I liked the recent Nova episode on neanderthals. They talked about how awful the last ice age was for the neanderthals despite being adapted to cold climates, and how modern humans survived it by staying away until it got warmer.
Neanderthals survived on a knife's edge for 350k years
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Re: Neanderthals survived on a knife's edge for 350k years
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. Spoken like someone who easily affords both rent and food. > Constant diseases, infestations, starvation, animal attacks. Not really, no. Sometimes, sure. Not all the time. A lot of food was more abundant, and a lot of modern diseases weren't an issue. Animal attacks were probably a 'constant threat' - but not likely a daily, monthly, or even yearly o…
>pretty wide agreement that the nature of life back then was like 3–5 hours/day spent on food gathering, with the rest spent socializing, resting, storytelling
It's more a pop culture artefact than accepted science. Original idea of paleolithic abundancy was made in sixties by rather artsy approach to the data collected in modern Kalahari. Later re-verification of the same data produced figures around 6.5-7.5 hrs.
Which, taking into account that their chores were quite physically demanding, makes a less rosy picture. That's not even mentioning that however primitive were Kalahari experiences of in the middle of XX century, they are unlikely to be fully representative of paleolithic state of affairs in e.g. Northern Eurasia.
That said they probably socialized more than us for many reasons, just not instead of work.
Re: Neanderthals survived on a knife's edge for 350k years
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 su…
I have wondered if animal husbandry played a larger role than agriculture, alone. The horse, as we know it, altered all of civilization.
Re: Neanderthals survived on a knife's edge for 350k years
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Inca Empire had crazy plant breeding techniques.
they also didn't even invent the wheel
Yes they did, they had wheeled toys. They just didn't have a use for the wheel for transportation because of poor terrain, lack of pneumatic tires, and a lack of beasts of burden.
Everyone gets caught up in the wheel thing, but how many people have tried rolling a non-pneumatic tire loaded with weight up mountains or even just across broken terrain? We still got people carrying fridges and shit on their back up mountains in Nepal because wheels are still not useful on that terrain. Not to mention something we think of as old like the wagon wheel is the culmination of over 1000 years of innovation.
Re: Neanderthals survived on a knife's edge for 350k years
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 su…
I have wondered if animal husbandry played a larger role than agriculture, alone. The horse, as we know it, altered all of civilization.
It was the cat, those little fluffy bastards walked into a human camp about 10,000 years ago and kicked everything off. That's why the Ancient Egyptians revered cats as Gods /s
Re: Neanderthals survived on a knife's edge for 350k years
#146I know even with humans pre-modern populations were drastically smaller, but it's still just astounding to me how small of a population size it seems like Neanderthals had.
There's new evidences that even Sapiens "introduction" in Europe happend multiple times in the scale of thousand years with migratory waves comming from Africa/Middle East.
There's a 12h Collège de France course from Jean-Jacques Hublin that display new understandings that is really captivating. It's in French though
Re: Neanderthals survived on a knife's edge for 350k years
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Neanderthals from 400kya are often classed as Heidelbergensis. Heidelbergensis is the last common anscestor of Neanderthals, Denisovans and us. We were all around for just as long, 400kya+, and before that, it was Homo Erectus. All of them, Erectus, Heidelbergensis, Neanderthals, Denisovans and Sapiens were walking around at the same time. There's plenty of fossil records we've uncovered that show that to be true.…
Did they really die out, or did the population just merge with modern humans? Most people on the planet have some Neanderthal DNA, so clearly there was some intermixing. If modern humans were a much larger population, it makes sense that the Neanderthals only contributed a small amount of DNA to the gene pool. I could imagine that they were just slowly absorbed into the much larger Sapiens population.
In Africa most people don't have Neanderthal DNA however in Europe probably everyone has. (I have no idea about Asia, maybe somebody can chip in)
I think they probably mixed in and we just became one, sort of
Re: Neanderthals survived on a knife's edge for 350k years
#148I know even with humans pre-modern populations were drastically smaller, but it's still just astounding to me how small of a population size it seems like Neanderthals had.
There's new evidences that even Sapiens "introduction" in Europe happend multiple times in the scale of thousand years with migratory waves comming from Africa/Middle East. There's a 12h Collège de France course from Jean-Jacques Hublin that display new understandings that is really captivating. It's in French though
You're talking about "Sapiens remplace Néandertal"?
Re: Neanderthals survived on a knife's edge for 350k years
#149It'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…
I think rope, twine, and weaving needs to be recognized as significant technical development. That has little record but would have been combined with wood for simple machines.
Re: Neanderthals survived on a knife's edge for 350k years
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Neanderthals from 400kya are often classed as Heidelbergensis. Heidelbergensis is the last common anscestor of Neanderthals, Denisovans and us. We were all around for just as long, 400kya+, and before that, it was Homo Erectus. All of them, Erectus, Heidelbergensis, Neanderthals, Denisovans and Sapiens were walking around at the same time. There's plenty of fossil records we've uncovered that show that to be true.…
Did they really die out, or did the population just merge with modern humans? Most people on the planet have some Neanderthal DNA, so clearly there was some intermixing. If modern humans were a much larger population, it makes sense that the Neanderthals only contributed a small amount of DNA to the gene pool. I could imagine that they were just slowly absorbed into the much larger Sapiens population.
>> Did they really die out
There are a few still. One made it to President of the USA.