Bath: Why did humans take over the world? Humans are our closest relatives neanderthal, is it extinct? We may be smarter, but there is surprisingly little evidence that this is true.
Neanderthals had large brains, language, and sophisticated tools. They made art and jewelry. They were clever and presented curious possibilities. Perhaps the decisive difference was not at the individual level but at our society.
250,000 years ago, Europe and western Asia were the lands of Neanderthals. wise man Lived in southern Africa. Estimates vary, but it is probably 100,000 years old. modern humanity I migrated from Africa.
40,000 years ago, Neanderthals disappeared from Asia and Europe and were replaced by humans. Their slow and inevitable replacement suggests that humans had some advantage, but that wasn't the case.
Anthropologists once viewed Neanderthals as dumb beasts. But recent archaeological discoveries show that they rival us in intelligence.
Neanderthals mastered fire before we did. they deadly hunterThey hunt large game such as mammoths and woolly rhinos, as well as smaller animals such as rabbits and birds.
They collected plants, seeds, and shellfish. Hunting and gathering all species required a deep understanding of nature.
Neanderthals also had a sense of aesthetics, such as making beads and painting cave paintings. They were spiritual people who buried the dead with flowers.
A stone circle discovered inside a cave may be a sacred site for Neanderthals. Like modern hunter-gatherers, Neanderthal life was probably steeped in superstition and magic. Their skies are filled with gods, and their caves are inhabited by ancestral spirits.
And then there's the fact that Homo sapiens and Neanderthals had children together. We weren't that different. But we've encountered Neanderthals many times over thousands of years, and we've always gotten the same results. They are gone. We stayed.
The major differences may have been less at the individual level than at the societal level. Just as it is impossible to understand bees without considering their colony, it is impossible to understand humans in isolation. We value individuality, but our survival is tied to larger social groups, just as the fate of a bee depends on the survival of the colony.
Modern hunter-gatherers provide our best guesses about how early humans and Neanderthals lived. Peoples such as the Khoisan of Namibia and the Hadzabe of Tanzania gather their families into wandering bands of 10 to 60 people. Bands are united into loosely organized tribes of over a thousand people.
Although these tribes lack hierarchy, they are connected by a shared language and religion, marriage, kinship, and friendship. Neanderthal society may have been similar, but there was one important difference. It's a smaller social group.
Pointing this out is evidence of low genetic diversity among Neanderthals.
In small populations, genes are easily lost. If 1 in 10 people carry the curly hair gene, then if 1 in 10 people die, that gene could be eliminated from the population. 5 out of 50 people will carry the gene. This means you have multiple backup copies. Therefore, over time, small groups tend to lose genetic variation and end up with fewer genes.
In 2022, DNA was recovered from the bones and teeth of 11 Neanderthals discovered in a cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia. Several of the individuals, including the father and daughter, were relatives. They were from a single band. And they had low genetic diversity.
Because we inherit two sets of chromosomes (one from our mother and one from our father), we have two copies of each gene. Often we have two different versions of a gene. You may inherit the genes for blue eyes from your mother and the genes for brown eyes from your father.
But Altai Neanderthals often had one version of each gene. The low diversity suggests they lived in small groups, averaging about 20 people, the study reports.
It is possible that Neanderthal anatomy favored small groups. Strong and muscular, Neanderthals were heavier than us. Therefore, each Neanderthal needed more food. This means that the land could support fewer Neanderthals than Homo sapiens.
And Neanderthals may have eaten primarily meat. People who eat meat get fewer calories from the land than people who eat meat and plants, which again reduces the population.
If humans had lived in larger groups than Neanderthals, we would have had an advantage.
Strong and skilled with spears, Neanderthals were probably excellent warriors. Lighter-bodied humans would probably have used bows for ranged attacks to counterattack.
But even if Neanderthals and humans were equally dangerous in battle, if humans had a numerical advantage, they could bring in more warriors and absorb more losses.
Large societies have other subtle advantages, too. Bigger bands have more brains. Remember more brains to solve problems, knowledge of animals and plants, skills in tool making and sewing clothes. Just as larger populations have greater genetic diversity, so will their ideas.
And more people mean more connections. According to Metcalfe's law, network connectivity grows exponentially with network size. A band of 20 members can have 190 connections between members, and a band of 60 members can have 1770 connections.
Information flows through the following connections: News about the movements of people and animals; tool making skills; And words, songs, and myths. Moreover, group behavior becomes increasingly complex.
Consider ants. Individually, ants are not smart. But interactions between millions of ants allow colonies to build elaborate nests, forage, and kill animals many times the size of the ants. Likewise, human groups design buildings and cars, write sophisticated computer programs, wage war, run companies and countries, and do things that no one else can do.
Humans are not unique in having large brains (whales and elephants have brains) or large social groups (zebras and wildebeests form huge herds). But we are unique in combining them.
To paraphrase the poet John Dunne, neither humans nor Neanderthals are islands. We are all part of something bigger. And throughout history, humans formed increasingly larger social groups: bands, tribes, cities, nation-states, and international alliances.
