# I know what killed the Neaderthals!!!!
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-know-what-killed-the-neaderthals/74923
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [August 4, 2001, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-know-what-killed-the-neaderthals/74923 "2001-08-04T21:14:58Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2001, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-know-what-killed-the-neaderthals/74923/1 "2001-08-04T21:14:58Z")
Scientists have long wondered what killed the Neanderthals off. They were bigger than us, had larger brains, and existed in the same places and times as we did, but they died out and we survived. Additionally, there appears to have been little, if any, inter-marriage between us and them. No one knows why, but today, I figured it out.
It came to me because I was doing yardwork. Its a murderously hot day and I’d been out in the hottest part of it cutting grass, trimming bushes, etc. Normally, I don’t sweat much no matter how hot I get, but today, the sweat was just pouring off of me in buckets, getting in my eyes and blinding me.
After nearly slicing my leg off, I went into the house in search of a towel to wipe the sweat off my face so I could see. As I was doing so, I grumbled to myself about why hadn’t we evolved something so that sweat didn’t get into our eyes. Because after all, if you’re in a fight for your life and you can’t see, you’re probably not going to live long enough to pass on your genes. Then, as I stared at myself in the mirror, I remembered that part of the purpose for the brow ridge was to divert sweat from our eyes. So I thought, “Why don’t we have a bigger one?” Then I remembered that the Neanderthals had a larger one. That’s when it hit me!
Larger brow ridge = more sweat. More sweat = more stench. So, by comparison, we humans, no matter how stinky we got must have smelled better than our Neanderthal cousins. It would have also taken less effort for us to clean the stench off of ourselves, thus enabling us to devote more time for things like making babies. Plus, a Neanderthal must have reeked like a dead mule, making it easy for his/her enemies to find them.
This also explains why we rarely intermingled. They smelled bad, so we didn’t want to have anything to do with them.
Of course, since I thought all of this up without the help of a PhD, I’ll never see any Nobel Prizes for it, and knowing my luck, someone will come along with a two sentence post that totally demolishes my theory, but I thought I’d post it so I could bask in the glory of my idea for a few moments.
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### Author:  [@Ross](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ross)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2001, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-know-what-killed-the-neaderthals/74923/2 "2001-08-04T22:14:45Z")
No way, man. I’m with you. From now on you will be known as Dr Tuckerfan. By me, at least. If you like we could ask an admin or a mod (never could remember which was more important) to change your name.
Your theory sounds at _least_ as plausible as half of the stuff masquerading as science these days - and isn’t it about time someone got credited with a major discovery without having to write a PhD? This is your Newton’s apple, it has fallen on your head. GO TUCKER! GO TUCKER! GO TUCKER! (DOES FUNKY DANCE; falls over)
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### Author:  [@JosephFinn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JosephFinn)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2001, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-know-what-killed-the-neaderthals/74923/3 "2001-08-04T23:02:28Z")
Being misspelled?
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### Author:  [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2001, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-know-what-killed-the-neaderthals/74923/4 "2001-08-05T06:50:40Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by JosephFinn \*
> \*\*Being misspelled? \*\*
What’s misspelled? You can spell the word Neandertal or Neanderthal. At least according to [http://www.dictionary.com](http://www.dictionary.com) that is.
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### Author:  [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2001, 6:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-know-what-killed-the-neaderthals/74923/5 "2001-08-05T06:55:52Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Tuckerfan \*
> \*\*
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > \*Originally posted by JosephFinn \*
> > \*\*Being misspelled? \*\*
>
> What’s misspelled? You can spell the word Neandertal or Neanderthal. At least according to [http://www.dictionary.com](http://www.dictionary.com) that is. \*\*
Of course, I post that, **then** I notice that I’ve misspelled it in the damn thread title. Shoot me for being an idiot, please.
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### Author:  [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2001, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-know-what-killed-the-neaderthals/74923/6 "2001-08-05T13:24:00Z")
Reconstructing the face of the Gibraltar 2 (Devil’s Tower) Neanderthal child:
[http://www.ifi.unizh.ch/staff/zolli/CAP/Gib2.htm](http://www.ifi.unizh.ch/staff/zolli/CAP/Gib2.htm)
Slow loading, and the finished reconstruction pic is at the bottom of the page, but worth waiting for.
