Neanderthals smarter than we give them credit for

This is an important change, our shifting view of the Neanderthal, but it has been underway for decades.

What is happening that is new & innovative, is that we now have the opportunity to revisit various questions about Neanderthals, using new genetic tools - and to explore new avenues.

Those with an interest in such topics as this will want to watch John Hawks Blog. He is a professor of paleoanthropology, and writes way-cool posts. He doesn't have comments.

Thanks for the pointer. My knowledge of such things is still from what I learned in school, and that was quite a while ago. I wasn't aware of the new information.

the days of considering neanderthal man a primitive brute are long gone. It is worth noting that this branch of humanity was VERY strong physically- Neanderthals tended to hunt at close quarters to their large prey species rather than standing off and throwing spears as our branch of humans did. But this does not denote that they were monkees- some of the differences between them and ourselves were cultural rather than physical or intellectual.

Bottom line, it is true that Neanderthal disappeared over thousands of years, and we replced them in Europe. Did we kill them? Some of that may have happened- humans have the ability to conduct wars with humans who look exactly like us, which makes it even easier to conduct wars with people who do not. Did we outcompete them and outbreed them? That's more likely. Did we interbreed with them, and do we carry a few of their genes? Likely in a small way, but clearly our physical structures owe little to them, so if there was genetic sharing it was not widespread.

Interesting. I think it's fascinating to know they existed and I'd really like to know what that was all about. How did they come to be? Why did they disappear? Where did WE come from? I hope advances in genetics will answer some of those questions.

With the finishing of the Chimpanzee DNA we also see that Homosapians are actually the Grizpoles (Grizzly & Polar Bear mix) of a number of cross Sapient combinations. This is based on the non-active genes where the greatest differences occurred.

Neanderthals once looked on as a biological dead end the Neanderthal line genetically speaking has been brought back to life with the better understanding of similarities of non-active genes.

Interesting. It's hard for me to wrap my head around "non-active genes". I'm definitely behind the times when to comes to genetics, but it's a fascinating field. My interest in genetics was fueled when I had a red-haired daughter, but my hair is brown. My mom had red hair and my husband's mother had red hair, and it was so obvious where her hair came from! It was almost like my daughter was the result of a crossing between my mother and my husband's mother, almost leaving US out of it! LOL! I'm sure that wasn't entirely true, but that's rather what it seemed like.

Actually, I believe other authors had discovered something similar but the "hospitable" nature of the Neanderthal caused it to be "killed" to the point of extinction. Similar to other "animals" that would, at first, just rest in place and allow migrants to walk right up and kill.

I couldn't find the original article, but I found the following:

Shipman, Pat. Separating "us" from "them": Neanderthal and modern human behavior. Proc Natl Acad Sci [online]. 2008. v. 105(38), pp. 14241-14242. Available from: Entrez, The Life Sciences Search Engine. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0807931105. PMCID: PMC2567153.

Banks, William E; d'Errico, Francesco; Peterson, Townsend A.; Kageyama, Masa; Sima, Adriana; Sanchez-Goni, Maria-Fernanda. Neanderthal Extinction by Competitive Exclusion. PloS ONE [online]. 2008. v. 3(12). Available from: Entrez, The Life Sciences Search Engine. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0003972. PMCID: PMC2600607.

Wow, thanks! :) It's rather sad to think that the Neanderthal were basically "nicer" than we are. Maybe if we had a little more of them in us we wouldn't be spending so much time killing each other.

@Barbara: Yeah, I agree! :•)

Have you seen the recent article about "Do-Gooders"?

ScienceDaily. Do-Gooders Get Voted Off Island First: People Don't Really Like Unselfish Colleagues, Psychologists Find. Science News [online]. 2010. Available from: [Article]

Oh my! Well, that doesn't surprise me, Chris. I've never liked reality TV because I've felt all along that they are encouraging bad behavior in people.

Isn't that the truth!

"Neanderthal - the 'nice' People"

This presentation can be viewed as a contemporary update to the long-popular "Noble Savage" presentation of prehistoric and/or 'primitive' peoples.

There has always been a hefty romantic component to our view of ancient or 'simpler' people. We *sigh* at the impositions & outright ugliness of modern societies, and imagine ourselves - and the Primitives - in more desirable contexts.

