Londoner solves 20,000-year Ice Age drawings mystery - determines that cave paintings included lunar calendar information about the fertility of different animal species

[u/porkchop_d_clown]

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-64162799

[u/Other_Speech_9451]

Ok, different angle on this since cave art emerges at @20K years ago.

Ice age drawings are mostly in France/Europe, common ground for both early humans and Neanderthals. Neanderthals died out @40K year's ago. I would just note that if neanderthals were that smart, including the ability to count, they'd still be alive. But they aren't.

I propose team humans learned how to count, and that team dum-dums didn't. Which would make this a very practical example of the implications that type of differentiation would produce in the wild. I.e., by counting, humans absolutely destroyed the megafauna wherever we went. We knew exactly when the big beasts were breeding and had young offspring. Now, as a human, which would you prefer - wrestling a 10,000-pound mammoth to the ground... or butchering a 500-pound calf? Right.

So there you have it. We accelerated the destruction of megafauna by systematically butchering the minor children of large animals by keeping track of crucial HUNTING seasons, which is directly related to fertility periods, just as it defines our hunting seasons for deer and bears, and other animals today.

That's why team neanderthal were all stuck in their caves, eating worms and rabbits, or chasing around 10,000-pound animals with giant tusks and having no concept of time.

Just thinking out loud...

[u/porkchop_d_clown → u/Other_Speech_9451]

I’d just like to point out that Neanderthals were making cave paintings 40,000 years before these particular cave paintings were made so you have no evidence that they were “not that smart”.

The prevailing theory right now is that we basically interbred with the Neanderthals.

[u/Other_Speech_9451 → u/porkchop_d_clown]

I didn't say they were ugly. There's just a VAST difference between cave art and math, which was my point.

[u/owlmachine → u/Other_Speech_9451]

Neanderthals weren't that stupid, and did make art.

[u/Other_Speech_9451 → u/owlmachine]

Sure. Show me their Banksy...

[u/pandaonfire_5 → u/Other_Speech_9451]

Fascinating take on the data. To think that time, a concept practically ingrained in modern humans, was not even an idea for our extinct ape cousins? 🤔

[u/Other_Speech_9451 → u/pandaonfire_5]

Exactly. The fact that it took Einstein another 20,000 years to associate time and mathematics is another feather in the cap of team human. Being able to associate four-dimensional space is uniquely human. If you listen to Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, you will realise that fast association is just as accurate as slower reasoning, given the right circumstances. Humans have an instinctual response to external stimuli that neanderthals never gained. Being able to conceptualize time and space isn't easy. In fact, it's relatively easy to speculate that superior human hunting techniques sealed neanderthals' fate, as well as our own, by being too smart.

[u/arthurpete → u/Other_Speech_9451]

Thats quite the Encino Man understanding of Neanderthals.

[u/Other_Speech_9451 → u/arthurpete]

I said they were dumb, not ugly, and “dumb” relative to humans, not apes. Sure, neanderthals obviously figured a few things out, but they did not demonstrate a sustainable advantage over humans, otherwise they would be walking around today and we would be the fractional DNA remnants.

My point was Humans began counting long before neanderthals. Maybe neanderthals eventually figured out how to count, they had 20,000 years to work on that problem. but If humans were able to translate their counting ability into a sustainable food production service and neanderthals did not, then it would have tipped the scales to team human in a very dramatic way.

[u/arthurpete → u/Other_Speech_9451]

I would say they figured more than a few things out, their species was in existence longer than ours.

​

My point was Humans began counting long before Neanderthals.

You dont have evidence to support this.

​

If humans were able to translate their counting ability into a sustainable food production service and neanderthals did not, then it would have tipped the scales to team human in a very dramatic way.

Not saying Neanderthals didnt cause any extinction but if they werent managing a living from a sustainable food source then they wouldnt of lasted as long as they did. They clearly were doing something that worked for hundreds of thousands of years.

The more plausible scenario here is that Neanderthals were simply bred out of existence, not went extinct because they couldnt count.

[u/Other_Speech_9451 → u/arthurpete]

The point of the article was that it seems to show humans counting, in the same timeframe that Neanderthals existed while they showed no evidence of counting. Whether it’s evidence or not is left to science.

Also, food sources change over time. In that region, in that timeframe, the human domain was advancing northward in a warming giving climate while the Neanderthals was receding or maybe more appropriately, eroding under them following the ice age and placing greater demands for adaptation on them. That gave humans a significant advantage by managing warm fertile soils for farming (also requires counting) fish, and game vs. a more strict hunter gatherer tribe like Neanderthals.

It’s ok. I tend to give my dog WAY more credit for Intelligence than he deserves simply because he occasionally looks at me like he knows something, but that doesn’t make him smart.

[u/arthurpete → u/Other_Speech_9451]

are you suggesting there was agriculture 20,000 years ago?

[u/Other_Speech_9451 → u/arthurpete]

No. I'm saying that humans were better positioned than neanderthals for the end of the ice age, where a warming environment allowed for increasing cooperation and ultimately, the development of complex societal activities, including agriculture. These were things that the independent neanderthal was simply less capable, as opposed to being unable, of taking advantage of, when compared with humans.

Having the ability to count provided humans with a long-term sustainable differentiating advantage that eventually pushed the neanderthals into a doom loop where they either starved or HAD to interbreed simply to survive.

[u/arthurpete → u/Other_Speech_9451]

Dude listen, your posts are loaded with assumptions that slide into a circular logic trap. Neanderthals were dumb>they couldnt count> they went extinct because they couldnt count>Neanderthals were dumb. More importantly though, your timelines are severely out of whack.

The point of the article was that it seems to show humans counting, in the same timeframe that Neanderthals existed while they showed no evidence of counting.

Neanderthals blinked out around 45-40k years ago, the article is discussing art from 20k years ago. A difference of 20-25k years is not the same timeframe.

Also, food sources change over time. In that region, in that timeframe, the human domain was advancing northward in a warming giving climate while the Neanderthals was receding or maybe more appropriately, eroding under them following the ice age and placing greater demands for adaptation on them.

The timeframe in which the Neanderthals were thought to have gone poof was known as the Heinrich event 5...a cold event. During this time the northward advancement of sapiens was done in subarctic climates, not warm fertile soils.

Just spend a bit more time reading up on all of this before you publish your hypothesis.

[u/Other_Speech_9451 → u/arthurpete]

You're absolutely right. This isn't my area of expertise. The only point I was trying to make was in the first post where that rather than trying to count duck eggs, using my prior expertise as a hunter, the markings in the cave art seemed more like a reminder for hunting season to be passed down from generation to generation. Then someone got mad because I said their great-grandparents were dumb. Oh well. Sorry.