Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Neanderthals operated prehistoric “fat factory” on German lakeshore

archaeologymag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 207 posts

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

#161

Post by ricksunny »

pbmonster wrote: post #10
ricksunny wrote: post #5

Earlier 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.

I think that's the crux of the cognitive dissonance we all experience when described the trope for the first time. 3% of group B's genes persisting eons later in the combined genome A+B isn't necessarily reflective of the original relative size of the population of B vs. A. Evolution only countenances which genes conferred a survival benefit edge to persist. Suppose population A was one million individuals, and population B was only one hundred (a 10000X disparity). Assume complete absorption of B into A over an instantaneous period of time. The proportional genetic representation argument, if it were operative, would imply that eons later, only 0.01% of the combined genome is from population B. Only that's not how genetics works - what matters is how much of a survival benefit did population B's genes confer on the inheriting offspring? To put up a concrete example, if population B had a gene conferring immunity to a regionally endemic pathogen, then that pop. B immunity gene is going to quickly saturate representation in the offspring populations as pathogen-vulnerable population members die off from disease.

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

#162

Post by zem »

xorcist wrote: post #148
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…

> the whole of paleo-anthropology "knew" that humans couldn't boil things until the invention of pottery Is that really true? That sounds unlikely when there are so many contemporary counterexamples. If you have an interest in cooking, there are several traditional meals where cooking is done in other ways. Especially so for indigenous people who have little access to metals or clay. For example on Borneo the traditi…

yeah I remember learning in school that with sufficiently good heat conduction you could boil water in a paper cup, because the burning point of paper was higher than the boiling point of water.

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

#163

Post by bjackman »

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, ask it the other way around: what are the chances that despite having no evolutionary advantage over Sapiens, Neandertals survived as a distinct population for hundreds of thousands of years? Seems vanishingly unlikely to me!

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

#164

Post by singleshot_ »

sfn42 wrote: post #102
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…

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…

Or some salt

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

#165

Post by dh2022 »

slow_typist wrote: post #43
ethan_smith wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stone boiling (dropping heated rocks into water-filled containers) was also a widespread pre-pottery technique that Neanderthals likely employed alongside the hide/bark methods you mentioned.

+1 You can even dig a hole into ground and seal it with clay. It’s a well known survival technique.

That is like cooking inside a really big pot :)

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

#166

Post by kadoban »

poulpy123 wrote: post #85
quietbritishjim wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people around me aren't anthropologists claiming to understand ancient societies.

> I don't see any cites for people who believed that boiling could not happen in fragile containers. > The people around me aren't anthropologists claiming to understand ancient societies. Are they people or not? It's a simple and quick experiment to have an idea of what current people think about this fact. You'll not be able to write a scientific paper about it but it will good enough to for a reasonable opinion on…

The people around me are people, they're not a representative sample of anthropologists though (now or decades ago). That logic just doesn't work.

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

#167

Post by [deleted] »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #142
hombre_fatal wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What more did they know about dietary fat than that it was edible and it would help them survive, the same as any animal? This just sounds like romanticizing.

You guys are getting to wrapped up in "They were Food Blogger Influencers". The key here is the mechanics "systematically stripping fat from the bones of large animals using water and heat" The ability to organize to use multiple coordinated steps.

[deleted]

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

#168

Post by [deleted] »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #142
hombre_fatal wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What more did they know about dietary fat than that it was edible and it would help them survive, the same as any animal? This just sounds like romanticizing.

You guys are getting to wrapped up in "They were Food Blogger Influencers". The key here is the mechanics "systematically stripping fat from the bones of large animals using water and heat" The ability to organize to use multiple coordinated steps.

[deleted]

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

#169

Post by genocidicbunny »

testing22321 wrote: post #154
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 boiled water over a fire in a plastic jug once. I was skeptical, but it Worked great. It was a remote hunting trip in the Yukon and my buddy forgot the camp stove & pots.

When I was a kid, me and friends used plastic bags to boil water for cooking when out in the forest or at a beach on the nearby river. As long as you had enough water in the bag, it worked great (though there were probably some fun chemicals being released from the bag...)

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

#170

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

sfn42 wrote: post #160
0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I watched a cook (America’s Test Kitchen?) where they explored different ways of thinking of heat management in pasta. The unbelievable one that worked: boil water, add pasta, turn off heat. The water retains the heat and will still penetrate the pasta. I have never actually tried it myself, but it makes sense.

It's not really that unbelievable. The pasta just has to be in hot water, whether it's 99.9C or 95C doesn't make much of a difference. I use this technique to boil eggs - boil water, turn off heat, add eggs. It seems to help avoid cracked eggs. I also hadn't thought to boil pasta that way though.

eggs in cold water, bring to boil, boil for 3 mins, remove from heat. never cracks, eggs never overcook no matter how long until you remove them from the water.
Post reply on HN