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Neanderthals survived on a knife's edge for 350k years

science.org

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Re: Neanderthals survived on a knife's edge for 350k years

#131

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

eru wrote: post #128
mcv wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless it's a very limited nuclear war, it would probably destroy the world as we know it , but that's a vague and flexible concept. It would likely destroy countries, societies, our way of life. Many people would die, but humanity would survive. Some countries might survive. If the war takes place on the northern hemisphere, the southern hemisphere might be much less affected.

I agree. My much more limited point was that we don't actually have enough nukes to glass the planet; but I could probably have made that more explicitly.

We have enough nukes to sterilise large areas of the planet.

But most of them are tac nukes, and they don't come with the support hardware needed to deliver them to large areas of the planet.

Reality is that Europe, Russia, the US, the Middle East, India, Pakistan, and parts of the Far East could have a really bad time.

But most of South America and Africa would likely survive with only economic and political damage rather than physical destruction.

Re: Neanderthals survived on a knife's edge for 350k years

#132

Post by eru »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #131
eru wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. My much more limited point was that we don't actually have enough nukes to glass the planet; but I could probably have made that more explicitly.

We have enough nukes to sterilise large areas of the planet. But most of them are tac nukes, and they don't come with the support hardware needed to deliver them to large areas of the planet. Reality is that Europe, Russia, the US, the Middle East, India, Pakistan, and parts of the Far East could have a really bad time. But most of South America and Africa would likely survive with only economic and political damage…

Not sure sterilisation lasts long on earth: life re-claims sterilised areas.

See your favourite massive volcano outbreak, or look at the Chernobyl exclusion zone.

(The impact of the disaster at Chernobyl is much smaller in area than a nuclear explosion would be, of course. But life has re-conquered everything there.)

In any case, I largely agree!

Re: Neanderthals survived on a knife's edge for 350k years

#133

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

surgical_fire wrote: post #105
jandrewrogers wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a hemorrhagic fever in ~1545 an ~1576 that killed tens of millions of people. This is well-documented. The exact nature of this hemorrhagic fever is a major open question in the history of North America, and the natives attested its existence before the Europeans arrived AFAIK. We know about hantavirus in the southwestern US and Mexico but that seems unlikely to be the source based on its epidemiology. This…

> disease we can’t explain Disease we can't explain that spread a few decades after European ships full of plagues arrived. I mean, yeah, sure.

You're making a fair point. Any native pathogens would have been shipped back to Europe with slave populations.

The fact that Europe didn't have the same catastrophic population decline suggests that either that didn't happen (possible, but a stretch) or that Europeans already had immunity.

Which would only be true if there was some freak genetic immunity (also a stretch) or the disease was already in wide circulation (far more likely).

Re: Neanderthals survived on a knife's edge for 350k years

#134

Post by alsetmusic »

alsetmusic wrote: post #51
peyton wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s some more recent scholarship than Guns, Germs, and Steel . See Rationalizing Epidemics: Meanings and Uses of American Indian Mortality since 1600 [1]. The truth is maybe a bit more complicated. We had doctors volunteering to visit tribes who recorded what they observed firsthand. Personally, given the evidence at hand, I think it’s likely the populations on this continent were caught in large boom/bust cycles…

> we happened upon them That's the thinking. It's not that people arrived. It's not that ancestors landed. It's that European's happened. This was unavoidable. The rest of the world was deficient for not being ready.

Stupid people may not be able to read sarcasm. I figured HN would have enough internet literacy, but maybe not.

Re: Neanderthals survived on a knife's edge for 350k years

#135

Post by nkrisc »

jarjoura wrote: post #82
hax0ron3 wrote: post #7

It's wild to think how long very human-like beings and modern humans existed before the technological revolution really took off. Hundreds of thousands of years of existing on the technological level of stone tools, spears, cloth made out of hides, and fire. Then at some unknown point probably in the last 100,000 years, the bow and arrow. Then about 12,000 years ago, the agricultural revolution, which probably unlock…

Can't imagine having to live with anxiety of just staying alive. Constant diseases, infestations, starvation, animal attacks. You would never feel like you have time to just, be. Instead you're focused on getting your next meal, and finding a place to sleep. It only took a few ice-ages to force us to get smart about how we organize and then here we are.

