Violence and the Neanderthals

Angela

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See:

Beier et al

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07343-8

"Have Neanderthals gained an unfair reputation for having led highly violent lives? A comparison of skulls of Neanderthals and prehistoric humans in Eurasia reveals no evidence of higher levels of trauma in these hominins."

"
The power of Beier and colleagues’ analyses lies in their study design. Instead of comparing Neanderthal data with those of more-recent or living human populations, as previous studies have done2,6, the authors based their comparisons on humans who not only shared aspects of their environment with Neanderthals, but whose fossil record also has a similar level of preservation. Beier et al. analysed data for 114 Neanderthal skulls and 90 human skulls. They gathered the data for 14 skull bones, and obtained information that ranged from 1 bone in poorly preserved fossils to data for all 14 bones per individual for well-preserved ones. In total, the authors recorded trauma incidence in 295 Neanderthal bones and 541 human bones. They also collected other information, such as the percentage of each of the 14 bones that was preserved for each individual, as well as details including sex, age at death and the fossil’s geographic location."

"

[h=3] [/h]
 
Since Neanderthals "disappeared" after ancient humans arrived in Europe, we can't exclude that the latter were just as, if not more, violent than the former. In modern "civilizational" parlance, both would be savages. Did we "eat" them?
 
All you have to do is watch chimps, to see they are nasty buggers, and humans have a lot in common with chimp violent tendencies. It takes very little threatening provocation for humans to resort to chimp-brain behaviour or to go "apeshit" (please excuse the vulgarity, I use it in this rare instance to highlight how our terms can tell the truth).

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...iolence/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.e8faa9b39554

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150811-do-animals-fight-wars

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170131104719.htm


I think the idea that Neanderthals were "more violent" comes out of an Enlightenment era self-serving bias that all things human are progressively superior coupled with a moral overlay that denies our own inherently brutal and chimpish nature. A more violent nature being thought by the brainiacs as signifying non-progression or inefficiency genetically, would then be attributed to the losers in the progression, which is a fallacy.
 
All you have to do is watch chimps, to see they are nasty buggers, and humans have a lot in common with chimp violent tendencies. It takes very little threatening provocation for humans to resort to chimp-brain behaviour or to go "apeshit" (please excuse the vulgarity, I use it in this rare instance to highlight how our terms can tell the truth).

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...iolence/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.e8faa9b39554

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150811-do-animals-fight-wars

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170131104719.htm


I think the idea that Neanderthals were "more violent" comes out of an Enlightenment era self-serving bias that all things human are progressively superior coupled with a moral overlay that denies our own inherently brutal and chimpish nature. A more violent nature being thought by the brainiacs as signifying non-progression or inefficiency genetically, would then be attributed to the losers in the progression, which is a fallacy.

2 things about the Neanderthals :

they were less mobile than modern humans
and they never used the blade tools with which the modern humans expanded after 50 ka

all the rest is speculation
 
Since Neanderthals "disappeared" after ancient humans arrived in Europe, we can't exclude that the latter were just as, if not more, violent than the former. In modern "civilizational" parlance, both would be savages. Did we "eat" them?

afaik there is no proof of violence between modern humans and Neanderthal

the simplest explanation is the modern humans simply outcompeted Neanderthals after 50 ka
 
The article does say that they didn't examine body injuries, so it may still turn out that Neanderthals were "more" violent, but I don't see that it matters. Humans are plenty violent enough.

I know lots of social science studies say that witnessing violence, whether in person or through things like movies, doesn't influence people to be violent, but I've always been a little skeptical about that. Given the present present replication crisis in the social sciences, I'd really like to see it re-examined.

One of the reasons I'm skeptical about it is that I grew up on stories of the German occupation of Italy and my father's war stories, and they reinforce many of the things I've read, which is that people do become "used" to violence, hardened to it, if you will. Killing your first animal, or person, for that matter, is a lot harder than killing your hundredth. I remember the first (and last) time my brother went hunting with my father and uncles. He said he couldn't even look at the deer. I'm sure I would have been the same, but as my father said, if eating depended on it, you'd do it. Just as if your survival depended on it, you'd kill a man as well.

