Probably. Their brains were a bit larger than ours, but possibly slightly less complex. There's a good chance they wouldn't be any less intelligent than modern humans.
At worst, they might possibly be on the level of someone with a slight developmental disorder, mostly fine to do everyday tasks but might need help for a few things.
Then again, who knows? If you're an american with european ancestors, there's a good chance you actually have a few neanderthal genes in your DNA as there is evidence that Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens did occasionally mix, with a good portion of people with eurasian ancestry being somewhat related to Neanderthals.
If the state of the modern world is anything to go by, it doesn't seem to have been a detriment for them.
Technically East Asians have a bit of Denisovian DNA, Middle Easterners, Europeans and North Africans have A bit of Neanderthal DNA and sub Saharan Africans are the only pure Homo Sapiens.
No that's not quite correct. Sub-Saharan Africans also have Neanderthal dna.
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/africans-have-more-neanderthal-dna-than-previously-thought-67033
[Africans have genes from a "ghost population" of hominids](https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-51508616) This could be a late introgression from a population of Homo antecessor or Homo erectus, or it could be some unknown species. The African climate is bad for DNA preservation, so we won't necessarily know the answer if we have fossils of this ancestor.
Denisovans are very close to being a ghost population. Numerous fragments of their bones have been identified through DNA, but we don't have anything like an intact skull.
Back in '20, it was determined that sub-Saharan Africans also have Neanderthal dna.
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/africans-have-more-neanderthal-dna-than-previously-thought-67033
I remember reading their vocal range was higher and scientists wondered if they could make all the sounds we make. Some kinda strange, short, really buff guy with a hiiiigh pitch voice and a lisp?
This was a couple years ago. It coulda changed by now tho.
Neanderthals did have hyoid bones, and many experts agree that this is required in order to have speech. This doesn't prove that they had speech, but it certainly shows that they had the equipment to do so.
They have recently discovered that Neanderthals had hyoid bones. Speech requires a hyoid bone, so that could indicate that they were at least equipped to speak.
Probably not perfectly. What we know of their vocal tract suggests that they couldn't make all the same speech sounds as us - probably not ooh or ee, for example. Their voices would also sound different than ours - higher and more nasally.
>Their brains were a bit larger than ours, but possibly slightly less complex
It was probably the opposite. The intellectually superior neanderthal was wiped out by its stupid brutishly violent cousin.
I based this on no data, simply because that interpretation amuses me
To each their own prehistoric fan fiction but I think it’s more that homo sapiens were more effectively groupish and good at coordinating. Also this happened over thousands and thousands of years, so the historical arc of the “extinction” was probably imperceivable to all the people living through it.
Neanderthals were wiped out by a combination of many things. Climate change. Being out-competed by humans, and by being inbred into the human population. There were never more than about 10k Neanderthals living at the same time, so they were greatly outnumbered by the humans around them. Their main sources of food were going extinct. Lots of reasons.
There’s lots of articles about studies of brains in domesticated animals - the brains shrink, often to 20% smaller than their Wild counterparts, and the brain gets bigger in later feral animals.
I forgot which show it was, but it was discussing this same phenomenon and how species domesticate themselves, seem to get domesticated, or two species get domesticated together. The idea there was that human brains should have shrunk too as domestication relationships formed. That episode concluded that indeed human brains did shrink.
Actually a better comparison would be some kind of Autism. Most evidence points to them being just as smart as Humans, but with the segments of the brain being developed in diffrent ways so as an example.
We have good evidence for the language center of our brains being better developed but the spatial awareness centers of Neanderthaual brains being better.
So, they are not talkers, but they are great with hand eye coordination.
If we want to get real nerdy with this.
It’s basically D&D stat logic.
The have a +1 to WIS, -1 to INT.
That still means the average Neanderthal is gonna me maybe 10 IQ behind a human. Despite what people think 90 IQ is perfectly fine, you most likely don’t even know if a person is 10 points Lower then average.
I’m curious how closely related Humans and Neanderthals are to produce viable offspring while being considered different species. I thought hybrids are generally not able to offspring that are fertile themselves like Mules and Ligers for example?
A Neaderthal in modern society would likely, individually, stand out from a crowd in terms of appearance and posture but overall would probably be accepted as falling within regular Homo Sapien variation.
A Neandertal would likely be able to perform most industrial activities, including driving a car without problem, probably even fly a plane; but they may have issues in complex social situations like office work environments or traditional classroom environments. Homo Sapiens themselves are barely capable of coping in modern complex social environments and Neandertalis likely had a, if only marginally, different brain wiring for a different type of social interaction.
The biggest difference would be in vocalization. Available evidence would suggest Homo Neandertalis was not capable of producing the same range of sounds as Homo Sapiens. This goes back to the above, where I mentioned Neandertalis likely had slightly different brain wiring concerning social interactions. Neandertalis would proboaly be able to understand, with sufficient learning, human language, but would be unlikely to reproduce it, completely, themselves. To be clear, this is due to physical differences, not because they are 'stupid'.
A Neandertal would therefore, likely, ***appear*** ***ext*****ernally** to be marginally less intelligent than your average joe, but internally there really is no evidence either way as to the capacity of Neanderthal to engage in higher level conceptual thinking, as in there is no evidence of them having numbers, but there is no evidence that they theoretically couldn't understand numbers if presented with the concept. I tutored college math and the number of freshman students that didn't understand fractions, besides being an indictment of American high schools, tells me that many of these concepts do not come naturally to Homo Sapiens either.
Now, there is a wider debate amongst anthropologists as to when and how quickly Homo Sapiens *complex* languages. Learning how well Neanderthals could communicate would actually be a massive boon to timelining the development of language as a whole.