Today, we have the added spin that 'humans are bad'. That we should be seen or held accountable as 'destroyers'. Finding examples like Neanderthals to pose as counter-points in contrast to the 'wrongness' of modern people & culture is a solidly-established 'modus operandi'.

Many specialized 'theories' have been offered to present the Neanderthal - and all other identifiable pre-modern groups - from various specialized viewpoints. One wants to be aware - and wary - not to be 'taken' by a version of the 'shiny bauble' effect, which is a significant hazard in this field today, and very conspicuously has been since the earliest days of our interest in fossil people & their lives.

We see the same 're-definition' of ancient cultures, here in North America, with respect to Native Americans. Certainly, they had (and have) important spiritual dimensions to their cultures, but those were equally certainly thoroughly mixed in with many unflattering and incompatible cultural expressions, both in terms of their relations among themselves, and with Nature.

The presentation of our Native Tribes as the original Environmentalists is mainly rooted in contemporary, not tribal culture. And so it is with the 'nice' Neanderthal.

A 'first pass' at the 'nice-Neanderthal idea' goes like this. In the early & middle stages of Neanderthal development, they were quite wide-spread. Even in their bones, we can see regional differences among them ... and this points to 'isolation' and 'differentiation', which was likely even more pronounced in non-skeletal ways. That reduces the chances that any one 'national niceness character' (a severely-mocked 'presentation', when applied to modern cultures; e.g., the 'cool' Scandinavian, the 'hot' Russian, the 'calculating' Korean, the 'playful' Filipino) would prevail in the genetics & cultures of far-flung Neanderthal populations.

In the end-stages of the Neanderthal story, they were in decline, presumably being 'assisted' by a more-successful culture. Those who resisted or confronted the superior force, were the first to disappear from the scene. Those who retreated & deferred, lived to continue their culture ... and genes.

The 'niceness' of refugia cultures has long been noticed. The Kung bushmen culture has been attributed to the decision to abandon better territories that were more-competitively contested, and retire instead to the spiritually rich but resource-poor open desert-lands, where Western Culture eventually found them.

If we look at the last days of the Neanderthal, then yes, we see clear patterns of refugia-strategies. We understand that such cultures minimize assertiveness and aggression. They defer & yield, they submit. This can give a general aura of 'niceness' ... but actually, it's something a bit different.

Very interesting! All I would like to add is the following: References would be awesome! :•) I am not asking because I don't believe you. Rather, your "argument" is quite logical and built upon education. As such, you must have access to references that could be shared with others. :•)

You should Consider the following "free" resources:

• NAP, THe National Academies Press.
• eScholarship, Berkley
• Entrez, The Life Sciences Search Engine, which actually has more than "life sciences."
• Caltech Authors.
• Illumin, A USC Database.
• ERIC, Education Resources Information Center.

Thanks, Chris! I've enjoyed your references, and agree that they make 'all the difference'. I'm off to town soon for weekly errands, but will take this up later today.

I was a little worried, about the size of my comment (even without refs!), and know that sometimes there is a cutoff-size ... which we don't know about until we exceed it.

I 'synthesized' my response to the nice-Neanderthal idea, and have no knowledge of any official or scientific rebuttal. As such, I can only offer a 'synthesis' of references ... not a citation of an authority for the interpretation I've outlined.

But I certainly much-prefer this kind of topic to the usual 'junk-food' fare, and like the non-WWF tone, too. ;)

Ted: Very interesting, and I see where you are coming from. They saw the writing on the wall, so to speak, and managed to survive at least a little while longer by making themselves scarce.

It is a rather romantic thing to consider the "noble savage" idea. I'm sure that by today's standards, your average Neanderthal would look a lot more savage and less noble. Life was tough then.

I do think that looking in retrospect at the more noble aspects of an ancient culture, in order to perhaps assimilate some of the better points, is good for a society. The Native American point is well taken ... many tribes did spend an awful lot of time killing each other. There's no question, though, that they really got the short end of the stick. I wonder how our life would be different if they were less willing to defer? Frankly, arrows weren't much of a match for guns (I hope I'm not mixing my eras or anything, since history is *not* my strong point), and at that point it's rather intelligent to avoid being shot.

