Neanderthals operated prehistoric “fat factory” on German lakeshore • Hacker News Board

Re: Neanderthals operated prehistoric “fat factory” on German lakeshore

#111

Post by collingreen » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 3:32 PM UTC

williamdclt wrote: post #97

jghn wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is also why cooking advice shifted from "don't wash mushrooms" to "wash mushrooms". If you're cooking your mushrooms properly you'll boil off all the water anyways, so it doesn't matter. It's only if you *don't* cook your mushrooms properly that washing mushrooms makes everything more watery than you'd like.

I don’t wash mushroom because that makes them slimy, making them much more annoying to cut (and also it takes more time than not doing it). I can take a little dirt!

Hopefully it's just dirt!

Re: Neanderthals operated prehistoric “fat factory” on German lakeshore

#112

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 3:40 PM UTC

b800h wrote: post #95

fransje26 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the moment, your comment is being heavily down-voted for what seems to be a totally reasonable point of view. In recent years we've went from "completely primitive and segregated Neanderthals", to "oh, we share quite a bit of DNA with the Neanderthals", and "the Neanderthals engaged in complex symbolic thought", as well as "the Neanderthals were pretty advanced artists". The current article is a further demonstrat…

What are the chances that we discover that in some ways they were more advanced than early homo sapiens (I'm not saying "us" here, as I have a lot of Neanderthal DNA)?

[deleted]

Re: Neanderthals operated prehistoric “fat factory” on German lakeshore

#113

Post by timschmidt » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 3:49 PM UTC

b800h wrote: post #95

fransje26 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the moment, your comment is being heavily down-voted for what seems to be a totally reasonable point of view. In recent years we've went from "completely primitive and segregated Neanderthals", to "oh, we share quite a bit of DNA with the Neanderthals", and "the Neanderthals engaged in complex symbolic thought", as well as "the Neanderthals were pretty advanced artists". The current article is a further demonstrat…

What are the chances that we discover that in some ways they were more advanced than early homo sapiens (I'm not saying "us" here, as I have a lot of Neanderthal DNA)?

Well they hard larger brains, more muscle mass, larger sinuses which aid in breathing in cold weather and possibly smell, denser bone structure, and a number of other possible advantages.

It has been proposed that the advantage we wield which led to out-competing / interbreeding with them may have been a superior ability to starve - i.e. use fewer calories - during periods like the last ice age.

Re: Neanderthals operated prehistoric “fat factory” on German lakeshore

#114

Post by t-3 » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 3:54 PM UTC

jbotz wrote: post #6

When 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…

I find it fascinating that paleo-anthropologists didn't know about using leather or bark pots when those are extensively documented and presumably well-known to recent-ish-history-anthropologists. Is there just very little overlap and communication between the groups?

Re: Neanderthals operated prehistoric “fat factory” on German lakeshore

#115

Post by JohnMakin » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 3:54 PM UTC

pbmonster wrote: post #24

josefx wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's always confusing how those DNA comparisons are worded. We share almost 99% of our DNA with chimps, for example. But this just means that if you go down the genome, we have 99% of the same types of genes. And that's true even though we don't even have the same number of chromosomes as chimps! (We also share 50% of DNA with bananas - which just shows how incredibly complex basic stuff like cell respiration is.) Th…

When stated this way, 3% seems like quite a lot.

Re: Neanderthals operated prehistoric “fat factory” on German lakeshore

#116

Post by octaane » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 4:04 PM UTC

FooBarBizBazz wrote: post #73

I clicked to learn what a "fat factory" is, then realized -- Soup. They were making soup. I would like to know what seasonings they used.

As I'm understanding it, it was primarily for grease, not soup itself. They certainly could have been making soup as well, but grease itself is a much more valuable product. It has utility for waterproofing, warmth (if you smear it on your body) lubricant, and is also highly calorically dense. You can also use it to preserve food (see "Potted meat") and on it's own, stays edible at room temp for a long time.

Re: Neanderthals operated prehistoric “fat factory” on German lakeshore

#117

Post by octaane » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 4:07 PM UTC

Interesting find. As mentioned by other comments, there are other ways you can boil things and render fat than with ceramic containers. However, there are even easier ways. For example, you could simply dig a hole in the ground, fill it with your fat, tendons, sinews, etc, top it with water, and toss in rocks that have been heated in a fire. That will boil the water and render the grease out; you just need to wait for the whole thing to solidify/cool.

Also, you can dig a hole, add your un-rendered fat, then pour boiling water on top of it, then skim off the fat once it cools. Native Americans did that for a long time to get grease from candlefish [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eulachon#Economics_and_trade

Re: Neanderthals operated prehistoric “fat factory” on German lakeshore

#118

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 4:08 PM UTC

somenameforme wrote: post #103

williamdclt wrote: post #69

Earlier 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…

Speaking of layer of water, the liedenfrost effect creates some rather spectacular demonstrations, to say the least. [1] That video is real. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6h7dt0bG8XU

That was upsetting. Huge difference between theory and practice when it comes to keeping a usable hand.

Re: Neanderthals operated prehistoric “fat factory” on German lakeshore

#119

Post by arrowleaf » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 4:13 PM UTC

freetime2 wrote: post #7

>The study indicates that Neanderthals, in addition to smashing bones to access the marrow—a behavior shared by their earliest African ancestors—also crushed them into fragments and boiled them to obtain bone grease, a nutrient-rich resource. I wish the article went into more details about how they boiled the bones. My first thought was that smashing bones and boiling them is not all that impressive. And then I thoug…

Frame or shape leather hide to hold water, add water and hold over flame or add hot rocks.

Re: Neanderthals operated prehistoric “fat factory” on German lakeshore

#120

Post by adgjlsfhk1 » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 4:17 PM UTC

cdrini wrote: post #42

b112 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During a period of high trust, I've watched crows training their young via showing. While crows have "crafty" intelligence, neanderthals would be more apt at this. But really, the logical first language would be gesture, an extension of already existing body language. And such language is employed by humans when hunting, at war, whenever quiet is preferred. Even a gesture language of a few dozen concepts is almost au…

Very cool anecdote! And agreed, I think we're being a bit "handwavy" about what we mean when we say "language"; it seems like more of a spectrum. I'm not sure where we draw the line between, say, language that animals use which, to the best of our knowledge, do not show complex/abstract communication, and human languages. And who knows where Neanderthal language/communication would fall on that spectrum!

there are plenty of imaginable levels of language. there's everything from ability to communicate danger (which even trees seem to have), having simple constructs like names/ a handful of nouns for specific types of danger (e.g. Bear!) which is roughly where we think dolphins and some apes are. above that likely we get some verbs for coordinating hunting. at some point in this process you start getting syntax, tense, declension, adjectives etc.

If I had to guess basic sentence structure probably goes back to the beginning of homo. The differences between Sapiens and others is likely much more subtle. e.g. symbolism, myth making, abstraction or something like that.