I always assumed the neanderthal’s brain wasn’t as developed so in a simplified way they were not as smart. Brawn only goes so far.
Not knowing a lot about this I find it fascinating.
To jump ahead what kind of evidence would “prove” that they inbred? I know we don’t have it but what would be proof? What could we look for?
I have proof! My ex-husband is a living example
Who says they were untrained in combat? We have to remember that Cro-Magnons were just as intelligent as us, if not more so - they had larger brains than we do on average. They probably had a spoken language and thousands of years of traditions. They may not have had an army that marched in formation, but I imagine that, if they were in a state of conflict with other hominids, they would have a lot of knowledge about combat tactics that were effective with what little they had.
Bigger and stronger isn’t always who wins. I mean, Managascar elephant birds and New Zealand giant moas were both bigger than humans but they’re extinct now due to human activities. We might yet wipe out elephants, lions, and tigers.
I don’t think it’s because the Neanderthals were somehow stupid or “less evolved” (a meaningless term). On average, their brains were bigger than either Cro-Magnon or modern H. Sapiens. That doesn’t mean they thought the way we did, and brain size is not an absolute indication of intelligence, but they were certainly smarter than, say, ostriches.
Remember, there’s a lot we don’t know about these folks. It could be Neanderthals were more carnivorous in habits, so that if an area was over-hunted they might starve where the Cro-Magnon could switch over to a nearly vegetarian diet for a time.
It could be the climate change, becoming warmer, and Neanderthals couldn’t tolerate the heat and it was enough, combined with conflicts between them and Cro-Magnons, to push them over the edge.
The Cro-Magnon’s might have brought in a disease the Neanderthals had no resistance to.
It might have been a combination of the above. Or something we haven’t thought of yet.
Why should that make them mmore intelligent? We don’t use all of our brain capacity. They might have used the same amount of their brain as we do, and just had more extra.
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*Originally posted by SlackerInc *
**Did you read the link I provided? I’m not asserting this is a sure thing, but Oxford University, I think we’d all agree, is a fairly prestigious institution. And I get a kick out of seeing freckle-faced redheads and thinking to myself “you’re part Neanderthal.”
Actually I did mention the redhead thing in my original post. Yes, it’s interesting because it implies they did interbreed for the gene to have survived, but I did say that I was more interested in psychological characteristics. Also, dare I say it, I think red-haired people get enough abuse already (also again, why is ‘Neanderthal’ a sort of insult?)
Another thing…I notice that most of you talk about Cro Magnons, not homo sapiens. I’m afraid I don’t know the difference, if there is one. Just checked encyclopedia and it just says CroMagnons were an early form of homo sapiens. Does this mean they were genetically the same as us?
(A) It wouldn’t make them more intelligent - whales and elephants have much bigger brains than us - it’s more to do with the relationship between brain size and body size. Humans have v. big brains in relation to body size (hence painful childbirth, perhaps!)
(B) I think the idea that we don’t use all our brain capacity is a myth. All parts of our brain has a role to play, it’s just that a lot of the functions are unconscious.
Wrong, we use ALL our brain capacity. If you’re referring to the myth about “people only use 10 percent of their brains”, then I must advise you that it is an utter fallacy.
As for cro-magnons defeating neanderthals - Its been speculated that the key factor in cro-mag dominance was their linguistic ability. Neanderthal vocal structure was severely limited, and they could not have a language system to compete with cro-mags.
Without language, speech, (and later) writing, humans would be nothing but hairless apes with stone tools.
As for why Cro Magnons prospered at the expense of Neanderthals, Binford believes that Neanderthals were bad at planning ahead. They more or less reacted to their enviroment as they found it.
This is one of the main reasons why modern humans are so successful at the expense of animials. Thoug they can learn to react differently under certain circumstances, animals generally react in predictable ways to a particuar set of stimuli. If you can recognize these patterns, you can exploit them. Once Cro-Magnon man learned a few handy “tricks,” the Neanderthal would fall for them time and time again.
We say “why did we win?”. Because we are the victors.
If THEY had won, we wouldn’t be here to ask the question, and THEY would be saying, “why did we win?”
Two groups clash. Either:
If #1, then either #2 or #3 remain as possibilities for later conflicts.
If #2, game over–and no one is here to ask why.
So, given enough time, #3 emerges as the final result.
Why side A and not side B? There are “factors,” and then there are “reasons.” There are always “factors,” plusses and minusses for each side. But there are not always “reasons,” such that one can say, THIS was why.
My guess is that the population ratio between the two groups varied wildly over thousands of years. At some point the Cros JUST HAPPENED to pass a critical point where they outnumbered the Neans by so much that they were able to drive the Neans out of their sustaining environment; and the remaining Neans, scattered, interbred to such a degree that they eventually died out.
I’ve been out of the loop, so to speak, for some time (got my BA in anthropology in 1996, then had to deal with some serious life changes that left me little time for study) so I may be “telling tales out of school” here. FWIW, my opinion is that Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons did interbreed, though not extensively. I remember seeing the article in either Archaeology or Discover back in 1999, and I cut it out and saved it, but I didn’t read it. I’ve read (don’t ask me to quote chapter & verse) of DNA testing to determine genetic viability, and that debate still rages, as far as I know. The general feeling seems to be that they were not genetically compatible.
OTOH, Jean Auel, the author of the “Earth’s Children” series, seems to believe that it was so. Not that one should take a fiction writer’s word with much more than a grain of salt, but still she seems to be quite well respected by the paleoanthropological community.