Over and beyond that, people can commit horrific acts of violence on other people, even defenceless people, out of extreme emotion, drugs or alcohol, or just generally a lack of human empathy. Of course, the capacity for that varies.

Personally, I've always felt that the notion of original sin, or of an id which must be controlled much better explains the reality of human nature than all the romantic notions born from most philosophical musings.

If anyone hasn't read it, I suggest "Lord of the Flies".
 
Personally, I've always felt that the notion of original sin, or of an id which must be controlled much better explains the reality of human nature than all the romantic notions born from most philosophical musings.

Rousseau's "noble savage" vs. Nietzsche's "savage nobles".
 
Rousseau's "noble savage" vs. Nietzsche's "savage nobles".

Except that there's nothing noble about savagery. It's nauseating.

One of many reasons I detest Nietzsche. Mad and bad, imo.
 
Except that there's nothing noble about savagery. It's nauseating.

One of many reasons I detest Nietzsche. Mad and bad, imo.

Nietzsche, in my opinion, was one of the greatest minds of all-time (and my second favourite behind Beethoven). His fundamental understanding of ethics and spirituality (not in the spooky sense, but in the psychological sense) is unrivalled by I think literally anyone in the history of mankind. He predicted the impact of the death of religion on society to a tee (and like him, I'm an atheist, but without religion and without a meaningful ideology replacing it it is obvious the West has massively degenerated in all areas - his famous line about killing God was that of mourning rather than gloating), and his elucidation on slave morality mirrors what we see today as political correctness. I genuinely believe all the ills of modern society were predicted and remedied by him well before anybody could have seen what was to come. Mad, maybe, but bad - no way.

You seem to associate him with being a supporter of the big, bad Indo-European wolf, screaming in an ecstatic frenzy as he slaughters peaceful little farmers with all the breath in his lungs that "Might is Right!". In reality, he wanted to develop a new morality, taking the best aspects of slave and master morality, in order to achieve both a kind and great society.
 
Nietzsche is simply being a realist. A "savage noble" is simply a barbarian - besides being the very conscious (and highly ironic) flip of Rousseau's "romantic" idea. The notion that he valorizes violence or savagery is a gross misinterpretation.

From The Genealogy of Morals:

“All instincts that are not discharged outwardly turn inwards – this is what I call the internalisation of man: with it there now evolves in man what will later be called his ‘soul’… Those terrible bulwarks with which state organisations protected themselves against the old instincts of freedom – punishments are a primary instance of this kind of bulwark – had the result that all those instincts of the wild, free, roving man were turned backwards, against man himself. Animosity, cruelty, the pleasure of pursuing, raiding, changing and destroying – all this was pitted against the person who had such instincts: that is the origin of ‘bad conscience’.”

https://philosophynow.org/issues/68/Psychoanalysis_and_Philosophy_II

Sublimation (as opposed to repression) is a major theme for Nietzsche. The Freudian concept of the Id traces directly back to Nietzsche -- "das Es", or "the It", in both of their writings. The term Id was interposed by Freud's translators.

http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1445-73772015000200002
 
2 things about the Neanderthals :


they were less mobile than modern humans
and they never used the blade tools with which the modern humans expanded after 50 ka


all the rest is speculation


I’m not sure why you quoted me above, as in my post I was solely stating that the quantifiable propensity for violence within a population is an area rife for bias and I do not make any speculation about Neanderthal violence.

I agree that it's clear that we are still in a blind speculative state of not knowing much about the Neanderthals. Speaking of speculation:


As for tools, it's my understanding that they made flint blades. Not metal for sure, but still a blade.


