Modern human incursion into Neanderthal territories 54k years ago at Mandrin • Hacker News Board

Re: Modern human incursion into Neanderthal territories 54k years ago at Mandrin

#31

Post by robwwilliams » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 6:34 PM UTC

sillysaurusx wrote: post #19

mc32 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it possible that humans simply outbred them? You don't have to "get rid" of a population if you can interbreed and outbreed a given stock, no? It's not like one day they exist and the next they don't; rather, they slowly get absorbed into the larger, faster breeding pop. Or even disease they had no natural immunity for. I presume there would be some conflict as even among human pops conflict is a given --but no…

It's possible. It's just one of those explanations that we'd really love to believe, since the alternative is so unthinkable. It's been a hobby of mine to be skeptical of it. Even Kurzgesagt mentioned in passing that we're not sure if it was due to "a series of minor genocides." - https://youtu.be/dGiQaabX3_o?t=79 - https://youtu.be/CWu29PRCUvQ?t=165 If anyone knows of breadcrumbs to follow, please chime in. Genetic…

It is interesting to read David Reich’s wonderful book “Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past”. He deals carefully and cautiously with the processes of human population “replacements”. So cautiously that the word “genocide” is not even in the index.

But with few exceptions, when I read between his lines, I see that ugly word tacitly, time and time again. Exceptions include some Celtic migration events, but in most cases the DNA results indicate major breaks in DNA haplotypes that are consistent with an unhappy end to one group.

And of course recent “sapiens” history gives us our own backyard examples—unrelenting!

If you read Napolean Chagnon’s “Nobel Savages” or Polly Wiessner’s and Akii Tumu’s “Historical Vines” you can get a good=bad gut feeling for what “replacement” probably meant operationally in pre-literate cultures. Sadly not much different since the invention of Greek orthography, Gutenberg’s printing press, TV and the internet. Us versus the Other is apparently the name of the human game.

If we could get everyone to absorb Richard Rorty’s pragmatic approach to a life well lived starting in grade school, now that would be real progress.

Re: Modern human incursion into Neanderthal territories 54k years ago at Mandrin

#32

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 6:35 PM UTC

hunterb123 wrote: post #28

lqet wrote: post #5

I would love to know what early Sapiens thought about the Neanderthals. Did they see them as that other tribe that is very strong, but acts a bit foolishly sometimes? As we have been the only remaining member of the Homo species for thousands of years now, living side by side with creatures that are only quite like us is an experience that has been lost in the collective human memory. I think it is pretty likely that…

> I read somewhere that the body proportions of Neanderthals are within the range of body proportions of modern humans, and research suggests that there was interbreeding between Sapiens and Neanderthals. Of course there was interbreeding. Their smaller population was bred into the larger Sapiens population. This is why most of us (Caucasians) have some percentage of Neanderthal in us.

[deleted]

Re: Modern human incursion into Neanderthal territories 54k years ago at Mandrin

#33

Post by SkyBelow » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 6:36 PM UTC

Juliate wrote: post #23

ivan_gammel wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I never understood why most people assume that humans today are, on average, more intelligent than our ancestors 40,000 years ago. Evolution of our species continues and some changes in our anatomy are being observed even in the last 100 years of our history. The evolutionary pressure never stopped, it just changed its form. We are no longer competing with nature, we are competing with ourselves, adjusting our diet…

> our society, our language are much more sophisticated, our abstract thinking and creativity have advanced, Can we be so sure? Our tools have evolved and become more sophisticated thanks for our industry for sure, but that says nothing of intelligence per se. How much more or less sophisticated and creative were humans only 150/200 years ago? Yet, technologically... things have moved quite a bit. Technology that has…

>Can we be so sure?

We have enough studies on the impacts of nutrition in the womb and the impact of experience and neglect on brain development in children that we can be sure that intelligence is more advanced. More complex languages leads to more complex thoughts. Better nutrition leads to greater intelligence. Both for our normal communication but also for languages to describe abstract ideas like mathematics.

