Neanderthal brains measure up to ours—literally
- Thread starter JournalBot
- Start date
In the movie Idiocracy, it wasn't the smart people who took over, it was the idiots who could reproduce faster.
I'm glad to see scientists are having a more thoughtful look at neanderthals and not discounting their abilities just because they're not us. Just because we survived doesn't mean we were smarter.
.... brought to you by Carl's Jr.
I'm glad to see scientists are having a more thoughtful look at neanderthals and not discounting their abilities just because they're not us. Just because we survived doesn't mean we were smarter.
.... brought to you by Carl's Jr.
Upvote
51
(56
/
-5)
eduardopozo56
Ars Centurion
It is explained on the article, but the flow feels weird. Starts the whole premise saying that size doesnt matter, yet then goes to explain that size DOES matter, just that on the same species, size differences are not big enough to matter.
Upvote
28
(28
/
0)
As one case in point, Einstein's brain was smaller than average (weighing 1230 g at his death, vs. modern human average of 1350 g.)
Upvote
31
(32
/
-1)
Wow. The "Well AKSHUALLY" brigade is already showing up this morning.
I enjoyed the article. I like this writer's work for Ars and I hope her recently increased pace of publication continues!
I enjoyed the article. I like this writer's work for Ars and I hope her recently increased pace of publication continues!
Upvote
47
(48
/
-1)
I'm looking at the body of evidence of innovation over time.
Modern humans innovated much more often, which resulted in a faster acquisition of technological superiority. Neanderthals didn't SEEM to innovate as quickly or as often. Their levels of "technology" admittedly improved over time. But the time frames were slower compared to modern humans.
Even accounting for modern humans learning new Neanderthal tricks as they encountered them, they modified and improved on them far more quickly and often than the Neanderthals did.
Is that a function of better cognition? That's arguable. Taking risks and trying new things COULD be a social things, dominated by tradition or beliefs. Knowing what works, works, and there may be social reasons why they stick to what works rather than trying new things (religious beliefs/ritual nonsense, I'm looking straight at you!). So baring social beaks on innovation, it may be that the humans only had a more flexible belief system.
LOTS of things can impact innovation that have NOTHING to do with the capabilities of the species. Just the social structure. From Neanderthal and earlier cave art, they definitely had the tools to create different social customs. And in a primitive society, innovation might not be as welcome for fear of mean things, the least of which being pissing off the gods, even if they had the intellectual/cognitive ability to do it.
It's also relatively clear that the Neanderthal were more "tradition bound", since they usually did NOT integrate the "better" ways of doing things. They did have physiological differences which may have factored into it, but even with them, there are ways to adapt the same methods to a somewhat different physical structure.
Brain volume doesn't really explain much. Even the structure of the brain only hints, rather than reveals. Neanderthal were very much like us, only, perhaps, more cautious in what innovations they added to their more limited tool-belt. They did NOT adapt well to the environmental changes that were the hallmark of their extinction. That suggests that while they may have been equally capable of innovation as modern humans, for whatever reason, they lacked the disposition to do so. And that could have been caused by humans simply out-competing them in the first place.
Upvote
-14
(7
/
-21)
Upvote
13
(13
/
0)
I am guessing it probably wasn't that the dumb survived (though maybe it was, I won't discount it).
On that, it does make me curious on reproduction. Homo Sapiens, the size of our head is about as big as they possibly can be, to still fit through a pelvis. And as it stands, pre-modern medicine, most women would eventually die in childbirth if they continued having children.
I wonder if neanderthal heads, with their shape, was easier or harder to fit through a pelvis. Neanderthals were generally larger than homo saps, especially pre-modern humans. So that might have made things easier.
One of the things I do wonder about is changing climate and that reproduction rate. A larger body takes more calories, but it also makes it easier for them to survive in more northern climates. I wonder if homo sapiens moving into more northernly climates did help drive neanderthals into extinction. Higher rates of reproduction, maybe, of homo sapiens, combined with competition for resources and each neanderthal probably needing more resources to stay alive, meant they got out competed. The last refuge of them seem to have been Iberia from extant archeological records. A more forgiving climate. Just wondering out loud.
It wouldn't need to be warfare or us being "smarter" than them. If it takes more resources to support each individual, and they don't reproduce as fast, than they'd be very handicapped in competing.
Upvote
7
(7
/
0)
I've seen specials and speculation suggesting neanderthals were missing some key ability to abstract based on the limited clan size compared to humans and their wider ranging "tribes", and by comparing their rate of "innovation".
That all may well be true, or... it could just be accidents of history. I doubt either you or I could have innovated the bronze age ourselves. Without some better information ruling out competing explanations (where they were located, or just the chance it takes for someone to come along with a new thought like that), and without controlling for humanity's own pressure on that culture which may have actively cut OFF neanderthal clans from uniting together, we can never truly know.
