Neanderthals: Smarter Than You Think 

Whoosh

*yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!

+Art Of Warring But bifocals weren't even invented yet...And what about the lenses?

+Art Of Warring You guys just don't get it. Stone glasses are for people to cool for looking at things.

+Pie Empire Quartz, obvs.

gabriel ferraz it doesn't say smart.. only *smarter* than expected. which can also be true of politicians who probably just act dumb.

@Uqpaa Handy Not trying to turn this racial, but that is usually used by racists to try to put themselves above other people. Neanderthals were about the same intelligence as homo sapiens, so Neanderthals didn't really make us smarter or dumber.

@Uqpaa Handy But it may explain why east Asia has some of the highest IQ averages. Since east Asians have the most Neanderthal DNA on average. BUt ThAT's JUsT a tHeOry A NeANdeRtHal ThEORY

@Uqpaa Handy And this proves that Neanderthal DNA improves IQ how? You specifically point out native americans and latinos when they both have Neanderthal DNA, so according to you it would make them smarter. Native Americans also have a small amount of Denisovan DNA. While you say white people and Asians have average IQ's that are higher (Which seems to be true when looking at the countries), you also point out other groups that according to you should have higher IQ but you say don't.

@Uqpaa Handy Also, there is no evidence of Neanderthals being smarter. Even if they were, DNA passed down from Neanderthals relates more to the immune system, not anything to do with intelligence.

XD Good one mate.

+Marv Roberts they'll be good at playing Far Cry Primal!

Ba dum tsss

HEEEEEY-OOOOO

Well I mean, in this case, it was. So..

Mufufufufu~

+Björn Dahlberg This is why, when people say go learn from a book instead of the internet. Well books can be outdated and made completely redundant with new discoveries.

+hawaiimaui123 You're godverdomme right.

+ratelslangen Just look at their water tech. Half the place is below seawater, its what they were named for!

+Mr. Bulbasaur's Channel Believe me, it's not just the water. Try some stroopwaffels and you'll know what I'm talking about. They get stale when you grow up with them but I've yet to see a single person who tried them who doesn't at least like them.

You may be missing some FOXP2

The site that found the Neanderthal buried with what was thought to be a flower crown has been debunked, since the pollen was dated to after the burial took place. Their larger skulls are not necessarily evidence they they were "smarter" than us, since it corresponds to their larger body mass. Just wanted to clarify! There is mounting evidence that they had culture and communities

@@BettyTame are people that go to the gym to build more mass, more stupid than when they started? The mass brain size argument is based

@@BettyTame no! They where shorter than humans. Brain size has nothing to do with body size

Sadly Since everyone except for pure Africans have some Neanderthal DNA I have found people using the fact that we have some neanderthal DNA to be racist against white/Asian people.

We'd probably just think they are really ugly or just got something wrong

Auyer Rafael yeah man.. all the race slurs and stereotypes would be pretty bad

Well, prior to the development of genetics and evolutionary theory, if Neanderthals were still around we might not have realized that they were even a different species. In which case, we would have likely continued interbreeding with them without knowing they were different and our genes would be even more mixed than they are now. There would be no pure homo sapiens left. We’d all be half-breeds without realizing it.

@@FullmetalChuunibyou Yes, I believe they would just be seen as another race. Then we'd be shocked when we found out they're a different species with DNA testing.

Not necessarily - if a lot of the DNA was really really useful, it would likely be selected for by evolution. A lot of it's related to more efficient fat storage, which makes sense considering Neanderthals were adapted to a life in the cold and humans originally evolved in the heat of Africa - a person with a more efficient way or storing body fat would have a huge advantage over everyone else

Another interesting thought: They were around before us and had all of these tools and technology, and we interbred with them. Assuming it wasn't just smash and dash, it's possible they stuck around and showed us the techniques they used. I think it very likely that we learned basic tool use, fire making, etc. from them instead of discovering it ourselves. Seems like an easy shortcut instead of having to go through all that trial and error, and probably why our ancestors seem to have innovated things so quickly. I think we were probably about as intelligent as they were but we out competed them because of some other factor like we were more social or more able to communicate and co-ordinate more effectively than they did. The reason so few people even consider this is probably just down to hubris. People want to believe in the story we've invented for ourselves about how great modern humans are, but like the work of all great modern innovators I think our success was built on the achievements of the ones who came before us.