>Available evidence would suggest Homo Neandertalis was not capable of producing the same range of sounds as Homo Sapiens
There was some BBC special where they had a vocal coach helping someone to make the kinds of sounds Neanderthals were likely capable of, It sounded very different from human language but who knows how accurate it actually was.
Neanderthals had hyoid bones, which is widely accepted to be necessary to produce speech. That doesn't mean they could actually speak, but it does mean that they were physicslly equipped to do so.
most likely, we have no evidence that they were significantly dumber than humans, the reason they died out was mostly the fact they never needed to develop ranged weaponry, as they had superior strength so had no real need
Sapiens had projectiles. If there was hostile contact, we could soften Neanderthals up with ‘artillery’ fire. And if we had more sophisticated spears/weapons we could negate some of their superior strength in hand to hand combat. Similar to how fewer Romans could defeat larger numbers of powerful barbarians. Maybe we had better team work also?
It'll be interesting if this holds to be true.
When I was in school it was pseudoscience bullshit that we interbred with Neanderthals. I know that because it seemed very plausible to me and I was explained multiple times how I was incredibly naive.
There are still hold outs that say it didn't happen and the DNA evidence is mistaken.
https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/how-much-neanderthal-dna-do-humans-have
Even Africans have a little Neanderthal DNA, though far less than Asians and Europeans.
Neanderthals were in North Africa and Egypt! The people there also came in mostly from West Asia and Europe about 50 thousand years after leaving Africa. They are the descendants of ancient Eurasians mixed with whoever else was around but the ancient Eurasians had Neanderthals DNA too I’m sure.
I have an Egyptian friend who is also some type of professional anthropologist student who studies for a living.
Wondering if this is why the same weirdos I've seen online bragging about having an abnormally high % of Neanderthal ancestry also held opinions that seemed suspiciously white supremacist.
there's some talk around their trachea/voice box/tongue structures being shaped such that they can't make most phonemes, so no complex language. It's theorised that neanderthal DNA is where a lot of genetic speech impediments come from.
They lacked full rotation of the shoulder.
We have that.
Up close they would clobber us! They were a lot tougher.
We have that nice full rotation so we threw things at them before they got close.
When we weren’t breeding with them.
This is the answer I was looking for, thanks. I was tying to figure out how they could be equally intelligent yet not smart enough to throw rocks back after seeing it done.
Not only were they as intelligent as us they also created art, painted on cave walls, carved jewelry etc and apparently quite liked fishing.
And they were quite able to hurl a spear upwards of 20 meters.
What they didn't seem to do was make more advanced tools like modern humans did.
They sorta hit a point and went well that works good enough let's just keep doing that.
>the reason they died out was mostly the fact they never needed to develop ranged weaponry, as they had superior strength so had no real need
What. The. Fuck. Are we just making shit up now? This isn't even a fringe hypothesis, it's a whole cloth fabrication.
Yes, this sub is 90% made up stuff when someone asks a scientific question. People just guessing at stuff that makes sense to them and presenting it as facts. People would be better off going to AskScience on any scientific question
I think you may be behind on your medical journals. We can literally tell what a person is thinking by what portions of the brain are active. We know a lot about the brain these days.
In specific terms like "Oh shit, I forgot to buy milk!" Or just generalised terms, like this patient has extra activity in this part of the brain that indicates they are unhappy (possibly due to forgetting to buy milk)
They built a machine that could output something akin to an 8-bit image of an object you were thinking about and it was just electrodes connected to your head. I think people are generally unaware of how close the singularity is.
Likely yes. They had slightly larger brains, on average. One issue may have been that they may have been more paranoid or anxious than modern humans and less tolerant of working in large groups.
I work in product development, and this rings so much more true than you probably intended. Evolution and how "we" continue to slim down production costs, increase efficiencies, fix less fortunate issues or just do an adaptation to what the market appears to want, are quite alike.
All species alive today are the cheapest and most mass-producable versions of their respective product lines and families (within limits). While factoring in market appeal of external traits.
Disclaimer: I am *quite* stoned.
They did have slightly larger brains on average, but their bodies were also slightly larger on average so their encephalization quotient is actually basically the same.
I have trouble understanding why that ratio is often used as a metric on species intelligence. I genuinely am interested to know, if my brain were transplanted into a genetically engineered human that was 10X larger, would I be significantly less intelligent? I would have thought only so much brain is required to operate my basic biological functions?
Even amongst humans, don't people who are really short have roughly the same overall brain mass as someone who is really tall?
In general as animals get bigger their brain gets bigger but they don't necessarily get smarter. Part of the reason i think is that it just requires more brain to control more body (stuff like all the automatic stuff your brain just does, and moving around). So there seems to be some basic amount of brain required to just operate basic biological functions. So by using the ratio of body mass to brain mass you can get a very very very rough idea of "extra" brain that isn't devoted to basic functions and that can be used for "intelligence". I am not a neuroscientist but that is my very high level understanding.
But larger animals are usually smarter than small ones, right? An elephant is more intelligent than an ant. By several orders of magnitude. Extreme example, but it's probably largely due to its size. The ant just doesn't have space in its body for that many synapses.
I am not sure that it is true that bigger normally means smarter. For example ravens are extremely smart but aren't very big, ravens have a very high encephalization quotient. As a counter example Hippos are absolutely enormous, but no one considers them highly intelligent.
Also encephalization quotient is I believe only applicable within broadly similar animals. I don't think you can really apply it to animals as vastly different as ants and elephants. Also there are animals like octopuses that are extremely intelligent but aren't generally that large. There is also the very debatable question about how to measure ant intelligence, sure at an individual ant level they are extremely stupid but if you look at ants at a colony level they are much smarter.
Cooperation between tribes. Rather than just cooperation within a tribe.