When it comes to "geniuses", I'm more hesitant now than ever before to say that any one human is INHERENTLY smarter or dumber than any other. Extend that to how animals keep constantly surprising us with their capabilities, it seems that really the ONE thing we've got is our highly advanced communication skills for abstract notions. Presumably if animals talked like in fairy tales, we'd be well and truly boned.
That all may well be true, or... it could just be accidents of history. I doubt either you or I could have innovated the bronze age ourselves. Without some better information ruling out competing explanations (where they were located, or just the chance it takes for someone to come along with a new thought like that), and without controlling for humanity's own pressure on that culture which may have actively cut OFF neanderthal clans from uniting together, we can never truly know.
When it comes to "geniuses", I'm more hesitant now than ever before to say that any one human is INHERENTLY smarter or dumber than any other. Extend that to how animals keep constantly surprising us with their capabilities, it seems that really the ONE thing we've got is our highly advanced communication skills for abstract notions. Presumably if animals talked like in fairy tales, we'd be well and truly boned.
Upvote
3
(6
/
-3)
I vaguely recall reading years ago that Neanderthal brains averaged slightly larger than modern H. sapiens. At the time, paleontologists were sure we were smarter than the Neanderthals, and thought the difference was that we had larger cerebrums.
Upvote
7
(7
/
0)
Infants' skulls are all-cartilage, and not even completely joined at the seams. They're designed to deform, and do so pretty severely while passing through the birth canal. Many if not most infants come out with seriously elongated heads, but then return to a normal shape in the days following birth. The shape of the skull, as well as the size of the brain or head, at a point where the individual is old enough that the cartilage has calcified into fossilization-amenable bone, don't have much to do with the constraints of the birth canal.
Upvote
7
(8
/
-1)
Not to mention that neanderthals are rather barrel-shaped with wider hips, which may have helped in delivery, one HOPES.
Upvote
3
(3
/
0)
This reminds me of the discovery that pandas are not actually biologically required to eat bamboo shoots. They are capable of a "normal" omnivorous diet and I believe attempts are being made to persuade pandas (and red pandas which are not closely related) to eat a varied diet. So why do they do it? Is this cultural transmission - one that could have led to panda extinction as bamboo sources were lost?
If so, is it possible that Neanderthals had developed culturally to exist on a diet which was increasingly unavailable, and failed to adapt?
If so, is it possible that Neanderthals had developed culturally to exist on a diet which was increasingly unavailable, and failed to adapt?
Upvote
10
(10
/
0)
You have literally made yourself yet another example of someone who doesn't know how to use "literally" foolishly accusing someone else of using it wrong. The headline uses a familiar metaphor for qualitative comparison ("measure up to") and then uses the word "literally" to say that in this case the expression is true in a literal, as well as metaphorical, sense.
Upvote
11
(11
/
0)
It's perfectly valid grammatically and I'm sorry you were forced to stay inside and practice violin where you could see the other children outside being allowed to engage in word play.
Upvote
8
(11
/
-3)
I read an article in the last couple years about a study suggesting that thought might have to do with wave interference patterns and that brain shape is more important that brain size. I can't remember if it specifically mentioned crows, but I definitely thought about those clever little toolmakers when I read it.
Last edited:
Upvote
0
(1
/
-1)
But you need to think about the order of cause and effect. Human infants are born at a level of development far below that of most animals and need intensive care to survive. (As a father, I barely remember that period through the fog of sleep deprivation.) The reason we are born relatively prematurely is so our heads will still be small enough and our skulls flexible enough to fit through the canal. If — and I am postulating with no data whatsoever here — Neanderthals gestated their babies three months longer than H. Sapiens then skull shape could very much come into play.
Upvote
1
(1
/
0)
My personal theory based on absolutely nothing but gut-feel is that Homo Sapiens out-competed Neanderthal not by being smarter and more adaptable; but by being more vicious and violent. 
Upvote
14
(15
/
-1)
re: cognition and brain size - there's a fun book by the neuro-scientist Suzana Herculano-Houzel called "The Human Advantage: A New Understanding of How Our Brain Became Remarkable" (2016), where she describes a better way to estimate cognitive ability. Mere size doesn't work that well. Whales and elephants have far larger brains than we do, and they're smart, but not all that smart. A better measure would be the number of actual neurons. She developed a macabre scheme she calls "brain soup", where she dissolved the brain tissue in detergent and stained the neuron cell nuclei blue. Then she could count them under a microscope. She found that human brains have 3X the frontal cortex cells (about 45G) of the next two most complex brains - 16G for elephants and chimpanzees.
She credits our ability to maintain such a calorie-heavy organ to cooking with fire. That releases a lot of nutrition in food without a lot of metabolic work. We would have to spend all day foraging otherwise.
