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When Orcs Were Real

treeofwoe.substack.com

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Re: When Orcs Were Real

#121

Post by PeterisP »

betwixthewires wrote: post #81
shp0ngle wrote: post #2

The first comment on the substack links to this article, from 2010, that basically refutes this theory and this book. https://blog.waikato.ac.nz/bioblog/2010/10/killer-neandertal...

Thanks for this, I didn't see the comment in the article. The minute I saw "horizontal slit eyes" I was pretty much done. There's literally no way to know if that was true, for that to be a claim in a proposed theory rightly discredits that theory. I can see them being hairy. But deducing from having larger eyes that they'd be nocturnal and therefore have horizontal slit eyes... And then there's the issue of the flat…

"There's literally no way to know if that was true" - we don't know now, but hypothetically in the future, wouldn't it be plausible to determine such traits from their DNA? We have a full DNA sequence, and wherever (and whenever, in the future) we know what impact particular genes had on some traits in primates, we can check how the neanderthals had it.

Heck, it would not get attempted due to ethical issues, but technically it might be even plausible to clone a neanderthal using a human surrogate mother, there has been some work in cross-species cloning.

Re: When Orcs Were Real

#122

Post by jablongo »

This article states that humans were likely pushed to near extinction by Neanderthals, with one figure being the at one point we were reduced to 50 individuals (??!!). How is this possible considering no Neanderthals ever lived in Africa? Were there periods where humans were also absent from that continent? Seems unlikely...

Re: When Orcs Were Real

#123

Post by TaupeRanger »

gpm wrote: post #103
peeters wrote: post #93

So even if we accept everything being said of the Neanderthals, this is left completely undefended: > Why does every culture have legends of monstrous humanoids, and why are they are always depicted as fearsome and dangerous? Because the legends were real. The orcs were real. Is the author really suggesting that these stories are the product of an unbroken chain of 50,000 years of oral tradition? If not, what do even…

Are you suggesting that there isn't an unbroken chain of oral tradition? That for some generations in the middle every child didn't talk to their parents or other members of the older generation? It's a game of broken telephone no doubt, but I don't see how that chain could not exist.

I think the salient point is that it's likely, given our imaginations, that we would've concocted stories about monstrous humanoids regardless of whether they actually existed alongside us. It shouldn't be surprising.

Re: When Orcs Were Real

#124

Post by fsloth »

jablongo wrote: post #122

This article states that humans were likely pushed to near extinction by Neanderthals, with one figure being the at one point we were reduced to 50 individuals (??!!). How is this possible considering no Neanderthals ever lived in Africa? Were there periods where humans were also absent from that continent? Seems unlikely...

The article is entertaining bs. It's about as scientific as H.P.Lovecrafts "At the mountains of madness".

Re: When Orcs Were Real

#125

Post by poisonarena »

soapdog wrote: post #59
Bayart wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Acknowledging the weight of passive factors (disease) shouldn't be at the cost of disqualifying the role of active ones like technology (military, political, administrative, trades). The Spanish had plenty of military engagements in the early colonization of the Americas that were easily solved purely because of their overwhelming technological advantages.

That is the biased narrative that we have been told for centuries, and it doesn't match recent research. Diseases happened first, they travel faster. The population affected devolves into chaos as disease often kills 9 in 10 and leave them without ruling and without those with specialised knowledge. Basically society is broken, the traumatised survivors are the ones that face the Europeans. > military, political, adm…

If they were so advanced why didnt they sail to europe and conquer them?

Re: When Orcs Were Real

#126

Post by turtle_san »

ohples wrote: post #117

TIL what "InfoGalactic" is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vox_Day#Infogalactic After clicking some of the links in this article I went to what looked very much like wikipedia, so much so i went on a typical half hour wikipedia-dive, but wasn't actually wikipeida (I have a big monitor and the links I clicked all directed to subsections of articles so I didn't see the info-galactic logo at the top). Really puts this ar…

I am glad InfoGalactic exists and try to tell other about it. It grows tiring, the character assassinations of right-wing biographies on wikipedia, for example controversies are presented in the opening paragraphs instead of being a sub-section. For example from the opening paragraph of Vox Day:

>>Theodore Robert Beale (born August 21, 1968), also known as Vox Day, is an American far-right activist,[2] writer, musician, publisher, and video game designer. He has been described as a white supremacist,[3] a misogynist,[4] and part of the alt-right.[5][6][7]

Now I would say InfoGalactic is politically neutral, I have not seen them applying bias against left-wing individuals. But even if they were right-wing that would be fine, even good. Mainstream morals/culture have been captured and manufactured in the image of a modern international leftism. And as someone on the right, it would be nice to see right-wing intellectualism go on the offensive for once and reclaim a sphere of influence.