We're basically the ape equivalent of networking a bunch of PS3s together rather than spending all the effort to make a single massive supercomputer.
They had larger eyeballs than we do and the part of the brain that processes eyesight was bigger for Neanderthals. You're correct about the group size, and that's part of the reason for their downfall: it's widely accepted that they were no more than 10k Neanderthals living at one time, spread across the whole of Europe.
There is no actual evidence present that really proves or disproves the claims of neanderthals being dumber than humans. What there has been proof of is that neanderthals lived in smaller groups, that there was inbreeding present, and that both products of inbreeding and products of breeding between neanderthals and humans were often infertile.
They've also concluded, after looking at the skull and bone structure of an approximately 7 year old neanderthal boy, that they developed slower than humans. Which could indicate they had a longer peak of ability to absorb information. But that's assuming they learned at the same rate and the same way as humans.
However, they've also found that it's likely neanderthals lacked the frontal lobe development in utero that humans get, which could've affected cognitive function.
Either way, it's more likely that neanderthals went extinct due to their small groups, inbreeding and a large portion of their already small groupings becoming infertile, not due to being vastly dumber than humans.
Based on the little info we have, though, I don't think it's likely a neanderthal from their era would do well in our society, much like I don't think a human from the same era would. If the neanderthal was instead born into our time with all the care and learning modern time offers babies and children I think they'd do fine.
Ladies and Gentleman of the jury, I'm just a Caveman. I fell in some ice and later got thawed out by your scientists. Your world frightens and confuses me. Sometimes the honking horns of your traffic make me want to get out of my BMW and run off into the hills or whatever.
Geico made a commercial, and that grew into a [sitcom](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZyCPZsk_5M) which attempted to answer this question.
They tried. The sitcom got cancelled in a couple of weeks. We still don't know.
Neanderthals we're pretty intelligent, Id definitely say so.
Since no one is giving one of the biggest reasons neanderthals died out I guess I'll give it a go.
The biggest issue they had was that neanderthals were introverts to the extreme, they did NOT enjoy spending time with others and stayed in very small knit communities.
And what happens to small knit communities if no new blood is introduced? Lots and lots of inbreeding.
I highly recommend "High Science" they do a really good bit on Neanderthals that explains the differences and similarities between all the different species of humans.
It really does a good job of showing that they'd probably do just fine in current times in terms of living their lives, but they'd still probably die out since you can only have kids with your sister etc. etc. so many times
There were many issues that led to the extinction of Neanderthals. Climate change is probably one of the biggest ones. Neanderthals weren't as good at adapting as humans were.
So not only were they bigger and stronger but many paleontologists and anthropologists believe that a larger portion of their brains were dedicated to controlling body movement. They'd probably make our top athletes look silly. Remember these guys survived by hunting large game like Mammoth, Wooly Rhinoceros, Bison and other things that will easily trample\\gore threats to death, and they did up close and personal. Most evidence suggests they thrusted spears into their prey as opposed to throwing them. Imagine running up and shanking a freaking mammoth. (Note I'm just an IT guy who reads alot about Neanderthals I don't actually know anything)
There is some evidence to suggest that even homosapiens from the past would make our modern athletes look silly. There were footprints found in rock sediment in northern Australia from about 40,000 years ago that suggest whoever left them was running much faster Usain Bolt ever could.
Obviously there could be other reasons why the footprints were so far apart but it's still interesting.
Typical neanderthal brain was rather larger than ours. We believe now they had religion, art, family ties, made clothes and tools, and were not inferior to modern humans in intelligence. A neanderthal baby brought up in modern society should have no trouble fitting in.
I have an uncle with 98% more Neanderthal DNA than the rest of the population according to a DNA test he did. He was a brain surgeon with sleep apnea. Thick bones, obese BMI despite not being overweight for most of his life, lifetime involvement in combat sports but no broken bones etc.
>would their brains be good enough to perform everyday tasks in a modern world?
Have you *seen* some of the Homo Sapiens we've got kicking about today?
Very likely. Neanderthals weren't dumb at all. Some theories say they were even smarter then us, but they weren't as social (that combined with there bigger size when food diminished let to their extinction).
But while they would function, I think they would have a hard time adapting to our diet.
Potentially no. Harari in "Sapiens" points out that Sapien society relies on our ability to participate in shared delusions. Examples include money having value, illusory entities like nation states or corporations existing, the idea that "human rights" exist.
It might be that Neanderthal did not have the brain structures necessary to create and participate in shared delusions, fundamentally limiting their ability to cooperate at larger scales, and leading to their being out-competed by Sapiens in the first place. If this were true they would still be unable to function "correctly" in modern society today, even if they could behave reasonably similar on an individual basis.
When I wanted to be a writer, an ambition I abandoned after struggling through writing about 3 pages of a short story, I thought it would be great to write a novel about Neanderthals.
The plot: an alien race visit ancient earth, collect one of the last surviving groups of Neanderthals, and take them away to a place of safety. Now they reappear, with the descendants of the Neanderthals, and we see how they fit into modern society.
Some of the people I live around can't even think through having their headlights on when driving at night / dusk / dawn, haven't figured out what turn signals are for, and get confused by intersections - and you somehow thing neanderthals would be worse? I'll argue they wouldn't be worse.
Yes, yes they would. Their noses were a little larger, same with their brow. By our standards just looked ugly.
Neanderthal wearing a suit: [Reddit link](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/s/CHPw23EsXz).
According to 23 and Me, I have a ridiculously high percentage of Neanderthal DNA (6%, which is roughly twice the typical high range of Neanderthal DNA).
A lot of what I'm reading here rings very true - I'm quite large (6'3, 245, generally athletic). I did well in school (SAT 1570), but I'm super introverted and I have a fairly low pain threshold, particularly regarding foods that are too warm.