The bottom line is, there are going to be almost as many opinions as there are anthropologists expressing them. I learned that when I was doing research for my college work. I’ve been told that it’s not nice to hijack threads, but here’s an interesting proposition to consider: If the “out of Africa” theory is going to prove to be the correct one (and alas for this multiregionalist, evidence is mounting up), it sort of stands to reason that, if Cro-Magnons came out of Africa, then they must have been black, losing the melanin in their skin over many generations as they evolved to accommodate the cold. The Neanderthals, having begun their sojourn in northern Europe and Asia, would have been light-skinned. Comments on this, anyone?
I am quite certain that I read somewhere maybe a couple years ago that someone had extracted some DNA from a Neanderthal bone and studied it and concluded that the differences between that and human DNA make it unlikely that there was any successful interbreeding. Jokes aside, people screw sheep and, reputedly, swans. (It is rumored that in Oxbridge, the swans are reserved for the dons.) Given the contact that certainly occurred in northern Europe between 30,000 and 50,000 years ago, if not longer, I would be astonished if they hadn’t tried. So of all the posts above, I regard the mule hypothesis most likely. The Neanderthals did have larger brains, but if they lacked the specific changes that led to language, they would have been, to say the least, at a severe disadvantage. Imagine a football game in which only one side could plan their plays. Even if the other side was bigger and stronger, which one would you bet on?
The interesting point is that the Abrigo de Lagar Velho child is dateable to a time well after the last known definite Neanderthals had vanished – meaning that either Neanderthal genes were carried on, that the interpretation of the fossil as having Neanderthal traits is in error, or some other explanation that presently escapes me.
W/R/T the “Neanderthal DNA,” only a few short DNA sequences were preserved, not a genome, which means that any conclusions as to interfertility are working far beyond the implications of the available data.
Apparently, the indigenous population of the Australian land mass - known generically as “aborigines” - that is, the population which existed here prior to European colonisation - is the most distinct pool of Cro Magnon gene pool on the planet.
The theory on this is that the Australian land mass broke away from the South East Asian archipeligo of islands some 40,000 years or more, resulting in the unique gene pool of not only humonoids but also marsupials and the like - (just think of the platypus for crying out loud).
Now, where it gets REALLY interesting is that the general consensus is that Australia became an island continent some 40,000 years ago. But ALSO, it’s generally accepted that Cro Magnon only first appeared out of Africa some 10,000 years prior to that.
And during that 10,000 year window, Neanderthals died off and Cro Magnons became omnipresent.
I suspect our true answers will be found in the indiginous hominoid gene pools of Australia I rather think. Anyway you look at it, Cro Magnon came a long way rather quickly - from Africa all the way across the sub continent to Asia and then Terra Australis, and then they were cutoff for 40,000 years. There’s gotta be some real interesting gene pool indications in there I reckon.
I knew someone who had the theory that the reason whites were so aggressive and effectively took over the world was because we bred with the neanderthals, while the non-white pure homo sapiens sapiens are more advanced and peaceful.
Crackpot theory, but felt like this would be an interesting thread to bring it up.
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Actually, no, this isn’t the consensus. 40,000 years ago, Australia was pretty much exactly where it is today. In any case, it didn’t break away from Asia and move south. It broke away from Antartica and moved north. Australia became an “island” sometime in the Cretaceous, about 65,000,000 years ago.
It’s also not the consensus that anatomically modern humans first appeared 50,000 years ago. The actual date is more like 120,000 years ago. This means that neanderthals and “modern” humans co-existed for about 80,000 years.
Something however, did happen to anatomically modern humans about 40,000 years ago – a date that corresponds closely with the extinction of the Neanderthal. Most scientists believe that this change was brought about by the direct intervention of the Star brotherhood of Antares 5 who wished to set humans on the path to evolving into the next dimension. Either that, or some mutation allowed humans to vastly improve their ability to manipulate abstract symbols and language.
It is true, however, that the first evidence of human habititation in Australia goes back about 40,000 years ago.
…and to develop an inordinate interest in large black slabs in the dimensions 1:4:9? 
… and to develop a deep love for the music of Richard Strauss.
You sprach that like Zarasthustra, Wumpus! 
Since no one has said this explicitly yet, I’ll pipe up and say that the reasoning behind theories such as Binford’s is that the shape of the typical Neanderthal skull is different enough from the shape of the typical Cro-Magnon skull to indicate that the shape/structure of their brains was pretty different from ours or that of our ancestors. The sloping forehead indicates a smaller frontal lobe. Since the frontal lobe controls activities like planning and imagination, it’s not far-fetched to speculate that the Neanderthals weren’t as creative as our ancestors or as good at strategizing.
The Neanderthal brain was pretty big though, and much bigger than our own in the back, where the temporal lobes are. That’s where memories are formed. Their memories may have been much better than ours are, although how this worked and what they might have done with their excellent memories are things we can only guess at. Anyway, these brain structure differences make it seem likely that the Neanderthals were a species that, while similar to and perhaps just as intelligent as our own, dealt with the world in a very different way.
For one reason or another it seems that “their way” couldn’t compete with “our way”, perhaps because we were better equipped to deal with the environment or perhaps because we killed them outright. And while there’s no solid evidence for the latter, I am inclined to believe that it is a primary reason for the extinction of the Neanderthals – if only because the history of our species suggests that we have a hard enough time restraining ourselves from killing each other with no motivation beyond minor phenotypical or cultural differences. The differences between Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals must have been much greater.
All the more reason to mourn their passing. I’ve often thought how much we could have benefited as a species by having a similar-but-different species around to interact with and learn from. I wish they could be with us today. But again, our track record as a species is such that I doubt we would have treated them very well if they’d survived. Perhaps we’d be using them as slaves even now.