If this still doesn't sound definite, then I think we are getting into the issue of what is intelligence and how do you measure it in a person or a population. But then we would need to get into answering just how can we be sure humans are more intelligent than a wide selection of animals and even non-animals. Same for creativity and sophistication.

Re: Modern human incursion into Neanderthal territories 54k years ago at Mandrin

#34

Post by thehappypm » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 6:38 PM UTC

lqet wrote: post #5

I would love to know what early Sapiens thought about the Neanderthals. Did they see them as that other tribe that is very strong, but acts a bit foolishly sometimes? As we have been the only remaining member of the Homo species for thousands of years now, living side by side with creatures that are only quite like us is an experience that has been lost in the collective human memory. I think it is pretty likely that…

There’s a theory that Neanderthals didn’t have very strong language skills. So just like you can communicate with the dog reasonably well, maybe we could have sort of communicated with Neanderthals. But nothing resembling the rich conversation that Homo sapiens is capable of. Bearing that theory in mind, the humans would have just been much more able to out-compete, deceive, and defeat Neanderthals little by little over time.

“Winter is coming. Should we migrate down to the coast? Last winter, there were lots of crabs, but my dad said many winters ago there was a terrible flood that killed many of his friends. We could stay here and try to gather as much wood as we can to keep warm and try to hunt the deer. The dumb people are wandering up the mountain. It’s always cold up there. They won’t survive.”

Re: Modern human incursion into Neanderthal territories 54k years ago at Mandrin

#35

Post by robbedpeter » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 6:38 PM UTC

ivanhoe wrote: post #21

sillysaurusx wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that were true, I'm not sure we'd use the term "extinct" to refer to Neanderthals. (Some) humans are willing to mate with just about anything. There would be human-dog hybrids if it wasn't genetically impossible, as unsettling as that thought is. Seems more likely that we treated Neanderthals as humans do with other outsiders: we exterminated them and took their resources. Word has it that you can find their desce…

They certainly didn't treat other humans anything different. In those days "us" meant the tribe or family group. Everyone else was "them", sometimes an ally, sometimes a foe, depending on the situation, resource scarcity and the power of both sides. And those were the violent times, so when there was no enough food for everyone, competition (whether it's human, neanderthal or animal) had to be either scared away or d…

It's important not to underestimate the intellectual life of ancient cultures. They were humans, with language, and probably had music, stories, traditions, religion, conflict, politics, and more. Methods of oral traditions have been identified that are essentially equivalent to modern memory athlete techniques, hundreds of thousands of factoids could be transferred with very little "bitrot" over generations. There are traditions in Australian aboriginal cultures that go back 40,000 years, and very sophisticated memory techniques that perpetuated their culture.

The relations between tribes near each other would have been as nuanced and varied and sophisticated and weird as any collectives of humans in relation to each other in modern life. "Those asshats downriver are rude, but they trade fair"

Modern life has given us profound advantages over previous generations, but we are basically the exact same kind of creature as plains walking humans from 300k years ago.

The notion of primitive simple hunter gatherer tribes doesn't account for the innate complexity of individuals. Their experience going through life would be the same as ours, we just have better (on most measures) tools and knowledge.

Re: Modern human incursion into Neanderthal territories 54k years ago at Mandrin

#36

Post by Juliate » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 6:40 PM UTC

flessner wrote: post #27

Juliate wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> our society, our language are much more sophisticated, our abstract thinking and creativity have advanced, Can we be so sure? Our tools have evolved and become more sophisticated thanks for our industry for sure, but that says nothing of intelligence per se. How much more or less sophisticated and creative were humans only 150/200 years ago? Yet, technologically... things have moved quite a bit. Technology that has…

I think a lot of this discussion can evolve around definitions. If we look at history back until the industrial revolution, I would guess that less people had to work on food production and thus could go into creative fields. Intelligence is better measurable through IQ tests and we can see IQ score rising in societies today. (Flynn Effect)

Intelligence is also highly context-specific. Context today is not the same for the average human 200 years ago, even more different 2000 or 20k years ago.

I'm not sure high IQ people from today would make it far in more ancient times, and not because smarter or dumber, but only because they are unadapted.

