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Neanderthals' use of complex adhesives shows high cognitive abilities
- jeroen79 3y agoWhy did they previously think they where less cognitive?, just because they looked brute?
- mc32 3y agoMaybe we can’t assert things without evidence. So if we lack evidence we can’t say one way or the other… maybe lack of assertion implies brute?
- readthenotes1 3y agoWhat's that phrase? "Oh you sweet summer child" From William King, the discoverer: "I feel myself constrained to believe that the thoughts and desires which once dwelt within it never soared beyond those of a brute," https://www.livescience.com/65003-how-smart-were-neanderthals.html https://www.livescience.com/65003-how-smart-were-neanderthal...
- mc32 3y agoIf Neanderthals discovered a human skeleton, what would they have thought? Woe be us for what thoughts and desires dwelt within its brain will suredly our abilities surpass and reach the moon after we are rendered history by its superior intellect?
- Fricken 3y agoDomesticated animals tend to be less intelligent than their wild brethren. I'm not convinced that 10k years of agricultural civilization has done anything to make us more intelligent as individuals. Relative to surviving as a hunter gatherer, you really don't have to be that bright to run a farm. Every cognitive asset we can lay claim to was once essential for our survival. If our ancestors were wolves, then we're dogs.
- suzzer99 3y agoBut also with farming came specialization, like blacksmithing, being a priest, being a scribe, trade, etc. So at least some of the population was having their brains taxed on a regular basis.
- Fricken 3y agoTea, and isolating various behavioral traits of wolves we've made various types of dogs. They're all less than a complete wolf.
- otabdeveloper4 3y agoThe default assumption would be that if they look very similar to modern humans, then they should act very similar too. Anything else is twisting the evidence for a political or religious foregone conclusion.
- huytersd 3y agoThe have a lower brain to body ratio than Homo sapiens. That metric pretty much holds true across the animal kingdom so they were probably atleast a little bit dumber.
- karim79 3y ago> The have a lower brain to body ratio than Homo sapiens. That metric pretty much holds true across the animal kingdom so they were probably atleast a little bit dumber. I'm no expert, but that does seem to be something of an oversimplification.[0][1] [0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-brain-size-matter1/#:~:text=In%20healthy%20volunteers%2C%20total%20brain,overall%20variability%20in%20general%20intelligence https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-brain-size-m.... [1] https://serendipstudio.org/bb/kinser/Int3.html https://serendipstudio.org/bb/kinser/Int3.html
- nicklecompte 3y agoI would be cautious about brain-body ratios. In all vertebrates, a huge chunk of the brain is dealing with sensory processing and integration, so brain volume : body size doesn't always scale the way you think it would. The bigger problem is I don't think your numbers are right, Neanderthals had notably larger brains than us. Via wikipedia: Average Neanderthal male height: 165cm Average Neanderthal male brain volume: 1600cm^3 Average pre-industrial human male height: 165cm Average pre-industrial human male brain volume: 1260cm^3 The difference is that Neanderthals also had disproportionately larger eyes than us, yet probably similar visual acuity: their brains had more pixels to process, which takes up quite a bit of volume. In fact it's eye size which seems to be the biggest confounding variable in associating brain size with intelligence. Their cerebellum was actually smaller than ours, which is probably more relevant - but who knows? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal
- huytersd 3y agoThey were bulkier. Bigger, heavier bones and apparently a significantly higher body mass.
- bsza 3y agoBecause it's a less extraordinary claim than the contrary. Attributing intelligence to stuff willy-nilly is why we used to think solar eclipses were caused by sun-eating dragons.
- famouswaffles 3y agoIs it so extraordinary? Humans bred with Neanderthals. And it wasn't just a few over-curious, it happened frequently enough there are noticeable traces of their DNA in modern humans despite their Millenia long extinction. This means that were having sex with Neanderthals regularly enough that it's unlikely this was an inherently dangerous activity (i.e try boning a chimpanzee for example). Not just that, they gave birth to their children and then raised them fairly regularly. This resulting offspring didn't just die off either, they mated successfully enough with humans. I just don't see that happening with a species that wasn't in our intelligence band.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- wredue 3y ago(Try boning a chimpanzee) Dude. This isn’t evolution. Post Neanderthal humans were not far removed from Neanderthal. As far as evolution goes Populations evolve. It’s not like there was Neanderthal and then big bang boom, modern smart human.
- famouswaffles 3y agoTrying to have sex with a wild Champanzee would be a very dangerous activity to engage in. That's the point of that comment. I know how evolution works.
- suzzer99 3y agoBonobos would probably be into it. They're horny little suckers.
