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What's Behind the Evolution of Neanderthal Portraits

40 points by prismatic 3y ago

verisimi 3y ago
In answer to the question of: > What's behind the evolution of Neanderthal portraits the answer is: > Science braided with sociopolitics. But I would say the answer is only a little to do with science... It's really just acts of imagination. The idea of 'Neanderthals' allows for an opportunity for different human groups to help guide how humans think of themselves. So it's an interesting narrative pivot point.
- jgilias 3y ago
  It’d be nice though if the images were also understood as just acts of imagination. You could take a chimp skull, use the same techniques used to ‘reconstruct’ Neanderthal faces, and you’d get a similar result - a smiley fellow with a tad narrow forehead, big teeth, and long hair. Why can’t we just accept that we have no idea? Take fur for example. We have a species of primates that evolved in frigid conditions, who seem to have had skeletons indicating adaptations to cold, who most likely couldn’t make clothes, nor the type of shelters that can be efficiently heated, yet they didn’t have fur. We have woolly rhinos and mammoths, but Neanderthals didn’t have fur because obviously lol, they’re our cousins after all. We don’t even know why we don’t have fur, and at what point we stopped having it. The leading explanation is basically just conjecture.
  - precompute 3y ago
    > You could take a chimp skull, use the same techniques used to ‘reconstruct’ Neanderthal faces, and you’d get a similar result - a smiley fellow with a tad narrow forehead, big teeth, and long hair. Someone's already tried that! https://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/feb/19/science.sciencenews https://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/feb/19/science.scie... >"Anthropology is going to have to completely revise its picture of modern man between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago," said Thomas Terberger, the archaeologist who discovered the hoax. "Prof Protsch's work appeared to prove that anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals had co-existed, and perhaps even had children together. This now appears to be rubbish." >The scandal only came to light when Prof Protsch was caught trying to sell his department's entire chimpanzee skull collection to the United States. >An inquiry later established that he had also passed off fake fossils as real ones and had plagiarised other scientists' work. >"Their stories about him were increasingly bizarre. After a while it was hard to take it seriously. You had to laugh. It was just unbelievable. At the end of the day what he did was incredible." >During their investigation, the university discovered that Prof Protsch, 65, a flamboyant figure with a fondness for gold watches, Porsches and Cuban cigars, was unable to work his own carbon-dating machine. >Instead, after returning from Germany to America, where he did his doctorate, and taking up a professorship, he had simply made things up. >In one case he had claimed that a 50 million-year-old "half-ape" called Adapis had been found in Switzerland, an archaeological sensation. In reality, the ape had been dug up in France, where several other examples had already been found.
    - jgilias 3y ago
      I hoped to see an image of a face! I wasn’t really talking about passing a chimp skull for a Neanderthal one. I was dissing the method of reconstruction itself. It basically assumes a Homo Sapiens like soft tissue morphology and works from there. And then you get those very modern looking guys and girls. I’d really like to see someone do the same just with a chimp skull. I doubt anyone would though, as that’d effectively undermine their work.
      - actionfromafar 3y ago
        Aren't we a bored geek and a Blender download away from that though?
  - precompute 3y ago
    > who most likely couldn’t make clothes, nor the type of shelters that can be efficiently heated, yet they didn’t have fur. This is absolutely not true. The popular consensus, however, is so steeply biased towards anything labeled "homo sapiens" that there's no consideration given to how other humanoid species might have lived. You assumption is correct, that they could not have survived in the freezing cold if they were also just stupid. In reality, if they were to survive in the freezing cold in small groups (most Neanderthals lived in groups of 8-40 individuals) they would have had to be - incredibly conflict-avoidant - very emotionally stable - would need to have a great amount of calories to last the winter, which means they would need to start preparing at least a year in advance - would also need to be strong and be able to work together in a group well - maintain quality over quantity -- mouths to feed that can't contribute to the group would be disastrous. - The last point implies that they had very stable social situations and likely little to no arguments over who should marry whom. Probably also had a very stable social hierarchy The tools Neanderthals have built have been found to have through multiple stages of preparation and multiple layers of coating. They domesticated many, if not most, of the animals that we now keep as pets. They also revered their elderly and gave proper consideration to their dead. These are all signs of an advanced manner of cognition, certainly not animals. In fact you could certainly make the argument that with the high social trust and extended time spent "hibernating" (waiting for it to get warm enough) inside a cave, they were more like mad geniuses working on large problems for months on end. Considering just how long they survived, they would also have been great at passing down things from one generation to the next, which is yet another point in favor of them having a rich culture.
