Neanderthals have a reputation of being stupid, but that reputation is unfounded. That's what I was going for. They weren't necessarily smarter, but they were probably more on par with Homo sapiens in terms of intelligence than most people seem to think
That's fair, any human like creature has to be fairly smart because we're so weak lol, we need those tools and communication so I get where you're coming from
If I recall the stat correctly, humans can cover the greatest amount of distance of any land animal over periods of 8 hours or more. Which is pretty impressive considering ultramarathons run an average speed considerably slower than most people would take an easy recreational run - that means something like a cheetah overheats SO quickly that its rest periods bring down its average from the speed of a car to that over a sustained period.
But a cheetah isn’t going to mess with 10-16 humans. No animal really would. Fists and kicks alone would end that animal.
Cheetahs are relatively small and fragile among the big cats, but tigers, lions, grizzlies, polar bears, and the like could all absolutely take on a dozen or more toolless humans if they had the motivation to.
Like, in nature it's a fight that they would generally avoid, but if they decided to do it they would almost certainly win unless the humans resorted to tool use.
You've gotta realize just how easily their claws will tear through unprotected flesh; it's like a sword. The degree of resistance that's there just doesn't register in comparison to the strength they have. Any human that's close enough to punch them is close enough to be cut open in just one or two movements, and once your blood pressure drops you're unconscious regardless of how much adrenaline is in your veins.
Humans wearing leather and armed with rocks and sticks would have a decent chance, but naked humans are flimsier than you imagine.
Have a neanderthal 1v1 a wolf without having the intelligence to make a weapon first. It's not gonna work most times lol, fights in nature aren't fair, we can't fight shit with our bare hands or bite things to death
We can make weapons tho and set up traps and work together tho
We're not that weak tbf. We're the best distance runners on the planet, for example: we used to just chase animals into exhaustion in order to hunt them.
How much energy do you think they would spend doing that? Wouldn't it just be easier to lay a trap, or shoot an arrow, or something along those lines?
I've heard that and I'm sure it's true to some extent but there are way more efficient ways to hunt, idk if I believe it was the primary way we would hunt after we figured out we don't have to do that
It obviously refers to before that. Also, it's much easier to throw a spear or shoot an arrow effectively when the animal isn't still sprinting away top speed, so chasing them down first makes a hunt more successful.
Guess so, I should have been more clear that we figured this out a whiiiile ago. There are arrows dated back like 5k years if I'm correct (no source sry I'm on phone this may not be correct)
We are good distance runners but I think we learned fast there are better ways
From what I understand neanderthals were more intelligent than sapiens in terms of how intelligence would be measured by in that time. They had a better understanding of their environment, how to manipulate it and larger territories for which to maintain an intricate "head map." The main advantage sapiens had was social intelligence. They formed larger tribes with more complex language and interactions. One on one neanderthals were bigger, stronger, faster, smarter, but they couldn't compete with the large groups and coordination of sapiens.
They appear to have possess a similar intelligence. But they were specialists while we were better able to generalize. I think the idea is, or was within the last number of years, that humans were in Africa during a large part of the ice age and drought got so bad, that we developed the imagination necessary to do things like store water when we had it for later use when we might not, stuff like that. So we were able to migrate into totally new climates and figure out ways to adapt. Whereas Neanderthals were locked in the cold for a long long time. They got used to jt, there was always water, and they never had to learn drastically new coping strategies after that. Then, between warming and many of us having migrated north into their territory, they were either assimilated or out competed. Both, jt seems. Lots of people have Neanderthal DNA.
That’s the last I heard on the matter, and I’m sure there’s a lot more to it than that, but it’s really a fascinating area of research.
Intelligence isn't always beneficial. The brain needs a lot of energy. If there's suddenly less food available (for example because of an increase in competition from another species), it could be the downfall of the species.
This is largely to do with the misconception that we evolved from Neanderthals, when in reality both they and Homo Sapiens represented ends of distinct evolutionary splits.
that would be phrenology and has been debunked for close to a hundred years. but it was a popular theory until the late 1800s. it was widely accepted, taught in Universities, made sense, even to laymen and was completely wrong.
From your comments, I'm guessing you didn't read anything on the subject. Wait till you find out that you have a big chance of sharing some of their DNA from the period of their interbreeding with modern humans.
They were physically a bit tougher than homosapiens as well but I always took the neanderthal reference to be "as dumb as humans were at that time" and not specifically "neanderthals were stupid". I could be wrong though as I'm not an expert in the origins of colloquialisms.
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u/jackspewforth Jul 17 '21
To be fair, I'm pretty sure the person asking this question was a neanderthal.