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Oof. It's an important find (AKA the Divje Babe flute[1]), but it's very hard to stay tuned in when they utter the phrase "spiritual being". That's quite a thin

Oof. It's an important find (AKA the Divje Babe flute[1]), but it's very hard to stay tuned in when they utter the phrase "spiritual being". That's quite a thing to say. How do you measure spirits these days? With wheels, rods, or clocks? So far as intelligent goes, the Neanderthals might have well been smarter than the first Sapiens to cross their path, but were disadvantaged by other factors, like a potentially ruinous birth rate, more restricted diet, and poorer (or more restricted) eyesight. One interesting idea I've heard . . for a story . . imagine if sapiens spread HGT-style via a disease, that was transmitted by violence and rape. Like a bio-zombie, or the "Crossed" virus from "Crossed +100" (and which was invented by Garth Ennis, I guess). From the neanderthal perspective, it would have felt like Planet Zombie afterwards - and then they have to make their way among these terrifying new humanoids. The horror of the future. It would probably be more interesting moved to the present day, with a speciating change propagating via what looks like zombie bites, but which actually reflects the early stages of a new species, some weird more-fully-eusocial variant of homo adapted for extreme density. [1] Which was really, really controversial in its day, and to some extent still is.

jaredhallen 3y ago
I've had a similar theory for a long time, admittedly based on basically absolutely nothing. Looking back at history, say WWII, what would have happened if the Axis had won? History is written by the victors, as they say. I have to imagine that things would be perceived differently today, had that happened. Something along the lines of the Heroic Axis defeating the Evil Allies. Having observed the way Homo Sapiens often behave, I've long wondered if we were the Axis, and the Neanderthals the Allies, so to speak.
- MilStdJunkie 3y ago
  Alternate History is a guilty pleasure of mine too! Except, it shouldn't really be called guilty, should it? Because those "alternates" give us insight into maybe - possibly - isolating crucial factors in human history. I'm not convinced there was any possible scenario where the Axis could win post December 1941, after the retreat from Moscow and the Americans entry. Particularly the latter. I remain convinced that America was the deciding factor in the conflict, and this should not be surprising looking at the raw production numbers. Soviet production levels shocked Hitler into outright disbelief[1], but even those numbers - numbers literally extracted from the blood of the Soviet nation - were half of American peacetime productive capacity. That's not even counting resource production differential (oil, coal, steel, etc), where the USA had more capacity than the rest of the Allies combined - several times over. Dulles and many others wished fervently for a mid-1945 pivot versus the Red Army, to meet them as far east as possible, "Allies" be damned (Stalin had never dealt with the Western allies in good faith, and honestly, Churchill didn't rush to shake hands either). It's hard to see how a March/April pivot could happen without an integration of the Wehrmacht into the Western Allies. How this would have gone down, it's probably not very pretty. We were already the number one employer of former Reich employees by that time, and going further would . . well, let's say that "A Night in the Garden" was a movie that got made for a reason. In some ways, the Reich's ideology was made more for America than it was for Germany, for a nation that still had yet a giant wild of "savages" to conquer and dehumanize. [1] https://erenow.net/ww/stalingrad/15.php https://erenow.net/ww/stalingrad/15.php
precompute 3y ago
Well... sure, but if you're really pushing the admixture hypothesis you'd necessarily need to assume that the species that lived in a more densely populated group was likely less individualistic. Add the Neanderthals' survival in sub-zero temps and you can easily claim that the Neanderthals weren't just "a little smarter" than the homo sapiens, they were likely doing 2 or 3 SDs on them, easily. Plus, them being acclimated to the cold would give them much better, not worse, eyesight, because they'd have to cross large distances and actually be able to make out things in the ice, and would also need good peripheral vision for protection from really bright light. "ruinous birth rate" doesn't really make sense... unless you compare the population of the neanderthals to that of the sapiens. By all accounts, the neanderthals lived in small groups, often not even over 30 individuals. They also likely had a very varied diet, or at least a very rich diet, because you can't be expected to be dumb and undernourished if you're eking out centuries in a cave because the weather outside is cold enough to freeze your bones. As for the last paragraph... agreed. Even the most skillful warriors can be overtaken by a huge wave. Nothing to fight.
tsojer 3y ago
I'd say that "Spiritual" here stands for the human spirit, rather than some kind religious spirituality. Spirit being everything surpassing mere cognitive actions needed for survival. The finding (like many other) strongly implies that neanderthals had the ability of abstract thought and creative urges. This should in no way be surprising since neanderthals appear at a quite late and developed stage of the human evolution. Neanderthals are generally quite an interesting topic, but equally interesting is the approach and prejudice of the scientific community towards them throughout the history. Research on neanderthals has been littered with logical fallacies by researchers who were absolute experts in their field, but refused the idea of neanderthals being a human subspecies or a remotely intelligent or capable one, just because it didn't fit in their personal or religious worldview. Upon discovery of neanderthals, leading anatomists at the time were like "yup, that's just a disease ridden regular human". More skeletons crop up and it's obvious that they have similar traits all across the world, and they are still going "Yup, so many disease ridden humans, how strange". Only after a whole cave in Vindia was found with more than 100 individuals that the scientific community half-unwillingly conceded that oh well there might have been another (sub)species parallel to homo sapiens. And that opened another can of worms and it's been decades of trying to prove how Neanderthals were intellectually inferior to Homo Sapiens. Those fallacies still exist today, and happen to very prominent scientists. I recently read a scientific articles from the late nineties by two anatomists who reconstructed the vocal tract of neanderthals to see if they had acoustic ability for spoken language. While their wok on the reconstruction was impeccable, their conclusion was that neanderthals couldn't have evolved spoken language as they could only produce two consonants. Which is a ridiculous conclusion seeing that there are languages today that use two consonants. So that's why people get worked up about a neanderthals having a flute and why we still have people saying a hyena made it in the comment section. It's totally wild to me how people can be prejudiced and kind of racist toward someone from tens of thousands of years ago.
- MilStdJunkie 3y ago
  I got ya. I have no problem seeing fellow Homo as, well, human, and probably with unique insight of their own. Things have gotten a little weird lately, as the Nazis have started identifying with Neanderthals. Or vice versa - or something like that. The notion that Erectus evolved in-situ into the various species of Homo - a resurrection of the Candelabra model - isn't quite as fringe as it used to be, and it might have some nuggets of truth. Unfortunately, the Candelabra model is just hot stew on toast for the Hitler-inclined, and then that overflows into everything else, making open discussions of human origins a mexican standoff. Anthropologists, meanwhile, approach anything hinting of the model like it's made of plutonium, and rightfully so, but this just cranks up the conspiracist vapors to 11. "See the Human Origins THEY'VE BEEN HIDING FROM YOU!" and then someone shows you an x-ray of some dude's leg with an extra bone in it.

