Neanderthals Were Not Stupid, Just A Bit Anti-Social

First, several comments:

"Modern humans were obsessed with this. They were spending a lot of
time and energy on how they looked. They cared more about how they
looked and were more style conscious."

We're decended from Stone Age metrosexuals? Nooooooooo! # 3

"Does this loincloth make me look fat?" # 5

Maybe they died out because Neanderthals didn't like spam. Picture:
http://www.c-pol.com/Fun/MontySpam2.jpg # 27

~ Janice :) --- My post is
here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1612647/posts?page=38#38

Don't forget to refresh browser.

<http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1612647/posts>Neanderthals
Were Not Stupid, Just A Bit Anti-Social
Scotsman ^ | http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=546482006
4-10-2006 | Ian Johnson SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT
Posted on 04/10/2006 5:45:19 PM EDT by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1612647/posts

"CRUDE, boorish and slow- witted" - even dictionaries give
Neanderthals a hard time. But our prehistoric cousins were in reality
just as smart as we are and did not die out as a result of a lack of
brain power, according to a new archaeological study.

Until now, the leading theory of why the Neanderthals disappeared has
been that a lack of intelligence meant they were less efficient hunters.

But a team of US archaeologists believe they met their evolutionary
end because of a failure to maintain social links with other groups,
unlike modern humans, who travelled widely, making the friends who
would help them during hard times.

Working in the Caucasus region of modern-day Georgia, the scientists
discovered evidence of highly skilled hunting behaviour by the
Neanderthals that required an understanding of yearly animal
migration patterns and the planning of traps to catch them.

But they also found there was a crucial difference between
Neanderthals and homo sapiens. The Neanderthals tended to be
anti-social, staying in small hunter-gatherer groups, while the
sapiens were "routinely" travelling distances of 60 miles and meeting
other groups.

This meant that if an area became hunted out or a more powerful rival
took over, the Neanderthals had no-one to turn to while the modern humans did.

Dr Dan Adler, of Connecticut University, who led the study, which
appeared in the journal Current Anthropology, said: "Any individual
Neanderthal, I don't imagine, knew more than 20, 30 or 50 people.
That's by virtue of the fact they didn't get around as much. Maybe
they didn't want to. Modern humans seem to get around a lot. They
were routinely covering distances of at least 100km.

"If you find yourself in an area where the resources just aren't
there any more - it's a bad season or you have killed all the game -
you need to move into another territory where other people are. If
you don't know them the chances are they are not going to like that.
Modern humans would have known these people."

Neanderthals seem to have had little interest in their appearance,
compared to modern humans, a sign that group identity was not
something they considered to be important.

"We have no indication that Neanderthals really paid much attention
to who other people were and they didn't try to signal to other
people who they were," Dr Adler said.

"Modern humans were obsessed with this. They were spending a lot of
time and energy on how they looked. They cared more about how they
looked and were more style conscious."

However, this lack of fashion sense should not reflect badly on their
intelligence, Dr Adler said.

"It's fairly clear that Neanderthals were pretty smart. They could
hunt just as well [as modern humans] and they had expert knowledge
about the environment," he said.

"Put you and a Neanderthal in the woods and the latter would probably
survive a lot longer.

"It's within the social realm where modern humans have an advantage.
I think they knew more people and lived a richer life in terms of
cultural contact than the Neanderthals did. But they were both smart."
Received on Mon Apr 10 18:56:03 2006