“The kinds of tools that Neanderthals began making about 200,000 years ago are known as Mousterian, after the site in France where thousands of artifacts were first found. Neanderthals struck off pieces from a rock “core” to make an implement, but the “flaking” process was not random; they evidently examined a core much as a diamond cutter analyzes a rough gemstone today, trying to strike just the spot that would yield “flakes,” for knives or spear points, requiring little sharpening or shaping.

Around 40,000 years ago, Neanderthals innovated again. In what passes for the blink of an eye in paleoanthropology, some Neanderthals were suddenly making long, thin stone blades and hafting more tools. Excavations in southwest France and northern Spain have uncovered Neanderthal tools betraying a more refined technique involving, Kuhn speculates, the use of soft hammers made of antler or bone.”

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/rethinking-neanderthals-83341003/



Also, the belief that Neanderthals were not very mobile, may be a speculation that will be changed. We shall see, maybe...

"Odysseus, who voyaged across the wine-dark seas of the Mediterranean in Homer’s epic, may have had some astonishingly ancient forerunners. A decade ago, when excavators claimed to have found stone tools on the Greek island of Crete dating back at least 130,000 years, other archaeologists were stunned—and skeptical. But since then, at that site and others, researchers have quietly built up a convincing case for Stone Age seafarers—and for the even more remarkable possibility that they were Neandertals, the extinct cousins of modern humans.

The finds strongly suggest that the urge to go to sea, and the cognitive and technological means to do so, predates modern humans, says Alan Simmons, an archaeologist at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas who gave an overview of recent finds at a meeting here last week of the Society for American Archaeology. “The orthodoxy until pretty recently was that you don’t have seafarers until the early Bronze Age,” adds archaeologist John Cherry of Brown University, an initial skeptic. “Now we are talking about seafaring Neandertals. It’s a pretty stunning change.”


"Strasser argued that the tools may represent a sea-borne migration of Neandertals from the Near East to Europe. The team used a variety of techniques to date the soil around the tools to at least 130,000 years old, but they could not pinpoint a more exact date. And the stratigraphy at the site is unclear, raising questions about whether the artifacts are as old as the soil they were embedded in. So other archaeologists were skeptical."

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/04/neandertals-stone-age-people-may-have-voyaged-mediterranean

 
See:

Beier et al

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07343-8

"Have Neanderthals gained an unfair reputation for having led highly violent lives? A comparison of skulls of Neanderthals and prehistoric humans in Eurasia reveals no evidence of higher levels of trauma in these hominins."

"
The power of Beier and colleagues’ analyses lies in their study design. Instead of comparing Neanderthal data with those of more-recent or living human populations, as previous studies have done2,6, the authors based their comparisons on humans who not only shared aspects of their environment with Neanderthals, but whose fossil record also has a similar level of preservation. Beier et al. analysed data for 114 Neanderthal skulls and 90 human skulls. They gathered the data for 14 skull bones, and obtained information that ranged from 1 bone in poorly preserved fossils to data for all 14 bones per individual for well-preserved ones. In total, the authors recorded trauma incidence in 295 Neanderthal bones and 541 human bones. They also collected other information, such as the percentage of each of the 14 bones that was preserved for each individual, as well as details including sex, age at death and the fossil’s geographic location."

"


From the article you linked, I find this interesting:

"Both Neanderthal and human males had a much greater incidence of trauma than did the females of their respective species. This pattern remains the same for humans today7. One final intriguing result is that, although traumatic injuries were present across all of the age ranges studied, Neanderthals that had trauma to the head were more likely to have died under the age of 30 than the humans were. The authors interpret this result as evidence that, compared with humans, Neanderthals either had more injuries when they were young or were more likely to have died after being injured.

