Slashdot Mirror
Manga Girls Beware: Extra Large Eyes Caused Neanderthal's Demise
An anonymous reader writes "The BBC reports on a new study of prehistoric skulls which suggests that Neanderthals became extinct because they had larger eyes than our species. As a consequence of having extra sized eyes, an average 6 millimeters larger in radius, more of their backside brain volume was devoted to seeing, at the expense of frontal lobe high-level processing of information and emotions. This difference affected their ability to innovate and socialize the way we, modern people (Homo Sapiens Sapiens) do. When the last Ice Age set on 28,000 years ago, Neanderthals had no sewn clothes and no large organized groups to rely on each other, hastening their fall. Yet, they were not stupid, brutish creatures as portrayed in Hollywood films, they were very, very smart, but not quite in the same league as the Homo Sapiens of Cromagnon."
And from the departement of wild speculations we have the following gem...
...to know where this is going
Personally, I'm more partial to the theory that we *are* Neanderthals (hybrids) and that they didn't 'die out', but were simply bred away.
There has been little hard evidence that Neanderthals were any less intelligent than Sapiens, just less evidence found for their intelligence, likely because there were far fewer of them. Studies of their flint knapping abilities show they were at least as skilled at toolmaking as Sapiens.
Anyhow, the article reads ore like a daydream than a piece on science, as evidence for the most important part (percent usage of the brain for eyesight, and the retardation effects of this difference)are omitted.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
We all know those big-eyed anime little neanderthal girls were killed of by tentacle monster rapists, thus preventing procreation!
Silence is a state of mime.
Can you please stop the tabloid headlines. "Extra Large Eyes Caused Neanderthal's Demise" would have been just fine, thanks. No need to try and sex it up with some manga girls. BTW, manga boys have big eyes too.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Come on, you're ruining the value of science with that nonsense.
Big eyes -> Larger region of brain devoted to sight -> smaller region of brain devoted to anything else -> Lower Intelligence -> Can't read emotions and transmit information -> Can't sew clothes properly -> Extinct.
6 millimeters!
my mom always warned me about that
Those giant eyes are going to be her downfall during the next ice age.
It amazes me that comments like this, with so little data to make such a conjecture, can be taken seriously by people who scoff at religion. We know slightly more about these other branches of humanity (their biology aside) than we do about the historicity and culture of Atlantis. Yet we are supposed to take for granted that we can just know, with virtually nothing known about neanderthal society, what caused them to go extinct.
Unbelievable.
I believe the article alludes to the diameter of the eyes having a 6mm difference, not the radius.
A 6mm radial difference would be a 12mm diameter difference, which would be... practically Manga.
I say BS! Neanderthals died out because the females preferred the larger penis of the Homo Sapiens.
For this is what the LORD says-- he who created the heavens, he is God; he who fashioned and made the earth, he founded it; he did not create it to be empty, but formed it to be inhabited-- he says: "I am the LORD, and there is no other.
All along we have been associating dumbness with blonde. Guess what it is the eyes. If you want your genes to be in a better place look for a narrow eyed gal/guy. They do not see well, but somehow know how to attain their goals.
They were bred out - this has been shown by DNA analysis. Early homo sapiens bred with them, and the homo sapiens traits were more effective.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
The last time I checked Neanderthals/Denisovans did not suffer a demise. It seems that at least some of them were absorbed by modern human populations so in a way Neanderthals/Denisovans are still around. Now if you'll excuse me I'm off to eat a dinosaur.
I say BS! Neanderthals died out because the females preferred the larger penis of the Homo Sapiens.
well.. that would explain the breeding out theory.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Really, these are "just so stories," not much better than fairy tales. If further research revealed that the neanderthals actually had smaller eyes, then you can be sure that someone (maybe the same people) would come out with a theory that neanderthals went extinct because they couldn't see as well as humans.
I first read that as "they were not stupid, british creatures".
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
Manga guys usually have big eyes too.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Actually, that would be the hybrid theory the root was proposing. Pureblood neanderthal males were at a reproductive disadvantage, so hybridization won out.
I thought it was already proven that Europeans are the ancestors of Neanderthals through DNA sequencing? And it's this very DNA responsible for a strong immune system in people with large amounts of Neanderthal DNA.
