Neanderthal slaves

[Garyjohn2]

Unfortunately, Nat Geo has become pretty politicized, which is one of the reasons (diminishing and less scholarly text is another) why I no longer subscribe. Nevertheless, I’ll read it.

I am not an anthropologist, but I will say that utilization of projectile weapons has more to do with physiognomy than with hunting in wide open spaces, let alone on the “plains of Africa” (Cro Magnon would have to have crossed a great deal of open country to reach Europe from any direction. It would not necessarily have been in Africa.) And, as Roman soldiers and early American pioneers could tell you, spears are, indeed, thrown in forests as well. The part about the “open plains of Africa” sounds just a bit strained to me in accounting for cause and effect. This writer has no idea where or how or among whom projectile weapons originated, which makes me wonder how much more of this is speculation.

Fair enough, but don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.

 

[empther]

There is some evidence that they bred with homo sapiens, but some evidence against it.

The evidence against it: sworn, signed and notarized documents:
“I, Joe Neanderthal, do hereby swear, and I can swear good, that I never messed around with those Cro-Magnon snobs.”

“I, Quentin Cro-Magnon the Third, do solemnly swear, I never had sex with that woman, Nasty Neanderthal. I wouldn’t associate with such low life scum.”

 

[lemondiesel]

it is suggested that early humans had the same intellectual capacity as humans in the present day, they just lacked the knowledge that we have accumulated. thus if the neanderthals were similar, it wouldn’t be irrational to make the same assumption.

assuming human beings have such things as natural rights of course.

excellent topic by the way, subscribed.

-LD

 

[Ridgerunner]

Agh! The one who, in the Time article, casts the spear theory, is a professor of “evolutionary anthropology”. I don’t guess he has any occupational stake in concluding that modern humans and Neanderthals are “separate species” having a common evolutionary ancestor. The thing with the pig ribs was just too much for me. A spear does not fly through the air with any greater velocity than it has when the throwing arm reaches its farthest extension. Thus, an in-hand thrust has no less velocity at the arm’s farthest extension than does a spear flying through the air unless the thruster wants it to. Going from the pig bone experiment to the conclusion that modern humans killed the Neanderthals is a tremendous leap. And, when you get right down to it, there is no conclusive evidence that Neanderthals could not throw. If, indeed, they were mainly large game hunters as the article maintains, and if, indeed, they lived on the open steppes, as the article also says, does it really make sense to imagine that they managed it without ever using projectiles? American Indians, who indisputably utilized projectile weapons, were largely unable to kill bison in sufficient quantities to sustain a significant population on the plains until the arrival of the horse. Plains Indians largely depended on agriculture before the horse. And we are supposed to believe Neanderthals were able to access horses, bison and wild cattle for food without even being able to throw a spear?

I remember seeing a film about Neanderthals on Nat Geo, and they attempted to show a Neanderthal stalking and killing a deer with a spear thrust “because he couldn’t throw”. Of course, the animal had to stand still and tolerate the Neanderthal’s presence until he was at nearly arm’s-length to the deer to facilitate the kill. Surely any deer hunter watching it laughed himself silly.

Maybe he’s right about the spear throwing and maybe he’s not, but paraphrasing a previous poster, I think he’s trying mightily to rebuild “Gone With the Wind” out of fifty frames, and he wants Scarlett and Melanie to marry the Tarleton twins and Ashley and Rhett to marry each other for the first “homosexual marriage” in the Deep South.

Oh well, I’m just a hillbilly boy. What do I know?

 

[cornbread_r2]

[snip]

I remember seeing a film about Neanderthals on Nat Geo, and they attempted to show a Neanderthal stalking and killing a deer with a spear thrust “because he couldn’t throw”. Of course, the animal had to stand still and tolerate the Neanderthal’s presence until he was at nearly arm’s-length to the deer to facilitate the kill. Surely any deer hunter watching it laughed himself silly.

[snip]

As I understand it, the argument against Neanderthals throwing spears isn’t that they couldn’t throw, but rather that we haven’t found any evidence that projectile points were in the their tool kit.