Beier and colleagues’ study does not invalidate previous estimates of trauma among Neanderthals. Instead, it provides a new framework for interpreting these data by showing that the level of Neanderthal trauma was not uniquely high relative to that of early humans in Eurasia. This implies that Neanderthal trauma does not require its own special explanations, and that risk and danger were as much a part of the life of Neanderthals as they were of our own evolutionary past. The result adds to growing evidence that Neanderthals had much in common with early human groups. However, the finding that Neanderthals might have experienced trauma at a younger age than humans, or that they had a greater risk of death after injury, is fascinating, and might be a key insight into why our species had such a demographic advantage over Neanderthals."

This makes me wonder a couple of things. Firstly, it might be postulated that Neanderthal skulls were vulnerable for a longer period than human skulls are and what this might mean. A longer full maturation period for Neanderthals?

Secondly, a greater amount of young male casualties might indicate warfare and being out-weaponed.
 
The article does say that they didn't examine body injuries, so it may still turn out that Neanderthals were "more" violent, but I don't see that it matters. Humans are plenty violent enough.

I agree with the gist of what you say, if I read you correctly, Angela and that there is enough of violence going around.

As per whether it matters to know what propensity Neanderthals were also violent, I would disagree. Until recently it was assumed that Neanderthals were the more "brutes" etc. based on what? Not much, I would say. Just mainly in my opinion probably coming from a simple formula of "less evidence of what we call advancement = more violent" - a questionable presumption to say the least.

Mainly though, the reason it is important to keep studying is the all-too human propensity for seeing the alien-to-us other as less-than, worse-than, stupider, more savage, etc. etc. which seems to align exactly with the more repulsive social violence chimp behaviour, we would do well to get out of our system. Neanderthals in a way are the last other, since we've explored pretty much every existing human civilization and also largely interbred around the world.

I know lots of social science studies say that witnessing violence, whether in person or through things like movies, doesn't influence people to be violent, but I've always been a little skeptical about that. Given the present present replication crisis in the social sciences, I'd really like to see it re-examined.

One of the reasons I'm skeptical about it is that I grew up on stories of the German occupation of Italy and my father's war stories, and they reinforce many of the things I've read, which is that people do become "used" to violence, hardened to it, if you will. Killing your first animal, or person, for that matter, is a lot harder than killing your hundredth. I remember the first (and last) time my brother went hunting with my father and uncles. He said he couldn't even look at the deer. I'm sure I would have been the same, but as my father said, if eating depended on it, you'd do it. Just as if your survival depended on it, you'd kill a man as well.

I think there are some people who are easily impressionable (I believe this is an inborn trait) and thus would fit the studies that are in the minority saying violence exposure begets violent behaviour. It is worth to note, here though many of these studies are pretty vague and coming from an ideological position, the latter of which is not conducive to finding the truth. I agree this area does warrant more rigorous examination.

As for some people becoming used to violence, such as war experience for example, this is a complex matter, as I think you would agree. We would have to define what it means to "become used to". It can mean tuning out and establishing a protective shell. It can mean turning a blind eye to atrocities because of a sense of powerlessness or life threat to one's self and family. It can mean crossing over to the "bad side" and turning on your neighbour who was once your friend at least not someone you would consider hurting. To me, the latter is really the only true example of seeing violence and then becoming violent among non-military.

As per the first kill being hard and the rest not so much, which speaks to a belief in violence as an easy corruptor, leading us to become callous, indifferent to the suffering of other creatures, and last but not least, a kind of fatalist foregone conclusion that we can't help but become bloodthirsty, I would say no. This is not a foregone conclusion. Some people do go down that road. I believe those who do always had this in them, but merely had it curtailed by laws and the need to get along. Yet, others do not become violent, but lose their marbles or just check out from society (ie. PTSD, used to be called shell shock).

I contend that it was much better in the days when there was a strict military/social class and mercenary units, rather than in late modern times when we have conscription of the mass of male population. I will explain why I say this. I believe we will never get rid of war, as it is in our make-up to war and in this sense, those who have been exposed to violence are at an advantage and it can argued, have a more realistic view about our nature and thus a better chance of staying sane. But also, there are people who do not flinch at violence or killing and this is in-born as well, as has been supported by recent psych studies.

