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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...
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
my mom always warned me about that
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
But does he offer free pizza if it takes over 30 minutes to deliver?
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!
I read brutish as British.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
Careful. According to TFA, better eyes can make you go extinct.
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
Natural evolution is an unguided process, as such it has no goals, therefore we don't have any evolving to do.
Personally I am of the opinion that natural human evolution will end by the end of the 22nd century at the latest, by that time all new humans will be genetically engineered. Instead of relying on chance to pass the best genes from parents to their offspring, parents will engineer the embryo to have the best genes at least for the most important attributes, and in some cases, modified genes to prevent heritable diseases being passed on.
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.
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.
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?
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!
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.
So what the article is telling me is that neanderthals looked like a stockier version of Gollum...
You're the only comment I've seen saying this, and I've read through most of them. That should hint at something about you, and it's not something good. Try not to obsess so much about race or indeed project your obsession. All racism is bad, but whites have less to complain about in that respect, overall. Bear that in mind.
Aside from that, I agree that the article and its conclusions are bollocks. Eye size does not necessarily say anything about the layout of the cortices in the brain.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
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.
(because if she gets too smart, she might decide she can do better than me).
How smart does she need to be to figure that out? Come on, now. ;)
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
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.
Yeah, both are basically silly misunderstandings of the well-documented phylogenetic tree. We didn't evolve from monkeys; living monkeys are a separate branch, or rather two, the New World and Old World monkeys, with us apes a third branch of the primate tree.
Similarly, the most likely explanation of what happened to the Neanderthals is that they interbred with the Cro Magnon invaders, and we're the descendants of the hybrids. Actually, it's likely that there was little gene flow back into Africa, and it's just the non-African branches of the human tree that have Neanderthal genes, but we'll have to wait a while to really verify (or disprove) that conjecture.
This is a sort of logical failure that we humans seem to be prone to. Another similar example came out a few years ago, when DNA studies led to the conclusion that roughly 20-25% the US population has "Native American" ancestry. It's pretty much the same story, with the documented history of slaughter and plagues wiping out the "natives", while on the sidelines the invaders were quietly hooking up with the natives and producing little hybrid babies.
Similarly, it's well understood that the "swarthy" appearance of the Mediterranean-zone Europeans is due to interbreeding with the large number of black African slaves brought into the Roman Empire. 2000 years has been enough to average out the genes locally, while the population is still somewhat visually distinct from the people farther north who haven't yet had time to fully join in the mingling. Give the Europeans another 10,000 years, and that merger will be complete, too.
Actually, my favorite such genetic-mixture story was the report some years back that researchers had verified earlier estimates of the mixing of the American black slave population, to the point that since around 1980 - give or take a decade - more than half of the American population has black African ancestry. I had a friend in college back then who looked pure, stereotypical Irish, with red hair, freckles, etc., but she liked to tell people that she was legally black. Her family had verified that she was 1/32 African, and in many US states, that would legally make her "colored". I'm about as pale as she was, though I'm 1/8 Ojibwa (my father's father's mother). I'd guess from the recent studies that I'm probably also about 4% Neanderthal, but the records to prove that seem to have been misplaced. ;-)
Anyway, it's rare that one group of humans has wiped out another. What we really do is interbreed. Yeah, we fight and kill each other occasionally, but we do that within groups, too. But that's short-term, and in the long run, the hybrids win.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.