Neanderthals were people. Even Nobel laurate Svante Pääbo, who sequenced their DNA, admits it.
Yeah but theres also sorts of political implications for admitting that
Neanderthals operated prehistoric “fat factory” on German lakeshore
101–110 of 207 posts
Re: Neanderthals operated prehistoric “fat factory” on German lakeshore
#102When 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…
Getting somewhat off-topic and maybe it's more evident to other people, but for me understanding this energy transfer was eye-opening for my cooking abilities! Like, my mushrooms aren't going to actually cook as I want as long as they render water because the water is cooling the pan down. Obvious in retrospect, never really fully realised it. Also means I can blast the heat up to get rid of this water faster, it's n…
It's a common mistake. Just this weekend I followed a recipe from a well known cooking website for beef stroganoff that said to brown the beef in batches together with batches of onion. That's not a good idea, the onion will release liquid which prevents the beef from browning and once that cooks off the heat required to brown the meat will burn the onion. So I cooked the beef and onion separately instead. The onion can easily be cooked in one big batch, and if you take care not to burn the fond built up by the beef you can deglaze it with the onion. It's a good way to add extra flavor to the finished dish.
I also had a discussion with a roommate once, he criticized my way of cooking pasta. I keep it just barely boiling, but he insisted I should crank it up to max. I explained that it doesn't matter, the water won't get any hotter. I'll just waste electricity making steam. He didn't believe me so I got a thermometer and proved it.
If you want liquid water to go above 100C you need a pressure cooker.
Re: Neanderthals operated prehistoric “fat factory” on German lakeshore
#103When 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…
Getting somewhat off-topic and maybe it's more evident to other people, but for me understanding this energy transfer was eye-opening for my cooking abilities! Like, my mushrooms aren't going to actually cook as I want as long as they render water because the water is cooling the pan down. Obvious in retrospect, never really fully realised it. Also means I can blast the heat up to get rid of this water faster, it's n…
Speaking of layer of water, the liedenfrost effect creates some rather spectacular demonstrations, to say the least. [1] That video is real.
Re: Neanderthals operated prehistoric “fat factory” on German lakeshore
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Deaf homo sapiens sapienses do have perfectly good language skills.
The original argument was that neanderthals didn't have good language skills because "their anatomy didn't allow for making complex sounds". Pointing out that deaf or mute humans still have complex language skills seems like an adequate counterargument to me.
That ignores the co-evolution between throat anatomy and brain structures related to language. There's no reason to select for language ability in the brain over evolutionary time if the throat can't use it. If mere ability to use sign language was enough to push language development, chimps would do much better with human-invented sign languages. Deaf and/or mute humans are, I presume, co-opting language skill "meant" (selected) for vocal language.
Re: Neanderthals operated prehistoric “fat factory” on German lakeshore
#105When 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…
What would speak against carving a cooking pot from stone? One thing I could find is that they might explode but I guess that would also depend on the type of rock.
Re: Neanderthals operated prehistoric “fat factory” on German lakeshore
#106This is the first time in the wild I've seen an image credited to an artist that is clearly AI made (with some minor detail like smoke added to the foreground). You can tell it's AI by the details of the bone and piles of wood.
It doesn't make them not an artist. There are lots of VFX professionals on LinkedIn having a total field day with AI tools and posting mind-blowing stuff. Somehow it hasn't reached the rest of social media yet. On that last point: AI is going to propel individual artists ahead of big Hollywood studios. They won't need studio capital anymore, and they'll be able to retain all the upside themselves.
It doesn't make them not an artist, but it might make them a bad artist. That image gets more nonsensical the more you look at it. How big is that skull in the foreground supposed to be?
Re: Neanderthals operated prehistoric “fat factory” on German lakeshore
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
There are a number of ethnic groups (not species or subspecies, I realize) that are less than 3% of the gene pool today (and happened over a much shorter timespan I would suppose) such as Irish, Jewish, Armenian, etc. Would they be considered having been outcompeted at this point?
No. There are still 100% individuals of all those groups, and the timescale of recorded history is too small for the same kind of competition as between neanderthals and sapiens anyway.
Re: Neanderthals operated prehistoric “fat factory” on German lakeshore
#108And 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…
I thought the idea was that Homo Sapiens's shoulders were capable of ranged weapons like atl atls while Neanderthals were ambush hunters.
Re: Neanderthals operated prehistoric “fat factory” on German lakeshore
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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 lea…
No archaeologist would call hide or wood pottery and ceramics don't turn into pebbles. Occasional ceramic use can be very visible archaeologically if the pottery preserves. It's an inert material in the absence of water, after all. In the presence of water though, it turns into dust rather than pebbles.
>ceramics don't turn into pebbles.
Much of the middle east, Greece, etc have many large sites with weathered pottery shards in the shape of pebbles, because pottery shards are flat-ish. Millions of ceramic rocks.
In the presence of water... you will find the round, flat ones with a perfect "pebbles shape."
This is extremely common where I live. I have an aquarium full of them.
The "thing about pottery" is that many cultures made (and broke) a lot of it.
Its very obvious in the stratography when a pottery making culture moves in. There will be shards in every handful of earth.
Occasional pottery use, like figurines or beads.. are not like that. They're only really found "in situ," graves or something.
Re: Neanderthals operated prehistoric “fat factory” on German lakeshore
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Getting somewhat off-topic and maybe it's more evident to other people, but for me understanding this energy transfer was eye-opening for my cooking abilities! Like, my mushrooms aren't going to actually cook as I want as long as they render water because the water is cooling the pan down. Obvious in retrospect, never really fully realised it. Also means I can blast the heat up to get rid of this water faster, it's n…
It's a common mistake. Just this weekend I followed a recipe from a well known cooking website for beef stroganoff that said to brown the beef in batches together with batches of onion. That's not a good idea, the onion will release liquid which prevents the beef from browning and once that cooks off the heat required to brown the meat will burn the onion. So I cooked the beef and onion separately instead. The onion…
I cook pasta at a rolling boil not because it cooks faster but the agitation of the boiling makes it less likely to form sticky clumps.