Oh, and as for the size of the comments, I think you can get pretty darned long here. I know *I* have. :) I enjoy intelligent and civilized discussion, and would like to encourage it.

And yes, this is a much more interesting topic than Lohan's latest exploits. In looking for things to write about, it's actually difficult to find sufficiently popular topics that don't involve celebrities and their escapades.

Ted~ Enjoyed your comment above (the big one) and found it pretty much spot on with my own thoughts on the subject.
Thanks.

@Ted: As a suggestion, if you believe a comment may be "too long", write a "response to" and post a link! That is what I did in the following situation:

On the Shoulders of Giants"-not the book though- Some prior innovative thoughts and mathematics that may have affected Dr. Einstein's relativity theory. My response to Chuck Larlham!

Chris, it sounds like you are suggesting one make a separate, new, normal Post, in place of a Comment that is too big & involved to be a comment. Do I understand right?

Although there are aspects to Gather that I enjoy, the structure & navigation for the website has baffled & escaped me, and I've given it a good look several times, thinking about Posting, myself ... and each time I've crawled away nursing my wounds & shaking my head.

It's a hairball. A rat's nest. It's a maze that goes everywhere and nowhere.

I'm not a newbie. I started in the 1990s writing websites by hand in old HTML. Then I learned early Cascading Style Sheets. Then I moved to Content Management Systems. I know the actual code-technology from the ground up, and I know the design & management practices. I'm active in the field.

But I can't make satisfactory heads nor tails of Gather. 16,000 Groups, which I can't explore in a rational way. Multiple cross-linked but opaque navigational channels.

All I can do without pulling my hair out, is dabble at what I see on the front page. It's really too bad, 'cause Gather has several attractive participant communities.

But I don't 'get it', not even close, and that inhibits me from taking on more than a passive - and likely passing - role.

Hope that isn't way too much more than you wanted to know. ;)

One way that you can find content that you're interested in is by "friending" (or connecting or whatever the heck they're calling it these days) people and adjust your "feeds" (on your home page that you get when you click on "My Gather"). I have mine set to only show posts by people I'm interested in. I rarely follow groups for the same reason you gave. Following what's on the main page works to an extent, but you're only seeing the main Gather feeds and only what they want to show you.

Another way to find interesting posts is by searching for a topic. You get a gazillion things, but they're divided up into "posts", "groups", "photos" etc. I don't use this much because there is no particular rhyme or reason to it. Even chronological would be helpful.

Posting articles really isn't all that hard once you know where to go. Click on "share" (at the top of this page), then you get a choice of three things "Share a post", "share a photo" and "share a video". Click on "share a post". Then put in a title and write your post. At the bottom of that page you can either save it as a draft (highly recommended to do this frequently if you're writing something long so it doesn't disappear) or submit it.

If you can wade your way through CSS code, you are certainly smart enough to figure out how to post on Gather!

I see how to Post, Barbara - to it's credit, posting per se is clear & easy on Gather.

The problem is, where do I put what I post? How are things organized here, so that someone doesn't have to paw through Lindsay Lohan trivia, to find my well-referenced piece on Neanderthals in Central Siberia?

By Friending me and waiting for my Feed to tell them I wrote something interesting? But ... they just got here this week, and I posted the Siberia article last month. Friend-feeds can be nice, but they don't help us proactively find what is (or is not) there.

When writing a piece on Neanderthals in Siberia, I want to check & see if Chris Harding and 6 other people haven't already beaten the stuffing out of the subject. After all, these people - we already know - are the core/hardcore audience for that kind of material. If they already Been There Done That, here on Gather, I want to be able to look around, find what they did, go 'Ah, they beat me to it' - and moving on to a topic that I can confirm has not been explored on Gather.

That is one of the potent reasons why there needs to be a way to determine what exists on a website, and in the same sense, what does not yet exist.

No, it's not that I can't see how to Post - I do - it's that ... Gather has no Table of Content, no Index ... "no particular rhyme or reason to it."

Also, you can type the "tag" directly into the "URL" and after the froward slash.

Example: http://www.gather.com/President Obama

Provides the following search: http://www.gather.com/President+Obama

Once you have this impressive list, you can find other "tags" at the bottom of the article.