Re: Modern human incursion into Neanderthal territories 54k years ago at Mandrin

#37

Post by robwwilliams » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 6:40 PM UTC

trevize1138 wrote: post #6

mzs wrote: post #2

some press coverage https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60305218 https://phys.org/news/2022-02-french-cave-story-neanderthals... original: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abj9496

The whole story gets more and more interesting and complex over time as we uncover it. No single "missing link." No simplistic story of homo sapiens coming in and wiping out neanderthals. A recent documentary I saw painted this very messy picture of migration in-and-out of various parts of Eurasia, back to Africa, back out and a general genetic mixing all-around. Overall modern humans out-competed neanderthals but al…

Of course that does not make it any less messy or bloody. One sex for killing, one sex for continuity.

Re: Modern human incursion into Neanderthal territories 54k years ago at Mandrin

#38

Post by hunterb123 » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 6:42 PM UTC

thehappypm wrote: post #34

lqet wrote: post #5

I would love to know what early Sapiens thought about the Neanderthals. Did they see them as that other tribe that is very strong, but acts a bit foolishly sometimes? As we have been the only remaining member of the Homo species for thousands of years now, living side by side with creatures that are only quite like us is an experience that has been lost in the collective human memory. I think it is pretty likely that…

There’s a theory that Neanderthals didn’t have very strong language skills. So just like you can communicate with the dog reasonably well, maybe we could have sort of communicated with Neanderthals. But nothing resembling the rich conversation that Homo sapiens is capable of. Bearing that theory in mind, the humans would have just been much more able to out-compete, deceive, and defeat Neanderthals little by little o…

Doesn't seem like a very sound theory, it's just more "Neanderthals were more stupid" with a backwards reasoning why they lasted so long.

It's more likely they were successful but slowly bred into the larger Homo Sapien population over time, judging from everyone's genetics today. Caucasians have way too high of a percentage of Neanderthal for them to have been killed off. Most of their population bred in.

Re: Modern human incursion into Neanderthal territories 54k years ago at Mandrin

#39

Post by asdff » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 6:42 PM UTC

sillysaurusx wrote: post #19

mc32 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it possible that humans simply outbred them? You don't have to "get rid" of a population if you can interbreed and outbreed a given stock, no? It's not like one day they exist and the next they don't; rather, they slowly get absorbed into the larger, faster breeding pop. Or even disease they had no natural immunity for. I presume there would be some conflict as even among human pops conflict is a given --but no…

It's possible. It's just one of those explanations that we'd really love to believe, since the alternative is so unthinkable. It's been a hobby of mine to be skeptical of it. Even Kurzgesagt mentioned in passing that we're not sure if it was due to "a series of minor genocides." - https://youtu.be/dGiQaabX3_o?t=79 - https://youtu.be/CWu29PRCUvQ?t=165 If anyone knows of breadcrumbs to follow, please chime in. Genetic…

We did in fact interbreed. Some modern human populations are as much as 5% neanderthal in their DNA. That much gene content to me suggest that this population was absorbed; a one off breeding here or there would not persist to 5% of the genetic material millions of years ago today unless hybridization was occurring frequently.

Re: Modern human incursion into Neanderthal territories 54k years ago at Mandrin

#40

Post by Spooky23 » Thu, Feb 10, 2022, 6:55 PM UTC

lqet wrote: post #5

I would love to know what early Sapiens thought about the Neanderthals. Did they see them as that other tribe that is very strong, but acts a bit foolishly sometimes? As we have been the only remaining member of the Homo species for thousands of years now, living side by side with creatures that are only quite like us is an experience that has been lost in the collective human memory. I think it is pretty likely that…

I think the assumption that past rivals are dumb, as we tend to roll over the details. I think overall there’s an assumption that modern humans = better.

Looking at contemporary history, there are dramatic differences in power dynamic between different human cohorts. There’s nothing that separates the biological abilities of any two populations on earth, but the one with the machine guns and artillery will always beat the guy with a bow and spear.

Look at the fate of the indigenous people of the americas. Europe didn’t send its best people, but disease, better weapons and toxic politics carried the age.