> cut-marked remains of 76 rhinos and 40 elephants were also discovered at nearby sites like Taubach.
Remarkable how different the previous interglacial periods were. Herds of elephants and rhinos in today's Berlin, at 51° north!
Neanderthals operated prehistoric “fat factory” on German lakeshore
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Re: Neanderthals operated prehistoric “fat factory” on German lakeshore
#12> The production of bone grease, which required huge quantities of bone to be worthwhile, was previously considered to be something limited to Upper Paleolithic modern humans. This find pushes back the timeline by thousands of years and represents a fundamental shift in our knowledge of Neanderthal diet and adaptation. If I had to guess I’d say we learned it from them.
I am convinced that early humans were a lot smarter then given credit for. My guess is the same as yours and that they were part of a long chain of steps of learning and development that went back much farther then we have evidence for.
Possibly however homo erectus used the same design for their hand axes for over a million years. This implies the design was hardwired in their brains, in the same way the design of nests are hardwired in bird brains, as opposed to a rationally thought out design.
Re: Neanderthals operated prehistoric “fat factory” on German lakeshore
#13When I first read this a question jumped out at me: Wait, Neanderthals were able to render fat? That requires boiling, and doesn't boiling require pottery? This led me down a bit of a rabbit-hole. It turns out that no, you don't need pottery to boil things, because you can do it just fine in combustible materials like animal hide or birch bark... so long as you keep the water level consistently high enough, because t…
Yes if you search youtube you can find people showing how to boil water inside a plastic bag. Typically they show this in survival situation scenarios. You apparently can also do it in a wooden container if done right.
But as to your question wouldn't they need to have pots? Well I know we don't have evidence of that but it wouldn't surprise me. Another method show for survival shows a person taking a fallen tree and building a fire by it. Then you place some hot burning pieces on top of the log. Keep adding them and burning on top of the log until it burns a bowl sized indentation. Then you take a rock or stick and scrape the hole and get it clean sort of. Then you put water into that and if no container to carry water is shows soaking a shirt and carrying it that way. After the large bowl sized hole is filled with water you take a few rocks that were sitting in the fire and drop them in. You will be amazed how fast it will boil the water. This is done to allow you to drink from a potentially unsafe water source.
I guess what I am thinking is that there are probably dozens of ways they could have achieved it. Ways that with our knowledge of today escapes us but to them it was common knowledge. If I had to take a guess they would have used rocks and use a large flat rock and encircle that rock with rocks making a pit or rocks then covered the sides with dirt. Then dug a hole under part of the large flat rock and made fire under it. This primitive pot would not work well at first but my guess is that as fat melted and oozed into the cracks it would eventually seal and then would work very well to boil things. Anyways just fun to think about I know very little about the time period.
Re: Neanderthals operated prehistoric “fat factory” on German lakeshore
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
I still struggle with the repeated assertions from the scicommss set that the 'neanderthals died out' or 'humans outcompeted neanderthals who went extinct', while at the same time acknowledging that 3% of DNA of everyone outside the African content is neanderthal. With that being the limit of 'the data' generally cited at hadn't, wouldn't a gradual, passively amicable merging (e.g. absorption) be just as explanatory…
It's interesting to think about, and yes, I would think it's more accurate to consider that homo (sapiens) neanderthalensis are part of what became us, and in that case it seems odd/wrong to talk about them being outcompeted when there was interbreeding and their descendents are still here. However they are still extinct! It reminds me of the historical narratives in the UK about Viking settlers. We were taught (in t…
Also the Normans were vikings!
Re: Neanderthals operated prehistoric “fat factory” on German lakeshore
#15And how could they've done this without language? I've heard this statement that neanderthals were "outcompeted" because homo sapiens had language and they did not (something about the way their anatomy didn't allow for making complex sounds). I call BS on that now. You can't do this kind of stuff without ability to communicate your intentions, future plans, rewards for other people and so on.
Next we'll discover they were rendering that fat to grease their wheel axles with...