Also, if you have suggestions, send them to Gather! I suggested the introduction of a simple math editor into their posting code. Making ".jpg"s or "sheets" is too disorganized for articles reliant upon extensive mathematical equations.

For example, I was going to review couette flow and provide the mathematics, but gather isn't "friendly" to the such articles. In truth, not many network sites are set up for such mathematical posts.

I suggested LaTex

Chris - I used the URL-trick with 'neanderthal', and there's 12 hits, several of which are OT. I then tried 'chris harding', and got 12 hits, all "by Chris Harding".

But I then tried 'Barbara White', and get "Tag Unavailable".

I'm impressed, that Gather took your LaTex suggestion. That's very encouraging ... esp. if you've really only done 12 posts!

Barbara & Chris - thanks! I will give it some thought & practice.

@Ted:Did they?

It is all about the tag on gather. Since many people are tagging without a common language, which is a common problem among programming, it causes one to "work" for the content they desire.

Ah ... I haven't been tagging my posts with my name. Good suggestion. A lot of what I post is ... well ... for the masses. I'm only approved for the "General" category and have to make 75% of my posts there. (I'm a Socialwriter -- I get paid if people read my posts. The money funds a ferret shelter I run.)

I've been having a lot of fun on this topic. It's so refreshing to have a real discussion.

@Ted, sorry to misunderstand about the posting thing. Frankly, what most people have done was to make their own group, specific to their interest, and post there. Then people who are interested in your topic can subscribe to your group and find similar articles there. If you make it moderated to post but free to join, you just have to deny off topic posts. It's not perfect, but it does work.

You can also try posting in the Gather Technology group (where this article appeared).

@Chris: You suggested LaTex ... they didn't implement that, did they? I type mathematical papers for a living using LaTex. I don't generate the mathematics, but I type the papers. It would be very cool if they did implement LaTex, but I wonder how they'd do it.

@Barbara: There area a couple Latex»HTML converters but Gather would have to contact them and work with them.

Also, I discovered "Connexions" and they have a LaTex importer. One could probably create content on Connexions and then share the "image" or link with their gather content. It would be nice if something similar was implemented in Gather.

By the way, I know how to convert a word document to an image but the images can "migrate" in the html on Gather.

Chris & Barbara,

I've also seen one or more math-rendering plugins on WordPress, using non-LaTex PHP libraries, which are written to be easily interfaced with existing website software. They are explicit LaTex-replacements, and offer a lot simpler input method, intended for those who don't know LaTex.

WP also hosts several full-boat LaTex plugins, claiming various advantages. All of these have 'lives' outside WP.

@Barbara 7:02pm,

I'd wondered if maybe the 16,000 Groups wasn't driven by a situation like you describe - just make your own! Thanks for the clue! :)

If it 'works' for Gather, for folks to just 'dump' anything somehow SciTech-like into "Technology", then it's no problem for me to do that. And if ain't Technology, then it must be Politics ... and wut more do ya need?? ;)

@Chris Harding Sep 27, 2010, 10:27am EDT

Ah - I jumped to conclusions, that they had accepted the math-suggestion you made.

As I say above, there are developed products aimed at alleviating the challenges of LaTex, for both the website & the user.

Yes, tags get messy, but they're a popular mess! WordPress has gobs of plugins to assist with tag-issues, and Merge scripts are biggies. They give you a nice interface that helps you spot all your multiple spellings of the same thing, and then rebuilds your MySQL table.

Again, many of these WP plugins are not at all WP specific: they may be ported, they may be general libraries. It's a code gold mine.

Yeah, I wonder if Gather was interested in "implementing" their own code for security reasons. I mean architecture at a "controlled" pace. A Wordpress system would be nice, and I have to admit that I have used way to many tags. At least I was told I used too many Tags.

In my opinion, a "tag" should be any word that is significant in an article. For example, I may do a post on "Microbiology and Travel". To make a general tag of Virus, Bacteria, Fungi, ect. would be to general. Rather, I believe my tags should include all the significantly discussed subjects.

Still, I would probably believe one item is "significant" while another would believe it is not significant.

Some people do use tons of tags, and long, complicated tags.