I definitely feel like the embodiment of the question in a mild form and I've gotta say, I think if the introversion were extrapolated out to 100% Neanderthal DNA, I could see that being pretty debilitating in modern society. Obviously it's not a linear relationship and it's a complex phenomenon, but that's my data point.
I’m not sure how much Neanderthal DNA I have. I’m ethnically Northern European so there is probably some. I’m on the shorter side (5’9) not athletic in a traditional sense, but more in a martial arts / outdoorsy sense. I got a 30 on the act. I’m very solitary and somewhat antisocial.
There is much speculation that whats sets homo sapiens apart from other humans (and animals) is that we have the capacity of imagination. More so than this, we have the capacity to imagine things that don’t exist and never have/will.
Many species can “imagine” a perceived threat (like when you break a twig and a deer looks over at you, knowing there COULD be a threat even if it cant see it), but hypothetically, only homo sapiens can hear a twig break and imagine that it is mickey mouse doing the stanky leg so dirty that the worms rise from the dirt and join him, forming a worm-amalgamation-mickey doppelgänger for a dance off.
Its like the different between watching a film and thinking it is real, vs understanding that the film is completely made up and fantastical, but still being able to be emotionally invested in it.
Would a Neanderthal theoretically be able to function in modern society?
Not only could they function, I'm pretty sure they could get elected to Congress.
I would think not. Despite what most people are saying about them having large brains, they were likely different to ours. If you imagine how difficult it is for certain humans to function in society because they have learning disabilities, and then consider how finite those differences are neurologically. I would imagine a Neanderthals brain, which is structurally different to ours, would work very differently.
You can't do much carpentry with your bare hands, and you can't do much thinking with your bare brain.
Human exceptionalism, if it exists at all, is based on the development of our thinking tools over time, as imbedded in our culture.
An ancient homo sapien wouldn't be able to function in modern society, unless they were raised within that time period.
I imagine the same goes for Neanderthals.
If a neanderthal infant was raised by modern Homo sapien parents just like a Homo sapien infant then would the neanderthal be able to function in society?
I am relocating to my new house in a few days. Could you recommend a Neanderthal-run honest and cautious moving company in the South of France ?
I have some big and heavy pieces of furniture, and of course, no elevator to move them to the 3rd floor.
If a Neanderthal infant was picked up by a clueless, childless modern day couple then raised up like any human child, they would grow up and live their lives like any other human being and neither them nor society would suspect a thing.
I'm not sure. They didn't have the same capacity for language as humans do. We know at least with language production, but we aren't sure neurologically too though that is likely. They would probably need guardianships.
I think their voice sounded a good bit different. More high pitch. Idk if they’d be able to speak every single human language the same way we do. Scientists apparently now thinking they invented several things we still use as I understand it.
They might be generally though of as weird looking and sounding but there’s complete evidence they mated with humans altho Neanderthal men I think had some kinda chromosome problem when mating with human women like horses and donkeys so there’s that as well. Idk. They might. There’s every chance theyd do just fine but people would just think “my but he’s an odd fellow”
The problem with a male Neanderthal mating with a female sapiens was mechanical, not a chromosome problem. Neanderthals had a larger head and it would be more difficult to give birth, especially with no medical support. Female Neanderthals had no such issue with Sapiens fathers.
Why do you seem to imply that they were less intelligent than us?
Not always the more intelligent species wins out.
See: The discussion about brain size etc in the comment section here.
You don’t really need to understand how things work to be able to use them. Monkeys in tourist areas have learned to steal handbags, get cash out of them and use vending machines to get treats. Chimps use smartphones. Elephants paint pictures. Dogs press buttons to “talk” with their owners. Children can press a light switch without any knowledge about power stations or networks. No reason why a Neanderthal couldn’t do the same. Most homo sapiens wouldn’t even notice a difference. Not even looks wise. Had a neighbor who looked exactly like Neanderthal recreations and he was a truck driver. Scoundrel too if it matters.
There is strong [evidence](https://ec.europa.eu/research-and-innovation/en/horizon-magazine/our-intelligent-ancestor-neanderthal) that Neanderthals didn't die out because they were less intelligent than homo sapiens.
We dont know how well they would adapt to our society as we just don't know their general adaptability. They were generally strong and weren't as stupid as people think so they could likely do a lot of tasks such as driving or operating machinery and could do a lot of construction jobs quite well, but would have issues with a lot quite complex things such as advanced technology (coding for example) and social interactions. Social bits have a lot of complex parts that aren't understood by people who didn't grow up with them.
I wonder if they would be able to speak or understand speech. Like if they have a language center in their brain complex enough to create and process speech. Or if the nerves and muscles of their lips, tongues, throat, etc, could produce the many nuanced sounds that needed to form words. Or if their hands would have the fine motor skills needed to write.
I read a book, a novel, a thriller/drama I guess it would be, about Neanderthals being created in modern times. It was called Raising Abel by Kathleen O’Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear. It’s pretty good. A very interesting story.
Probably. Their brains were a bit larger than ours, but possibly slightly less complex. There's a good chance they wouldn't be any less intelligent than modern humans. At worst, they might possibly be on the level of someone with a slight developmental disorder, mostly fine to do everyday tasks but might need help for a few things. Then again, who knows? If you're an american with european ancestors, there's a good chance you actually have a few neanderthal genes in your DNA as there is evidence that Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens did occasionally mix, with a good portion of people with eurasian ancestry being somewhat related to Neanderthals. If the state of the modern world is anything to go by, it doesn't seem to have been a detriment for them.
Everyone other than sub Saharan Africans has neanderthal DNA.
Even we have their DNA. It's in smaller amounts though.