Simon Gerg I think I see what you're saying, but isn't the Neanderthal DNA still Neanderthal DNA by % content? Even if there was maybe only one modern human individual that interbred ± 55,000 years ago, they would have had to distribute their DNA to many offspring for those genes to be absorbed by the population as a whole. Yes, the more helpful genes percolated to the top by forces of natural selection. These wouldn't be the same as having a Neanderthal relative from 3-generations up the line, but still Neanderthal by origin and by overall percentage. Angus Davies It seems probable that there was some culture exchange between these groups, however, evidence shows fire and tool making are much much older. Much older than the estimated time frame when Neanderthals diverged from modern humans. I agree that perhaps as the victors of history we may have too quickly written off the legacy of the Neanderthal species. They had larger brains for sure. Perhaps instead of blaming their demise on lacking an inventive and creative culture or being too niche in their adaptability, we should be looking for other reasons they died off. Perhaps they fell victim to disease. Perhaps modern humans were more violent. Or maybe modern humans had more children. There's any number of scenarios that could explain why they didn't survive the test of time.

Larger brain size may also be attributable to having more sensory input as well - a more developed sense of smell, or larger eyes needed to see things more clearly in the darker northern latitudes. Although, the cross-breeding event apparently occurred in theory somewhere around the Levant.

Angus Davies That makes sense.

I was going to say, it seems impossible to have such complex tools for the time without any vocal communication.

nope.

yes I thought thats what it said

yes

+Thoryne I did too!!

+Thoryne I am from the Netherlands.. and it still happens to me all the time. :'D

yes, they ruined the joke by answering it, I hope that that guy asks another one

+Lucas van Osenbruggen WHY IS THERE HAIR ON URANUS

+Lucas van Osenbruggen WHY DO NIPPLES GET HARD?

+Matthew Monroe cold or arousal normally.

bensemus x i didn't ask how, but why do they because of that? whats the evolutionary advantage of your nipples getting hard?

Whoosh

+Nerdfighers DFTBA Someone is an xkcd fan...

+Nerdfighers DFTBA Bang!

+IceMetalPunk And so it begins.

+Mike O'. I read that in Ambassador Kosh's voice

MagicAccent you are on meth

Whoosh

+Nerdfighers DFTBA is this a thing now?

+Nerdfighers DFTBA Ker-blam

+ForeverOfTheStars If we go back in time we would kill everyone with the diseases we carry.

if I get to use a time machine I would use it to destroy those humans who are not vegetarian because we can save earth right now if each and every other person on earth becomes vegetarian. all the co2 will be removed and we can survive atleast a few more years

you're asking the real questions

But why do we have hair around our anus tho?

+விஷ்ணு கார்த்திக் the video fr tht is made tho.

No they're from Europe. They used Bidet'sLOL

+Daniel Renard ^.^

*Speciesist.

+Colm Ryan Specist? Dunno, just sounds better on the tongue.

+Aryan Kulshreshtha Neanderthal are people too!

FKF DETTOL!Dettol

Dettol I wash my after shit hands from you. fkf

+TheOneManGeekArmy They'll start trash talking, that's how we'll know that they could speak after all

+Nexius Reign The presence of only one hasn't really done much for keeping the whole war thing from being popular :/

+sed anon Yeah but this is a civil war. Imagine how much worse it would be against things that AREN'T HUMAN. All morality basically gets thrown off the table.

They were human just a bit different, they were homo neanderthalensis and we are homo sapiens both classified as human.

Neanderthals existed for 430,000 years and still couldn’t advance in time.

"Confetti, it's a parade!"

+Mr Ununpentium This is an excellent question. I really hope they answer it.

+Mr Ununpentium Well since human brains are just squishy computers made by trial and error, it stands to reason that we could theoretically redesign it or improve it to be better.

+Mr Ununpentium yeah but then youd have a bunch of enviromantalist crying about the human brain and how where not allowed to touch it

Mr Ununpentium Humans have a brief window as young children when language acquisition is very easy. If you weren't exposed to a second language young, that will make learning a second language harder when you are older. I don't know about you, but I don't think we are wise enough to start messing around with our DNA as you suggest. DNA has millions of sequences, having evolved over the history of life on this planet, we have sequenced it but we still don't understand what most of it does. Would you want your child to be an experiment on fiddling with human DNA? People don't trust scientists to fiddle with plant DNA (else why is the "Non GMO" label on food so popular?) and you want to mess with Human DNA? No thanks. Go watch Gattica if you want to see how that is likely to work out.

