When you see a film or a drawing, they are always shown as wearing ragged fur clothing, with big gaps and nothing resembling good tailoring. Long messy hair too. I doubt this is correct, if they couldnt make fur clothing that actually fit and covered them they could not survive in subzero temperatures. As for grooming, mammals pretty much all spend time caring for their fur / hair, washing themselves one way or another. With their big brains, it seems unbelievable that neanderthal didnt take care of themselves or were half human and so only half way wore clothes.
Because they are cave men. Cavemen went around slugging potential partners with big clubs. The reality is they would have worn clothes not all that unlike what the Eskimos did. More modern depictions do show their use of furs to be more functional that past images, so maybe times are a changing
ya those images are based on our modern day arrogance, prehistoric man was every bit as smart as we are, the technological advantages we have today are the culmination of 200K yrs of development...I'd say 99.99% of us today would be dead very quickly if we were reduced to what prehistoric man had available to stay alive...
It is one of the reasons I have so much disdain for these ancient alien shows. The past is human, be damn proud of what they did
Most images we see of Neanderthals are based upon earlier images of them as 'cave men'. More recent images are far more nuanced http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/10/neanderthals/hall-text https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/neanderthal/
23andMe says I am 2.9% Neanderthal. What is being lost is the humanoid experience in Asia. It wasn't all Denovisians or whatever. Chinese anthropologist claim their H. erectus occurring at the same time as Neanderthal further west, later occurring Chinese H. erectus were developing flattened cheek bones. We have lost sight of later day H. erectus and their contribution to 'us kind'. BTW the Chinese resist all these species and claim "continuity through continuous hybridization." Some years ago, National Geographic had a cover story issue on H. erectus. It was the source of what I discuss above. Moi
Well there are always their tools to show the level of their craftsmanship , although they preferred round weapons instead of blades and didn't used javelins their tools were equally good but easier to make and wasted less material. Since they had to use cloths for a much longer time than we did theirs should be better than ours ( at least to the point when our ancestors reached Siberia) . I am not sure about long hair and beards , from one side the more body fur you have the best you can conserve heat but from the other side they used fire more often than we did and long hair can be a problem when you are an ambush predator trying to stab big animals with a heavy spear . From what i remember the last fossil of an erectus dates back to over 100.000 years but what makes Chinese claims 100% BS is that ALL of them have African markers in their DNA .
How the hell did they get the moniker "cavemen in the first place? I'll tell you how, their bones were typically found in caves by modern day archaeologists. And their artwork too. Where it is protected from the elements for thousands of years. It doesn't mean that cavemen predominantly lived in caves.
true enough, tents and temporary shelters of sticks and bones don't preserve very well, finding their exceedingly rare and faint remains is more difficult than winning a lottery...
There is a line of scientific thinking that homo sapiens, homo neanderthalensis and homo erectus are not different species but subspecies or even races of the same species. In the case of erectus in particular many false assumptions were made about their anatomy because the first full skeletal remains of a homo erectus turned out to be that of a deformed child. Early anthropologists took what were deformities in a single sample and extropolated them out to all homo erectus.
1) The Chinese anthropologist disagreed with the West about "species replacement". Like the latest out of Africa migration came along and did a total genetic replacement of the previous hominid. Like the latest out of Africa coming along and totally replacing the Neanderthal genome. The Chinese believed in "continuity through continuous hybridization". So some hominid group is found in a cave in Georgia in the Caucasus with a brain volume of less then 700cc waited for the next group of out of Africa hominids to come by, they interbred and both left with bigger brains. Etc. Okay ? "Continuity through continuous hybridization". 2) H. erectus also left Africa and went East. Chinese anthropologist claim their chronologically later H. erectus skulls demonstrate flattening of the cheek bones common in Asians today. Similar to Neanderthal having a football shaped cranium only found in white people today. Unfortunately, with the discovery and genome of the Denovisian or whatever, that Neanderthal related one, "we" have forgotten the H. erectus living in Asia, who probably interbred with the Denovisian or whatever. So would you like to know why the only Maternal, mitochondrial DNA is from the latest, Our of Africa move? I know! I know! BTW I figured the above out myself, like Watson and Crick, from the available evidence. I was so happy to read the Chinese agreed with me and for decades I had argued with a western anthropologist who believed in the total replacement idea. So I am so hot on these topics, yes I am Moi
I for one fall into not just interbreeding but also evolution of the subspecies or race over time. The the cranial capacity homo erectus finds grows considerably when comparing early to later finds.
IIRC the cranial capacity Neanderthals is larger. This suggests that they may have been significantly smarter than us..