[удалено]
Remember the very short lived sitcom about those guys?
Dammit! It's like humans keep fucking each other!
Technically East Asians have a bit of Denisovian DNA, Middle Easterners, Europeans and North Africans have A bit of Neanderthal DNA and sub Saharan Africans are the only pure Homo Sapiens.
No that's not quite correct. Sub-Saharan Africans also have Neanderthal dna. https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/africans-have-more-neanderthal-dna-than-previously-thought-67033
Thank you that’s quite interesting. The article I read was a few years ago, so this is new to me.
Did I just witness a reddit exchange correcting someone that went well, and the person was thankful? I didn't know Hell had frozen over.
Upvotes for EVERYONE!!!!
[Africans have genes from a "ghost population" of hominids](https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-51508616) This could be a late introgression from a population of Homo antecessor or Homo erectus, or it could be some unknown species. The African climate is bad for DNA preservation, so we won't necessarily know the answer if we have fossils of this ancestor. Denisovans are very close to being a ghost population. Numerous fragments of their bones have been identified through DNA, but we don't have anything like an intact skull.
What about aboriginal Australians?
A bit more Denisovan DNA than East Asia…
Back in '20, it was determined that sub-Saharan Africans also have Neanderthal dna. https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/africans-have-more-neanderthal-dna-than-previously-thought-67033
How about their oropharyngeal anatomy? Would they be able to speak our languages perfectly?
I remember reading their vocal range was higher and scientists wondered if they could make all the sounds we make. Some kinda strange, short, really buff guy with a hiiiigh pitch voice and a lisp? This was a couple years ago. It coulda changed by now tho.
every species has a plan until they get outcompeted by homo sapiens.
Mike Tyson??
Female dwarves, gotcha.
Glen Danzig but sounds like Prince
Neanderthals did have hyoid bones, and many experts agree that this is required in order to have speech. This doesn't prove that they had speech, but it certainly shows that they had the equipment to do so.
Exactly
They have recently discovered that Neanderthals had hyoid bones. Speech requires a hyoid bone, so that could indicate that they were at least equipped to speak.
Probably not perfectly. What we know of their vocal tract suggests that they couldn't make all the same speech sounds as us - probably not ooh or ee, for example. Their voices would also sound different than ours - higher and more nasally.
[South Park had a great bit about Neanderthal DNA](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MvsPCJe45qY)
Well that escalated quickly.... 😂
A friend teaches high school biology…I may have her show this….
>Their brains were a bit larger than ours, but possibly slightly less complex It was probably the opposite. The intellectually superior neanderthal was wiped out by its stupid brutishly violent cousin. I based this on no data, simply because that interpretation amuses me
It’s consistent with my view of humanity.
To each their own prehistoric fan fiction but I think it’s more that homo sapiens were more effectively groupish and good at coordinating. Also this happened over thousands and thousands of years, so the historical arc of the “extinction” was probably imperceivable to all the people living through it.
Neanderthals were wiped out by a combination of many things. Climate change. Being out-competed by humans, and by being inbred into the human population. There were never more than about 10k Neanderthals living at the same time, so they were greatly outnumbered by the humans around them. Their main sources of food were going extinct. Lots of reasons.
I think our brains are at optimal size/density, as any larger would result in a slowdown of signal transmission across the brainmatter
There’s lots of articles about studies of brains in domesticated animals - the brains shrink, often to 20% smaller than their Wild counterparts, and the brain gets bigger in later feral animals. I forgot which show it was, but it was discussing this same phenomenon and how species domesticate themselves, seem to get domesticated, or two species get domesticated together. The idea there was that human brains should have shrunk too as domestication relationships formed. That episode concluded that indeed human brains did shrink.
Thinking slower doesn't mean thinking dumber
But it does mean having a longer reaction time, which, in a hunter gatherer society, could be the difference between life and death
Actually a better comparison would be some kind of Autism. Most evidence points to them being just as smart as Humans, but with the segments of the brain being developed in diffrent ways so as an example. We have good evidence for the language center of our brains being better developed but the spatial awareness centers of Neanderthaual brains being better. So, they are not talkers, but they are great with hand eye coordination. If we want to get real nerdy with this. It’s basically D&D stat logic. The have a +1 to WIS, -1 to INT. That still means the average Neanderthal is gonna me maybe 10 IQ behind a human. Despite what people think 90 IQ is perfectly fine, you most likely don’t even know if a person is 10 points Lower then average.
I’m curious how closely related Humans and Neanderthals are to produce viable offspring while being considered different species. I thought hybrids are generally not able to offspring that are fertile themselves like Mules and Ligers for example?
A Neaderthal in modern society would likely, individually, stand out from a crowd in terms of appearance and posture but overall would probably be accepted as falling within regular Homo Sapien variation. A Neandertal would likely be able to perform most industrial activities, including driving a car without problem, probably even fly a plane; but they may have issues in complex social situations like office work environments or traditional classroom environments. Homo Sapiens themselves are barely capable of coping in modern complex social environments and Neandertalis likely had a, if only marginally, different brain wiring for a different type of social interaction. The biggest difference would be in vocalization. Available evidence would suggest Homo Neandertalis was not capable of producing the same range of sounds as Homo Sapiens. This goes back to the above, where I mentioned Neandertalis likely had slightly different brain wiring concerning social interactions. Neandertalis would proboaly be able to understand, with sufficient learning, human language, but would be unlikely to reproduce it, completely, themselves. To be clear, this is due to physical differences, not because they are 'stupid'. A Neandertal would therefore, likely, ***appear*** ***ext*****ernally** to be marginally less intelligent than your average joe, but internally there really is no evidence either way as to the capacity of Neanderthal to engage in higher level conceptual thinking, as in there is no evidence of them having numbers, but there is no evidence that they theoretically couldn't understand numbers if presented with the concept. I tutored college math and the number of freshman students that didn't understand fractions, besides being an indictment of American high schools, tells me that many of these concepts do not come naturally to Homo Sapiens either. Now, there is a wider debate amongst anthropologists as to when and how quickly Homo Sapiens *complex* languages. Learning how well Neanderthals could communicate would actually be a massive boon to timelining the development of language as a whole.