- atleastoptimal 3y agoBecause they were bullish on Rockcoin and stick3
- Terr_ 3y agoThat makes me think of a fun Mitchell and Webb sketch, involving rock professionals and the introduction of bronze. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nyu4u3VZYaQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nyu4u3VZYaQ
- atleastoptimal 3y ago> SWE's learning their job has been automated by GPT-5 circa 2025 (colorized)
- Terr_ 3y agoOn a more-serious note, nah, I really don't feel threatened: LLMs are good at "throw high-probability results together from samples in training data", but not "logically analyze the final result to ensure it is sane", nor "change it to make it sane." So improving LLMs may replace interns (or low-quality outsourcing) where an SWE has to review/fix everything anyway... but it'll take a fundamentally different kind of model to tackle those trickier essential tasks.
- nicklecompte 3y agoThe actual paper[1] clarifies something I suspected before even reading it: they were not able to rule out that these were created by early modern humans: > Unfortunately, the context of Le Moustier allows reasonable doubts as to whether the authors of these pieces were Neanderthals. This is so because there are no radiometric dates available for our assemblage and direct dating of the lower shelter at Le Moustier [56 to 40 ka (75)], which is adjacent to the upper shelter from where our adhesives were excavated, situates the site at the end of the Neanderthal presence in Europe. At this time (76), and even before (33, 77), H. sapiens incursions into southern Europe make it possible that Neanderthals and H. sapiens were present at the same sites. The phys.org article should have mentioned this! I suspect a lot of these "Neanderthals were more advanced than we thought stories" are actually "modern humans left Africa earlier we than thought." [1] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adl0822 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adl0822
- jumploops 3y agoArticle-specifics aside, why do we always put ourselves on a pedestal? Many modern humans are, at least in part, descended from Neanderthals. Other hominids have displayed seemingly complex behavior[0]. Maybe it’s just me, but human technological superiority seems to be some combination of “enough” on the intelligence scale and “luck” (in the sense of time and place). [0] https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/small-brained-hominid-species-challenges-human-exceptionalism-says-paleoanthropologist-1.7075618 https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/small-brained-hominid-specie...
- SamBam 3y agoI've always felt it is a great sorrow that the world couldn't fit more than one intelligent hominid species on it for more than a short period before all but one were wiped out (killed, outbred, whatever). Imagine living on a planet with multiple human-level intelligent species, who somehow had managed to get to now without eradicating each other.
- boringuser2 3y ago
- enasterosophes 3y agoI thought it was already well established that neanderthals were cognitively on par with modern humans, and may even have been more intelligent? While it's not uninteresting that we now have evidence for them making complex adhesives, I am less surprised by the find than by other peoples' apparent surprise about their high functioning.
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoLots of papers reaching for that conclusion, but put it all together and it would take giving every benefit of the doubt to a dozen sites to believe it. In other words, maybe they were high-functioning, it's just possible. But I wouldn't bet on it.
- EnigmaFlare 3y agoNot only sites but more Neanderthal DNA also corresponds roughly with higher IQ in modern human populations. It's still very weak evidence though.
- jgilias 3y agoMight as well be that the cause and effect is reversed here. Such as, populations that were in contact with the Neanderthals had to become smarter to outcompete them.
- enasterosophes 3y agoSo you think the odds are against it? I think that seems like a strong take, but I'm not an expert in the field. In as much as I can see why "no significant intelligence" is the null hypothesis, I'd still be inclined to word doubts more cautiously. There is a difference between "we don't have strong enough evidence to reject the null hypothesis" and "I think the null hypothesis is more probable."
- xetplan 3y agoEven if they were in the ball park intelligence wise, humans are absolutely ruthless animals. Personally, I don't think there is all that much mystery what happened. Animals seem to have this habit of vanishing when humans move in.
- FredPret 3y agoI read somewhere that we outcompeted Neanderthals in part because we (and "we" now includes a bit of Neanderthal DNA) had global trade even back then. One human tribe lives near good rocks and trade their spearheads with their neighbours. Another tribe, far away, can make good straight sticks. Despite near-zero communication, those two tribes and all the tribes physically in between them can trade and everybody gets a better spear. Apparently we know this happened because the wood and the rocks from ancient human villages are all from far away. But the Neanderthals only used local materials. There were also far fewer of them, which could also explain the lack of trade. I looked for sources and found this: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167268105000284 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01672...
- jaredhallen 3y agoThat's an interesting take that I haven't heard before. Another theory that I have heard has maybe a little more to do with why modern humans succeeded in general (rather than specifically vs Neanderthal) is that modern humans had excellent endurance. This allowed them to take big game by essentially running it to death over a period of days. I do wonder if that was a capability that Neanderthals lacked, or possessed to a lesser degree.
- FredPret 3y agoYou are right that we have fantastic endurance. Apparently Neanderthals could sweat though: https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/sweat-glands-evolution/ https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/sweat-glands-evolutio...
- vasco 3y agoThat's a mainstream theory, it'd seem you just read about it and forgot and thought it was original idea, search for "Endurance running hypothesis".
