4 ms·

It's one possible theory, and no doubt, at the very least, it was part of the reason they died. But that's not the only smoking gun. E.g. For at least 200k ye

by rhelz 3y ago

It's one possible theory, and no doubt, at the very least, it was part of the reason they died. But that's not the only smoking gun. E.g. For at least 200k years, we can tell by fossils from the middle east that we made many attempts to spread to Europe, but were always pushed back. Fun fact: Neanderthals actually had substantially bigger brains that we do today (their average size was about 1400-1500ccs. Subtract the volume of a tennis ball from that and you'll get the average size of our brains today). Neanderthals were smart, tough, mofos. So what changed 50k years ago which finally let us succeed? Well, the climate was warming from the last ice age, and Neanderthals were very much cold-adapted hominids. Their short, stocky legs and heavy muscular arms were great at sneaking through the woods and stabbing a deer with a spear, but when the climate changed the woods disappeared, those short legs, hauling a very heavy upper-body musculature, were not so good at running the deer down on a plain. Honestly, we have no real definitive answer to why we are here and they aren't. Like anything else, probably it was a complicated process in which lots of factors--including dumb luck--played a role. For about 4 million years, the earth was very hospitable to all kinds of species of Homo--we find their bones, in a kaleidoscope of shapes and sizes, all over the old world. Since the last ice age, however, Homo has been having a really rough time of it. And we are the only humans left. If you were locked in a room with 10 people, and one by one they started to disappear, when you were the only one left, you might wonder whether it would happen to you too.....

allendoerfer 3y ago
The fact, that I am sitting here slacking off, reading something some dude wrote on the other side of the world just because he had nothing better to do and wanted to enjoy and share his own thoughts, takes away the fear of imminent extinction of my species.
- rhelz 3y ago
  For all the real work going on, we practically are already extinct. There is a vibe line between doom scrolling and brain death.
temp0826 3y ago
Fun to think about. Maybe they were bigger and stronger, which forced us to actually be more clever and start to use our smaller but still very capable brains to accomplish stuff. I don't know if there were actually interactions between the different species, but I sure wouldn't want to fight a neanderthal without a plan or some tools.
nicklecompte 3y ago
I mentioned this in an HN comment earlier this week - be careful about the "Neanderthals had bigger brains than us" stuff. A big chunk of that difference is in the occipital lobe, which is involved in visual processing. And the likely reason for that is that they had significantly larger eyes than modern humans: Larger eyes = more pixels = more real-time visual processing demands (assuming Neanderthals had the same visual acuity as modern humans) = bigger chunk of brain, since evolution is not gonna easily minimize the neurons themselves or find a more efficient algorithm. But on the other hand, their brains being comparable in size to ours is a good reason to think their intelligence was basically comparable to ours. FWIW this study suggests that Neanderthals and modern humans might have had very different approaches to language: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4766443/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4766443/ Neanderthals and modern humans both evolved to make sophisticated vocalizations, but it's possible that the Neanderthals had 10000 words yet only a few ways to join them in simple sentences. (E.g. what if Neanderthals couldn't ask questions, only state disagreements?) In particular we know that humans can have local brain damage leading to near-total disability in using language while still being able to comprehend language, so you could see ancient hominids being "as smart as modern humans" in terms of general problem-solving - building tools, administering medicines and performing surgeries, long-term planning around food - but having profound blocks in language that prevented them from forming larger societies. Neanderthals tended to live in small family groups, whereas almost every modern human hunter-gatherer lives in a much larger tribe (absent war or disaster).
- rhelz 3y ago
  The point that we shouldn’t speculate too much about the implications of Neanderthal brain size is well taken. But IMHO it applies just as well when trying to show that Neanderthal’s language was super different from ours. We know virtually nothing about the evolution of language in our own species, let alone another species. They were different for sure, but the fact that we regularly mated with and formed families with Neanderthals and their first few generation generations means to me that the difference wasn’t that much. I’d go so far as to that absent any reason to believe otherwise, the default presumption should be that we’d be close to equals with them in these matters.
jeff-davis 3y ago
I happen to be reading Sapiens right now. The author seems convinced that we genetically developed the ability for abstract thought (which he calls imaginary or fiction), and that allowed us to cooperate much more easily in large numbers. For instance, believing in a particular flag allows you to identify your allies on the battlefield without having ever met them before. The theory goes that other animals, including other hominins, genetically lack the hardware to rally around a flag. This also led to the notion of a shared culture across many individuals that can adapt much more quickly than genetic evolution. (Unless I misunderstand, of course.) The author squarely blames Homo Sapiens for wiping out the other hominins, pointing out how many other large species seemed to go extinct as soon as we arrived someplace new, even long before the Agricultural revolution.
- rhelz 3y ago
  Certainly our capacity for abstract thought is our superpower, but recall, we tried to spread to Europe for 200,000 years, and the Neanderthals always were able to push us back out again. 50,000 years ago, something changed . Maybe it was an increased capacity for abstract thought, but if so, that was a software and not a hardware development, because we had the same anatomy for 300,000 years. If we could implement the software, I don’t see why the Neanderthals couldn’t have done so, as they had even bigger brains than we do.
  - jeff-davis 3y ago
    Part of the theory is that abstract thought enables culture, and culture enables much faster adaptation than genetic evolution. But still far from instant. So maybe the abstract thought hardware was there for a long time before we got culturally coordinated enough to use it with full effectiveness to organize large groups capable of outcompeting Neanderthals.

