Neanderthals had short stocky bodies perfectly suited to the cold. Modern humans had tall skinny bodies, terribly suited to the cold. Yet despite being at a physical disadvantage, modern humans had the intelligence to adapt the situation to their advantage. The BBC writes:
…Neanderthals, with their shorter and stockier bodies, were actually better adapted to Europe’s colder weather than modern humans. They came to Europe long before we did, while modern humans spent most of their history in tropical African temperatures. Paradoxically, the fact that Neanderthals were better adapted to the cold may also have contributed to their downfall.
If that sounds like a contradiction, to some extent it is.
Modern humans have leaner bodies, which were much more vulnerable to the cold. As a result, our ancestors were forced to make additional technological advances. “We developed better clothing to compensate, which ultimately gave us the edge when the climate got extremely cold [about] 30,000 years ago,”…
If this analysis is correct, it provides strong support for the cold winters theory of human population differences in IQ, because it suggests cold climates were so cognitively demanding for hominins, that not even Neanderthals, whose bodies were physically adapted to the cold, could survive when it got really cold.
Pumpkin Person 
That’s the most backward ass logic I’ve seen in a while.
Wouldn’t the trade offs just equal out? And it’s not like the climate had not gotten extremely cold multiple times throughout Neanderthal’s stay in Europe In fact the climate had extreme fluctuations worse than the upper paleolithic about 4 or 5 times which is why Neanderthal had a cold adapted body in the first place.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Vostok_Petit_data.svg
I wonder what was different this time around? Oh yeah, There was a a tall black hominin they suddenly had share shit with about 50,00 years ago, not long before they went extinct.
I cosign this.
Melo do you think the Neanderthal extinction was due to, as you say, competition along with interbreeding? I’ve seen some papers saying that there was no interbreeding and still others that say that the amount of Neanderthal DNA is lower than commonly thought.
There’s always a multitude of factors, Interbreeding, competition, mutational meltdown, and climate change all contributed to Neanderthal demise. Some Scientists even suggest the domestication of the dog did them in. But I feel the Occam’s Razor is that Europe simply was big enough for both of us, We both hunted similar food, we both needed to have children. We were just more genetically “gifted”, in numbers and intelligence and so we absorbed them.
Did we absorb them? Some scientists say all the Neanderthal DNA entered our genomes in the middle east, not during competition in Europe, by which time it may have been too late to breed.
“Did we absorb them? Some scientists say all the Neanderthal DNA entered our genomes in the middle east, not during competition in Europe, by which time it may have been too late to breed.”
I’ve seen some higher estimates, some lower estimates (~2 percent) and still others that show no introgression at all.
“Did we absorb them?”
Pretty sure, these are some recent studies.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4537386/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25341783/
“We find that on the order of six to nine percent of the genome of the Oase individual is derived from Neanderthals, more than any other modern human sequenced to date. Three chromosomal segments of Neanderthal ancestry are over 50 centimorgans in size, indicating that this individual had a Neanderthal ancestor as recently as four to six generations back. However, the Oase individual does not share more alleles with later Europeans than with East Asians, suggesting that the Oase population did not contribute substantially to later humans in Europe.”
“This individual derives from a population that lived before-or simultaneously with-the separation of the populations in western and eastern Eurasia and carries a similar amount of Neanderthal ancestry as present-day Eurasians. However, the genomic segments of Neanderthal ancestry are substantially longer than those observed in present-day individuals, indicating that Neanderthal gene flow into the ancestors of this individual occurred 7,000-13,000 years before he lived.”
Basically Implying we were screwing around in Europe.
Neanderthals survived many Ice ages, I just think their population was too small for genetic vigor.
I wonder what was different this time around? Oh yeah, There was a a tall black hominin they suddenly had share shit with about 50,00 years ago, not long before they went extinct.
It sounds like it was the combination of BOTH extreme cold and competition that killed them. They might have survived the competition had the climate not got so cold.
I don’t think so. While it’s tempting to say it could go both ways, Ice age Europe was a variable climate with a lot less hominin species before we came along, I think they were already used to the cold.
I think this can kind of extend back to our discussion on the threshold of intelligence it takes to dominate all environments on earth. While I think i concede now that only Modern humans(cro magnon) are possibly intelligent enough to do so, I think it’s logical to say that free time is a factor, because once you surpass this threshold you have the necessary time to create sophisticated art, but the mental threshold to dominate a specific ecosystem isn’t the same as what it takes for symbolic thought. What I’m saying is Neanderthals had the actual physical/neurological potential for symbolic thinking but they were “too busy” hunting mammoths up close and personal and planning for the next food shortage to worry about painting on walls.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030544031200297X
“If this analysis is correct, it provides strong support for the cold winters theory of human population differences in IQ, because it suggests cold climates were so cognitively demanding for hominins, that not even Neanderthals, whose bodies were physically adapted to the cold, could survive when it got really cold.”