- PeterisP 3y agoThe endurance running adaptations seem to start 1.9 million years ago for our common hominid ancestors that significantly predate the split between us and neanderthals which happened more than a million years later.
- thaumasiotes 3y agoYou know who uses a lot of complex adhesives? Spiders.
- ijustlovemath 3y agoIf this stuff interests you, I'd highly recommend checking out a copy of Origins by Jennifer Raff, which discusses the recent work on how the Americas were initially populated, and why many anthropologists are moving away from the Clovis theory.
- jollyoldpirate 3y ago[dead]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dsign 3y agoI came to read the comments here, and I wasn't disappointed! There are a lot of links to articles and additional information on the Neanderthals, which I really appreciate. There is also a bit of "poor Neanderthals, we Sapiens are terrible." We have a vast toolkit for dealing with material scarcity, which includes not only industries, but also millennia of surviving culture. We have codified in our tales, morals and religions, rules that help the survival of the group. We have done that very often, but the tales, morals and religions we have today were the ones that worked best in symbiosis with their group to bring both to the present day[^1]. The execution of those rules is what gives raise to our "poor Neanderthals" utterance. Back in the day, Neanderthals and Sapiens just didn't have any of those luxuries, only a terrifyingly hostile environment[^2]. Just imagine yourself with a sore throat during the chilly, misty, rainy spring season that is all too common in Europe, but you are living in the bushes, and you are very hungry. Will you think "I better don't kill (and eat) that Neanderthal that is taking some food somewhere, my descendants many, many millennia from now will feel lonely"? No. Maybe you will f*ck with the much-stronger Neanderthal, and kill (to eat later) him during his post-nut moment. And that will be your modus-operandi with everything, even fellow Sapiens. Yes, probably the Neanderthals were the noble ones, they maybe were even better at math than us. Poor Neanderthals. For my part, I'll put my species on a pedestal; the price of making it up here has been exceedingly high. [^1]: And often, bloodily so. [^2]: Which makes it unfair to condemn our ancestors for the destruction of that environment.
- otabdeveloper4 3y agoIn reality we have literally zero evidence for making any of these assumptions. We know absolutely nothing about the thought processes of ancient humans. (But if we had to guess, a good baseline assumption would be that it was like those of modern humans, and that they had societies, laws, rules of conduct and social norms just like we do today.)
- dsign 3y agoThe evidence we have is exactly the one you said: moderns humans living in conditions of scarcity. Sure, they don't resort to as dire extremes as the one I described. Mostly[^1]. I was simply extrapolating. But the rule of law, rules of conduct and so on are not the same as for us Westerners living the good life, nor is the degree to which they obey those laws. You just need to visit a third-world country, or look at their numbers (e.g., corruption index). I was born to those facts in my particular native hell-hole[^2], but later in life I did some book-worming to inform myself better. I can highly recommend "The Collapse of Complex Societies: New Studies in Archaeology, Book 8" (it's expensive in Amazon, but one credit in Audible). From that work: > The citizens of modern complex societies usually do not realize that we are an anomaly of history. Throughout the several million years that recognizable humans are known to have lived, the common political unit was the small, autonomous community, acting independently, and largely self-sufficient. Robert Carneiro has estimated that 99.8 percent of human history has been dominated by these autonomous local communities (1978; 219). It has only been within the last 6000 years that something unusual has emerged: the hierarchical, organized, interdependent states that are the major reference for our contemporary political experience. [^1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korowai_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korowai_people [^2] When starvation was too dire, my people would steal the neighbor's cat and eat it. It was a widespread practice.
- ourmandave 3y agoThat headline, I can't help think of Tool Time and Tim Taylor's misadventures with construction adhesives.
- bookofjoe 3y agoRecommended: "No Enemy But Time" by Michael Bishop, which won the 1982 Nebula Award for Best Novel. Wikipedia plot synopsis: "The novel follows the story of a modern black American man who is able to mentally project himself back to pre-human Africa, where he meets (and eventually mates) with humanity's prehistoric ancestors." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Enemy_But_Time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Enemy_But_Time Goodreads plot synopsis: "Joshua Kampa, the illegitimate son of a mute Spanish whore and a black serviceman, has always dreamed of Africa. But his dreams are of an Africa far in the past and are so vivid and in such hallucinatory detail that he is able to question the understanding of eminent palaeontologists. As a result, Joshua is invited to join a most unusual time travel project and is transported millions of years into the past of his dreams." https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/637400.No_Enemy_But_Time https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/637400.No_Enemy_But_Time https://archive.org/details/noenemybuttime0000unse https://archive.org/details/noenemybuttime0000unse https://isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1459 https://isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1459
- rancour 3y agoMan I wish I had the time to read all these novels. Just from the title alone i can tell it’s a science fiction classic.