    - jgilias 3y ago
      Can you point me to some sources about Neanderthal animal domestication? That’s very interesting, I’d like to read more on that! Specifically about clothes and shelters though. To my knowledge we really don’t have finds indicating that they could or would do this. Regarding group size, I think you’re reading much too much into it. The group size is similar to wolf packs. Wolves are smart too, are great at hunting in groups, have stable social hierarchies, and have been around for a long time.
stephc_int13 3y ago
One thing always bothers me when reading about Neanderthal extinction. The fact that we have proof that interbreeding occurred between Sapiens and Neanderthal should open the possibility that they quite simply were blended into a larger Sapiens population instead of mysteriously disappearing.
- Oreb 3y ago
  I’m not an expert, but isn’t the current consensus that this is pretty much exactly what happened?
- adrian_b 3y ago
  I have never heard of an example in earlier human history when two groups of humans have blended peacefully after their territories became in contact. I believe that the idea of blending by peaceful interbreeding is just wishful thinking based on modern ethics. Some Neanderthals have probably blended into modern human tribes, most likely some children or women. Other hybrid humans may be the result of random encounters. The majority of the Neanderthals have disappeared during a relatively short time span, of a few thousand years. Some of them might have died as a result of direct fights with the expanding modern humans, the others might have been forced to retreat into worse territories that provided less food, so their population has dwindled.
  - krisoft 3y ago
    > the idea of blending by peaceful interbreeding is just wishful thinking based on modern ethics. I don’t see stephc_int13 writing anything about the peacefullness or non-peacefullness of the blending.
  - stephc_int13 3y ago
    They very likely fought, but it does not mean that led to genocide. What I am suggesting is that Sapiens won by numbers, that they were more numerous.
  - actionfromafar 3y ago
    The climate changed and the hunting grounds the Neanderthals were most fit for, disappeared. Sapiens were better adapted to the changed environment. The two groups existed in parallel for a long time. Also IIRC Neanderthals were always isolated in smaller groups compared to how Sapiens lived, even before Sapiens entered the shared stage.
marginallen 3y ago
This whole article is barely on the level of a senior secondary school student. There is so much false and incorrect, predated and misrepresented information that are simply a regurgitation of current societal norms
- precompute 3y ago
  Your account is shadowbanned, FYI.
  - shiroiushi 3y ago
    It is? I can see his post, though it's in gray.
  - kergonath 3y ago
    No, it is not. It has a negative score, which is quite impressive in itself, but the posts are visible. The comment is downvoted for being utter rubbish, though.
    - precompute 3y ago
      It is. I vouched for his comment here. If you have showdead enabled you can see the other comments he's made. Won't be visible if you're logged out.
- Tor3 3y ago
  I re-read the article after reading your comment. I can't find any obvious false, incorrect, predated or misrepresented information. Could you please point out what is false and incorrect etc?
- bitcurious 3y ago
  That's a pretty strong statement, maybe expand on what's false, incorrect, or misrepresented?
pilaf 3y ago
I was a bit intrigued by the twin sculptors in the video and ended in their website [1], they seem to have created a wealth of amazingly detailed and realistic sculpts of various extinct hominids with a lot of character to boot, definitely worth a look. 1: https://www.kenniskennis.com/ https://www.kenniskennis.com/
chucke1992 3y ago
So I guess it is really not scientific at all...
rrgok 3y ago
I really wish we could develop the science and technology to view the past like movies, but without needing it to be recorded on film. It would be amazing to have a kind of time telescope, enabling us to see far back in history, not just across space.
pyinstallwoes 3y ago
Neanderthal portraits strike me as morally offensive, reflecting an arrogant and ignorant form of control over interpretation. These depictions reduce a complex ancient species to biased stereotypes, perpetuating assumptions that prove inaccurate over time. It's a distorted construct falsely asserting superiority by condescendingly looking down on our evolutionary past.