Sounds like a fascinating paper. Did you say anything about the findings at Shanidar? Apparently there was a Neanderthal who had most likely been killed by a human with an atlatl and dart - it's only a one-off, though, so I don't know how far it can be generalised

+Simon Gerg It was a really interesting topic to research, and I don't recall even finding any information on that site, but I was more focused on the DNA and evidence of the intelligence and culture of Neanderthals and the evidence of their interbreeding with homo sapiens so I didn't have a lot of time to look at anything that didn't pertain to my main topic. Thanks for bringing it up though I will go look it up now.

I suppose that could be possible, its hard to know exactly what was going on that long ago, but in my research i did find one example of an area where the bones of both neanderthals and homo sapiens were found. the people studying the site believe that they were coexisting and even interbreeding. There is also the fact that there were far fewer neanderthals than homo sapiens so when it came to choosing a mate it probably would have been simpler for neanderthals to choose a homo sapien just because there were more of them around.

BullShitThat Michael Aranda said: “We now know for example, that by the standards of fifty centuries ago, their technology was surprisingly advanced.” He’s talking about stone tools that were made no later than 40,000 years ago. To impress how a piece of technology is more advanced, you compare it to other contemporaneous technology, and not to future technology. So he had to have meant to say ‘fifty millennia ago.’ Furthermore, he couldn’t have been referring to the standards of 3,000 BC, because by that point humans had already invented amongst other things, the bow, the wheel, pottery, glass making, writing, and papyrus. Things that are far more advanced than stone tools.

@@Ngamotu83 Bows were used early. They are simple.

+tommy Drink from the tip of the bottle, dont swallow the entire bottle.

xD

+crojonphoenix lmao

Haha that was funny

Just go quietly please.

:) faf

Francis Del Torto It was probably white people looking for oil

Diseases probably.

@@criticalsage they had Bitter immune system than homo sapiens

Same i think we should get reparations from the humans for slaughtering our people and stealing our land.

@@Jebu911 "Muh people!" #NeanderthalLivesMatter

@@Jebu911 *Grunts in agreement* lol

+Royal - RIFLES Can you do it with your eyes closed?

+EclecticFruit i bet he doesn't even need to think while doing it.

+iota-09 Whoa. The man's a legend!

Er I think you mean napping.

simple tools... spears with pointed shaped stones, carefully sculpted, fixed with hand made cords and a glue made of sap from a specific tree, cooked in a closed container (which also has to be made) ... no language to explain all this? it seems unlikely.

Fabio Dougherty Possibly. For one thing simple imitation is very effective. Parrots have for a long time been known as 'feathered primates' and some species can copy a multi-step procedure after seeing it once. Then there's the question of what qualifies as a 'language', again some birds like the Japanese Great Tit use syntax. (www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160308/ncomms10986/full/ncomms10986.html ) This would qualify their calls as a language by most definitions that include our own. The power of such a language is hard to gauge but such a simple arrangement could quite conceivably allow for such processes to be passed on.

+Gareth Dean Knapping flint is NOT possible by imitation. It requires a lot of technical knowledge, planning, and practice. Similarly, making pitch from birch sap is no easy process. Just making it with modern metal implements is tricky, as you need to get birch bark hot using coals from a fire, but you can't let oxygen get to the bark or it will burst into flames. Just doing it with metal containers is tricky enough.

Grindstone I've heard far too many 'it's just too hard' arguments to dismiss that possibility unless it can be scientifically proven somehow. I still recall how apparently tiny bird brains couldn't possibly deal with tools, even simple ones. The process may be very tricky it may even take years to learn properly but that's not the same as needing language to pass on.

Gareth Dean It goes beyond "it's just too hard". Seriously, try taking up knapping. You'll see it goes far beyond just clacking rocks together. It is very methodical, very technical, and very complex. In fact, we can point out the distinct differences between early human knapping and Neanderthal knapping. Including how humans would carry chunks of pre-formed flint long distance ready for making more flakes on demand. We have not found evidence of this forethought among Neanderthals. As for birds, Ravens have shown remarkable intelligence, not only in solving multi-step issues, but also passing on knowledge to their young. But that is not the same as what we are discussing.

What's wrong with those in Africa?

+Ipeleng Thobejane They aren't descended from Neanderthals.

Peter Connell what proof you got..did you publish a paper on that..you would have laughed out of a lot of places on that one

tgillies101 Cept Berber descended from caspians k thanx bye

tgillies101 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-S99s2a4Iip8.html

+smileyeagle1021 If our skin colors matched we'd team up and kill all the other sods.

+TheGreenRocket // TGR than*

omg SAME😂😂😂

***** Because their thought process clearly shows they don't know the difference between those two words.

***** Okay, you're insanely moronic and this is the last response you will get from me. It's blatantly obvious to anyone who has the slightest bit of intelligence that the word OP misread was "Neanderthals" for "Netherlands" and that the "then" part was a typo.