Yeah, back then they used to wrap them around their waist, unfortunately all the interbreeding with small peni'ed Neanderthal has left us with the 10 inches we have today. (Doesn't everyone else have 10 inches?)
Cheap storage VM.
...cue in the asian jokes (if you are one of those that find it funny to call someone smart as in smarter than you of course).
Because I read: "Yet, they were not stupid, *british* creatures as portrayed..."
This theory only works if there was a barrier in the size of the skull so either the eyes or the brain could use the given space.
A little smaller ability to live in larger groups makes a big difference...
Equating intelligence with brain size has always been both stupid and puzzling to me, particularly since there's no good evidence to support it that can't be countered by contra-evidence that at least as good or better.
...they partied too hard. I know this because.
This racist article offers the underlying message that Africans are smarter than Europeans, and are therefore superior. The article itself is based on assumptions, speculation, and is short on facts, as well.
There is almost no evidence that the size of the brain dictates intelligence or problem solving ability, and most theories along these lines have been thoroughly debunked in modern times.
The article is just a bunch of white-hating racist bullshit.
Grug mom say Grug look cool. Grug may no have fancy sewn clothes, but Grug have feelings.
Your political party doesn't care about your rights and only represents corporate interests.
... practically Manga
or Hobbits!
While size does matter, larger eye sockets does not automatically mean more of their brain was used for processing visual stimuli. For that to be valid, one would need to know what the size of the pupil and retina was, not the eye socket. It is quite possible that Neanderthals has more muscular eyes, just like they had more muscular bodies, but the actual visual portion of their eyes, the part that actually sees, was not significantly different than homo sapiens. Another explanation could also be that when Neanderthal developed, during the ice age, light levels were lower in the climates that they inhabited and the larger eyes were an adaptation, which again would not indicate more of their brain was used to process visual stimuli, but instead the larger eye was simply to enable more light gathering capability than their ancestors near the equator.
Without having an actual Neanderthal brains and eyes to examine, one cannot simply make this determination simply based on the size of the eye socket.
Open slashdot (click-click) ... YES! (CLick)
Ok. New article...Big manga
WTF?? It's about their eyes !??
Human beings still have a lot of evolving to do. Specifically, until we finally abandon coercion (meaning violence or threat thereof) as the primary tool of social organization, and until coercion is strictly relegated to self-defense, we are no more than clever brutes. I believe that if an intelligent species is to evolve past the critical point of capable self-destruction, they have no choice but to abandon the concept of a special "right" to employ coercion as the means to progress (which all government is founded on). To clarify, at some point in our future (thousands of years from now), human society will either abandon this primitive relic from the animal kingdom (coercion as the defining point of society), or we will go extinct, never having graduated from the animal kingdom which created us.
This research is pure prejudice and a waste of taxpayer's money. The scientists should have waited a little more and ask the neanderthal directly.
Suck it, Robert J. Sawyer!
"Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part that wonders what the part that isn't thinking isn't thinking of"-TMBG
It's not just Asians. Western "cute" imagery, such as Precious Moments and Love Is, also has fairly large eyes. On the one hand, the characters in Precious Moments are super-deformed, meaning their heads are so big (roughly 38% of body height) that they can hold a bigger brain. On the other hand, such a bigger brain would need stronger neck muscles and take a lot of energy.
This theory only works if there was a barrier in the size of the skull
There are three barriers. In no particular order, they are how big of a head the neck muscles can hold up, how much energy the digestive system can supply to a larger brain, and how big the hole in mommy's hips has to be in order to let baby's head through. Too big and one ends up like Pop-Tarts boy.
I like Ben Bova's explanations better in his series of Orion's books. Basically, these superevolved humans created a special killer called Orion, and he teleports a bunch of Genghis Khan's men back in time to kill all the dinosaurs and the Neanderthals. The Neanderthals were actually smarter than humans, but lacked that killer instinct of the Mongols.
21st Century Renaissance Man
They would have been masters of the club and hand spear. Creating a barrier to other migrating humans, until the humans developed a throwing ability for spears and ? Then they became the hunted and lost out from a early arms race.
http://phys.org/news151326825.html
"When the last Ice Age set on 28,000 years ago, Neanderthals had no sewn clothes and no large organized groups to rely on each other, hastening their fall. "
Ha! Take that, Robert J. Sawyer!