Cheers, I hope you enjoyed your InfoGalactic-dive, seems you liked it fine until Wiki told you not to.

Re: When Orcs Were Real

#127

Post by mattkrause »

projektfu wrote: post #88
betwixthewires wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for this, I didn't see the comment in the article. The minute I saw "horizontal slit eyes" I was pretty much done. There's literally no way to know if that was true, for that to be a claim in a proposed theory rightly discredits that theory. I can see them being hairy. But deducing from having larger eyes that they'd be nocturnal and therefore have horizontal slit eyes... And then there's the issue of the flat…

The suggestion that Neanderthal had a tapetum lucidum is also weird as that is a feature that has been lost in almost all extant primates, including nocturnal ones, except the bush baby.

I believe some tarsiers have it too, but yeah...this whole part seems like evolutionary fan-fiction.

Re: When Orcs Were Real

#128

Post by jillesvangurp »

rebuilder wrote: post #10

Why do we have to posit non-human monsters as explanations for these myths? After all, there were (and still are) real monsters out there that would kill, rape, kidnap and torture people - people from other communities. Strange danger was serious business back in the day, why could that not evolve into all kinds of boogeymen?

Supplement the list provided in the article by more modern boogeymen such as Negroes, Jews, Arabs, etc. and you have a nice explanation of recent history. I realize this may be deeply offensive to some of the readership here and emphasize that I don't look at the world in these terms. However, recent history is full of people that actually do demonize these groups of people; no matter how irrational that is.

Nothing has changed here except our ability to find meaningless differences among groups of people with enough of a qualifier to split the world into "us" and "them". It's a natural reflex that transcends genetics, race, and other ways to qualify people as us and them. There have been plenty of experiments to suggest that this us and them reasoning does not really have to involve anything meaningful or substantial. E.g. the Stanford Prison Experiment is a great example where giving some people a uniform is enough to trigger the effect.

IMHO Neanderthals did not actually disappear and the different subspecies of humanity simply merged to create a more fit offspring. Apparently humans carry enough neanderthal DNA to suggest that inter (sub)species breeding was a thing. Is that "us" or "them" or does that even mean anything? What do we call the humans without this DNA? Pure breads or ancestors? Is that better, worse, or just different? Is that even a thing? I.e. didn't those humans just die out?

We like to dramatize things into epic battles, fights, etc. But life a few thousand years ago was brutal and very much survival of the fittest biased. Apparently, humans with some neanderthal DNA were somewhat fitter and survived into modernity. No need to get judgemental about that.

Re: When Orcs Were Real

#129

Post by Folcon »

escape_goat wrote: post #110
Folcon wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Guns, Germs, and Steel" is a good book, really enjoyable read. But speaking to historian friends of mine has given me the impression that it's not highly regarded in those circles. Unfortunately I can't give any criticisms beyond that because it has been a long time since I had those discussions and the details just don't come to mind, so I guess really what I'm saying is though it's a popular and enjoyable read, pe…

One of the remaining gems within my reddit horizons is the /r/AskHistorians subreddit, which maintains an FAQ that (amongst many other things) contains a plethora of academic responses to GGS. I have included below a link to the top and presumably most comprehensive response [1] for those who are interested. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2mkcc3/how_d...

I didn't know about this! Thanks for bringing it up :)...

Re: When Orcs Were Real

#130

Post by imbnwa »

soapdog wrote: post #24

> Europeans defeated indigenous peoples throughout history, by superior technology and numbers. Oh boi, not this horrible and flawed argument again. People have learned nothing from recent research into the impact of diseases in that history? Popular books like "Guns, Germs, and Steel", and "1491" give you a view into these matters and provide one with references for their sources for research. This idea of "Europe w…

I mean the theory in TFA is talking about Neantherdals evolving in Ice Age Europe but somehow that's related to the human genetic bottleneck that had to have had occurred in Africa to apply to all humans unless there's new origin of emergence and migration I didn't know about. The whole theory is bathed in a casual Eurocentrism, we don't even get a reference to a non-European creature of fantasy fitting these traits, we're just sorta assuming this is the case that they're all actually approximate.

Whatever was constitutive for human beings in the period of our dwindling numbers happened in Africa

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