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."

Comments

This just in

[Anonymous Coward]

And from the departement of wild speculations we have the following gem...

Re:This just in

[hairyfeet]

Other than playing Frankenstein....why would you want to? This isn't some alien here, its just a failed branch of our own tree, its not like these Neanderthals would be all that different from us which is why cloning them (unlike say dinosaurs) wouldn't be THAT difficult if you sunk enough money into it.

I mean seriously what WAS the Neanderthal? It was a little more compact than us, with a body designed to take more punishment at the cost of speed and agility (some unscrupulous military might find them attractive...if it weren't for the fact that giving troops armor is way cheaper), had a little smaller brain but not by a huge amount, we're not talking Lucy or early Java man here folks, and they had a brow ridge although again not as bad as many of the earlier offshoots.

At the end of the day what you'd probably have was a slightly squatter human that would probably fit into the low average end of the bell curve and honestly probably wouldn't have THAT hard of a time fitting into our modern society once they learned the ways of those around him/her. Hell I've known guys uglier than Neanderthal that had no problem getting GFs so most likely they'd just breed themselves right back out of existence in a few generations if you didn't stick 'em on an island somewhere and make 'em a protected species.

So I honestly don't get what the appeal of bringing one of these back would be for, other than just to say we did it and maybe morbid curiosity? If you were talking Lucy or early Java man or even those little hobbit people? THEN I could see the point, they were so different from us it would be like having an alien species brought to life, but with Neanderthals there is debate even to this day whether they just died out or we fucked them out of existence, so what would be the point of making more? So you could point and go "Ha ha, your brow ridge makes you look funny"? Hell 50k in plastic surgery and they wouldn't look any weirder than some of the guys I've run into over the years.

Re:This just in

[Immerman]

More likely they just take a large tissue sample from one well-preserved Neanderthal, do a standard "puree a bunch of cells, scan the DNA fragments, then reassemble the data into a complete genome". It's unlikely that any given section of DNA will be damaged in all, or even most cells. Then you just send the genome to a DNA synthesis lab and get a vial containing fresh new pristine DNA to inject into your target egg. That's a lot easier than trying to piece together a viable genome from multiple disparate individuals.

Of course you still wouldn't have a "true" Neanderthal since it's mitochondria and probably much of it's epigenetics would be inherited from the egg donor, still, we appear to have been able to interbreed with them so the chimeric child would at least probably be viable, and could give us *some* insight into the differences between our species.

Might even turn out that they were actually more intelligent than us, and our advantage was purely a cultural accident. I mean come on - we were all wandering around as the dominant predators in pretty much our current (physical) state for what, 50-100,000 years? But no, instead it's: Oh, this other species with bigger brains than us also had bigger eyes, and clearly using them drained their brainpower. Nevermind that they say nothing about the relative number of photoreceptors (big lenses don't consume brain power), or that there's not a 1:1 correspondance between photoreceptor and nerves signals reaching the brain. Or that visual processing is a complex process, many of whose subsystems actually appear to get re-purposed on demand for abstract reasoning purposes.

Re:Idle speculation

[Joce640k]

Homo Sapiens seems quite "stupid and brutish" most of the time. Just saying.

Tabloid headlines

[AmiMoJo]

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.

Just admit you dont know and get over it

[MikeRT]

This difference affected their ability to innovate and socialize the way we, modern people (Homo Sapiens Sapiens) do.

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.

Demise?

[theVarangian]

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.

Brain Size == Simplistic Drivel

[repetty]

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.

While size does matter...

[Dcnjoe60]

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.

Re:Idle speculation

[Beardo the Bearded]

We can be, we can be.

We've also got Medicine sans Frontier, Engineers without Borders, Save the Children, and footprints on the moon.

So we can also be pretty fucking rad when we want to be.

Re:Idle speculation

[ScentCone]

Animals might be more aggressive, but they sure as fuck aren't as evil as humans...

You're confusing motives with capabilities. Chimps, baboons, etc., are practically psychotic compared to us. If the few of them that are "nice" could build prisons to keep the really dangerous, murderous ones from bothering them and killing their offspring, I expect they certainly would.

Re:Idle speculation

[The Grim Reefer]

Do animals build prisons to hold and torture fellow animals?

There are species of shrimp that keep live starfish alive for months while eating them. Komodo dragons kill with a toxic bite that takes days to die from.

Do animals build concentration camp to hold and kill millions of it's own kind?

No, but pack animals banish members to die of starvation or be killed by others. No other species has built as complex of a societal structure to compare with. So we simply don't know. Most social animals probably wouldn't bother with prisons to begin with, they'd simply kill or banish any drain on the pack or herd, or leave them behind to die. Humans typically don't do this. We take care of our elderly and sick.

Do animals build nuclear bombs to destroy fellow animals far away?

Of course not, they're too fucking stupid to do so. Do animals donate blood or perform surgery so save other members? Do they donate organs to save each others lives? Did they start the Peace Corps? Or donate time to Habitat for Humanity? Have they started shelters to care for homeless humans? Do carnivores and omnivores ever choose to be vegetarians? Have they invented vaccines for chronic illnesses? If they had nuclear weapons to use against their enemies, you can bet your ass there are many species who would.

Animals might be more aggressive, but they sure as fuck aren't as evil as humans...

I'm not sure about evil, as animals don't really think in those terms as far as I can tell. but I would guess that more great ape physical confrontations per incident that end in death than do humans. There are probably less fights over mating in the human world than in the animals. As far as "evil" have you ever seen a cat play with its quarry after it's injured it? Or a Trigger fish eat the eyes of another fish and let it swim aimlessly before eating it? There is plenty of cruelty in the animal kingdom. Don't think for a second that humans are alone in this.