Only hominids use fire. We appear to have co-evolved with it from its first traces a million years ago. It's so deeply entwined with us that pyromania is a common psychiatric condition. It's fire that lets us naked apes live everywhere and eat anything!
She credits our ability to maintain such a calorie-heavy organ to cooking with fire. That releases a lot of nutrition in food without a lot of metabolic work. We would have to spend all day foraging otherwise.
Only hominids use fire. We appear to have co-evolved with it from its first traces a million years ago. It's so deeply entwined with us that pyromania is a common psychiatric condition. It's fire that lets us naked apes live everywhere and eat anything!
Upvote
17
(17
/
0)
There are no fossilized newborn or toddler skeletons or skulls of any human or proto-human species. This indicates that the pattern of bearing very immature young with cartilage instead of bone throughout most of their body, is a long-established and conserved pattern for hominids.
But in general, kids being born with cartilage instead of bone throughout their bodies, isn't even just a hominid trait: it extends across mammals. For instance, dog pups are pretty much all-cartilage upon birth.
Upvote
4
(4
/
0)
Does it stop with fire or does it go into the post-agricultural diet filled with cheap carbs that are quickly converted to the glucose brains use to do all that brain stuff?
Upvote
2
(3
/
-1)
So whales and elephants have far more cognitive ability than homo sap. Could be, it's hard to know until at least one of the species demonstrates it's ability by learning to communicate with the others.
Upvote
1
(1
/
0)
Yeah, I'll concede that's a bit of a smoking gun.
I've seen plenty of dogs being born and yeah, they kind of blow a hole in it too. But I've seen the birth canal thing pointed out using ungulates as an example (I've also watched horses and cows give birth) and their babies are up on their feet minutes after being born.
Upvote
2
(2
/
0)
Pre-agricultural humans weren't any less intelligent. Agriculture was only just recently invented, ~10000 or so years ago - whereas Homo Sapiens has been around, in its modern form, for ~250000 years.
Upvote
7
(9
/
-2)
I liked this article. Now I won’t feel nearly so bad every time my wife calls me a Neanderthal!
Upvote
8
(8
/
0)
I absolutely would never claim they were less intelligent and didn't meant to suggest that in the slightest. What I was getting at is that because carb-rich diets provide quick access to glucose ("blood sugar") people on them have both more time and energy available for using that intelligence.
Upvote
4
(6
/
-2)
You’re still treating fluid, overlapping populations as discrete, opposing entities.
Upvote
2
(3
/
-1)
We're culturally developed to exist on an oil diet. Let's see whether we fail to adapt.
Upvote
0
(3
/
-3)
Not finding the source again, but once saw a hypothesis that Neanderthals' hunting technique relied on jumping down on animals from a tree. Climate-led deforestation ruined that technique, and Sapiens' technique of running animals to exhaustion gave us an advantage in the new Savannah environment. A bit terrain-specific, and hard to prove, but interesting nonetheless, since unrelated to brains: Neanderthal were stronger than us, but we have the advantage in endurance.
Upvote
-1
(2
/
-3)
"I used to think the brain was the most important organ in my body, but then I realized who was telling me that."
Upvote
15
(15
/
0)
I read something recently about Europe being replacement populated, first by Anatolian farmers who were more efficient than hunter gatherers, and then by a later wave that had managed to utilise bronze.
No difference in intelligence, but a critical technical improvement.
Last edited:
Upvote
7
(7
/
0)
Upvote
7
(7
/
0)
They still very much do. Their skulls are not all cartilage, the bone plates* of the skull have not yet fused, allowing them to deform. There are limits to how much a baby's head CAN deform. My wife was an L&D nurse for about 15 years and several years as an antepartum/postpartum nurse and charge nurse. She is very familiar with every way a baby gets stuck in the birth canal, and the size of the head very much does present limits. There are studies on this. Add in, this is part of the reason that hominids have such long development times compared to the vast majority of other species. Primates are already slower on development, but still develop into adulthood a lot earlier than humans do. We gain a lot more brain mass in those first few years versus most species.
*The cartilage that does exist (hyaline cartilage), is a lot harder than the cartilage you'd normally think of. A bit of half a dozen of one, six of another. It has some more flexibility than straight ossified bone, but a lot less than the cartilage in the adult body.
Last edited:
Upvote
6
(6
/
0)
I feel like there is a joke in there about small hands and small feet.
Upvote
3
(3
/
0)
My understanding has been that what truly matters is the number and complexity of the connections within the brain. The brain can be large or small, but still represent intelligence based on how complex the neural connections are. I expect size will matter as a secondary factor in the sense only that below a certain point, a smaller brain cannot accommodate the number and complexity of neural connections necessary for human-level intellectual capacity.
Upvote
6
(6
/
0)