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Neanderthals operated prehistoric “fat factory” on German lakeshore

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

#81

Post by germinalphrase »

williamdclt wrote: post #69
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…

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…

I’ve heard it said by a very science oriented chef that ‘all cooking is moisture management’.

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

#82

Post by cyco130 »

tremon wrote: post #80
cyco130 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deaf homo sapiens sapienses do have perfectly good language skills.

The original argument was that neanderthals didn't have good language skills because "their anatomy didn't allow for making complex sounds". Pointing out that deaf or mute humans still have complex language skills seems like an adequate counterargument to me.

Fair enough. I fully agree.

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

#83

Post by jghn »

williamdclt wrote: post #69
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…

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…

this is also why cooking advice shifted from "don't wash mushrooms" to "wash mushrooms". If you're cooking your mushrooms properly you'll boil off all the water anyways, so it doesn't matter. It's only if you *don't* cook your mushrooms properly that washing mushrooms makes everything more watery than you'd like.

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

#84

Post by bee_rider »

qoez wrote: post #53

This is the first time in the wild I've seen an image credited to an artist that is clearly AI made (with some minor detail like smoke added to the foreground). You can tell it's AI by the details of the bone and piles of wood.

I guess the line is quite blurry, but they could have used some sort of AI-based fill-in for those areas, right

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

#85

Post by poulpy123 »

quietbritishjim wrote: post #59
poulpy123 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly just ask people around you if you can boil water in a plastic or paper bag

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 topic.

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

#86

Post by tremon »

Roark66 wrote: post #15

And how could they've done this without language? I've heard this statement that neanderthals were "outcompeted" because homo sapiens had language and they did not (something about the way their anatomy didn't allow for making complex sounds). I call BS on that now. You can't do this kind of stuff without ability to communicate your intentions, future plans, rewards for other people and so on. Next we'll discover the…

There's plenty of ways to communicate complex ideas without using complex language, as long as you have sufficient time to interact. Skills can be taught using demonstration, imitation, and correction; ideas can be drawn or acted out.

What language enables, in my view, is accurate communication through intermediaries. It makes a lot of difference whether you need to supervise someone through all the ways that cooking on leather can go wrong versus richly explaining those same failure modes and how to avoid them. The former pretty much prescribes that most complex knowledge will stay within a tribe or a close community, whereas a rich vocabulary allows knowledge to spread readily among trade routes.

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

#87

Post by poulpy123 »

thfuran wrote: post #50
poulpy123 wrote: post #48

While the discovery is great, there are quotes that are very clickbaity like "They understood both the nutritional value of fat and how to access it efficiently.” No they didn't understand the nutritional value better than any other homo something before or after, or even any carnivorous animals. It's just that evolution engineered them to look for food everywhere. For example the bearded vulture diet is based on bon…

Neanderthals were certainly smart enough to have more understanding of dietary needs than a vulture does. And "any homo something before or after" includes us today. While it might be reasonable to say there are things we don't fully understand about the way fat affects the body, we do understand the nutritional value of fat.

> Neanderthals were certainly smart enough to have more understanding of dietary needs than a vulture does.

Understanding the nutritional value of a food goes beyond than working to get the food. You need to have a theory of nutrition (true or false), and there is nothing that can suggest this. Saying that they ate fat because fat is good for them is tautologic

> And "any homo something before or after" includes us today.

It is obvious that I include our specy only until the first research and experiments on the topic

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

#88

Post by bee_rider »

Nursie wrote: post #9
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…

It's interesting to think about, and yes, I would think it's more accurate to consider that homo (sapiens) neanderthalensis are part of what became us, and in that case it seems odd/wrong to talk about them being outcompeted when there was interbreeding and their descendents are still here. However they are still extinct! It reminds me of the historical narratives in the UK about Viking settlers. We were taught (in t…

It doesn’t seem that much of a coincidence that some of the history’s foremost boat-based pillagers and raiders were the descendants of Vikings, right?

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

#89

Post by chrismcb »

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…

Every camper knows you can boil water in a paper cup.

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

#90

Post by anon84873628 »

Youden wrote: post #22
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…

In high school science class we boiled water using standard printer paper: fold a sheet into a box, put it on a stand over a bunsen burner, fill it with water, turn up the bunsen burner. Not only does it not burn but it retains more of its structural integrity.

In Boy Scouts we did it with plastic cups. Not the healthiest material in retrospect :-)
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