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### Author:  [@Astroboy14](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Astroboy14)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2001, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-know-what-killed-the-neaderthals/74923/7 "2001-08-05T15:05:11Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Tuckerfan \*
> \*\*
Of course, I post that, **then** I notice that I’ve misspelled it in the damn thread title. Shoot me for being an idiot, please. \*\*
[/QUOTE]
Damn!
And I LIKED him!
Oh, well… a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do…
**Astroboy raises his gun, levels it as he wipes a tear away…**
**POW**
**heavy sigh**
Where’s ma shovel?😃
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### Author:  [@Sterra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sterra)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2001, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-know-what-killed-the-neaderthals/74923/8 "2001-08-05T17:40:12Z")
I think it was the larger brains that did them in. They discussed philosophy while humans beat them to death with animal bones.
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### Author:  [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2001, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-know-what-killed-the-neaderthals/74923/9 "2001-08-05T19:17:41Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Astroboy14 \*
>
> Damn!
>
> And I LIKED him!
> Oh, well… a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do…
>
> **Astroboy raises his gun, levels it as he wipes a tear away…**
> **POW**
>
> **heavy sigh**
>
> Where’s ma shovel?😃 \*\*
Damn, the only person to ever say they liked me on the board and he shoots me!
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### Author:  [@saepiroth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saepiroth)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2001, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-know-what-killed-the-neaderthals/74923/10 "2001-08-06T01:18:38Z")
i always preferred the “we sucked, but in a good way” argument that originated with the ammonite-Nautilus dominace battle. here is the ammonite-Nautilus crosses explained;
Ammonites and nautili shared living conditions, but ammonites were both more adaptable, and reproduced faster, so they beat the nautili back to the depths. at the end of the precambrian, a cataclysm eliminated most of the life on earth- including the ammonites and the adult nautili. however, because of the nautilus reproduction method of laying just a few eggs that take years to hatch, many baby nautili were hatching after things settled down. i have no web cites, but the name of the book was “On Methusalah’s Trail: mysteries of the burgess shale”.
this applies to humans as thus: the neanderthals and we shared the same areas, diet, and habitations. so, the more capable neanderthals forced us out of the prime living areas, and, with difficulty, our systems adjusted over time to eat meat and such instead of pure vegetable matter. when an ice age rolled over the habitats of the neanderthals and we humans, we relied on meats ever more in our diet while the neanderthals couldn’t adapt fast enough and died out.
well, it may not be right, but that is what i’ve always believed.
hey, tuckerfan; why would an increrased ability to avoid sweat-blindness equal ‘sweat more’? if both humans and neanderthals needed a certain amount of sweat emission to keep cool, and neanderthals evolved a brow ridge to see when producing that much sweat, why would they increase their sweat emissions any more? all i see is that they wouldn’t have to wrap a diaper around their head when mowing the lawn to keep the sweat out of their eyes (What? it works well!).
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### Author:  [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2001, 7:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-know-what-killed-the-neaderthals/74923/11 "2001-08-06T07:15:18Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Tuckerfan \*
> \*\*
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > \*Originally posted by JosephFinn \*
> > \*\*Being misspelled? \*\*
>
> What’s misspelled? You can spell the word Neandertal or Neanderthal. At least according to [http://www.dictionary.com](http://www.dictionary.com) that is. \*\*
Ah, so it _can_ be spelled without the “h.” The narrator on a discovery channel special a few months ago was driving me batty because he was pronouncing it “knee-ander-tall.” I’ve never heard anyone say it that way, and it sounds…wrong. Not incorrect, per say, but horribly wrong.
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### Author:  [@Steve\_Wright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_Wright)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2001, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-know-what-killed-the-neaderthals/74923/12 "2001-08-06T11:50:16Z")
I think your discovery channel person is pronouncing it the right way. _T[h]al_ is simply German for “valley”, and “th” in German is usually (tr.: I can’t think of a counter-example, but some clever so-and-so will cpme along with one two minutes after I post this) pronounced like “t” in English.