This is good! Its makes sure that I can convince my Manga Girl to stay with me (because if she gets too smart, she might decide she can do better than me). Plus, if she does catch the eye of some Manga Guy, I can say, honesty "Him? He's dumber than me. Why would you want that? Come here and get back into bed with me."
I read brutish as British.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
Guess the Neanderthals weren't smart enough to avoid them.
Since the visual region of a species' brain will tend to grow to be exactly as large as it needs to be, I do not see how this would lead to cannibalization of other organs. What is important is whether or not the other organs of the brain exist in the first place. Once they do exist, natural selection will tend to expand them appropriately. The notion that birth canal places a limit on the size of the human brain, implying a competition for space in the skull, does not appear to be correct. There is nothing limiting the width of the birth canal, which is free to adapt to the size of newborn skulls. Therefor the only thing limiting the size of our brains is our metabolism. We have a smaller occipital region in our skulls than neanderthals because we have smaller retinas. If neanderthals have not been able to keep up with us cognitively it is because either they were unlucky, or they lacked some of the specialized organs of the brain that we possess.
It is true that having more brain mass for any reason will require more nutrition, but the fact that neandertals had larger eyes in the first place suggests that it was adaptive, and gave them an advantage. Where the article really falls flat on its face is that on the one hand it argues that the expanded neanderthal visual system is adaptive (else why would they have it?) and on the other hand it argues that the expanded neanderthal visual system is non-adaptive. You cannot have it both ways. If having more visual power was not adaptive then selection pressure would have favored smaller eyes and more energy spent on the rest of the brain.
"Will future ages believe that such stupid bigotry ever existed!" -- Ivanhoe
more likely cause: larger eyes were easier to gouge out with rudimentary weapons.
Survival of the fittest, or in our case the most warlike.
I do anyway! Assume most do unless they were malnourished growing up
More convincing is that the Neanderthal metabolism required more meat. They were not as omnivorous as H Sap. Neanderthals suffered and lost children when H Sap flourished and had many. They were out-competed that way.
Conspiracy theory rant from usenet's own Cleve Blakemore in 3... 2... 1...
I know it's silly to be the biological equivalent of a grammar Nazi, but species and subspecies epithets like "sapiens" are not capitalized. Only the genus epithet is capitalized, and all parts of a species name should be italicized (it's Latin). Thus: Homo sapiens sapiens, Homo sapiens neanderthalensis (or Homo neanderthalensis if you regard it as a species rather than subspecies). It's not *that* hard to write biological species names correctly. It would be nice if journalists didn't get it wrong all the fricking time.
Human society is organized through violence -- just as in the animal kingdom. It's just that human beings are better at sweeping it under the carpet, or pretending it doesn't exist ("government by the people"). If government was by and for the people, then logically, government wouldn't need guns.
Remember the objective definition of government: it is the organization holding a monopoly on the "right" to employ violence as a means. Everthing government does is founded on either violence or the threat of violence. Government is ubiquitous in human society, and therefore, violence is ubiquitous in human society.
Putting it in the proper context, the fact that human beings show less frequency of visible violence than their closest relatives in the animal kingdom isn't exactly a call for celebration.
and they still didn't see it coming.
FTA: "If you live in a larger group, you need a larger brain in order to process all those extra relationships." So that's why blackbirds have such enormous brains!
That the human brain generally works a particular way is no indication of how the neanderthal brain worked.
We know, for example (thanks to a slashdot story) that a man with like 1/4th of a brain's normal volume (http://news.softpedia.com/news/A-Quarter-Brained-Man-60542.shtml) can lead a pretty normal life. We also know that brains route around damage and adapt. So what is it with this obsessive belief that brain size is equated with X, Y and Z of intelligence and behavior?
While the article presents an interesting hypothesis which fits in with why humans would have dominated neanderthals (better group behavior/communications), it can't really be said for sure based on the size of the eyes. There's a WHOLE lot of assumption and speculation going on there.
I find it interesting that the notion of being "really smart" (based on brain size) but without good communication skills. This would imply they were effectively advanced apes... unable to learn from one another, but able to learn on their own and through mimmickry. (No stored knowledge means no building or accumulation of knowledge.)