by rhelz 3y ago

allendoerfer 3y ago

The fact, that I am sitting here slacking off, reading something some dude wrote on the other side of the world just because he had nothing better to do and wanted to enjoy and share his own thoughts, takes away the fear of imminent extinction of my species.

rhelz 3y ago
For all the real work going on, we practically are already extinct. There is a vibe line between doom scrolling and brain death.

temp0826 3y ago

Fun to think about. Maybe they were bigger and stronger, which forced us to actually be more clever and start to use our smaller but still very capable brains to accomplish stuff. I don't know if there were actually interactions between the different species, but I sure wouldn't want to fight a neanderthal without a plan or some tools.

nicklecompte 3y ago

I mentioned this in an HN comment earlier this week - be careful about the "Neanderthals had bigger brains than us" stuff. A big chunk of that difference is in the occipital lobe, which is involved in visual processing. And the likely reason for that is that they had significantly larger eyes than modern humans: Larger eyes = more pixels = more real-time visual processing demands (assuming Neanderthals had the same visual acuity as modern humans) = bigger chunk of brain, since evolution is not gonna easily minimize the neurons themselves or find a more efficient algorithm. But on the other hand, their brains being comparable in size to ours is a good reason to think their intelligence was basically comparable to ours. FWIW this study suggests that Neanderthals and modern humans might have had very different approaches to language: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4766443/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4766443/ Neanderthals and modern humans both evolved to make sophisticated vocalizations, but it's possible that the Neanderthals had 10000 words yet only a few ways to join them in simple sentences. (E.g. what if Neanderthals couldn't ask questions, only state disagreements?) In particular we know that humans can have local brain damage leading to near-total disability in using language while still being able to comprehend language, so you could see ancient hominids being "as smart as modern humans" in terms of general problem-solving - building tools, administering medicines and performing surgeries, long-term planning around food - but having profound blocks in language that prevented them from forming larger societies. Neanderthals tended to live in small family groups, whereas almost every modern human hunter-gatherer lives in a much larger tribe (absent war or disaster).

rhelz 3y ago
The point that we shouldn’t speculate too much about the implications of Neanderthal brain size is well taken. But IMHO it applies just as well when trying to show that Neanderthal’s language was super different from ours. We know virtually nothing about the evolution of language in our own species, let alone another species. They were different for sure, but the fact that we regularly mated with and formed families with Neanderthals and their first few generation generations means to me that the difference wasn’t that much. I’d go so far as to that absent any reason to believe otherwise, the default presumption should be that we’d be close to equals with them in these matters.

jeff-davis 3y ago

I happen to be reading Sapiens right now. The author seems convinced that we genetically developed the ability for abstract thought (which he calls imaginary or fiction), and that allowed us to cooperate much more easily in large numbers. For instance, believing in a particular flag allows you to identify your allies on the battlefield without having ever met them before. The theory goes that other animals, including other hominins, genetically lack the hardware to rally around a flag. This also led to the notion of a shared culture across many individuals that can adapt much more quickly than genetic evolution. (Unless I misunderstand, of course.) The author squarely blames Homo Sapiens for wiping out the other hominins, pointing out how many other large species seemed to go extinct as soon as we arrived someplace new, even long before the Agricultural revolution.

rhelz 3y ago
Certainly our capacity for abstract thought is our superpower, but recall, we tried to spread to Europe for 200,000 years, and the Neanderthals always were able to push us back out again. 50,000 years ago, something changed . Maybe it was an increased capacity for abstract thought, but if so, that was a software and not a hardware development, because we had the same anatomy for 300,000 years. If we could implement the software, I don’t see why the Neanderthals couldn’t have done so, as they had even bigger brains than we do.
- jeff-davis 3y ago
  Part of the theory is that abstract thought enables culture, and culture enables much faster adaptation than genetic evolution. But still far from instant. So maybe the abstract thought hardware was there for a long time before we got culturally coordinated enough to use it with full effectiveness to organize large groups capable of outcompeting Neanderthals.