jaredhallen 3y ago

I've had a similar theory for a long time, admittedly based on basically absolutely nothing. Looking back at history, say WWII, what would have happened if the Axis had won? History is written by the victors, as they say. I have to imagine that things would be perceived differently today, had that happened. Something along the lines of the Heroic Axis defeating the Evil Allies. Having observed the way Homo Sapiens often behave, I've long wondered if we were the Axis, and the Neanderthals the Allies, so to speak.

MilStdJunkie 3y ago
Alternate History is a guilty pleasure of mine too! Except, it shouldn't really be called guilty, should it? Because those "alternates" give us insight into maybe - possibly - isolating crucial factors in human history. I'm not convinced there was any possible scenario where the Axis could win post December 1941, after the retreat from Moscow and the Americans entry. Particularly the latter. I remain convinced that America was the deciding factor in the conflict, and this should not be surprising looking at the raw production numbers. Soviet production levels shocked Hitler into outright disbelief[1], but even those numbers - numbers literally extracted from the blood of the Soviet nation - were half of American peacetime productive capacity. That's not even counting resource production differential (oil, coal, steel, etc), where the USA had more capacity than the rest of the Allies combined - several times over. Dulles and many others wished fervently for a mid-1945 pivot versus the Red Army, to meet them as far east as possible, "Allies" be damned (Stalin had never dealt with the Western allies in good faith, and honestly, Churchill didn't rush to shake hands either). It's hard to see how a March/April pivot could happen without an integration of the Wehrmacht into the Western Allies. How this would have gone down, it's probably not very pretty. We were already the number one employer of former Reich employees by that time, and going further would . . well, let's say that "A Night in the Garden" was a movie that got made for a reason. In some ways, the Reich's ideology was made more for America than it was for Germany, for a nation that still had yet a giant wild of "savages" to conquer and dehumanize. [1] https://erenow.net/ww/stalingrad/15.php https://erenow.net/ww/stalingrad/15.php