40 points by prismatic 3y ago

In answer to the question of: > What's behind the evolution of Neanderthal portraits the answer is: > Science braided with sociopolitics. But I would say the answer is only a little to do with science... It's really just acts of imagination. The idea of 'Neanderthals' allows for an opportunity for different human groups to help guide how humans think of themselves. So it's an interesting narrative pivot point.

jgilias 3y ago
It’d be nice though if the images were also understood as just acts of imagination. You could take a chimp skull, use the same techniques used to ‘reconstruct’ Neanderthal faces, and you’d get a similar result - a smiley fellow with a tad narrow forehead, big teeth, and long hair. Why can’t we just accept that we have no idea? Take fur for example. We have a species of primates that evolved in frigid conditions, who seem to have had skeletons indicating adaptations to cold, who most likely couldn’t make clothes, nor the type of shelters that can be efficiently heated, yet they didn’t have fur. We have woolly rhinos and mammoths, but Neanderthals didn’t have fur because obviously lol, they’re our cousins after all. We don’t even know why we don’t have fur, and at what point we stopped having it. The leading explanation is basically just conjecture.
- precompute 3y ago
  > You could take a chimp skull, use the same techniques used to ‘reconstruct’ Neanderthal faces, and you’d get a similar result - a smiley fellow with a tad narrow forehead, big teeth, and long hair. Someone's already tried that! https://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/feb/19/science.sciencenews https://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/feb/19/science.scie... >"Anthropology is going to have to completely revise its picture of modern man between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago," said Thomas Terberger, the archaeologist who discovered the hoax. "Prof Protsch's work appeared to prove that anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals had co-existed, and perhaps even had children together. This now appears to be rubbish." >The scandal only came to light when Prof Protsch was caught trying to sell his department's entire chimpanzee skull collection to the United States. >An inquiry later established that he had also passed off fake fossils as real ones and had plagiarised other scientists' work. >"Their stories about him were increasingly bizarre. After a while it was hard to take it seriously. You had to laugh. It was just unbelievable. At the end of the day what he did was incredible." >During their investigation, the university discovered that Prof Protsch, 65, a flamboyant figure with a fondness for gold watches, Porsches and Cuban cigars, was unable to work his own carbon-dating machine. >Instead, after returning from Germany to America, where he did his doctorate, and taking up a professorship, he had simply made things up. >In one case he had claimed that a 50 million-year-old "half-ape" called Adapis had been found in Switzerland, an archaeological sensation. In reality, the ape had been dug up in France, where several other examples had already been found.
  - jgilias 3y ago
    I hoped to see an image of a face! I wasn’t really talking about passing a chimp skull for a Neanderthal one. I was dissing the method of reconstruction itself. It basically assumes a Homo Sapiens like soft tissue morphology and works from there. And then you get those very modern looking guys and girls. I’d really like to see someone do the same just with a chimp skull. I doubt anyone would though, as that’d effectively undermine their work.
    - actionfromafar 3y ago
      Aren't we a bored geek and a Blender download away from that though?
- precompute 3y ago
  > who most likely couldn’t make clothes, nor the type of shelters that can be efficiently heated, yet they didn’t have fur. This is absolutely not true. The popular consensus, however, is so steeply biased towards anything labeled "homo sapiens" that there's no consideration given to how other humanoid species might have lived. You assumption is correct, that they could not have survived in the freezing cold if they were also just stupid. In reality, if they were to survive in the freezing cold in small groups (most Neanderthals lived in groups of 8-40 individuals) they would have had to be - incredibly conflict-avoidant - very emotionally stable - would need to have a great amount of calories to last the winter, which means they would need to start preparing at least a year in advance - would also need to be strong and be able to work together in a group well - maintain quality over quantity -- mouths to feed that can't contribute to the group would be disastrous. - The last point implies that they had very stable social situations and likely little to no arguments over who should marry whom. Probably also had a very stable social hierarchy The tools Neanderthals have built have been found to have through multiple stages of preparation and multiple layers of coating. They domesticated many, if not most, of the animals that we now keep as pets. They also revered their elderly and gave proper consideration to their dead. These are all signs of an advanced manner of cognition, certainly not animals. In fact you could certainly make the argument that with the high social trust and extended time spent "hibernating" (waiting for it to get warm enough) inside a cave, they were more like mad geniuses working on large problems for months on end. Considering just how long they survived, they would also have been great at passing down things from one generation to the next, which is yet another point in favor of them having a rich culture.
  - jgilias 3y ago
    Can you point me to some sources about Neanderthal animal domestication? That’s very interesting, I’d like to read more on that! Specifically about clothes and shelters though. To my knowledge we really don’t have finds indicating that they could or would do this. Regarding group size, I think you’re reading much too much into it. The group size is similar to wolf packs. Wolves are smart too, are great at hunting in groups, have stable social hierarchies, and have been around for a long time.