This may give you the ability to build large buildings. social structure It gave Homo sapiens superiority over nature and other hominin species.
Neanderthals had large brains, language, and sophisticated tools. They made art and jewelry. They were clever and presented curious possibilities. Perhaps the decisive difference was not at the individual level but at our society.
250,000 years ago, Europe and western Asia were the lands of Neanderthals. wise man Lived in southern Africa. Estimates vary, but it is probably 100,000 years old. modern humanity I migrated from Africa.
40,000 years ago, Neanderthals disappeared from Asia and Europe and were replaced by humans. Their slow and inevitable replacement suggests that humans had some advantage, but that wasn't the case.
Anthropologists once viewed Neanderthals as dumb beasts. But recent archaeological discoveries show that they rival us in intelligence.
Neanderthals mastered fire before we did. they deadly hunterThey hunt large game such as mammoths and woolly rhinos, as well as smaller animals such as rabbits and birds.
They collected plants, seeds, and shellfish. Hunting and gathering all species required a deep understanding of nature.
Neanderthals also had a sense of aesthetics, such as making beads and painting cave paintings. They were spiritual people who buried the dead with flowers.
A stone circle discovered inside a cave may be a sacred site for Neanderthals. Like modern hunter-gatherers, Neanderthal life was probably steeped in superstition and magic. Their skies are filled with gods, and their caves are inhabited by ancestral spirits.
And then there's the fact that Homo sapiens and Neanderthals had children together. We weren't that different. But we've encountered Neanderthals many times over thousands of years, and we've always gotten the same results. They are gone. We stayed.
The major differences may have been less at the individual level than at the societal level. Just as it is impossible to understand bees without considering their colony, it is impossible to understand humans in isolation. We value individuality, but our survival is tied to larger social groups, just as the fate of a bee depends on the survival of the colony.
Modern hunter-gatherers provide our best guesses about how early humans and Neanderthals lived. Peoples such as the Khoisan of Namibia and the Hadzabe of Tanzania gather their families into wandering bands of 10 to 60 people. Bands are united into loosely organized tribes of over a thousand people.
Although these tribes lack hierarchy, they are connected by a shared language and religion, marriage, kinship, and friendship. Neanderthal society may have been similar, but there was one important difference. It's a smaller social group.
Pointing this out is evidence of low genetic diversity among Neanderthals.
In small populations, genes are easily lost. If 1 in 10 people carry the curly hair gene, then if 1 in 10 people die, that gene could be eliminated from the population. 5 out of 50 people will carry the gene. This means you have multiple backup copies. Therefore, over time, small groups tend to lose genetic variation and end up with fewer genes.
In 2022, DNA was recovered from the bones and teeth of 11 Neanderthals discovered in a cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia. Several of the individuals, including the father and daughter, were relatives. They were from a single band. And they had low genetic diversity.
Because we inherit two sets of chromosomes (one from our mother and one from our father), we have two copies of each gene. Often we have two different versions of a gene. You may inherit the genes for blue eyes from your mother and the genes for brown eyes from your father.
But Altai Neanderthals often had one version of each gene. The low diversity suggests they lived in small groups, averaging about 20 people, the study reports.
It is possible that Neanderthal anatomy favored small groups. Strong and muscular, Neanderthals were heavier than us. Therefore, each Neanderthal needed more food. This means that the land could support fewer Neanderthals than Homo sapiens.
And Neanderthals may have eaten primarily meat. People who eat meat get fewer calories from the land than people who eat meat and plants, which again reduces the population.
If humans had lived in larger groups than Neanderthals, we would have had an advantage.
Strong and skilled with spears, Neanderthals were probably excellent warriors. Lighter-bodied humans would probably have used bows for ranged attacks to counterattack.
But even if Neanderthals and humans were equally dangerous in battle, if humans had a numerical advantage, they could bring in more warriors and absorb more losses.
Large societies have other subtle advantages, too. Bigger bands have more brains. Remember more brains to solve problems, knowledge of animals and plants, skills in tool making and sewing clothes. Just as larger populations have greater genetic diversity, so will their ideas.
And more people mean more connections. According to Metcalfe's law, network connectivity grows exponentially with network size. A band of 20 members can have 190 connections between members, and a band of 60 members can have 1770 connections.
Information flows through the following connections: News about the movements of people and animals; tool making skills; And words, songs, and myths. Moreover, group behavior becomes increasingly complex.
Consider ants. Individually, ants are not smart. But interactions between millions of ants allow colonies to build elaborate nests, forage, and kill animals many times the size of the ants. Likewise, human groups design buildings and cars, write sophisticated computer programs, wage war, run companies and countries, and do things that no one else can do.
Humans are not unique in having large brains (whales and elephants have brains) or large social groups (zebras and wildebeests form huge herds). But we are unique in combining them.
To paraphrase the poet John Dunne, neither humans nor Neanderthals are islands. We are all part of something bigger. And throughout history, humans formed increasingly larger social groups: bands, tribes, cities, nation-states, and international alliances.
This may give you the ability to build large buildings. social structure It gave Homo sapiens superiority over nature and other hominin species.