Also, check out this article on persistence hunting – an apparently ancient skill that’s still practiced today.

 

[Aelred_Minor]

As I understand it, the argument against Neanderthals throwing spears isn’t that they couldn’t throw, but rather that we haven’t found any evidence that projectile points were in the their tool kit.

Also, check out this article on persistence hunting – an apparently ancient skill that’s still practiced today.

Actually I’ve read the same thing somewhere, that their shoulders were built such that they physically could not bring their arm back far enough to throw with much force. The idea would be they ambushed prey and stabbed them with spears. Since there are a lot of ambush predators in nature I doubt this is so far fetched, all the more assuming they worked as a group. Obviously this style of hunting would be much easier in forests, and I recall coming across a theory that the disappearance of forests across much of Europe due to climate change around the time of their extinction may have contributed to their decline.

 

[cornbread_r2]

Aelred Minor:

I’ll look into that some more. Thanks.

On a related issue, here’s an article speculating on the role that throwing may have played in human development.

 

[cornbread_r2]

As I understand it, the argument against Neanderthals throwing spears isn’t that they couldn’t throw, but rather that we haven’t found any evidence that projectile points were in the their tool kit.

I neglected to consider the possibility that Neanderthals didn’t have projectile points in their tool kits because they couldn’t throw and had no use for them. This article supports the idea that Neanderthals couldn’t throw effectively and that that may have disadvantaged them in regards to the encroaching homo sapiens sapiens.

 

[Ridgerunner]

As I understand it, the argument against Neanderthals throwing spears isn’t that they couldn’t throw, but rather that we haven’t found any evidence that projectile points were in the their tool kit.

Also, check out this article on persistence hunting – an apparently ancient skill that’s still practiced today.

Well, sure. But the Eurasian steppes aren’t the Kalahari, and one has to be suspicious of the conclusion in the cited article that humans did persistence hunting before “inventing” projectile weapons. That’s a little hard to credit, as every three year old boy "invents’ projectile casting without ever being taught to do it, and employs it with gusto and increasing finesse as he gets older. We’re supposed to believe that people who could make effective stone points couldn’t figure out how to throw a stick? It doesn’t work for me.

As to projectile points, we really don’t know for sure what Neanderthals used for points of various purpose. There has been a lot of clarification on that of Amerinds recently, and those people lived within our own history and left immense numbers of points behind. Now and then one simply finds them lying on the ground, they are so numerous. We do know Neanderthals had spears. And, of course, many primitive people simply sharpened and fire-hardened sticks both for thrusting weapons and casting weapons. Some do today.

And, while I am just a non-expert questioning experts, I suspect it’s one thing to run down an antelope in the heat of the Kalahari, but another running down a bison or horse in a temperate climate like Ukraine. I also have to wonder how exhausted a bison or wild guar has to be before he can no longer turn and kill you, exhausted or not. As I mentioned before, plains Indians were near vegetarians in a sea of meat on the hoof before the horse, precisely because of inability to chase down buffalo or survive the attempt if they managed to corner one. And many plains Indians were prolific runners. Did they not really need the horses? Everything in their history suggests that they did.

I am also, from personal experience, aware how quickly even a large animal can disappear in the woods, and how keenly developed their instincts are to do just that. They don’t have to be very far away for you to be unable to see them, and they get more rest by far than the pursuer does. And, cattle, at least, can be astonishingly swift from a standing start. A truly aggressive bovine can be on you in the woods from the point of invisibility to impact faster than one would ever dream; one of the major reasons cattlemen don’t like to allow cattle to enter wooded areas. A persistence hunter like a wolf can outrun a bovine, but a man sure can’t. I’ll agree, when it comes to cattle in extreme heat, a man has an advantage. In mid-90 degree weather or above, they’ll overheat. Below that, they won’t. In moderately cool or cold weather, the advantage is all on the animal’s side.