stephc_int13 3y ago

One thing always bothers me when reading about Neanderthal extinction. The fact that we have proof that interbreeding occurred between Sapiens and Neanderthal should open the possibility that they quite simply were blended into a larger Sapiens population instead of mysteriously disappearing.

Oreb 3y ago
I’m not an expert, but isn’t the current consensus that this is pretty much exactly what happened?
adrian_b 3y ago
I have never heard of an example in earlier human history when two groups of humans have blended peacefully after their territories became in contact. I believe that the idea of blending by peaceful interbreeding is just wishful thinking based on modern ethics. Some Neanderthals have probably blended into modern human tribes, most likely some children or women. Other hybrid humans may be the result of random encounters. The majority of the Neanderthals have disappeared during a relatively short time span, of a few thousand years. Some of them might have died as a result of direct fights with the expanding modern humans, the others might have been forced to retreat into worse territories that provided less food, so their population has dwindled.
- krisoft 3y ago
  > the idea of blending by peaceful interbreeding is just wishful thinking based on modern ethics. I don’t see stephc_int13 writing anything about the peacefullness or non-peacefullness of the blending.
- stephc_int13 3y ago
  They very likely fought, but it does not mean that led to genocide. What I am suggesting is that Sapiens won by numbers, that they were more numerous.
- actionfromafar 3y ago
  The climate changed and the hunting grounds the Neanderthals were most fit for, disappeared. Sapiens were better adapted to the changed environment. The two groups existed in parallel for a long time. Also IIRC Neanderthals were always isolated in smaller groups compared to how Sapiens lived, even before Sapiens entered the shared stage.

marginallen 3y ago

This whole article is barely on the level of a senior secondary school student. There is so much false and incorrect, predated and misrepresented information that are simply a regurgitation of current societal norms

precompute 3y ago
Your account is shadowbanned, FYI.
- shiroiushi 3y ago
  It is? I can see his post, though it's in gray.
- kergonath 3y ago
  No, it is not. It has a negative score, which is quite impressive in itself, but the posts are visible. The comment is downvoted for being utter rubbish, though.
  - precompute 3y ago
    It is. I vouched for his comment here. If you have showdead enabled you can see the other comments he's made. Won't be visible if you're logged out.
Tor3 3y ago
I re-read the article after reading your comment. I can't find any obvious false, incorrect, predated or misrepresented information. Could you please point out what is false and incorrect etc?
bitcurious 3y ago
That's a pretty strong statement, maybe expand on what's false, incorrect, or misrepresented?

pilaf 3y ago

I was a bit intrigued by the twin sculptors in the video and ended in their website [1], they seem to have created a wealth of amazingly detailed and realistic sculpts of various extinct hominids with a lot of character to boot, definitely worth a look. 1: https://www.kenniskennis.com/ https://www.kenniskennis.com/

chucke1992 3y ago

So I guess it is really not scientific at all...

rrgok 3y ago

I really wish we could develop the science and technology to view the past like movies, but without needing it to be recorded on film. It would be amazing to have a kind of time telescope, enabling us to see far back in history, not just across space.

pyinstallwoes 3y ago

Neanderthal portraits strike me as morally offensive, reflecting an arrogant and ignorant form of control over interpretation. These depictions reduce a complex ancient species to biased stereotypes, perpetuating assumptions that prove inaccurate over time. It's a distorted construct falsely asserting superiority by condescendingly looking down on our evolutionary past.