I've read somewhere that they have found remnants of tents made from mammoth bones in Ukraine, though I don't know whether these were occupied by Neanderthals. But not that strongly, the encephalization quotient, is a much more reliable estimate of intelligence and we don't know what that was for Neanderthal. It is known that they seemed somewhat stronger than us pound for pound and to have had a rather higher tolerance for pain. As for what they looked like if they did truly resemble this fellow then they would get along well with my brother-in-law. If they dressed like the traditional Inuit their clothes were actually quite well made. In People of the Deer Farley Mowat compares the Inuit's clothes to modern man's houses in importance.
Why are Neanderthals not thought as simply a different race? Different races have drastically different physical structure.
Because originally they were thought to be primitive knuckle draggers. Once something becomes scientific dogma it is very hard to undo.
The "caveman" stereotype arose when the first remains were found in a cave above the Neander River in Germany. There obviously are not enough caves to provide habitation to even a small population, but caves must have seemed wonderful to those long-ago people when they found them. Clothing would be affected by climate and environment. Look to the remote peoples studied by anthropologists for models. People living in tropical climates might have gone nearly naked; the Inuit wore furs, etc. The available materials also make a difference. People living where there's lush vegetation might use large leaves and other plant matter. Economy of effort would also be important, since they did everything by hand, unlike us. That argues against furs, because it's hard to kill large animals by hand and then prepare their skins for wear. (If you used an unprepared skin, it would quickly rot. Tanning or an alternate method of preserving the skin would be needed.) Skins may have only been worn by such as the Inuit, who had no choice. I just looked at a big selection of cave paintings, and it's unclear what they're wearing. Some look naked, some seem to wear things like skirts that flare at the bottom. Many are just stick figures. The rest of the "caveman" shtick is just a tradition of popular culture. It's found in old silent films, where people had to be dressed in something to keep the producers on the right side of the law. Cartoons added to the tradition. Once established, these stereotypes are self-sustaining. It's not science or history. It's a folk-tale. Remember the part of Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" where ape-like proto-men live and grunt before being inspired by Kubrick's interstellar monolith? Geico's cavemen commercials? People love the idea of "natural" living, unencumbered by the constraints of civilization.
Consider what Neanderthal had to do to survive. Or that primitive found in that Georgian cave with a brain less then 700cc. Both had to have the ability to plan for food. Not just the catch of the day. Those hide clothes had to be cured hides. Imagine trying to wear an uncured, unprocessed hide. Further those hides were sewn together because buttons didn't happen until much later, and zippers later still. And when surviving Siberian Ice Age winters or those in the Caucasus, they were probably sewn as air tight as any Inuit's. Oh, and Neanderthal did fish. Was it all by hand or spear or y'think they figured out baited hooks or nets? As for their hair. Untidy hair is uncomfortable. It is reasonable to consider braiding or tying and clan members grooming one another. Their sewing skill probably also applied to wound care too. Some evidence of surgical interventions. I guess my point is if you think it backwards from what they would have needed, like to be dressed in hides, how primitive - non human could they have been? Although I would bet they were gentiles. Moi
Researchers from Spain have presented evidence in PLOS ONE that Neanderthals used small sticks or blades of grass not only to remove fragments of food from between their teeth, but also to lessen the pain caused by periodontal disease, a form of gum disease. While multiple human and Neanderthal remains have been found showing evidence of toothpick use, the authors propose that the combined evidence of toothpick use and gum disease suggests that Neanderthals were perhaps practicing an early form of dental care. The samples in the image above show an adult’s upper jaw with three teeth left intact found at the Cova Foradà cave site in Valencia, Spain, amidst animal remains and tools dated to the Mousterian era (300,000-30,000 years ago). The adult teeth, believed to belong to an individual between 35-45 years old, show heavy wear on the top surface and exposed roots, the result of a lifetime’s consumption of fibrous and abrasive foods like meats and grains. There are no signs of cavities in the remaining teeth, though decayed bone and the porous surface texture of the left side of the jaw indicate the presence of gum disease. http://blogs.plos.org/everyone/2013/11/13/picked-clean-neanderthals-use-of-toothpicks-to-fight-toothache/
If Neanderthals had been discovered instead in the 20th century, and in the same location, they'd be known as Neandertals. Non Germans would probably then pronounce the name better.
when you say race do you mean specie?...different species cannot produce viable young when they cross breed, that many modern people carry neanderthal DNA verifies that there were viable/fertile young, so we were not sufficiently genetically different enough from neanderthals to be considered a separate specie...
