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Neanderthals ran 'fat factories' 125k years ago (2025)

universiteitleiden.nl

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Re: Neanderthals ran 'fat factories' 125k years ago (2025)

#161

Planning ahead, bulk processing, storing for later. Sounds less like primitive survival and more like logistics. Every time we dig deeper the gap between them and us gets smaller.

It's possible to make potted meats which will store for a time at room temperature (for extra credit, ferment it like sausage) by covering them in fat. But they didn't have ceramics apparently, I don't know offhand if you could do it in something like an animal stomach. Of course, we put sausage into intestine casings... I dunno make sausages and dip them in fat?

Re: Neanderthals ran 'fat factories' 125k years ago (2025)

#162
post #53
post #46

Fascinating. Considering the industrial scale fat production that the neanderthals managed to operate according to this article, it makes me wonder even more whether we still understand why exactly they went extinct in 80 thousand years later.

The answer that seems to be emerging from several different lines of research is that a) they always had fairly low fertility and b) they didn't really go extinct as such, they just intermixed with Homo Sapiens Sapiens and because the later had much higher fertility, Neanderthal genes got diluted down to the present ~2% in the Eurasian population.

[deleted]

Re: Neanderthals ran 'fat factories' 125k years ago (2025)

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great question. When people say outcompete it can certainly include violence but we’re talking about populations spread over continents over thousands of years. Factors like technology, fertility, adaptability, etc. are more what people mean when they said outcompete.

[flagged]

This is accurate for post history but evidence doesn't support this for prehistoric hunter gatherer tribes.

Re: Neanderthals ran 'fat factories' 125k years ago (2025)

#164
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real reason why now, every two weeks, you are bombarded with articles about how great Neanderthals were... - https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2UUsisXvwoM

They were pretty great though. I mean, racism and people using anthropology to try and act superior to each other aside (which, I will grant, is a pretty big fucking aside): neanderthals were crazy strong and had bodies which had much more "explosive" muscle fibres than that of modern humans (or H. Sapiens of the era). They, of course, had significant misgivings which likely led to their extinction- but I wonder how…

Finally, an explanation for rugby!

https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&client=ubuntu&q=nea...

Re: Neanderthals ran 'fat factories' 125k years ago (2025)

#165
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is wrong and confused in every possible way. Look up the Flynn effect ... it refers to an actual change in performance. That the scores on a given IQ test are occasionally renormalized so that the mean is 100 has no bearing on whether "IQ is a statistical distribution", whether intelligence or whatever the heck IQ measures can be measured absolutely, or on the validity and meaning of the previous statements by E…

I find it interesting that you are basically saying the same thing, even if the reply you are confused by simply made some assumptions you were not able to make and was a bit less precise. It’s interesting how people will say things like “This is wrong and confused in every possible way” even though it’s not, making it and them in turn the ones “wrong and confused in every possible way”. Maybe if we are a bit more ge…

Nothing you wrote here is remotely correct, it contributes nothing on the topic, and it commits the exact sins it accuses me of.

Re: Neanderthals ran 'fat factories' 125k years ago (2025)

#166
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the original reply actually make sense in context? I can't see how. It's a response to someone saying "you can't draw any conclusions of IQ significantly before 1950 from how the line behaves after 1950", and it says "And that’s because IQ is a statistical distribution, not an absolute measurement of intelligence." This seems like a non sequitur to me. Am I missing something? (Bear in mind that the 'line' under…

On a given set of 1000 questions, over time the trend has been to answer slightly more of them correct every year, progressively raising unstandardized scores, over the set of all IQ testees, since IQ testing was formalized in the 1950s. Extrapolation is the most questionable statistical tool, and while extrapolation ad absurdum is a way to show a formal predicate logic argument to be incorrect or underspecified, it…

This is another non sequitur ... it doesn't address retsibsi's point or their question. It has nothing to do with cluckindan's comment, which is what this subthread was about.

Re: Neanderthals ran 'fat factories' 125k years ago (2025)

#167
post #67

The article mentions "rendering fat (from bones)" many times, but doesn't say how neanderthals actually did it? My best guess is they broke the bones into many little pieces, threw them in a fire, and waited for the fire to extinguish and cool, thus producing hardened (rendered) fat. Feels like the most interesting part of the article was omitted!

You can make a wooden basin or waterproof pit. Fill it with water, drop in hot stones from a fire. This is common in preceramic cultures. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pot_boiler -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_boiling

Re: Neanderthals ran 'fat factories' 125k years ago (2025)

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in Alberta (Canada), and I just saw some in the grocery store last week. I actually can't recall ever seeing a store without 3.25% milk here. It's usually called "homo(genized) milk" rather than "whole milk", but those two phrases both mean the exact same thing.

Whole refers to the fat content and homogenized refers to a process used to better suspend the fat in the milk to prevent separation. Almost all milk you buy is probably homogenized. They don't technically mean the same thing but if the only thing you see is homogenized on the container, it's probably whole milk.

You are correct that all milk undergoes a homogenization process, but for whatever reason, only 3.25% milk is labelled as "homogenized" in Canada. Even the ingredients/fine-print are like this too, so it's not just a marketing thing [0] [1].

This could be a regional thing though: out east milk typically comes in bags [2], but I'm in the west and have only ever seen milk in bottles, so it wouldn't surprise me if the term for 3.25% milk was different in the east too.

[0]: https://www.obviouslygoodmilk.ca/en/products/milks/lucerne-3...

[1]: https://www.obviouslygoodmilk.ca/en/products/milks/lucerne-2...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_bag#Canada

Re: Neanderthals ran 'fat factories' 125k years ago (2025)

#169
post #166
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a given set of 1000 questions, over time the trend has been to answer slightly more of them correct every year, progressively raising unstandardized scores, over the set of all IQ testees, since IQ testing was formalized in the 1950s. Extrapolation is the most questionable statistical tool, and while extrapolation ad absurdum is a way to show a formal predicate logic argument to be incorrect or underspecified, it…

This is another non sequitur ... it doesn't address retsibsi's point or their question. It has nothing to do with cluckindan's comment, which is what this subthread was about.

It's because there are multiple levels of misconceptions as well as "violent agreements".

retsibsi is correct. You can't draw (meaningful) conclusions about IQ before 1950, because extrapolating from the data after 1950 is dumber the farther back you reach, just for reasons related to the concept of extrapolation.

This has nothing to do with the fact that IQ is a statistical distribution that we keep re-norming, which "should always average 100"; The Flynn Effect is not in serious dispute, it's just an effect that pertains to nonstandardized results.

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