

Neanderthal large eyes 'caused their demise' - drucken
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21759233

======
btilly
In the BBC series _Walking With Cavemen_ they suggest an interesting theory
that the crucial cognitive difference between _homo sapiens_ and previous
hominids is that we more actively care about and think about our future. This
leads to active advance planning, where people do things now because it will
pay off much later.

It also leads us to think about questions that seem to have never occurred to
other hominids. For instance we put a surprising amount of energy into
wondering about what happens when we die, and how we can get a better result.
As a consequence every known human society - both now and in the archeological
record - has burial rituals of some sort. But no other form of hominid,
including Neanderthals, has shown evidence of that.

~~~
molecule
> As a consequence every known human society - both now and in the
> archeological record - has burial rituals of some sort. But no other form of
> hominid, including Neanderthals, has shown evidence of that.

The latter assertion is false:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal_behavior#Burial_pra...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal_behavior#Burial_practices)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanidar_Cave>

[http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/The-Skeletons-
of-...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/The-Skeletons-of-Shanidar-
Cave.html)

~~~
Dn_Ab
Neanderthals buried their dead true but it is uncertain whether they performed
burial rituals. So I would assign a value other than true or false. But it
would be inline with the data to weight against burial _rites_ by
Neanderthals. Humans seem to have been cognitively more flexible than
Neanders, with more varied tools, more complex burials and art.

Nevertheless, I am curious how they ascertained that Neanderthals could not
plan ahead as well as humans. Their definition must be very restrictive
because New Caledonian Crows, Chimps, Bonobos, Dolphins, Elephants and
possibly even octopuses have been shown to be able to plan ahead.

~~~
Retric
I would take the presence of flower remains in some Neanderthal graves as
counter evedence.

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droithomme
Big eyes? Last week it was reported that bunny rabbits caused the demise of
the Neanderthals.

I forget what it was that caused the demise of the Neanderthals two weeks ago.
Maybe that they had red hair and sunburned easily.

I guess that means it's been three weeks since the last announcement that
another "nearby earth-like planet" has been discovered.

~~~
vwinsyee
Actually, a few days ago, an NPR article [1] suggested the possibility that
the Neanderthals didn't exactly 'die out'. Rather: "We neither murdered them
nor outcompeted them. We mated with them and, in time, simply folded them into
our species until they disappeared."

Also, related to some other comments, the same NPR article claims that
"there's evidence they thought about life in complicated ways" based on how
they cared for an elder and their burial rituals.

[1]
[http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2013/03/08/173813194/what-...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2013/03/08/173813194/what-
happened-when-humans-met-an-alien-intelligence-sex-happened)

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andrewflnr
I guess it's likely my fault, but I utterly fail to see why larger eyes
necessitates more processing circuitry. I guess if it actually had higher
resolution, but is that necessarily the case? If all the larger size does is
let in more light, then what difference does that make to the post-processing
except that the data is better?

~~~
qdog
If you assume the cones and rods in the eye are still the same size, but the
eye is bigger, if the portion of the eye covered in receptors remains a
constant ratio, a relatively small increase in eyeball size would probably
make a large difference. I'm too lazy to go look up the surface area of a
sphere and don't recall it of the top of my head, but if I'm not mistaken the
surface area grows much faster than the diameter.

I assume that only letting in more light would be a bigger pupil, not a bigger
eyeball, hence the bigger eyeball has a lot more data to process.

~~~
taproot
I'm inclined to agree there is likely a substantial increase in input, but I'm
not sold on the idea we lack the bandwidth or capacity.

In fact I'm kind of on the fence, we humans tend to approximate a lot of
information not under our direct focus with memory and perception tricks? I
guess you call them. I'm not sure whether this means we are maxing capacity as
it is and have to approximate in order to handle the information, or if its
simply more efficient energy wise. Anyway, my point is, while there may be
more information coming in, it doesn't necessarily mean they used it all, or
cost them anything in the way of processing power elsewhere.

I'm still holding onto the idea we were simply better looking and got all the
chicks. (interspecies breeding)

~~~
qdog
Actually the article seems like a lot of conjecture. I should have prefaced my
comment by saying that if they are right, perhaps there is a higher resolution
and this might be why.

Whether they are right I don't think we have enough evidence either way,
really.

------
georgeoliver
What of the hypothesis that Neanderthals had _larger_ brains than us? Or is
there not much evidence for that?

~~~
stan_rogers
The did (marginally) and an occipital bun (an enlargement of the skull in an
area roughly over the visual cortex) is characteristic of Neandertal skulls.
Mind you, size does not imply complexity, but endocasts don't point to
anything obviously less complex than _H sapiens sapiens_. (In fact, both
Broca's and Wernike's areas seem to be about on par, and recent genetic
evidence suggests that Neandertals had essentially the same FOXP2 gene we
have. That would indicate, given current knowledge, that they likely had
sophisticated language as well.)

