
A Spark of Insight into Neanderthal Behavior - diodorus
https://www.sapiens.org/column/field-trips/neanderthal-tools/
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netcan
One of the most mind bending realizations (to me) from human history is how
unremarkable sapiens were, relative to other humans, for most of our history
as a distinct species.

YNH proposes a fascinating theory about sapiens' ability to break "dunbar
number" social limitations and form larger tribal groups... but he proposes a
relatively recent date for this. For 250 out of the 300ky we existed, we did
not have this distinction.

Meanwhile, the number of species that co-existed with sapiens is a tentative 7
or 8. At least 3 species are _very_ different. Small brained, semi-arboreal.
Homo Naledi represents the (arguable, but I don't see another option) first
known mortuary practice... previously thought to be a Sapien invention.
Another species may have crossed a sea, somehow.

Earlier generations of paleoarchaeology had encountered similar weirdness with
neanderthals. It seems that neanderthals and sapiens shared a lot of culture.
Material culture (tools, art..) cross species barriers and spread just like it
does between sapien populations.

The memetic origins of modern sapiens isn't just inherited from our sapien
ancestors. Memes jumped species barriers. Prometheus may have been a hobbit.

~~~
saiya-jin
> Another species may have crossed a sea

Imagine the probable racism if ie Americas were inhabited by truly different
sub-species. Unless they would be able to defend themselves of course (and
probably not die from new diseases)

~~~
netcan
I don't really think it would have been a very different response.

Racism is a form of our tribal xenophobia. The fact that racism came with a
pseudoscientific logic is besides the point. European fascism managed to be
fundamentally racist, even though Jews were culturally and physically similar.

Early colonial racism in the americas was more of a religious bigotry than
later forms, which were explicitly racist. It evolved It evolved into formal
racism once conversion made religious bigotry unavailable.

My point is, xenophobia is not really based on points of difference. Those are
post facto.

Also, I'm not sure to an Armenian sapien in the deal past, a neanderthal would
have been more foreign than an Indonesian sapien. They would have both just
seemed like foreigners. Maybe neighboring Neanderthals dressed or behaved more
similarly than far-away sapiens.

.

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mtron_
They used a very cool way to analyze the Bones. Instead of chopping off
samples the bones were put in a plasic Box and a tiny static upbild was enough
to kick some molecules out of them which they analyzed and identified the
species.

~~~
INTPenis
Yes, and this lead to the assumption that neanderthals thought ahead about
which bones to use for various tasks.

That's about the gist of this article. Cool new bone sampling tech and an
obvious assumption.

Sorry but that was a bit anti-climactic to me. :)

~~~
pedrovhb
Well, it's obvious if we assume that neanderthals have close mental faculties
to our own, but we don't really know that. Abstract thinking and forethought
are things that we take for granted but can't just blindly assume other
species have the same capabilities. In this sense, I'd say the discovery is
meaningful in the sense that it gives us a bit more certainty that they did
have a significant forethought capability.

I'm not sure I would jump to the same conclusions, though. Although reindeer
bone tools weren't found, maybe that doesn't mean that they weren't made, just
that the artifacts didn't survive as well.

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wdb
Thank you for posting this article, looks really interesting and I wasn't
aware of this site.

