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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’

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.

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.