
50k-year-old three-ply cord fragment found at Neanderthal site - diodorus
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52267383
======
readarticle
_”Given the ongoing revelations of Neanderthal art and technology, it is
difficult to see how we can regard Neanderthals as anything other than the
cognitive equals of modern humans, " the study said._

I don’t keep a finger on the pulse, but seeming advances in the study of
Neanderthals have been noticeable from browsing HN alone this past decade.

Are there any books or resources that look to bring a layman up to speed on
the changes to and current state of the field, similar to what _Mann’s 1491_
did for pre-Columbian studies back in the day?

I’ve turned up _Pääbo’s Neanderthal Man_ before, but it was focused on
genetics, and could be quite technical.

~~~
d0100
It is difficult to see how we can regard Neanderthals as anything other than
"the same as today just many years ago"

At the risk of being disdained by "science", I never bought the idea of pre-
historic human subspecies.

The reason being is that I cannot fathom the evolutionary event that would
cause our brain to develop in such a way that we evolved from "smart enough to
outsmart all predators" to "completely dominate the earth and the elements".

There hasn't seemed to exist any such predator or environment where such a
huge jump in brain capacity would be required.

~~~
grawprog
>completely dominate the earth and the elements".

I think that depends on how you look at it. If we're going by pure numbers,
bacteria win by a landslide. Then we've got fungi which come pretty close to
competing with bacteria for most numerous and widespread.

Ants probably have us beat too along with a few other insects.

But to address the point you were making. It didn't happen all at once. It was
a long gradual process that occurred with huge overlap between different
hominid species. The 'jump' in brain power wasn't a jump, but a slow process
of selection where smarter individuals would outcompete the less intelligent
ones.

For example, they would possibly hunt more efficiently, using tools and having
a better memory for migration routes, they would have a better memory for
dangers etc. Over time individuals better suited to this would mate and breed
with others, this in turn would pass those traits on to offspring while
individuals who couldn't compete would be left out and over millions of years
of this and constant adaptations acquired because of this, humanity got
smarter.

~~~
TremendousJudge
You haven't mentioned what to me is a much more important evolutionary
pressure: other humans. Politics is a feature of the ancestral environment.
Humans aren't smart because they need to out-compete other species, or a harsh
environment. Other animals do this as well, and none of those are as smart
(sorry octopi, elephants, dolphins and crows). Humans are so intelligent
because they had to out-compete each other, in a positive feedback loop that
produced where we are at today

------
throwaway_pdp09
0.5mm wide is very thin indeed, especially as it's made out of even 3 fibres.
Finer than anything I'd expect to be handmade but IANANeanderthal.

~~~
jarofgreen
I saw that to, but it seems clear that's the sizes now? I guess it was bigger
and most of it has rotted away? But also IANANeanderthal.

------
harryf
For a second there was thinking Live, Neutral, Earth?!? Wow these Neanderthals
were far ahead...

~~~
DiabloD3
No, they were even more advanced: Fire, Wind, Water, Earth

------
visarga
> Three groups of fibres were separated and twisted clockwise in an "S-twist".
> Once twisted, the strands were twined anti-clockwise in "Z-twist" to form a
> cord.

And hardly could they imagine the academic language used in analysing their
handy work.

------
ben174
I think it's fairly obvious there was a giant blood war between the
neanderthal and homo sapiens early on. And a mass extinction of neanderthals.
Simply because they were different. If anyone has more information about it,
I'd love to hear more.

~~~
jmcgough
A sizeable chunk (like 1-4%) of our DNA comes from Neanderthals, and there's
recent evidence that they produced offspring with humans. The two coexisted
and interbred for many years.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interbreeding_between_archai...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interbreeding_between_archaic_and_modern_humans)

------
actionowl
I wonder if it was null terminated.

~~~
dang
I'm putting a three-ply cord fragment to thwart you guys in the title above.

------
jstewartmobile
Will Blavatsky have the last laugh?

------
ungzd
Is there link to this story on something other than ultra-mainstream media?

~~~
mattkrause
Here's the actual paper:

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-61839-w](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-61839-w)

Hardy, B. L., Moncel M.-H., Kerfant C., Lebon, Bellot-Gurlet M. L., & Mélard
N. (2020). "Direct evidence of Neanderthal fibre technology and its cognitive
and behavioral implications." _Scientific Reports._ 10(4889).

------
JoeAltmaier
This seems a stretch. The art, craft and social structures of Neanderthal can
only be seen as 'very primitive' compared to modern humans. This PC insistence
on making them seem 'as smart as us' does no service to science.

They are similar in kind to us, in that they could master (simple) crafts. But
evidence shows they often learned it from Homo Sapiens, and imperfectly at
that.

------
throwaway36377
I have friend who does genetic testing and had person who wasn't matching
sapiens genome and compared to Neanderthal with much better match. Out of
curiosity found Facebook profile and they look like Neanderthal. Is it
possible that they aren't exinct?

~~~
seemslegit
IANAGeneticist but afaik it is known that there was interbreeding between
modern humans and neanderthals and there are populations in Europe and Middle
East with genetically discernible neanderthal ancestry, still your observation
that they "look like a Neanderthal" is probably affected by confirmation bias.

~~~
cmrdporcupine
Actually all that is known is that there is shared genetic sequences that
indicate interbreeding as one possible scenario. I've heard others make the
claim that the same phenomenon could have been caused by populations of
sapiens that had archaic genetic features (that is shared by both sapiens and
neanderthal) from much further back.

I expect the genetic picture is far more complicated than we thought or think,
and "interbreeding" is a simplistic way of talking about populations. Species
are, after all, a taxonomical concept we invented, not an actual thing in
nature. The lines are far more blurry.

~~~
seemslegit
No disagreement there, just pointing that interbreeding is a natural default
hypotheses given that we know that at some point their living areas began to
overlap and the Neanderthals eventually disappeared as a distinct species by
that taxonomy - the debates afaik are about the scale of the phenomena that is
whether they were mostly absorbed by modern humans or mostly driven to
extinction or even killed by them.

~~~
cmrdporcupine
Lots of animals have gone extinct when our range overlapped with theirs :-)

~~~
seemslegit
Yes but ancient modern humans would have recognized Neanderthals as humans
rather than animals even if they had knowledge of other hominids.