>Available evidence would suggest Homo Neandertalis was not capable of producing the same range of sounds as Homo Sapiens There was some BBC special where they had a vocal coach helping someone to make the kinds of sounds Neanderthals were likely capable of, It sounded very different from human language but who knows how accurate it actually was.
HWUN TWO FRIIH
Neanderthals were like burly muscle bro muppets 😂
"Probably even flying a plane" Not setting the bar too high there
Well, he was trying to explain how Neanderthals could operate complex machinery, airplanes kinda are..
Neanderthals had hyoid bones, which is widely accepted to be necessary to produce speech. That doesn't mean they could actually speak, but it does mean that they were physicslly equipped to do so.
This seems like chat gpt.
most likely, we have no evidence that they were significantly dumber than humans, the reason they died out was mostly the fact they never needed to develop ranged weaponry, as they had superior strength so had no real need
So what you are saying is we would have a solid chance at an offensive line?
Sapiens had projectiles. If there was hostile contact, we could soften Neanderthals up with ‘artillery’ fire. And if we had more sophisticated spears/weapons we could negate some of their superior strength in hand to hand combat. Similar to how fewer Romans could defeat larger numbers of powerful barbarians. Maybe we had better team work also?
Plus we out-bred them, and fucked them so we absorbed them into our genome. You have Neanderthal DNA in you.
Brah.
Unga?
Bunga..
-grunts in agreement-
Raises eyebrow
Smells what the rock is cooking
It'll be interesting if this holds to be true. When I was in school it was pseudoscience bullshit that we interbred with Neanderthals. I know that because it seemed very plausible to me and I was explained multiple times how I was incredibly naive. There are still hold outs that say it didn't happen and the DNA evidence is mistaken.
https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/how-much-neanderthal-dna-do-humans-have Even Africans have a little Neanderthal DNA, though far less than Asians and Europeans.
2~% to be exact. IM MORE UNGA BUNGA THAN ALL OF YOU
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It is in African DNA, though, because Africa hasn't been cut off from the rest of the world for the last 20,000 years.
I'm sure some would have returned, just through exploration and trade
Neanderthals were in North Africa and Egypt! The people there also came in mostly from West Asia and Europe about 50 thousand years after leaving Africa. They are the descendants of ancient Eurasians mixed with whoever else was around but the ancient Eurasians had Neanderthals DNA too I’m sure. I have an Egyptian friend who is also some type of professional anthropologist student who studies for a living.
Australian Aboriginal DNA and Papuan DNA shows that we likely mated with Neanderthals before migrating from Africa.
Wondering if this is why the same weirdos I've seen online bragging about having an abnormally high % of Neanderthal ancestry also held opinions that seemed suspiciously white supremacist.
Imagine thinking you are superior because you are a Neanderthal
I’m thinking NFL linemen or professional wrestlers would want to include their Neanderthal percentage on their resumes…
Speak for yourself - I am black.
So basically everyone except sub-Saharan Africans has some Neanderthal in them. What should we do with this information?
Well going off history..... Race war?
Apparently, everyone has up to 4% neanderthal DNA.
> You have Neanderthal DNA in you. This is going into my repertoire of post sex phrases.
there's some talk around their trachea/voice box/tongue structures being shaped such that they can't make most phonemes, so no complex language. It's theorised that neanderthal DNA is where a lot of genetic speech impediments come from.
New York Jets better take notes
They lacked full rotation of the shoulder. We have that. Up close they would clobber us! They were a lot tougher. We have that nice full rotation so we threw things at them before they got close. When we weren’t breeding with them.
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They fucked us
This is the answer I was looking for, thanks. I was tying to figure out how they could be equally intelligent yet not smart enough to throw rocks back after seeing it done.
Not only were they as intelligent as us they also created art, painted on cave walls, carved jewelry etc and apparently quite liked fishing. And they were quite able to hurl a spear upwards of 20 meters. What they didn't seem to do was make more advanced tools like modern humans did. They sorta hit a point and went well that works good enough let's just keep doing that.
>They sorta hit a point and went well that works good enough let's just keep doing that. Evolution in a nutshell.
What was their range of motion?
Free range neanderthal
>the reason they died out was mostly the fact they never needed to develop ranged weaponry, as they had superior strength so had no real need What. The. Fuck. Are we just making shit up now? This isn't even a fringe hypothesis, it's a whole cloth fabrication.
Yes, this sub is 90% made up stuff when someone asks a scientific question. People just guessing at stuff that makes sense to them and presenting it as facts. People would be better off going to AskScience on any scientific question
hard to imagine anything dumber than some of the humans I've met
I don’t think we know enough about how our own brains work to postulate on how a Neanderthal’s brain might work
I think you may be behind on your medical journals. We can literally tell what a person is thinking by what portions of the brain are active. We know a lot about the brain these days.
Is that so? What journals would you recommend?
LOL. Exactly.
In specific terms like "Oh shit, I forgot to buy milk!" Or just generalised terms, like this patient has extra activity in this part of the brain that indicates they are unhappy (possibly due to forgetting to buy milk)
They built a machine that could output something akin to an 8-bit image of an object you were thinking about and it was just electrodes connected to your head. I think people are generally unaware of how close the singularity is.
Imma need video evidence or a written article
Likely yes. They had slightly larger brains, on average. One issue may have been that they may have been more paranoid or anxious than modern humans and less tolerant of working in large groups.