Re: Neanderthals operated prehistoric “fat factory” on German lakeshore
#16> The production of bone grease, which required huge quantities of bone to be worthwhile, was previously considered to be something limited to Upper Paleolithic modern humans. This find pushes back the timeline by thousands of years and represents a fundamental shift in our knowledge of Neanderthal diet and adaptation. If I had to guess I’d say we learned it from them.
I still struggle with the repeated assertions from the scicommss set that the 'neanderthals died out' or 'humans outcompeted neanderthals who went extinct', while at the same time acknowledging that 3% of DNA of everyone outside the African content is neanderthal. With that being the limit of 'the data' generally cited at hadn't, wouldn't a gradual, passively amicable merging (e.g. absorption) be just as explanatory…
I am pretty sure most experts in the field would share your assertion that the statement ("neanderthals died out") hides complexity.
Sometimes hiding complexity behind some ballpark statement can be useful tho. I teach media technology — and a useful simplification is to have students think about inputs and outputs in an abstract fasbion first, then we can talk about signal types and levels and maybe impedances. But in reality a mere piece of wire with a shield can get infinitely more complex and fill a whole academic career. It just isn't useful to start talking about it that way unless you like to get rid of students. I tend to mention simplifications when I use them however, something I wish more scientific journalism did.
Re: Neanderthals operated prehistoric “fat factory” on German lakeshore
#17Neanderthals were people. Even Nobel laurate Svante Pääbo, who sequenced their DNA, admits it.
Re: Neanderthals operated prehistoric “fat factory” on German lakeshore
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
I still struggle with the repeated assertions from the scicommss set that the 'neanderthals died out' or 'humans outcompeted neanderthals who went extinct', while at the same time acknowledging that 3% of DNA of everyone outside the African content is neanderthal. With that being the limit of 'the data' generally cited at hadn't, wouldn't a gradual, passively amicable merging (e.g. absorption) be just as explanatory…
I think it's because that 3% number is so small, it actually comes down to "outcompeted". A merger of two equally fit sub-species would result in more DNA persisting.
Isn't there already an overlap in the upper 90% between humans and apes? I don't know how much the neanderthal DNA differed back then, but it couldn't be more than that, could it? So wouldn't 3% of the total be at least a third of the parts that did differ?
Re: Neanderthals operated prehistoric “fat factory” on German lakeshore
#19When I first read this a question jumped out at me: Wait, Neanderthals were able to render fat? That requires boiling, and doesn't boiling require pottery? This led me down a bit of a rabbit-hole. It turns out that no, you don't need pottery to boil things, because you can do it just fine in combustible materials like animal hide or birch bark... so long as you keep the water level consistently high enough, because t…
Yes if you search youtube you can find people showing how to boil water inside a plastic bag. Typically they show this in survival situation scenarios. You apparently can also do it in a wooden container if done right. But as to your question wouldn't they need to have pots? Well I know we don't have evidence of that but it wouldn't surprise me. Another method show for survival shows a person taking a fallen tree and…
>But as to your question wouldn't they need to have pots?
"Pottery" tends to assume ceramics. In Neolithic and later sites that had pottery, ceramic remains typically represent 99% of the total artifacts.
Bronze age tel sites are littered with ceramic pebbles. Every pot eventually becomes a bunch of shards and pebbles that last forever.
That said... a material culture that only uses ceramics occasionally wouldn't leave such signs.
Also.. you could call a wood or hide bucket "pottery," I think.
Re: Neanderthals operated prehistoric “fat factory” on German lakeshore
#20And how could they've done this without language? I've heard this statement that neanderthals were "outcompeted" because homo sapiens had language and they did not (something about the way their anatomy didn't allow for making complex sounds). I call BS on that now. You can't do this kind of stuff without ability to communicate your intentions, future plans, rewards for other people and so on. Next we'll discover the…
Both of those things can be true. Just because they didn't have language, doesn't mean they couldn't communicate, it just means they could likely only communicate primarily by showing instead of telling. And it's also clear why being able to communicate with language would indeed offer quite the competitive edge over that system.