precompute 3y ago

Well... sure, but if you're really pushing the admixture hypothesis you'd necessarily need to assume that the species that lived in a more densely populated group was likely less individualistic. Add the Neanderthals' survival in sub-zero temps and you can easily claim that the Neanderthals weren't just "a little smarter" than the homo sapiens, they were likely doing 2 or 3 SDs on them, easily. Plus, them being acclimated to the cold would give them much better, not worse, eyesight, because they'd have to cross large distances and actually be able to make out things in the ice, and would also need good peripheral vision for protection from really bright light. "ruinous birth rate" doesn't really make sense... unless you compare the population of the neanderthals to that of the sapiens. By all accounts, the neanderthals lived in small groups, often not even over 30 individuals. They also likely had a very varied diet, or at least a very rich diet, because you can't be expected to be dumb and undernourished if you're eking out centuries in a cave because the weather outside is cold enough to freeze your bones. As for the last paragraph... agreed. Even the most skillful warriors can be overtaken by a huge wave. Nothing to fight.

tsojer 3y ago

I'd say that "Spiritual" here stands for the human spirit, rather than some kind religious spirituality. Spirit being everything surpassing mere cognitive actions needed for survival. The finding (like many other) strongly implies that neanderthals had the ability of abstract thought and creative urges. This should in no way be surprising since neanderthals appear at a quite late and developed stage of the human evolution. Neanderthals are generally quite an interesting topic, but equally interesting is the approach and prejudice of the scientific community towards them throughout the history. Research on neanderthals has been littered with logical fallacies by researchers who were absolute experts in their field, but refused the idea of neanderthals being a human subspecies or a remotely intelligent or capable one, just because it didn't fit in their personal or religious worldview. Upon discovery of neanderthals, leading anatomists at the time were like "yup, that's just a disease ridden regular human". More skeletons crop up and it's obvious that they have similar traits all across the world, and they are still going "Yup, so many disease ridden humans, how strange". Only after a whole cave in Vindia was found with more than 100 individuals that the scientific community half-unwillingly conceded that oh well there might have been another (sub)species parallel to homo sapiens. And that opened another can of worms and it's been decades of trying to prove how Neanderthals were intellectually inferior to Homo Sapiens. Those fallacies still exist today, and happen to very prominent scientists. I recently read a scientific articles from the late nineties by two anatomists who reconstructed the vocal tract of neanderthals to see if they had acoustic ability for spoken language. While their wok on the reconstruction was impeccable, their conclusion was that neanderthals couldn't have evolved spoken language as they could only produce two consonants. Which is a ridiculous conclusion seeing that there are languages today that use two consonants. So that's why people get worked up about a neanderthals having a flute and why we still have people saying a hyena made it in the comment section. It's totally wild to me how people can be prejudiced and kind of racist toward someone from tens of thousands of years ago.

MilStdJunkie 3y ago
I got ya. I have no problem seeing fellow Homo as, well, human, and probably with unique insight of their own. Things have gotten a little weird lately, as the Nazis have started identifying with Neanderthals. Or vice versa - or something like that. The notion that Erectus evolved in-situ into the various species of Homo - a resurrection of the Candelabra model - isn't quite as fringe as it used to be, and it might have some nuggets of truth. Unfortunately, the Candelabra model is just hot stew on toast for the Hitler-inclined, and then that overflows into everything else, making open discussions of human origins a mexican standoff. Anthropologists, meanwhile, approach anything hinting of the model like it's made of plutonium, and rightfully so, but this just cranks up the conspiracist vapors to 11. "See the Human Origins THEY'VE BEEN HIDING FROM YOU!" and then someone shows you an x-ray of some dude's leg with an extra bone in it.