I have never been hunting, never butchered an animal. I haven't even caught a fish! I had a hard time when my dog killed a chipmunk. I would say this lack of exposure to my roots of survival, doesn't do me any favours. I would be able to kill if I had to for survival and I would kill without remorse if my kids' life was threatened.


Over and beyond that, people can commit horrific acts of violence on other people, even defenceless people, out of extreme emotion, drugs or alcohol, or just generally a lack of human empathy. Of course, the capacity for that varies.

Personally, I've always felt that the notion of original sin, or of an id which must be controlled much better explains the reality of human nature than all the romantic notions born from most philosophical musings.

If anyone hasn't read it, I suggest "Lord of the Flies".

I'm in agreement about original sin. To me it is the perfect metaphor for how once humans developed consciousness, we also developed the dark side of this and that is to come up with more and more creative ways to be jerks. You see this in other animals as well. The more intelligent ones can manipulate and torment.
 


I’m not sure why you quoted me above, as in my post I was solely stating that the quantifiable propensity for violence within a population is an area rife for bias and I do not make any speculation about Neanderthal violence.

I agree that it's clear that we are still in a blind speculative state of not knowing much about the Neanderthals. Speaking of speculation:


As for tools, it's my understanding that they made flint blades. Not metal for sure, but still a blade.


“The kinds of tools that Neanderthals began making about 200,000 years ago are known as Mousterian, after the site in France where thousands of artifacts were first found. Neanderthals struck off pieces from a rock “core” to make an implement, but the “flaking” process was not random; they evidently examined a core much as a diamond cutter analyzes a rough gemstone today, trying to strike just the spot that would yield “flakes,” for knives or spear points, requiring little sharpening or shaping.

Around 40,000 years ago, Neanderthals innovated again. In what passes for the blink of an eye in paleoanthropology, some Neanderthals were suddenly making long, thin stone blades and hafting more tools. Excavations in southwest France and northern Spain have uncovered Neanderthal tools betraying a more refined technique involving, Kuhn speculates, the use of soft hammers made of antler or bone.”

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/rethinking-neanderthals-83341003/



Also, the belief that Neanderthals were not very mobile, may be a speculation that will be changed. We shall see, maybe...

"Odysseus, who voyaged across the wine-dark seas of the Mediterranean in Homer’s epic, may have had some astonishingly ancient forerunners. A decade ago, when excavators claimed to have found stone tools on the Greek island of Crete dating back at least 130,000 years, other archaeologists were stunned—and skeptical. But since then, at that site and others, researchers have quietly built up a convincing case for Stone Age seafarers—and for the even more remarkable possibility that they were Neandertals, the extinct cousins of modern humans.

The finds strongly suggest that the urge to go to sea, and the cognitive and technological means to do so, predates modern humans, says Alan Simmons, an archaeologist at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas who gave an overview of recent finds at a meeting here last week of the Society for American Archaeology. “The orthodoxy until pretty recently was that you don’t have seafarers until the early Bronze Age,” adds archaeologist John Cherry of Brown University, an initial skeptic. “Now we are talking about seafaring Neandertals. It’s a pretty stunning change.”


"Strasser argued that the tools may represent a sea-borne migration of Neandertals from the Near East to Europe. The team used a variety of techniques to date the soil around the tools to at least 130,000 years old, but they could not pinpoint a more exact date. And the stratigraphy at the site is unclear, raising questions about whether the artifacts are as old as the soil they were embedded in. So other archaeologists were skeptical."

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/04/neandertals-stone-age-people-may-have-voyaged-mediterranean


you told that our opinion on Neanderthals is biased and I agree

the Neanderthals made flake tools, not blade tools
so did modern humans, till 50 ka
when they started to make blade (stone) tools, they got the upperhand of the Neanderthals
 
The article does say that they didn't examine body injuries, so it may still turn out that Neanderthals were "more" violent, but I don't see that it matters. Humans are plenty violent enough.

