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I 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

by dsign 3y ago

I 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 ago
In 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 ago
  The 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.
brabel 3y ago
> 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... Very good point. Add to that the fact that people were in constant movement before agriculture was invented (just a dozen or so thousand years ago!) and would run into very "strange", unknown tribes on their journeys - without having any idea whatsoever of where they came from, what they believe in or how they're likely to behave towards strangers - and I imagine much of the time, given evidence of widespread violence in our past, they would almost always fight each other. When the other tribe was so different like the Neanderthals would have looked, I imagine it was extremely hard not to default to basically trying to exterminate them completely. Perhaps the few cases of breeding between humans and Neanderthals could be explained by young members of the exterminated tribes which the humans took pity on and decided to raise within their own tribes? I wonder if there's any sort of evidence of this sort of thing happening, or something else like actual peaceful coexistence and maybe even trading between the species (again, I would guess that would be extremely unlikely as we even today prefer to trade with those who are at least a little bit like us).
- Anotheroneagain 3y ago
  This is never an issue in reality. They would have a common language, and know each other in some way.

by dsign 3y ago

otabdeveloper4 3y ago

In 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 ago
The 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.

brabel 3y ago

> 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... Very good point. Add to that the fact that people were in constant movement before agriculture was invented (just a dozen or so thousand years ago!) and would run into very "strange", unknown tribes on their journeys - without having any idea whatsoever of where they came from, what they believe in or how they're likely to behave towards strangers - and I imagine much of the time, given evidence of widespread violence in our past, they would almost always fight each other. When the other tribe was so different like the Neanderthals would have looked, I imagine it was extremely hard not to default to basically trying to exterminate them completely. Perhaps the few cases of breeding between humans and Neanderthals could be explained by young members of the exterminated tribes which the humans took pity on and decided to raise within their own tribes? I wonder if there's any sort of evidence of this sort of thing happening, or something else like actual peaceful coexistence and maybe even trading between the species (again, I would guess that would be extremely unlikely as we even today prefer to trade with those who are at least a little bit like us).

Anotheroneagain 3y ago
This is never an issue in reality. They would have a common language, and know each other in some way.