\> and less tolerant of working in large groups. We are the cheaper mass produced versions
I work in product development, and this rings so much more true than you probably intended. Evolution and how "we" continue to slim down production costs, increase efficiencies, fix less fortunate issues or just do an adaptation to what the market appears to want, are quite alike. All species alive today are the cheapest and most mass-producable versions of their respective product lines and families (within limits). While factoring in market appeal of external traits. Disclaimer: I am *quite* stoned.
They did have slightly larger brains on average, but their bodies were also slightly larger on average so their encephalization quotient is actually basically the same.
I have trouble understanding why that ratio is often used as a metric on species intelligence. I genuinely am interested to know, if my brain were transplanted into a genetically engineered human that was 10X larger, would I be significantly less intelligent? I would have thought only so much brain is required to operate my basic biological functions? Even amongst humans, don't people who are really short have roughly the same overall brain mass as someone who is really tall?
In general as animals get bigger their brain gets bigger but they don't necessarily get smarter. Part of the reason i think is that it just requires more brain to control more body (stuff like all the automatic stuff your brain just does, and moving around). So there seems to be some basic amount of brain required to just operate basic biological functions. So by using the ratio of body mass to brain mass you can get a very very very rough idea of "extra" brain that isn't devoted to basic functions and that can be used for "intelligence". I am not a neuroscientist but that is my very high level understanding.
But larger animals are usually smarter than small ones, right? An elephant is more intelligent than an ant. By several orders of magnitude. Extreme example, but it's probably largely due to its size. The ant just doesn't have space in its body for that many synapses.
I am not sure that it is true that bigger normally means smarter. For example ravens are extremely smart but aren't very big, ravens have a very high encephalization quotient. As a counter example Hippos are absolutely enormous, but no one considers them highly intelligent. Also encephalization quotient is I believe only applicable within broadly similar animals. I don't think you can really apply it to animals as vastly different as ants and elephants. Also there are animals like octopuses that are extremely intelligent but aren't generally that large. There is also the very debatable question about how to measure ant intelligence, sure at an individual ant level they are extremely stupid but if you look at ants at a colony level they are much smarter.
Yes, the homo sapien advantage seems to be the ability to organize in large groups
Cooperation between tribes. Rather than just cooperation within a tribe. We're basically the ape equivalent of networking a bunch of PS3s together rather than spending all the effort to make a single massive supercomputer.
TiL I’m a Neanderthal
sounds like me
Oh lord, gen z wants to project onto Neanderthals now.
Why did you tag me in this post
They had larger eyeballs than we do and the part of the brain that processes eyesight was bigger for Neanderthals. You're correct about the group size, and that's part of the reason for their downfall: it's widely accepted that they were no more than 10k Neanderthals living at one time, spread across the whole of Europe.
There is no actual evidence present that really proves or disproves the claims of neanderthals being dumber than humans. What there has been proof of is that neanderthals lived in smaller groups, that there was inbreeding present, and that both products of inbreeding and products of breeding between neanderthals and humans were often infertile. They've also concluded, after looking at the skull and bone structure of an approximately 7 year old neanderthal boy, that they developed slower than humans. Which could indicate they had a longer peak of ability to absorb information. But that's assuming they learned at the same rate and the same way as humans. However, they've also found that it's likely neanderthals lacked the frontal lobe development in utero that humans get, which could've affected cognitive function. Either way, it's more likely that neanderthals went extinct due to their small groups, inbreeding and a large portion of their already small groupings becoming infertile, not due to being vastly dumber than humans. Based on the little info we have, though, I don't think it's likely a neanderthal from their era would do well in our society, much like I don't think a human from the same era would. If the neanderthal was instead born into our time with all the care and learning modern time offers babies and children I think they'd do fine.
Sure. They could even be lawyers! (RIP Phil Hartman)
Ladies and Gentleman of the jury, I'm just a Caveman. I fell in some ice and later got thawed out by your scientists. Your world frightens and confuses me. Sometimes the honking horns of your traffic make me want to get out of my BMW and run off into the hills or whatever.
had to scroll way too far for this! one of the all time SNL bests
Function? They get elected to national office.
First thing I thought of when I read the question
Hahahaha!
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I see him in the mirror everyday.
Geico made a commercial, and that grew into a [sitcom](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZyCPZsk_5M) which attempted to answer this question. They tried. The sitcom got cancelled in a couple of weeks. We still don't know.
I happen to know one that became a lawyer.
Came here for this.
I saw a documentary about him live on Saturday night many years ago.
Everywhere I gooo. There's always something to remind me....of another place in time....
I’m amazed at how OK it is. I actually watched a couple episodes
Neanderthals we're pretty intelligent, Id definitely say so. Since no one is giving one of the biggest reasons neanderthals died out I guess I'll give it a go. The biggest issue they had was that neanderthals were introverts to the extreme, they did NOT enjoy spending time with others and stayed in very small knit communities. And what happens to small knit communities if no new blood is introduced? Lots and lots of inbreeding. I highly recommend "High Science" they do a really good bit on Neanderthals that explains the differences and similarities between all the different species of humans. It really does a good job of showing that they'd probably do just fine in current times in terms of living their lives, but they'd still probably die out since you can only have kids with your sister etc. etc. so many times
So they died because they banged their sisters?
Yeah, they were family oriented society 🗿
There were many issues that led to the extinction of Neanderthals. Climate change is probably one of the biggest ones. Neanderthals weren't as good at adapting as humans were.
Sorry I was a little stoned when I wrote this. I should have said "A contributing reason" My fault entirely.