I know lots of social science studies say that witnessing violence, whether in person or through things like movies, doesn't influence people to be violent, but I've always been a little skeptical about that. Given the present present replication crisis in the social sciences, I'd really like to see it re-examined.

One of the reasons I'm skeptical about it is that I grew up on stories of the German occupation of Italy and my father's war stories, and they reinforce many of the things I've read, which is that people do become "used" to violence, hardened to it, if you will. Killing your first animal, or person, for that matter, is a lot harder than killing your hundredth. I remember the first (and last) time my brother went hunting with my father and uncles. He said he couldn't even look at the deer. I'm sure I would have been the same, but as my father said, if eating depended on it, you'd do it. Just as if your survival depended on it, you'd kill a man as well.

Over and beyond that, people can commit horrific acts of violence on other people, even defenceless people, out of extreme emotion, drugs or alcohol, or just generally a lack of human empathy. Of course, the capacity for that varies.

Personally, I've always felt that the notion of original sin, or of an id which must be controlled much better explains the reality of human nature than all the romantic notions born from most philosophical musings.

If anyone hasn't read it, I suggest "Lord of the Flies".

It is in this respect interesting to read Napoleon Chagnon on Amazonian Indians. He called their state of affairs a permanent war. I tend to think of HG's as similar to that. It is IMHO no coincidence the Motala samples were heads on stakes. Cannibalism was wide spread in ice age Europe.
 
It is in this respect interesting to read Napoleon Chagnon on Amazonian Indians. He called their state of affairs a permanent war. I tend to think of HG's as similar to that. It is IMHO no coincidence the Motala samples were heads on stakes. Cannibalism was wide spread in ice age Europe.

Sounds interesting. I'll investigate that when I have a chance. It wouldn't at all surprise me.

As someone noted above, all one needs to do is educate oneself about chimp behavior, for example. Nasty, filthy, brutish creatures.

Teilhard de Chardin, to summarize him unforgivably, believed we were evolving spiritually as well as physically, and that this was behind the idea of original sin. It almost got him excommunicated. I think it's a nice idea, but I see no signs it's happening in most people.
 
As someone noted above, all one needs to do is educate oneself about chimp behavior, for example. Nasty, filthy, brutish creatures.

Blame it on Cheeta...

Chimps are simply being chimps. Damning them for their behavior is tantamount to blaming them for being chimps. Or tigers for being tigers.

The victims of violence by savages and barbarians would amount to a relatively small pile compared to the mountains of victims from our modern civilized wars. Who is the more "demonic", us or them? Who is crueler?
 
Sounds interesting. I'll investigate that when I have a chance. It wouldn't at all surprise me.

As someone noted above, all one needs to do is educate oneself about chimp behavior, for example. Nasty, filthy, brutish creatures.

Teilhard de Chardin, to summarize him unforgivably, believed we were evolving spiritually as well as physically, and that this was behind the idea of original sin. It almost got him excommunicated. I think it's a nice idea, but I see no signs it's happening in most people.

don't overlook the link between agressivity and overpopulation, be it amongst chimps or amongst humans
add to this the high mobility, typical of modern humans, which creates frequent confrontations with 'strangers'
and the competition amongst young males (universal)

it's in our DNA
 
Blame it on Cheeta...
Chimps are simply being chimps. Damning them for their behavior is tantamount to blaming them for being chimps. Or tigers for being tigers.
The victims of violence by savages and barbarians would amount to a relatively small pile compared to the mountains of victims from our modern civilized wars. Who is the more "demonic", us or them? Who is crueler?

you can't blaim chimps for being chimps, that's right

but you can't deny human nature either
before dreaming of peace, one should first try to understand what human nature realy is,
being a gutmensch won't help

that humans are making much more victims is simply a consequence of human's higher intelligence and of humans being much more numerous on our planet
 

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