> Can't imagine having to live with anxiety of just staying alive. Constant diseases, infestations, starvation, animal attacks.

If you wanted, you could ask any of the people living like that today what it’s like. You can find them even in any American city.

Re: Neanderthals survived on a knife's edge for 350k years

#136

Post by zirgs »

alsetmusic wrote: post #51
peyton wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s some more recent scholarship than Guns, Germs, and Steel . See Rationalizing Epidemics: Meanings and Uses of American Indian Mortality since 1600 [1]. The truth is maybe a bit more complicated. We had doctors volunteering to visit tribes who recorded what they observed firsthand. Personally, given the evidence at hand, I think it’s likely the populations on this continent were caught in large boom/bust cycles…

> we happened upon them That's the thinking. It's not that people arrived. It's not that ancestors landed. It's that European's happened. This was unavoidable. The rest of the world was deficient for not being ready.

Yeah, someone would have started to cross the oceans eventually. Europeans happened to do that first.

Re: Neanderthals survived on a knife's edge for 350k years

#137

Post by thfuran »

prawn wrote: post #121
whymememe wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mostly agree, but the whole worked only 15 hours a week stat is almost certainly not correct. It came from a paper that only counted time outside of camp as work, so time spent in camp processing food wasn't counted. The actual number of hours varies massively - seasonally and geographically - but probably closer to 30-40.

I'd bet that a lot of that in-camp work didn't feel excessively laborious when it was done while socialising within your group, and without a sense of "wish I was playing video games". Sitting around a camp fire now whittling away at something is more mucking around than chore.

Sure sitting around a campfire and whittling away at something now feels more like mucking about than chore, because it is. You don’t actually need whatever it is you’re whittling. It would probably be less relaxing if your survival depended on your handiwork.

Re: Neanderthals survived on a knife's edge for 350k years

#138

Post by chmod775 »

jarjoura wrote: post #82
hax0ron3 wrote: post #7

It's wild to think how long very human-like beings and modern humans existed before the technological revolution really took off. Hundreds of thousands of years of existing on the technological level of stone tools, spears, cloth made out of hides, and fire. Then at some unknown point probably in the last 100,000 years, the bow and arrow. Then about 12,000 years ago, the agricultural revolution, which probably unlock…

Can't imagine having to live with anxiety of just staying alive. Constant diseases, infestations, starvation, animal attacks. You would never feel like you have time to just, be. Instead you're focused on getting your next meal, and finding a place to sleep. It only took a few ice-ages to force us to get smart about how we organize and then here we are.

Here's some food for thought: Something like that was their normal and they likely had all of these sorted out with relative ease, given that they'd be experts at that kind of living. Also wild food sources were plentiful. Overall they may have enjoyed more downtime than us, who have to do quite a bit to maintain our higher standards of living. Estimates are that hunter-gatherers "worked" around 20 hours / week to sustain themselves, the rest being spend on low intensity tasks or idle time.

Given how plentiful and available food sources were, I don't imagine their life could have been considered stressful in that regard. As a hunter gatherer there's also a specific point at which there's nothing really left to do: There's no point in hunting/collecting more food than you can eat before it rots. No infinite treadmill to run. Nobody who always has "more" regardless of how hard you work.

You on the other hand have a lot to stress out about in modern society, not even considering that if there's any major breakdowns in the systems we have established to feed our massive populations, such as a disease that wipes out the majority of crops, the majority of us will be dead and starved within months if not weeks, with very little individuals can do about it. The planet can always feed a couple of us, but can't feed billions if things aren't operating somewhat smoothly.

Re: Neanderthals survived on a knife's edge for 350k years

#139

Post by shevy-java »

What is more interesting is how they went extinct.

I would assume there were local populations that lived for a long time. But then they were gone too.

Some DNA is in modern humans, so there must have been some inter-breeding, but that in itself alone can not explain why the Neanderthals went extinct.

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