New Evidence Debunks "Stupid" Neanderthal

ThinkComp writes "In what could possibly be a major blow to a scientific consensus that has held for decades, recent research suggests that the traditional conception of Neanderthals being "stupider" than Homo sapiens may in fact be misleading. As articles about the research findings state, 'early stone tool technologies developed by our species, Homo sapiens, were no more efficient than those used by Neanderthals.' The data used in the study is available on-line along with a visual description of the process used."

Comments

Not Aggressive enough

[topham]

It's pretty simple. They weren't aggressive enough and we wiped them out through brute force like we do everything else that's different.
Big shock.

Re:Not Aggressive enough

[MyLongNickName]

Yeah, because Europe has a long history of peace and tranquility.
Africa currently lives in perfect communion with one another.
Russia is a paragon of pacifism.
And Asians are known for their brotherly love.
No brutal kidnappings and murder in Mexico.
And no death squads in South America.

Face it, humans are fundamentally flawed.

At least Antarctica is peaceful (but shrinking).

Re:Not Aggressive enough

[Pantero Blanco]

After all, is there a single species on Earth that's anywhere as violent as homo sapiens?

There are quite a few. We're just smart enough to build weapons, and we have the hands for it. Spiders, tasmanian devils, and blue jays aren't really capable of mining metal and forging weapons. Chimps sometimes organize to kill other chimps (and sometimes other neighboring apes).

Why do so many people think that nature is peaceful?

Debunk?

[amstrad]

Finding evidence that may alter the "scientific consensus that has held for decades" is not debunking. It is the normal process of science. Debunking is the process of correcting misconceptions and exposing false, unscientific, or non-evidence based claims.

Collectively stupid?

[pieterh]

We tend to try to compare individual intelligence but this is probably meaningless. The real reason for our species' success is not that we're individually brilliant, but that we are very good at dividing up large problems to solve collectively. This works thanks to our social instincts: respect for authority, sense of fairness, competitiveness, group belonging, etc. etc. The whole gamut, the reason why we read and post to Slashdot, because we're a social species and bloody good at it.

Neanderthals, larger, individually smarter, were presumably generalists that could do more by themselves but could not compete as well a group of modern humans, when it came to hunting and perhaps fighting.

Of course I'm defining "intelligence" very much in the sense of "how humanity thinks and solves problems". It's easy to claim superiority when one is the species writing history.

We aren't getting smarter. Not really.

[Anonymous Coward]

While there have been great advances, really we've been dealing with the same level of intelligence throughout history.

What has changed us is the quality of life.

When you don't have to slay a beast, drag water 4 miles and fend off hordes of enemies, robbers and the plague you can get 'more' done.

I'm sure in history there were many brilliant people. Some 4000 years ago with the documents we have people still had the same ideas, the same drama.

The Steven Hawking of 1000 years ago would starve or be stuck in a mud shack thinking about how to eat and if his family would leave him in the jungle. That doesn't happen in the developed countries.

After visiting the slums of Rwanda I often asked myself what these people would do if they had access to clean water. The answer - the same thing the Romans, the Greek, the Europeans, the French and the Americans. Build, expand and innovate.

D~y

Re:Pop culture != scientific consensus

[Sockatume]

From TFA:

Many long-held beliefs suggesting why the Neanderthals went extinct have been debunked in recent years. Research has already shown that Neanderthals were as good at hunting as Homo sapiens and had no clear disadvantage in their ability to communicate. Now, these latest findings add to the growing evidence that Neanderthals were no less intelligent than our ancestors.

It's evidence against the old, already-discarded concensus. So we can chalk this up to the lay media's love of turning articles into "scientific renegade tales", and inability to comprehend that science is continuously revising itself.