Interview with George Church: Can Neanderthals Be Brought Back from the Dead?

9 posts

Angocachi
I don't doubt that they made tools, art, and pigments. They buried their dead as well. But there is no evidence that they did anything more advanced than a Papuan or Khoisan. A 5 year old girl can doodle on her walls and a dog can bury dead things.
Some people have suggested that because Neanderthals were indigenous to Eurasia that the cold climate might have selected them for greater intelligence. But cold climate isn't what selects for that, it's seasonal change. Eurasia only favored far-sighted planning and more group work when it became a temperate zone alternating between white and green every 6 months. During the Neanderthals time, he would have experienced less seasonal change, his region remaining mostly cold and frosted all year. He wouldn't need the degree of intelligence Homo Sapiens have.
Really, if you sat one down for an IQ evaluation he would come out at 70-80.
Don Johnson

We could also try to bring back Gigantopithecus blacki, the largest ape that ever lived. This thing was about 10 ft. tall and 1,200 lbs., and it may have been bipedal or at least stood erect easily. It died out about 100,000 years ago and co-existed with modern man for thousands of years. It may be the ultimate origin of the various Bigfoot legends around the world.

It could dominate the NBA and be used in other forms of sports entertainment.

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Bob Dylan Roof

Sorry, Angocachi , not only could Neanderthals bench more, they were also more culturally refined than their uncouth cousins. Check your stereotypes.

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Still from The Nose Ring of the Nibelung

Neanderthals sang opera, says researcher
by phenomenica on February 4, 2013

in Prehistory, Science

Neanderthals sang opera, British archaeologist Steven Mithen, originator of the theory that music was used as a form of pre-linguistic communication by these pre-historic people, told EFE.

The musicality of the Neanderthals can be identified more with opera than with rap because in addition to music, these hominids also used dance and body language as forms of communication,” said Mithen, author of “The Singing Neanderthals”.

“Rap is associated with a particular type of music based on words and phrases, something the Neanderthals lacked,” Mithen said.

Mithen helped open a lecture series Thursday on “Music and Its Impact on the Body and Mind” at the CosmoCaixa exhibition center.

neanderthalThe lecture series is being organized jointly with the Bellvitge Institute for Biomedical Research, or IDIBELL.

“Neanderthals did not adopt a hierarchical position in their songs,” Mithen said.

Human beings evolved about 100,000 years ago in Africa and later developed spoken languages, but the modern individuals who spread into the Middle East, Asia and Europe 50,000 years ago encountered Neanderthals, who still communicated using ancient musical forms, Mithen said.

“Modern human beings used language, which was a more efficient form of communication, and they could also invent better technology, while the Neanderthals were gradually pushed out toward extinction,” the University of Reading researcher said.

Inkarri
My ass they did.

And he knows this because he was around at the time to witness it or what?

All tribal/primitive peoples dance and sing. Enough of this pro-neanderthal propaganda...
Niccolo and Donkey
President Camacho
Angocachi Roland Broseph Arcturus
How the hell do you know all this shit. Weren't you certain only a few months ago that chinks had interbred extensively with homo erectus and that only Europeans had significant neanderthal ancestry?

In any case, IIRC from Anthropology 101, neanderthals did indeed have slightly larger brains--- something like 3-5% greater volume, on average. What you say about the their intelligence being more of a spatial-kinesthetic type, as opposed to homo sapiens' presumably greater logical-mathematical (and perhaps verbal) intelligence is interesting, although I have no idea if it's accurate. This would also have interesting implications when it comes to evaluating the effects of neanderthal (and other non-sapien) genetics on modern human populations. The Australian aborigines, for example, while being complete primitives in areas like mathematics, must have possessed a somewhat complex sense of spatial/kinesthetic intelligence, as evidenced by their discovery of the boomerang.

I do know that the neanderthals' inability to reach levels of cultivation on par with homo sapiens has long been attributed by some to the theory that neanderthal hyoid bones rendered them incapable of speech. I would believe that speech is far more important than raw brain power for things like farming and warfare. Now supposedly they have found a neanderthal skeleton in Israel possessing a hyoid bone acceptable for speech, but this might just be a Jewish false flag.

The other theory of neanderthal extinction which doesn't lay the blame at their supposedly inferior intelligence is that they were poorly assimilated for the end of the Ice Age and were exterminated by humans in open combat. Neanderthals were built like powerlifters (and much stronger, in fact, as their muscle attachments etc were much larger than those any modern human would possess) and needed a high-protein diet to sustain them. Humans were supposedly more omnivorous and their bodies conserved energy better. This is linked to the theory that neanderthals only had thrusting spears (good for hunting large ice age prey such as mammoths, but less practical for smaller and more nimble prey), whereas humans possessed the critical advantage of range with their throwing spears.

The evidence for this is twofold: firstly, many neanderthal skeletons discovered have injuries similar to those of modern rodeo riders; in other words, they hunted at very close-range, possibly literally jumping on their prey, and often had to withstand their prey fighting back. The other side of the theory is anatomical; supposedly neanderthals' arms were poorly configured for the act of throwing, whereas humans learned to master it.

These 2 links explore this "spear theory" in more depth:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090720163729.htm
http://phys.org/news151326825.html
President Camacho

Related tangentially to my earlier mention of hominid speech, I would like to bring up an interesting theory proposed by Spengler: he once asserted (in Man and Technics , I believe) that for the early generations of homo sapiens, speech was a privilege, a difficult task to master, and an art only accessible to the more important (and presumably male) adults. By the arrival of organized agriculture and especially with the first high cultures (Sumer and Egypt), speech had completely filtered down to the masses and even to children, while reading and writing now became the distinguishing marker of the elites. (It should be noted though that both back then and today, the sophistication and refinement of the elites' vocabulary, syntax, and semantic skills remain far superior to the common man's speech-- something of which both parties are acutely aware of)

Spengler doesn't cite evidence for his theory, of course; he relies instead on his favored method of historical analogy. But there is something compelling to the idea, I think, and it would seem to fly in the face of the accepted theory re: speech development-- for which there is equally little evidence, I might add. Anthropologists all seem to imagine the earliest talking humans as ultra-communitarian groupings with men, women, and children communicating on a relatively equal basis, delegating simple division of labor in a democratic fashion, etc. Estate groupings (or "class divisions", in Marxist jargon) and true social stratification, we are told, first appear with the rise of agriculture/civilization and the concomitant need for central planning, stricter division of labor, etc.

But it seems just as likely that the vast majority of pre-agricultural humans in these primitive bands and tribes were capable of only grunting perhaps a few basic words for everyday objects, while the enunciation of complex clauses and ideas was the possession of a small coterie of leaders responsible for ritual, organization, and strategy.

Angocachi
Chink archeologists themselves hold firm to the theory that they are descended from Asian Homo Erectus because they share dental and facial features. I had assumed Europeans and Caucasoids had more Neanderthal DNA than Asians because Neanderthals were indigenous to Europe, the Neareast, the Urals, etc with heavy concentrations in Central Europe.. plus the skeletal similaties and the evidence that they had red hair. It must be that as early Homo Sapiens passed through the Neareast, unwhittingly on their way to Asia, they interbred with Neanderthals and it was this Neanderthal/Homo Sapiens hybrid that hybridized with Asian Homo Erectus populations to produce the Mongoloid.

As for the Neanderthal brain, it depends on what population you are comparing them to.
Bob Dylan Roof
Angocachi Don Johnson President Camacho

Via Dienekes, from the abstracts for the 2013 meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists:

Cro-mags win again