I think the true question is : could they see better than us with those bigger eyes?
The rest seems to be wild conjectures.
Of course they're malnourished, look how small their trunk is! They probably have to eat with their hands. Gross.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
OK, smaller eyes and more emotional brains allowed us to socialize and survive, but what explains our recent stupefaction, and how much longer can we last?
No, you're wrong. They brought home a copy of Kama Sutra and their Neanderthal husbands used it to wipe their asses. However, the pretty little blond guy down the mountain at the trade camp - he read the book and showed her the meaning of "it is not the size of the boat but the motion of the ocean."
Anyone who's seen the movie Speed knows Neanderthal DNA is still with us. Google for pics of that bus driver. If he had a club instead of a steering wheel, he could get a job in a museum as a stand-in.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I think you're suffering from a bit of confusion on how to convert between units of measure. As 1cm does not equal 1in, your 10cm member is not 10 inches in length.
The bigger eyes allowed them to more readily discern the emotional state of others. This mode of communication made it unnecessary to develop language. They were outcompeted by our species because language gave us technological superiority.
Manga guys usually have big eyes too.
Yeah, but from what I've seen (I'm not a manga/anime fanatic), I've noticed that when they do go too far with the "big eyes == cute" anime thing, (especially with overly "cutesy" and/or soft-porn oriented pictures), it's with the pictures of girls and woman.
It's true that larger eyes -> protectiveness-inducing attractiveness up to a point. But aside from the fact that overdoing this can have a "too much" saccharin effect, some of those pictures go beyond that, and (to me) the eyes are so large they start to lose their stylised "human" connection and edge into freakish, alien and almost insectoid/fly-like territory.
Examples; here and especially here (possibly NSFW)
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
No other species has built as complex of a societal structure to compare with.
Citation needed. I've seen this argument before and I've never seen any real analysis to back up the assertion. Mostly it sounds simply like puffery on our part when we claim this. Complexity is a difficult thing to measure. We have some unique abilities and out societal structure is indeed complex but we barely understand the societal structure of most other animals so it really is difficult to make comparisons that are meaningful.
Ummm dude, it ended about 10,000 years ago and was a 100K year event. Where does this 28,000 come from?
"By contrast, the larger frontal brain regions of Homo sapiens led to the fashioning of warmer clothes and the development of larger social networks."
Onesies and Facebook allowed us to beat Neanderthals!
Did they only have sweaters and myspace then?
This is a theory we know is wrong. If it were true there would be lots of Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA (passed on by the mother to her daughters) in the modern human population. Instead there is none (http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.1002947).
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
"they were very, very smart, but not quite in the same league as the Homo Sapiens of Cromagnon."
Apparently these guys are under the impression that Cro Magnon and Homo sapiens were different soecies. Either that or the BBC is "interpreting" the news for us again.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
It had nothing to do with eyes. Several populations around the world have quantifiable amounts of Neanderthal genetics. Why not actually educate yourself before posting schmegma?
If smaller eyes were so much better then how come nature didn't select for them in Neanderthals?
So what the article is telling me is that neanderthals looked like a stockier version of Gollum...
I can't believe no one caught that allegory.
Liking manga/anime is already a sign of a deficient brain, so this all fits.
So much bullshit! They are extinct because they got a rock dropped on them. All species that are local or are located a distance from the equator will become extinct. If you are local and there is an impact near where you are, guess what, you are now extinct. If you live far south or far north and there is a super volcano or a big impact, guess what, you are now extinct.
i tell you.. these Neanderthals were brutish savages...
I read (probably on Wiki) that their population peak was around 70,000. Obviously that'd have to be taken with a major grain of salt, but given we're talking about continental Europe, 70,000 doesn't sound like a barrier to much. You could walk around for months and see fuck all. ;)
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Who the hell said homo sapiens are smart? What hole does the author live in?
They are a part of us. Sheesh. Why do people still get this wrong?
I used to be
for more speculation on the fate of Neanderthals, see The Silk Code
I wonder if google glass will lead down the same path to extinction
Humans didn't move in and thrive until they had a weapon advantage. It's takes more than a walk around to thrive in a occupied territory. Any competitors would have been hunted down and eliminated over the years or decades. Then with better weapons, the tables were turned.
That sounds as crazy as we came from a Monkey.