Actually it said that the colder periods putted them at a disadvantage compared to humans, not that they couldn’t survive period.
It further implies that our rudimentary understand for clothes making for the cold came from them through transmission.
I would also reword that last sentence on “hominins”, because then that would make your statement on Neanderthal contradict itself seeing how none-cold adapted hominids were the ones that used higher intelligence to adapt.
Here you should’ve used Pott’s theory. Even then that didn’t imply that human actually “got smarter” when they reached higher elevations, just that they used their behavioral plasticity. If they had to select for intelligence then that would undermine the point of what Africa provided them in terms of Potts.
There is evidence (lice divergence dates, as the article mentions) that humans beach to wear clothes by 170,oo years ago (pehaps in the in the cooler or more mountainous parts of SS Africa, or one of the many places where it is cold at night, or somewhere that is oppressively sunny; or clothing may have other benefits in different climates). Skin working tools, like stone and bone awls (a piercing tool mostly for skins that is the precursor to the needle) and in some cases early bone needles (in the case of sibudu ca 60,000 bc. Awls, being a more rudimentary precursor, appear much earlier) are found at early African sapiens sites (though could also have been for making things like bags, cloaks or other things beyond clothing).
The article incorrectly states that neanderthals (with the lissoir) were the first to make bone tools (40,60,000 years ago)—perhaps they meant to say the first bone tools in Europe—, when in fact bone tools are found at African sites like Blombos beginning 100,000-70,000.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blombos_Cave#Bone_tools
http://news.ufl.edu/archive/2011/01/uf-study-of-lice-dna-shows-humans-first-wore-clothes-170000-years-ago.html
The Khoisan and Hadza both traditionally wear skins (the Hadza men traditionally wore a short skin garment over the shoulder (second link)
https://whatistheevidence.wordpress.com/2007/07/25/dress-for-success/
http://www.adventureclassroom.org/cultures_hadza.php
https://www.google.com/search?q=khoisan+clothing&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiT0o3r3O_UAhXEaT4KHRNhAVgQ_AUIBigB&biw=1243&bih=813#tbm=isch&q=traditional+khoi+khoi+kclothing&imgrc=2I4yQrfKbV8xWM:
http://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-san-or-bushmen-women-in-traditional-dress-ghanzi-botswana-67727151.html
https://www.google.com/search?q=khoisan+clothing&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiT0o3r3O_UAhXEaT4KHRNhAVgQ_AUIBigB&biw=1243&bih=813#tbm=isch&q=traditional+khoisan+clothing&imgrc=GgQNBTKDq-6PbM:
Of course more specialized clothes for the (greater) cold would have come later as humans moved into colder climates. I think Gilligan is likely in general correct where he is quoted as saying
“When they began to struggle, that could be the reason why they went extinct, they didn’t have the technology for complex clothing that modern humans had already developed earlier in Africa,”
It is possible that the lissoir in particular could have been a neanderthal contribution, though it is also possible that it was independently invented by moderns as they adapted to Europe (or even, though perhaps less likely, adopted by neanderthals from them since the dates at 40,000 at the early end estimate, coincide with the earliest appearance of sapiens in Europe.
http://www.pnas.org/content/110/35/14186.full
“more comparable to assemblages from southwest Asia made by modern humans (19, 43) have such poor bone preservation that neither human fossils nor bone tools are known, and thus their influence on Neandertals cannot be evaluated. Thus, it remains to be determined whether MTA lissoirs are evidence that modern humans influenced Neandertals earlier and longer than previously suggested, whether these lissoirs represent independent invention and convergence, or whether, perhaps this time, Neandertals may have influenced subsequent Upper Paleolithic modern human populations in western Europe where lissoirs are common.”
In my opinion, the most important and cognitively demanding advance of the paleolithic is the bow and arrow.
The invention of the bow and arrow was a pivotal moment in the human story and its earliest use is a primary quarry of the modern researcher. Since the organic parts of the weapon – wood, bone, cord and feathers – very rarely survive, the deduction that a bow and arrow was in use depends heavily on the examination of certain classes of stone artefacts and their context. Here the authors apply rigorous analytical reasoning to the task, and demonstrate that, conforming to their exacting checklist, is an early assemblage from Sibudu Cave, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, which therefore suggests bow and arrow technology in use there 64 millennia ago.
And it has nothing to do with Neanderthals or the ice age.