CNN, People, WSJ etc run on WP, generate huge tag loads, and it's not an issue. Tags are very simple data. However, tags can also be part of the site SEO (search engine optimization), and that is very important for places like Gather. Tags can be SEO like the HTML Meta header tags ... and like there, if you stuff too much in it or esp. if the terms start to look repetitious, then the search engine balks.

I looked at your "hikes" tag - and saw it's all photos. Pictures are a toughie, for SEO.

I live next to Olympic National Park, and have grappled with how to handle my hike pictures & reports. WP doesn't lend itself to what I like to do, in handmade pages.

Interesting!

Thanks for the post Barbara. I think the Neanderthals as being "brutish and stupid" has been put aside in the past couple decades really, at least in books I have read about them recently. I find it all extremely interesting myself.
Take care.

Books? Oh yeahh .. it's coming back to me now! ;)

What have you been reading? :)

Ha... I read (or watch) just about anything I can come across on the subject of early man(?) since my first anthropology course I guess, be it fiction or science. Reading "Lucy" by Johanson may have started me off, or perhaps even "Clan of the Cave Bear" by Auel(?) as well, LOL. A hobby of mine I suppose, and if I had it all to do over again would be out digging up bones and artifacts someplace... ;-)
Recently I had a few bucks to blow on buying books, and just finished reading "The Neanderthals" by F. Schenk & S. Muller, as well as "Cro-Magnon" by Brian Fagan.

I find this particular article interesting, The Author, Clive Finlayson of the Gilbralter Museum contends that Neanderthal did not "die" out but was absorbed into Human Populations where they came together, and he contends the Genome proves his theory. I don't know if it was Finlayson in an earlier publication or some other scientist, but there was a theoretical proposition that a couple of visible characteristics are inherited from Neanderthal ancestors. Barbra, one of those is Red Hair. Another Green Eyes. A third is the prominent brow of some Eastern European Ethnic Groups. The idea that cross breeding ended the Neanderthal is not unique to humanity. Salmon, are able to produce fertile offspring in Aquafarming situations. Bison and Bovine also produce fertile offspring, called Beefalo in my part of the world.

The theory is not beyond reason.

The survival weakness of Neanderthal was not intellect. It was body structure. Humans have a posture and head structure that allows us to run faster than Neanderthal. Its a matter of balance. And, if the theory is correct it could explain to some extent the surprising speed and stamina of two widely diverse populations of Humans. Native Americans, and Africans. Both populations were isolated from Neanderthal. I don't want to stray into Eugenics, that is not sound theory. Nurture plays a very large part in the ability to run far and fast. But when you see a Kenyan in a Marathon, it is hard to not believe the runner was born to the talent.

Interesting idea (Neanderthal blood makes us slow). I thought I'd read that Neanderthal genes were rare in the humane genome.

This is particularly interesting to me since my ex-husband had a very pronounced brow and my daughter has red hair!

Not slow per se, anatomically neanderthal was not as effective a runner as the Human. It's the way the head, and neck are constructed. On Neanderthal the neck was somewhat shorter, and the position of the head on the spinal column was differently balanced. I don't think they have ever found a Neanderthal Skeleton in Sub Saharan Africa.

It's also interesting because my son, who inherited the pronounced brow, is a thoroughly non-violent person, and my ex would have rather died than shoot someone (he must have been convincing ... his number came up in the draft in 1972 or so and they declared him unfit for war!) My son is large and strong, but was incapable of fighting. I wouldn't call either my ex or my son terribly bright, though. Not dumb, just not A-type personality bright.

I don't think there has ever been much evidence of violence in connection with Neanderthal ... they did hunt with stone weapons, but I don't think they used them on each other.

I'd heard they were rather peaceful, which some people thought might have led to their demise. I guess they just ascribed to that "make love not war" sort of thing. :) I was thinking my pacifist ex and son would fit the "gentle" Neanderthal view. I have no idea if it's accurate, of course.

It was the making love that "bred" them out of existence. (little joke) But I don't think there is much or any evidence that they were any more inclined to violence as most primates, humans excluded.

I'd heard they were LESS likely to be violent. Hence the "make love not war" with the "make love" being intended as a joke regarding being bred out of existence. :)

I chuckled, so I guess I got it.

Well, I'm glad somebody gets me! :)

Consider my hat tipped to you, for your efforts in this report. I was glad for the additional information.