Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[PanH]

You have to correlate both brain size and brain to body size, as a bigger body necessarily requires a bigger brain.

... does it? Didn't some of the largest land based creatures our world has seen have rather impressively small brains?

Elephants have a 4-6kg brain (human 1.3kg) but they have the smallest brain/body ratio for mammals (with mouses the highest).

[Owlbread]

Elephants are still very intelligent though.

[Moghjubar]

Mmm.... robo-burgers: http://singularityhub.com/2013/01/22/robot-serves-up-340-hamburgers-per-hour/

I guess there goes Neanderbaby's employment chances.

[Scelly9]

One every ten seconds. Awesome.

[Descan]

That's pretty cool~

[Sheb]

Yeah, the point is that inter-specific intelligence difference are much bigger than intra-specific difference. A guy with an IQ of 75 may be damn dumb, but he's still going to outsmart them magpie any time of the day.

While brain-to-body-size ratio tell us that Neanderthals were pretty smart by animal standard (they used advanced tools, that kind of stuff), my guess is that they'd still be pretty dumb by human standard. What you're going to do is create a whole new species of retards. (It's not insulting if the guys' been dead for over 40,000 years, right?)

They're either going to end up in specialized institutions, or in a brand new Neanderthal Reservations somewhere where they'll enjoy all the benefits of alcoholism.

[SalmonGod]

Mmm.... robo-burgers: http://singularityhub.com/2013/01/22/robot-serves-up-340-hamburgers-per-hour/

I guess there goes Neanderbaby's employment chances.

So... we need to get on this thing where we figure out how a person can justify their own survival without a job.

[Neonivek]

You could discuss the useability of IQ tests though.

Try discussing it with someone with an IQ of 50.

Someone with an IQ of 50 would be pretty hard.

Though to my knowledge Neanderthals are still smarter then IQ 50. Heck APES are smarter then 50 IQ and Neanderthals are supposed to be smarter then even that (heck some scientists say they didn't EXACTLY die out but rather they bred with us to extinction).

As said before, stuff hints that they aren't really capable of abstract thought

That sounds incredibly made up. Not by you mind you, but by a scientist.

We lacked several very basic concepts back then too.

Even Gorillas have abstract thought.

Honestly it sounds like someone out there is making things up about Neanderthals JUST to make humans seem "special".

[Reelya]

I'm highly skeptical of the "Neanderthal's were stoopid!" arguments, because they've been around so long (over 100 years), and as one line of argument is debunked, they come up with another incompatible line of argument try to try and 'prove' the same argument.

Basically there's an agenda to prove we won solely because we were smarter, and I've seen them constantly recreating the same argument with totally different lines of reasoning, as each previous argument was defeated - almost never backed up by any observational evidence. In this case, the thing they're trying to prove clearly predates any actual evidence, and seems to be unfalsifiable, because it gets recreated with a new theory every time it gets debunked.

Interestingly enough, most of the arguments I've heard about neanderthals being unintelligent sub-human are extremely similar to the 19th century arguments that said the Australian Aboriginals were unintelligent sub-humans. The same evolutionary superiority was touted as the reason the English settled and dominated over the Australian native population.

[Sheb]

Well, I believe in the Great Leap forward theory, that around 50,000 thousands years ago, something put us on a road of incredibly fast technologic progression. That's when we invented the boat, the net, the handle, the needle and pretty much everything more complicated than a sharp rock. Whatever it was that made us progress, Neanderthal don't seem to have it.

[Neonivek]

If you want to be technical Sheb we have Neanderthal DNA in us.

So whatever intelligence sucking effect it had, it obviously didn't have enough of it.

most of the arguments I've heard about neanderthals being unintelligent sub-human are extremely similar to the 19th century arguments that said the Australian Aboriginals were unintelligent sub-humans.

that would explain why their depiction is VERY close to the depiction of them.

[Reelya]

Well, I believe in the Great Leap forward theory, that around 50,000 thousands years ago, something put us on a road of incredibly fast technologic progression. That's when we invented the boat, the net, the handle, the needle and pretty much everything more complicated than a sharp rock. Whatever it was that made us progress, Neanderthal don't seem to have it.

I was hoping you'd come up with something better than that. This is the exact argument of why the "white man" is racially superior to all other races. Clearly we were racially superior to the africans and aboriginals, right? Same technological argument.

Technological advancement is the colonial superiority argument.

[Neonivek]

It could have just been coincidence and that the Neanderthals that didn't breed with humans (and become what we call humans) died out the same way people die out.

That our survival was much more fragile then we thought and Neanderthals just didn't win the survival lottery.

OR that eventually they bred with us to extinction.

[Reelya]

There is actually one big difference between Neanderthals and Humans that is actually based in evidence. Bone analysis shows that Neanderthals were pretty much carnivores (99% meat diet, although new evidence shows they cooked vegetables, the bone studies still suggest they mainly ate meat) whilst Cro-Magnon man was an omnivore (50% meat, 50% plants).

This leads to a possible theory that Cro-Magnons out-bred the Neanderthals due to exploiting more resources from the same area of land. Nothing to do with intelligence, and everything to do with lifestyle.

[Neonivek]

Yep being a Carnivour would actually do it.

Omnivour, along with humans MANY other advantages over ordinary animals that people forget, allowed us to increase the variety of foods we could eat by vast amounts.

Actually who the heck propagated the idea that humans are the most pathetic animal in all of nature and we ONLY survive because of our intelligence because otherwise we are too weak and pathetic to do anything? It is actually REALLY untrue.

If I had to name the Human being's one major physical advantage over most animals it would be! Stamina. We are absolutely built for stamina.