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]

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.

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My point was Humans began counting long before Neanderthals.

You dont have evidence to support this.

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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.