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Comment by biohacker42 | Hacker News Reader

What's so scary about the Neanderthals is not that they were bigger or stronger, but that their brain volume was bigger then ours and from the skull shape we can tell the brain was shaped just like our brains.

So they might have been smarter.

But here's where it gets interesting they lived in small isolated groups and didn't invent the fancy tools and jewels humans did.

However once they saw them, they could reproduce them exactly.

That's what we know form archeology.

Now the question is, were they dumber then us, or was it just our greater population densities that make us seem more creative in the archeological context?

And if they were not less intelligent then us, why did they go extinct?

If human cloning becomes routine we could perhaps resurrect the neanderthal, what if they turn out to be just as smart as us?

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There's numerous potential reasons why they went extinct. The main one is that they merely couldn't adapt fast enough after the ice ages passed and were out-competed for food, however it might have been that humans basically killed the Neanderthals through the spread of farming.

Homo Sapiens Sapiens (us) are keen users of fire throughout history, in fact we made the world we chose to live in. Through purposeful setting of forest fires we converted forest to savanna, which we could then use for farming and pasture.

The interesting thing though is that the first (fossil recorded) domestication of dogs happened in 30,000 BC in Belgium, and likely this behavior had been going on for some time before a dog conveniently died in a way to be fossilized and not used for food. Carbon dating suggests Neanderthals went extinct 30,000 years ago (from the latest remains, however again some will have lived longer without being fossilized), which is in fact 28,000 BC. So the question is, did Neanderthals begin the domestication of dogs? Because the next known domestication occurred around 7,000 BC again in Belgium.

So I wonder, did Neanderthals show humans how to domesticate dogs? Because throughout human history, invention spreads quickly, so why did it take almost 25,000 years for it to provably occur again in the same place?

The question of intelligence though depends on a number of factors. The human brain is about as large as you can get before signal delay gets too long (possibly a reason for Neanderthal extinction, they literally couldn't react fast enough), however the human brain has a high nerve density, which would just compound the problem if our brains were bigger. It's certainly possible that the Neanderthals were as intelligent as us, but that they simply reacted slower and when the environment started warming up and more dangerous animals started spreading back they might not have coped as readily.

An extreme example of the neurone delay is the Elephant. It's brain is massive, but they have relatively slow reactions. However their intelligence is immense for an animal, I mean it appears that they actually have the concept of revenge, which suggests an understanding of right and wrong.

I've heard theories that dogs started the domestication process because they were attracted to our garbage.

And since neanderthals were almost exclusively meat eaters, it might be the case that they attracted a lot more wild animals with their leftovers.

Another theory I've heard is that neanderthals are unique in having an inferior sense of balance.

Inferior not just when compared to us, but to almost every known hominid or great ape.

Apparently the inner ear organs responsible for balance and thus also for agility do fossilize and that's how we know.

So part of their extinction might have been our ability to outrun and out jump them.

Then again it could have just been our pernicious desire and ability to exterminate competition.

I believe wolves could have started the domestication process. I mean wolf pups have similar (but not identical) behaviors to dogs and any abandoned or orphaned wolf pups would easily become attached to a human as the alpha. Actually, humans are pretty well suited to the alpha role, due to the fact that in wolves the leader is generally the best at leading (not necessarily the strongest or fastest, just like in humans) and the alpha always gives out the food. Early human societies would have likely had the similar behaviors as alpha wolves.

Neanderthals may have had a stronger alpha than human societies do. It's likely never going to be provable unless we clone a ton of Neanderthals and dump them on a small island, but if Neanderthals had a more leader dominant pack, similar to what Silverback Gorillas have, then this would have made perfect pack-leaders for orphaned wolf pups. However, from what I've heard is that the process was only ever started, IE wolves were found to live within human populations with signs of domestication (likely curious docile ones), but it was never completed meaning they're unsure if we bred the docile wolves until around 7000 BC.

The one thing I've always wondered is if Neanderthals simply grasped the beginning of concepts. They adopted tools they never invented, but learnt to make. They possibly began the domestication process, but never completed it. They obviously understood how to make clothes that no other species of hominid ever did, because they lived in the UK and some of their sites are behind the glacial lines for most of the period they were in Europe, so they obviously lived close to the glaciers to establish settlements as the glacier retreated. However, they never appeared to advance far on any of these, whether this is merely a symptom of technological development (IE since humans began it's been on exponential growth, however in the beginning things were on the order of 10,000 years apart) or if it's the limit of the Neanderthals brain structure. A lack in neural connectivity may have inhibited creativity and original ideas.

The larger an animal, the larger the vegetative parts of its brain needs to be. Controlling for body size (and possibly even neglecting body size * ), Neanderthals did not have larger brains than do modern humans. An even greater advantage for modern humans would be seen in terms of neocortex size: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neocortex#Evolution

The neocortex is the newest part of the cerebral cortex to evolve (hence the name "neo"); the other parts of the cerebral cortex are the paleocortex and archicortex, collectively known as the allocortex. The cellular organization of the allocortex is different from the six-layer structure mentioned above. In humans, 90% of the cerebral cortex is neocortex. [...]

The neocortex is part of the cerebral cortex (along with the archicortex and paleocortex, which are cortical parts of the limbic system). It is involved in higher functions such as sensory perception, generation of motor commands, spatial reasoning, conscious thought and, in humans, language.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal#cite_note-5

a 1993 analysis of 118 hominid crania concluded that the cranial capacity of H.s. neandertal averaged 1412cc while that of fossil modern H.s. sapiens averaged 1487cc.

That's what I get for believing "science" from a Nat Geo special!

I don't know who's stupid idea was it to rename National Geographic to natgeo but it almost made me stop watching

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