Again, I don’t pretend to be an expert, but I really do think some “specialists” have points of view that are established and half-philosophical, and they often end up finding only what they want to find. The earlier post showing an artist’s rendering of a red-headed, freckled Neanderthal is, for example, very different from that of artists who make them look as much like apes as they can manage. What do any of the 'experts" really know beyond what they want to think? Personally, I don’t think they know a whole lot about the Neanderthal way of life.

 

[CatSci]

For me its simple:

Does one of them complain and tries to whip up his fellow neaderthals to voice discontent about their teatment or use their clubs to bash in our heads?

If yes, then neanderthals should be treated as humans.

That’s pretty much the route I’d take.

If they said: “No, please, I don’t want to be a slave” then we sh/wouldn’t enslave them.

But if they just jumped aroung flinging poo, then we could.

 

[Garyjohn2]

I agree that there is a lot of speculation and bias in science. However, I will disagree that Native Americans were near vegetarians before the horse. The idea that the meat in a native American’s diet was harvest mainly from large mammals is a myth. It was much more common for them to eat fish, rabbit, squirrel, turtle, and other small animals. The large bison remains found in ancient native American sites preserve easily, so they are over-represented but that does not mean it is what they mostly ate. There is lots of evidence for small animal and fish consumption. At the same time, it is important to note that meat supplemented their diet MUCH less than an average American today, but I don’t think they needed a horse to get plenty of meat.

I think it’s also good to note the other ways to kill large game with thrusting weapons besides stalking them and ambushing them. This tactic would not work with most animals, who have much better smell and hearing than we do, and are much faster. It would work with some animals that might stand their ground (like a boar). One other way, yes, is to pursue them until they cannot run any more. An easier way is to pursue them off the edge of a cliff (a tactic used by Natice Americans to do with animals that run in herds) and then either harvest them or kill the injured animal with a thrust. Also, you can chase the animals in to a kind of choke point (like a ravine, or very thick brush, or a funnel made form fallen logs and debris) where you have other hunters waiting to ambush. More likely, however, is that most of their “hunting” was scavenging, killing weak or injured animals (like most predators today), cannibalism, fishing, or catching animals like turtles that don’t require as much work or risk of bodily harm. Yes, I’m speculating, but it makes sense to me. So you can get lots of meat without projectiles too. The extent that Neaderthals were intelligent enough to use choke-points and cliffs in their hunts, I do not know…but I’d tend to think they were.

By the way, I am enjoying this discussion and appreciate all the different views and information here. If I try to talk about this stuff with people I know it real life, I get either glazed eyes or a quick change of subject. I should also note that I’m not an expert, but I find this stuff fascinating and I learn all I reasonably can about it. Another cool book to check out is “Search for the First Americans (Exploring the Ancient World)”
MELTZER DAVID J. I read this one for an anthropology class, pretty cool stuff.

 

[Benadam]

I wonder if anyone has considered this. If you were having an thought provoking conversation with someone behind a screen for while and looked behind the screen to see your interesting new friend is a neandertal would he suddenly be no longer human?

Not to me.

 

[Benadam]

If I looked behind the screen to see that my new friend is a gorilla he would still be a human to me.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I agree that there is a lot of speculation and bias in science. However, I will disagree that Native Americans were near vegetarians before the horse. The idea that the meat in a native American’s diet was harvest mainly from large mammals is a myth. It was much more common for them to eat fish, rabbit, squirrel, turtle, and other small animals. The large bison remains found in ancient native American sites preserve easily, so they are over-represented but that does not mean it is what they mostly ate. There is lots of evidence for small animal and fish consumption. At the same time, it is important to note that meat supplemented their diet MUCH less than an average American today, but I don’t think they needed a horse to get plenty of meat.