Edit:
“…it is also possible that it was independently invented by moderns as they adapted to Europe—or present among modern humans longer than is believed pre-Europe—as well as by neanderthals separately (or even, adopted by neanderthals from them since the dates at 40,000 at the early end estimate, coincide with the earliest appearance of sapiens in Europe.”
In my opinion, the most important and cognitively demanding advance of the paleolithic were slavery and voodoo.
To Afrosapiens:
“In my opinion, the most important and cognitively demanding advance of the paleolithic is the bow and arrow.”
Yes, I do think the bow and arrow was important and likely and important stage/innovation in weaponry/projectile weaponry. But I think the invention generally of projectiles was fairly important as well (requiring a greater estimation of trajectory and distance, and the ability to design weapons with these things in mind). And that (beginning likely with distance javelins) seems to date to the early period of 279,000 bc (when we now know early homo sapiens had already diverged in Africa)
These first projectiles are likely mostly javelins, but some possibly atlatls (with atlatls/woomeras created either roughly contemporarily or—more likely—soon after javelins)
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0078092
“Projectile weapons (i.e. those delivered from a distance) enhanced prehistoric hunting efficiency by enabling higher impact delivery and hunting of a broader range of animals while reducing confrontations with dangerous prey species. Projectiles therefore provided a significant advantage over thrusting spears. Composite projectile technologies are considered indicative of complex behavior and pivotal to the successful spread of Homo sapiens. Direct evidence for such projectiles is thus far unknown from >80,000 years ago. Data from velocity-dependent microfracture features, diagnostic damage patterns, and artifact shape reported here indicate that pointed stone artifacts from Ethiopia were used as projectile weapons (in the form of hafted javelin tips) as early as >279,000 years ago. In combination with the existing archaeological, fossil and genetic evidence, these data isolate eastern Africa as a source of modern cultures and biology.”
the early period of 279,000 bc (when we now know early homo sapiens had already diverged in Africa)
Are you saying our species is more than 279,000 years old? Because of the 315,000 year-old remains found in Morocco? Apparently there’s some debate on whether those qualify as fully modern humans.
But it’s interesting that projectile weapons may have been used 279,000 year ago. It looks like the pendulum has swung from anatomical modernity predating behavioral modernity by tens of thousands of years to behavioral modernity predating anatomical modernity by tens of thousands of years. Perhaps the truth is they both occurred at the same time.
“Are you saying our species is more than 279,000 years old? ”
I was referring to the Moroccan evidence, yes, and the evidence that some ancestry in certain groups, like Khoisans may have a divergence date of roughy that ( about 260 ka ago). I suspect that our species (or an early form of it) dates to around 270,000-300,000 bc. The genetic and archaeological evidence seem to support (or be increasingly supporting/suggesting that idea). But yes, there is some debate.
“behavioral modernity predating anatomical modernity by tens of thousands of years. Perhaps the truth is they both occurred at the same time.”
I also suspect that that is the case (or is closest to the truth), that they more or less occurred at the same time.
Edit:
“…suggesting that idea). But yes, there is some debate (over whether they qualify), so there is still some uncertainty; they could be sapiens, or possibly closer to transitionals.”
Edit:
“(though could also have been for making things like bags, cloaks, some form of rudimentary shelter possibly, or other things beyond clothing).”
If it is true that neanderthals were hairy as some believe (though how much might be hard to determine) in addition to being adapted to the cold in their build, they may have needed artificial covering less than is sometimes proposed.
Edit:
“…into colder climates. But I think Gilligan is likely in general correct where he is quoted as saying…”
Humans would have interacted with Neanderthals further south from the cold. So they would not at first interact with the Neandertal most adapted to the cold but with Neanderthals further away from the cold.
Humans I think would have been more socially organized than Neandertal and relied on reconnaissance to map new territory for resources. Hunting then would be based on fast prey where Neandertals mostly hunted medium sized mammals. Humans made throwing spears and that could be a weapon against Neanderthals but also good for prey Neandertals ignored because Neandertals had no throwing spears. Besides throwing spears humans may have had other technologies more advanced than Neanderthals.
In the end, Humans probably were able to hunt better and Neanderthal starved out.
Support for the contention:
In conclusion, human cold adaptation in the form of increased metabolism and insulation seems to have occurred during recent evolution in populations, but cannot be developed during a lifetime in cold conditions as encountered in temperate and arctic regions. Therefore, we mainly depend on our behavioral skills to live in and survive the cold.
I’ll write about metabolic cold adaptation soon.
Thus, it seems that whites and in particular indigenous circumpolar populations generate more heat than African natives at rest.
Something I always thought about.
