flood that killed many of his friends. We could stay here and try to gather as much wood as we can to keep warm and try to hunt the deer. The dumb people are wandering up the mountain. It’s always cold up there. They won’t survive.”
- hunterb123 5y agoDoesn't seem like a very sound theory, it's just more "Neanderthals were more stupid" with a backwards reasoning why they lasted so long. It's more likely they were successful but slowly bred into the larger Homo Sapien population over time, judging from everyone's genetics today. Caucasians have way too high of a percentage of Neanderthal for them to have been killed off. Most of their population bred in.
- thehappypm 5y agoIt’s a core argument in Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari.
- hunterb123 5y agoOk, he's most likely wrong. Interbreeding is pretty much proven. Do you know why he thought they didn't have strong language skills and how he linked that to deception and such or was he guessing? Because we have genetic tests nowadays, and it looks like they all bred in from the high percentages people have.
- amanaplanacanal 5y agoWouldn't current percentages depend more on how adaptive those particular genes are than what the starting percentage was? How many generations between then and now?
- thehappypm 5y agoInterbreeding did happen but it’s probably not true that Neanderthals got wholesale assimilated into Homo sapiens. More that there was some low level of interbreeding. I recommend reading the book, and also I would not recommend dismissing a respected book in one sentence, but I will say that the argument is largely anthropological. that the millions of years of human existence without development into more advanced civilizations can best be explained by language and oral history. More specifically, the ability to think in abstract and communicate it to others.
- hunterb123 5y ago> Interbreeding did happen but it’s probably not true that Neanderthals got wholesale assimilated into Homo sapiens. More that there was some low level of interbreeding. Why is it probably not true? It's the simplest reasoning. Why did they have to be deceived through language or annihilated, but slightly fornicated? > I recommend reading the book, and also I would not recommend dismissing a respected book in one sentence Seems reading the book wouldn't help me if you read it and can't argue the points on it's behalf. I'll ask this again: Do you know why he thought they didn't have strong language skills and how he linked that to annihilation via deception and such or was he guessing?
- Spooky23 5y agoThe cave paintings they left behind suggest otherwise.
- thehappypm 5y agoWhy does a painting imply complex language?
- Spooky23 5y agoCave paintings are in many cases real artistic expressions of animal scenes. Some use the contours of the caves to almost deliver an animation effect. It seems unlikely that an entity capable of depicting a nuanced abstract scene would be unable to verbally express similar concepts.