I think it’s also good to note the other ways to kill large game with thrusting weapons besides stalking them and ambushing them. This tactic would not work with most animals, who have much better smell and hearing than we do, and are much faster. It would work with some animals that might stand their ground (like a boar). One other way, yes, is to pursue them until they cannot run any more. An easier way is to pursue them off the edge of a cliff (a tactic used by Natice Americans to do with animals that run in herds) and then either harvest them or kill the injured animal with a thrust. Also, you can chase the animals in to a kind of choke point (like a ravine, or very thick brush, or a funnel made form fallen logs and debris) where you have other hunters waiting to ambush. More likely, however, is that most of their “hunting” was scavenging, killing weak or injured animals (like most predators today), cannibalism, fishing, or catching animals like turtles that don’t require as much work or risk of bodily harm. Yes, I’m speculating, but it makes sense to me. So you can get lots of meat without projectiles too. The extent that Neaderthals were intelligent enough to use choke-points and cliffs in their hunts, I do not know…but I’d tend to think they were.

By the way, I am enjoying this discussion and appreciate all the different views and information here. If I try to talk about this stuff with people I know it real life, I get either glazed eyes or a quick change of subject. I should also note that I’m not an expert, but I find this stuff fascinating and I learn all I reasonably can about it. Another cool book to check out is “Search for the First Americans (Exploring the Ancient World)”
MELTZER DAVID J. I read this one for an anthropology class, pretty cool stuff.

Prior to the horse, the Indian population on the plains was very sparse and consisted of tribes that we don’t usually think of as “the plains Indians”, which largely arrived when horses were available. They did have techniques for killing buffalo, but they were not sufficiently effective to support the populations that came once they did have horses.

But again, narrowing the question to projectiles, unless we assume Neanderthals couldn’t throw due to physical limitations, it does not seem reasonable to me to assume they did not manage to “invent” them, since throwing projectiles comes so naturally to us, and since “invention” of a projectile is a lot less complicated than knapping flints, which Neanderthals indisputably did. And no one could reasonably deny that a thrown weapon is a much safer bet than a thrust weapon when one is dealing with a large, deadly animal, whether in an open field or in an enclosed “trap space”.

 

[Benadam]

Says who?
The common definition for human is “homo sapien” I thought. Neaderthals are not classified as homo sapien. I think the question should be not “were they human” but “were they people.”

BTW early humans ate neaderthals (and likely vice-versa). I re-read that national geographic article I referenced in an earlier post and picked up that little nugget. There are marks on neaderthal bones indicating we were after their brains and marrow (sorry if that’s gross, this is science…those are calorie-rich tissues). So we might have treated them as animals some time in the distant past when we were little more than animals ourselves!

I find it difficult to believe that humans identify primarilty with their outward appearance. I believe human identity originates in the inner self.
I guess I’m saying I think if they did the walk and talk they would have been identified as human.

 

[vsedriver]

Do only human beings have rights? If so why?

this ought to be good.

 

[vsedriver]

If I looked behind the screen to see that my new friend is a gorilla he would still be a human to me.

if it was a gorilla, how would you know there was anyone behind the screen?

 

[vsedriver]

And no one could reasonably deny that a thrown weapon is a much safer bet than a thrust weapon when one is dealing with a large, deadly animal, whether in an open field or in an enclosed “trap space”.

I would deny it. Once you have thrown your weapon you are essentially helpless. If you failed to take down the animal on the first throw you risk being the next target. Far better to thrust and harry, and hope you either bleed it to death or hit a vital organ and still be able to defend yourself.

 

[Benadam]

if it was a gorilla, how would you know there was anyone behind the screen?

I guess I’de have to actually see him speaking. wouldn’t you identify with the gorrilla if it was otherwise like you. God did have Adam look among the animals for a mate

 

[Ridgerunner]

I would deny it. Once you have thrown your weapon you are essentially helpless. If you failed to take down the animal on the first throw you risk being the next target. Far better to thrust and harry, and hope you either bleed it to death or hit a vital organ and still be able to defend yourself.

Unless, of course, you have the foresight to bring along two spears.

Remember, all of the cited anthropologists are saying Cro Magnons (Homo Sapiens if you prefer) threw spears? Were they dumber, then, than Neanderthals in doing so if, indeed, Neanderthals never did?