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### Author:  [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2001, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-know-what-killed-the-neaderthals/74923/13 "2001-08-06T15:37:24Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by saepiroth \*
> \*\*\
> hey, tuckerfan; why would an increrased ability to avoid sweat-blindness equal ‘sweat more’? if both humans and neanderthals needed a certain amount of sweat emission to keep cool, and neanderthals evolved a brow ridge to see when producing that much sweat, why would they increase their sweat emissions any more? all i see is that they wouldn’t have to wrap a diaper around their head when mowing the lawn to keep the sweat out of their eyes (What? it works well!). \*\*
You’re kind of looking at it the wrong way. Neandertals had larger bodies, therefore they had to sweat more than we did to keep themselves cool. Thus they had a larger browridge than us, and since they sweat more, they stank more. You’re idea as to why they died out and we evolved differently certainly has merit. I can imagine that happening along side my idea as well. Of course, until someone actually clones a Neandertal, we’ll never know for certain (and even then we may not).
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### Author:  [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2001, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-know-what-killed-the-neaderthals/74923/14 "2001-08-06T15:40:10Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Steve Wright \*
> \*\*I think your discovery channel person is pronouncing it the right way. _T[h]al_ is simply German for “valley”, and “th” in German is usually (tr.: I can’t think of a counter-example, but some clever so-and-so will cpme along with one two minutes after I post this) pronounced like “t” in English. \*\*
Yes and no. Dictionaries give guides for pronouncing it both ways, so I discovered last night 🙂
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### Author:  [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2001, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-know-what-killed-the-neaderthals/74923/15 "2001-08-06T15:43:18Z")
- I know what killed the Neaderthals!!!
- hyphenated last names for children
Yup, I think that’s what did it.
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### Author:  [@Jet\_Jaguar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jet_Jaguar)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2001, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-know-what-killed-the-neaderthals/74923/16 "2001-08-06T16:31:40Z")
While reading this thread, I cringe every time a poster writes something like “Neanderthals vs. Humans”. Neanderthals were just as human as we are, just in a different way. Better to say “Neanderthals vs. Sapiens”. Anyway, this isn’t GD, maybe I’m just being too anal about it.
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### Author:  [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2001, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-know-what-killed-the-neaderthals/74923/17 "2001-08-07T05:45:45Z")
The most interesting theory I’ve heard of to account for Neanderthal disappearance was by the paleontologist Björn Kurtén. He wrote a novel, _Dance of the Tiger_, to set forth his theory.
In a word, what killed them off:
Love.
_sapiens_ lacked the heavy mandible and brow ridges, therefore kept in adulthood features that only occurred in infancy in _neanderthalensis_. Ethologists have shown how infantile features are cute and attractive. This prolonged infantilism of the _sapiens_ face made _neanderthalensis_ attracted to them. They fell in love and had babies with _sapiens_. Being a separate species, their offspring were sterile. Enough of this mating over time and all the Neanderthal offspring wound up sterile. Extinction.
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### Author:  [@ssj\_man2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ssj_man2k)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2001, 7:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-know-what-killed-the-neaderthals/74923/18 "2001-08-07T07:04:08Z")
I watched the discovery channel, and they had a thing about neanderthals.
Our 2 species did infact intermingle, peacefully. We traded knowledge and such. We even inter-bred, and we were close enough so that you could make babies. They have found fossils of part human, part neanderthal children.
What killed the neanderthals was their inability to adapt. As the environment they were used started disappearing, they lost hunting ground, and relations with other neanderthal groups. The couldn’t adapt to the changes like we could, so they died out. But scientists suspect that if their birth rate 2% higher, or death rate 2% lower, they wouldv’e survived.
And actually, the stench you were talking about in the original OP probably would’ve helped them, if anything. Unlike today, our stench acted as pharamones, attracting mates rather than repelling them. So, the neanderthals wouldv’e attracted more mates, rather than get blind from sweat and die.
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### Author:  [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2001, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-know-what-killed-the-neaderthals/74923/19 "2001-08-07T08:11:05Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by ssj\_man2k \*
> \*\*I watched the discovery channel, and they had a thing about neanderthals.
>
> Our 2 species did infact intermingle, peacefully. We traded knowledge and such. We even inter-bred, and we were close enough so that you could make babies. They have found fossils of part human, part neanderthal children.
> \*\*
I have to ask…cite, please?
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### Author:  [@ssj\_man2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ssj_man2k)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2001, 8:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-know-what-killed-the-neaderthals/74923/20 "2001-08-07T08:15:25Z")
The discover channel.
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