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Neanderthals hunted dangerous cave lions, study shows
- thghtihadanacct 3y agoHunting? Or the direction your companion stabbed as you were being mauled?
- worthless-trash 3y agoWhy not both ?
- dmix 3y agoIt said the lion was laying down on its side when it was stabbed by a spear which I guess they figured out with some forensics or analysis.
- chrisco255 3y agoThese are details that are impossible to ascertain.
- dmix 3y agoIt's always an estimation of course. But if you are going to damage a bone sufficiently to leave a deep mark with a (probably sharpened rock) spear then it really helps to have a hard surface underneath to do so. It could have been standing and then pushed up against a wall but two hands thrusting it downward is safer bet.
- hirundo 3y agoI've been watching too many Baldur's Gate Youtube videos on how to build a character, and one guy talks about the "power spike" when your character gets a particularly useful ability, like an extra bonus action per turn. The biggest power spike of genus Homo may have been attaching a rock to the end of a stick. The spear changed our ancestors from sub-apex prey to predators ready to take on a lion in its cave. From meat to masters of all we surveyed. The next power surge of that magnitude may have been nukes. Yet it couldn't save neanderthalensis from sapiens.
- breakfastduck 3y agoI think the gun was probably a big one, prior to nukes.
- stronglikedan 3y agoA bullet is just a really fast spear.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bitxbitxbitcoin 3y agoA really fast javelin (throwing spear), technically.
- soufron 3y agoProvided that the nukes really exist of course :)
- appplication 3y ago> Yet it couldn't save neanderthalensis from sapiens. This is what I don’t understand. Neanderthals were strong and smart. Did Homo sapiens kill them outright I.e. war? Or was it more of a outcompete and outbreed situation?
- Swizec 3y ago> Or was it more of a outcompete and outbreed situation? There’s a lot of evidence we more or less absorbed the neanderthal population. Old school tribal genocide style – you win the war/battle, kill the men, take their wives. We don’t know if that’s exactly how it happened, but it stands to reason that pre-historic tribal warfare wasn’t much different than the more recent tribal warfare we do have records about. 1% to 4% of human DNA, for people with non-African backgrounds, is Neanderthal: https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/genetics/ancient-dna-and-neanderthals https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/genetics/ancient-dna-an... (cmd+f for “interbreeding”) Mind you the whole “take their wives” aspect of human warfare is, uhm, pretty well documented: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wartime_sexual_violence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wartime_sexual_violence
- spandextwins 3y agoInstead of a boring article, I wish they used some kind of AI to make a movie with AI voices and AI sound to illustrate that word salad.
- iak8god 3y agoWord salad is "confused or unintelligible mixture of seemingly random words and phrases." Which part of the article seemed confusing/unintelligible/random to you?
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y agoReading things like this, reminds me of how badass our ancestors were. Armed with just primitive weapons they took on lions, bears, wolves, mammoths.
- pk-protect-ai 3y agoDon't forget that they have had larger brains too.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ejarzo 3y agoTrue although that doesn't necessarily mean more intelligence – theoretically smaller could mean more efficient – like how our computers have decreased in size but increased in performance.
- chrisco255 3y agoIt's not just a theory. Many animals have bigger brains than humans including mammoths.
- pk-protect-ai 3y agoThe Neanderthals and earlier Homo Sapiens Sapiens (which have had larger brain than ours too), have had smaller bodies with larger brains though.
- Detrytus 3y agoActually, intelligence is a hindrance, not help when fighting a lion. I mean, it's useful to have one smart person in the tribe, to invent all those weapons, but smart people tend to overthink everything, making them worse fighters/hunters.
- chrisco255 3y ago
- jimmytucson 3y agoLink to the paper with more context, maps, and images: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-42764-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-42764-0
- nairboon 3y agoSounds like Far Cry Primal
- hotnfresh 3y agoI’ve played most of the Far Cry games. Starting with the first one. That one’s by far the most interesting. Dunno about “best” (to me, “interesting” adds enough appeal in this case that it’s probably also my favorite, but “best” depends on the player) but definitely most interesting.
- gadders 3y agoI gave it up. Too much crafting. Maybe I should go back to it...
- hotnfresh 3y agoIt’s got more of a simulation element than the others (though it’s still very game-oriented, to be clear—I’ve played modded Skyrim that was more simulationist than FC:Primal, without even cranking those mods as far toward realism as they go) which is probably a downer if you’re in for a fun casual romp like most of the other far cry games (especially 3 on). What I found interesting was that it, at times, made me feel a tiny fraction of the kind of awe and fear—and power—that I expect Stone Age people really did feel, for similar reasons. It’s also one of the few games that’s ever taught me a practical non-computer skill. I string my recurve bow the way the first-time longer crafting animation for a bow shows you doing it :-)
- mcpackieh 3y agoThe way it was balanced made Primal feel a lot more 'real' than the other Far Cry games. Normally in Far Cry you might shoot an enemy in the chest 20 times with a rifle and he won't die, simply because that rifle is cheap. In Primal, from what I recall, pretty much all the human enemies would go down with no more than a few arrow wounds. And if it took more than that, an enemy continuing to fight with a few arrows in him was at least easier to suspend disbelief for.
- boston_clone 3y agoFor those that find this kind of history interesting, I strongly recommend the book “Sapiens” by Yuval Harari. Its distillation of the complexities of human evolution while being careful to admit things we don’t know and not over-assume make for a truly great read (so far*, Im not yet done with it!)
- josefresco 3y ago> “Sapiens” by Yuval Harari I was looking forward to this book but found it to be almost unreadable. I don't remember my specific issues, just that I was discouraged after several attempts and gave it up which rarely happens with me. I believe I had just read a few other novels about human evolution/ancient civs and found some of Yuval's assertions to conflict (IMHO) with what I read elsewhere, most likely The Dawn of Everything (not certain).
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- abfan1127 3y agowhat other books have you read? I'd be interested in that list.
- josefresco 3y agoI looked back, my issue was with another Yuval book: Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow Maybe I'll try Sapians it give Yuval another try. My recent list: The Half Known Life Born a Crime American Prometheus Operation Mincemeat Leonardo Da Vinci Powers and Thrones The Icepick Surgeon Destiny of the Republic The River of Doubt Red Famine Under the Banner of Heaven In Order to Live The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream Homo Deus The Confidence Men The Bomber Mafia Calypso Termination Shock Red Platoon: A True Story of American Valor The Dawn of Everything The Secret Life of Groceries The Hidden Life of Trees
- P_I_Staker 3y agoI think Sapiens may be a product of it's time. It may still true today, but I think this became really popular during the Joe Rogan era prior to covid. This type of content was taking off then. Lots of shrewd observations that seem to point in a convenient direction. Then you realize that most of these things were never really meaningful, if they were even true to begin with. Just a collection of interesting annectdotes at best. Bunch of interesting factoids that are patched together, with no real meaning.
- jonnycomputer 3y agoWell now we know why they went extinct.
- jonnycomputer 3y agoHowever many points you take away, the joke was worth it.
- fuzzfactor 3y ago>Neanderthals hunted dangerous cave lions I was wondering what other kind of cave lions were they likely to encounter? Or maybe it was Homo Sapiens that domesticated the harmless cave lions, and there you go. Perhaps more risk-averse but wiser in the long run.
- djaro 3y agoYeah? Up until relatively recently African tribes used to hunt elephants, lions, hippos, rhinos and more with just spears. Of course humans hunted animals back then too.