In summary, population studies indicate that people living in Africa, i.e. the Negroid population, have better heat loss (sweating) capacities, but have blunted metabolic responses to cold exposure. One may conclude that in the 40,000 y that people inhabit cold areas, part of the heat loss capability in the heat is lost and that a more effective ST is developed. For NST the number of studies are insufficient for conclusions. It seems that BMR of cold indigenous people is higher than tropical counterparts.
This is all true. Metabolism would need to be higher in colder climes since the body can keep warm that way. Think of shivering. When you shiver your metabolism increases.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1864780
So it’s on solid ground that peoples in higher latitudes have higher metabolisms than those who live in the tropics.
It is assumed that European Neanderthals were well equipped with cold defense mechanisms. Apart from metabolic adaptations, including brown adipose tissue for NST, they are supposed to have had insulative adaptation, such as strong vasoconstriction in the skin, hairy skin to reduce heat loss, localized cold-induced vasodilation and cold shock proteins. It is predicted that some Neanderthals would have covered up to 80% of their body. There is some evidence that the Neanderthals, who lived in Europe 180,000 y ago until extinction 30,000 y ago, exchanged DNA with the modern Cro-Magnon human. This may have led to the presence of the aforementioned cold defense mechanisms (but not a hairy skin) currently found in Inuit and Caucasians that are present to a lesser extent in black African people nowadays.
It is well-documented that reactions to local cold, like immersion of hands in cold water, show considerable differences between blacks and whites. Several studies indicate that Negroes show slower and reduced CIVD responses. Purkayastha et al. showed that subjects living in polar regions had superior CIVD responses over tropical natives.
…
It seems that repeated severe cold exposure (cold water immersion) leads to reduced metabolism, but repeated exposure to cold air may enhance metabolism. Some degree of insulative adaptation occurs due to repeated whole body cold exposure, but it is different to exclude the effect of a fatter diet in cold areas. The feeling of discomfort and pain subsides both in whole body cold exposure and local cold exposure, leading to altered behavior. Humans have developed excellent clothing, houses and behavioral adaptations to cold, and these seem to be tremendously more important for living under extreme conditions than our physiological mechanisms alone.
This paper is really good.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4861193/
Melo are you aware of this paper?
Why are there so many explanations for primate brain evolution?
A crucial, but frequently overlooked, issue is that fact that the evolution of large brains required energetic, physiological and time budget constraints to be overcome. In some cases, this was reflected in the evolution of ‘smart foraging’ and technical intelligence, but in many cases required the evolution of behavioural competences (such as coalition formation) that required novel cognitive skills. These may all have been supported by a domain-general form of cognition that can be used in many different contexts/
…
Finally, perhaps, we can answer the question with which we started: why are there so many different explanations for primate brain evolution? Put simply, too many analyses focus on correlational evidence while advocating a single explanation
to the exclusion of all others; as a result, they rarely make serious attempts to integrate the various explanations (for all of which there is convincing evidence) into a single unitary explanatory framework. We hope that we have gone some way towards achieving that objective.
Click to access 20160244.full.pdf
Check out table 1 on page 9.
lots of juice.
still wqiting for afro to admit white man supremacy.
it’s so hard.
hard.
sad!
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-03/europeans-are-drinking-themselves-to-death
Shakira!!!1
I see what you mean. I thought that too when I first saw it. It looks a little like her—maybe more superficially than anything. Only it seems to have a bit of a protruding chin (slightly) and neanderthals almost never had that to any degree—that, and they didn’t have much of a neck. It think the image is made from digitally altering a human face (rather than based on a neanderthal skull), so it may not be entirely accurate.
Seems that guy who draw Shrek. Unlikely accurate, in my opinion.
Also, neanderthals tended to hace a sloping (less bulbous/convex) forehead and more prominent brow ridges than this image.
chess is funny.
1. the best human chess player ever is probably alive and a norwegian. magnus carlsen. only the cuban jose raul capablanca might be better.
2.maybe the jews were smart enough to give up…after computers.
The Neanderthals died off because they were assholes and their Woman were ugly. Notice there’s no Neanderthal mtDNA from their Women. When Neanderthals saw our beautiful Cro-Mag Women they would kidnap them and rape them. Every time. Eventually the Cro-Mags got sick of them stealing our beautiful Cro-Mag Women and would kill them or drive them off into inhospitable areas. The last Neanderthals areas were in mountainous terrain.
Now you may disagree with this hypothesis but if you’re honest it’s probably as good as any of the other explanations we have of why the Neanderthals died off.
GO CRO-MAGS!
Sam J.’s Theory of Neanderthal Rape leading to their demise.