You probably have some portion of Neanderthal DNA, so yup

+Yuannan Lin there are fossils of homo sapiens and neanthertals from around the same time. different skulls.

+Yuannan Lin anatomically modern humans came from Africa, and there's evidence that at one point many human species may have coexisted with each other. But to say that neanderthals and other hominids are the same species as us is inaccurate

+Yuannan Lin also race is a social construct. Genetically humans show very little variation between populations, even less than populations of chimpanzees, our closest living ancestors. Even if it seems like phenotypically there are different "races" of human beings, there's no evidence of speciation.

+CybeargPlays ikr... don't you hate it, wehn you are napping all day and after that you feel totally stoned

+Anticonny Usually that happens in reverse order.

It helps me explain things better😂

The Italians are now offended xD

+Nate Hood Once I had an interview on the radio and I moved my hands a lot so my brain didnt get "stuck" with a word. It's a trick I got from neuroscience classes. Amazingly useful.

Aaaaand that's a problem becaaaause...?

But we are just animals. So what?

Because we are

+PootisPigeon No we are not. The whole reason the term "animal" was invented is to distinguish between plants and other non-human animals. In taxonomy, humans are part of the kingdom Animalia, but that has nothing to do with the philosophical meaning of an "animal". That's just for biologists. The mind of a human is clearly unique from every other creature in the world. Don't degrade your own species.

+Xavion251 pretty much one of the only things special about our species is the brain. Maybe the thumb is a bit more well-"built" and so on, but that's the main thing. But other animals have emotions and can solve problems and think for themselves and in a group as well. We are just more advanced at thinking than they are. Prairie dogs have a complex language and crows have been shown to be very good at problem solving. Dogs can get depressed and before ecstatic and a lot of animals have an understanding of basic physics. So, beyond the fact that humans are only as smart as we are because we learn on the shoulders of giants (because if we lived in the wild and didn't document everything, I doubt we'd be that great off), what makes us better than the rest of our *fellow* animals. And philosophy says you can't ever be 100% sure of anything and reality may not be real and then there's the whole "If a chair's purpose is to be sat on and you don't sit on a chair, is it still a chair?" side of philosophy. So, please, on a scientific video especially, don't try to say we humans are not animals. Just because we invented the word to separate ourselves from other animals doesn't mean we can't suddenly reuse it to include ourselves with them.

+Dan K because that's how the place in Germany is pronounced. Actually also with a prolonged "a"-sound at the end, like: Neander-taal.

+Dan K that's how it's pronounced. Neanderthal are named after the place they were discovered and pronounced the same way as the locals would call it. Neanderthals were found in Germany, and the german language does not have the "th" pronunciation.

i see. thanks guys

+Unbearable Pain There are humans that have no Neanderthal DNA & are equally as smart.

Whoosh

+Nerdfighers DFTBA Nerdfighers?

Neanderthals also had much larger brains than modern humans, as is clear by the whooshing sound that wind makes as it passes between "Nerdfighters DFTBA's" ears.

+Nicholas Bevins fake and gay

+Nicholas Bevins This isn't related to the argument at hand, but I'd like to point out that Asperger's and Autism, though they are both on the Autistic spectrum, are considered separate disorders. If someone has Autism and is at the higher end of the spectrum, that is considered as high functioning Autism, not Asperger's. Though most people who aren't experts in the matter don't see the difference between High functioning and Asperger's, so you could tell people you have Asperger's and they wouldn't know otherwise.

BAHAHAHAHA

+Aanthanur DC Kind of ironic that you're against Trump yet you have an anti-Islamic profile pic don't you think? Trump is the only candidate that has a good plan for combating Islamic extremism.

ahah amazing !

sunny day no he hasn't. he doesn't know the difference between normal moselms and radical moslems. he has not the slightest idea about this problem. and you know what is far more important than fighting Islamic extremism? AGW, and he is in denial about AGW. he is an anti science candidate, i am totally pro science.

+Aanthanur DC Moslems? I think you mean Muslims.

+Marcela Muricy tug of war between gravity and surface tension. If the milk isn't flowing over the edge fast enough, and the edge is not angled right, some of the fluid's surface tension will attract it to the carton more than the earth attracts it to the ground. It will stick, travel around the lip, and then trickle down. There are all kinds of fancy fluid dynamics at play as well.

+Rob Kinney thanks 👍🏻

They also carry over greater distances. Given the Neanderthal style of hunting, I think they probably used clicks and whistles.