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On prehistory: It’s strange and a bit sad to me that we have zero cultural memory of neanderthals. All we have left is modern speculation and imagination.
by nobodyandproud 3y ago
On prehistory: It’s strange and a bit sad to me that we have zero cultural memory of neanderthals.
All we have left is modern speculation and imagination.
- goatlover 3y agoHow far back do you think human cultural memory extends? The earliest writings would be preserving stories known at the time, but how far back did those stories go in prehuman history? I'm guessing most of prehistory was forgotten even before you get to neanderthals.
- jbotz 3y agoProbably, but there is some evidence that Australian aboriginal oral traditions have preserved information for at least 16,000 years or so, i.e. well into the last ice age. IIRC there are two specific instances, one involving astronomical observations that can be dated to about that long ago, and another involving geography, where the stories speak of an area of land as it would have appeared when sea levels where much lower during the ice age.
- flir 3y agohttps://www.science.org/content/article/aboriginal-tale-ancient-volcano-oldest-story-ever-told https://www.science.org/content/article/aboriginal-tale-anci... Notable because it's so old, but it gives you an upper bound.
- helpfulmandrill 3y agoI have sometimes wondered if ideas about dwarves, gnomes, trolls or other vaguely human-shaped mythical creatures might have originated in encounters with other, now-extinct human species.
- ldjkfkdsjnv 3y agoThe same is true of greek gods. Some of them, like Zeus, were probably real people that existed a long time ago
- XorNot 3y agoOr possibly several people: it's worth remembering that there were no photographs in most of human history. The story of who a person was can easily be a combination of many.
- andrewpolidori 3y agoAbsolutely right! Famously every town in the ancient Mediterranean had a Hercules story about how he came around and did some unique thing.
- w0de0 3y agoNo, probably not. The word “Zeus” is far older than Greek - it’s a Proto-Indo-European word, and he is an Indo-European sky god, with analogues from India to Iberia. (“Dios,” as in the Latin languages’ word for the Christian god, has this derivation.) This all to say that the word (and the sacred culture attendant) is far older and far broader than can be ascribed to some just-so story of a prehistoric, let alone proto-Greek, warlord. If I were to look for origins of “Zeus,” the god, I would instead first contemplate how vast the sky appears when seen from the steppe (whence the Yamnaya, first speakers of this language family). How does one not imagine a sky father in that seeming infinity?
- ldjkfkdsjnv 3y agoNothing you wrote here negates what I wrote. Just that it goes far back, and probably originates in pre-history. Its not inconceivable to think about figures like Jesus existing 20-30-40k years ago. Over time they turn into legends, which are bigger and more vast than the living human ever was.
- carlosjobim 3y agoDwarves are short people, so there's really no mystery there. As for gnomes and trolls, they could be explained as birth defects. The myth of "changelings" are probably these birth defects that might not be noticeable in a newly born child, but later become obvious. I think the real cultural memory of the Neanderthals and other species related to us is in the myths of Titans and Giants. People who were on earth first and who battled furiously with man-like gods for dominance.
- adastra22 3y agoAre you sure? There is a convincing argument that Neanderthals were the original boogeyman, and carried down to the present through the stories we tell our children and works like Beowulf: https://treeofwoe.substack.com/p/when-orcs-were-real https://treeofwoe.substack.com/p/when-orcs-were-real
- fsloth 3y agoAFAIK the idea of neanderthals as original bogeymen is closer to anthropological fanfic than a credible hypothesis, but would love to have an anthropologist/paleonthologist to chime in.
- adastra22 3y agoI think it is beyond something we can know definitively. We know that our species interacted because we share DNA. The nature of that interaction is largely guesswork.
- InitialLastName 3y agoI like the argument that our time coexisting with neanderthals is the reason the uncanny valley exists: we have in the deep past had very good reason to be made uncomfortable by entities that almost, but not quite, seem like humans.
- helpfulmandrill 3y agoBut then, when chimps and gorillas do something human-like, it inspires laughter and delight rather than discomfort.