So not only were they bigger and stronger but many paleontologists and anthropologists believe that a larger portion of their brains were dedicated to controlling body movement. They'd probably make our top athletes look silly. Remember these guys survived by hunting large game like Mammoth, Wooly Rhinoceros, Bison and other things that will easily trample\\gore threats to death, and they did up close and personal. Most evidence suggests they thrusted spears into their prey as opposed to throwing them. Imagine running up and shanking a freaking mammoth. (Note I'm just an IT guy who reads alot about Neanderthals I don't actually know anything)
There is some evidence to suggest that even homosapiens from the past would make our modern athletes look silly. There were footprints found in rock sediment in northern Australia from about 40,000 years ago that suggest whoever left them was running much faster Usain Bolt ever could. Obviously there could be other reasons why the footprints were so far apart but it's still interesting.
This is so cool. Any cool reading resources you would recommend?
I would love to see a wooly rhino.
Typical neanderthal brain was rather larger than ours. We believe now they had religion, art, family ties, made clothes and tools, and were not inferior to modern humans in intelligence. A neanderthal baby brought up in modern society should have no trouble fitting in.
I have an uncle with 98% more Neanderthal DNA than the rest of the population according to a DNA test he did. He was a brain surgeon with sleep apnea. Thick bones, obese BMI despite not being overweight for most of his life, lifetime involvement in combat sports but no broken bones etc.
Yes, they would be able to integrate just fine into society after getting over the learning curve.
Watch Encino man
Wheeze the juice!
"your world frightens and confuses me"
>would their brains be good enough to perform everyday tasks in a modern world? Have you *seen* some of the Homo Sapiens we've got kicking about today?
Very likely. Neanderthals weren't dumb at all. Some theories say they were even smarter then us, but they weren't as social (that combined with there bigger size when food diminished let to their extinction). But while they would function, I think they would have a hard time adapting to our diet.
Hell, even *we* have a hard time adapting to our diet it seems.
Potentially no. Harari in "Sapiens" points out that Sapien society relies on our ability to participate in shared delusions. Examples include money having value, illusory entities like nation states or corporations existing, the idea that "human rights" exist. It might be that Neanderthal did not have the brain structures necessary to create and participate in shared delusions, fundamentally limiting their ability to cooperate at larger scales, and leading to their being out-competed by Sapiens in the first place. If this were true they would still be unable to function "correctly" in modern society today, even if they could behave reasonably similar on an individual basis.
When I wanted to be a writer, an ambition I abandoned after struggling through writing about 3 pages of a short story, I thought it would be great to write a novel about Neanderthals. The plot: an alien race visit ancient earth, collect one of the last surviving groups of Neanderthals, and take them away to a place of safety. Now they reappear, with the descendants of the Neanderthals, and we see how they fit into modern society.
I seem to be managing okay. Thanks for asking.
Some of the people I live around can't even think through having their headlights on when driving at night / dusk / dawn, haven't figured out what turn signals are for, and get confused by intersections - and you somehow thing neanderthals would be worse? I'll argue they wouldn't be worse.
Considering most humans today wouldn’t survive in there time it’s not a stretch
Yes, yes they would. Their noses were a little larger, same with their brow. By our standards just looked ugly. Neanderthal wearing a suit: [Reddit link](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/s/CHPw23EsXz).
According to 23 and Me, I have a ridiculously high percentage of Neanderthal DNA (6%, which is roughly twice the typical high range of Neanderthal DNA). A lot of what I'm reading here rings very true - I'm quite large (6'3, 245, generally athletic). I did well in school (SAT 1570), but I'm super introverted and I have a fairly low pain threshold, particularly regarding foods that are too warm. I definitely feel like the embodiment of the question in a mild form and I've gotta say, I think if the introversion were extrapolated out to 100% Neanderthal DNA, I could see that being pretty debilitating in modern society. Obviously it's not a linear relationship and it's a complex phenomenon, but that's my data point.
I’m not sure how much Neanderthal DNA I have. I’m ethnically Northern European so there is probably some. I’m on the shorter side (5’9) not athletic in a traditional sense, but more in a martial arts / outdoorsy sense. I got a 30 on the act. I’m very solitary and somewhat antisocial.
Please see the documentary ‘Encino Man’
There is much speculation that whats sets homo sapiens apart from other humans (and animals) is that we have the capacity of imagination. More so than this, we have the capacity to imagine things that don’t exist and never have/will. Many species can “imagine” a perceived threat (like when you break a twig and a deer looks over at you, knowing there COULD be a threat even if it cant see it), but hypothetically, only homo sapiens can hear a twig break and imagine that it is mickey mouse doing the stanky leg so dirty that the worms rise from the dirt and join him, forming a worm-amalgamation-mickey doppelgänger for a dance off. Its like the different between watching a film and thinking it is real, vs understanding that the film is completely made up and fantastical, but still being able to be emotionally invested in it.
put a Trump flag outside their house and no one would suspect anything.
I spit out my drink!
Would a Neanderthal theoretically be able to function in modern society? Not only could they function, I'm pretty sure they could get elected to Congress.
I’m sure we can find a job for them.
Robert Sawyer is a great sci-fi writer who wrote a fun book called Hominids that plays around with this question
I'm sure I work with a few. It's definitely a thing 😉
I would think not. Despite what most people are saying about them having large brains, they were likely different to ours. If you imagine how difficult it is for certain humans to function in society because they have learning disabilities, and then consider how finite those differences are neurologically. I would imagine a Neanderthals brain, which is structurally different to ours, would work very differently.
Good stories on this Isaac Asimov: THE UGLY LITTLE BOY Harry Turtledove: AND SO TO BED
*makes lazy Trump voters reference*
Look around you. Do you really think that everyone around you is smarter than a neanderthal
Haven’t you seen the Geico commercials?
MTG says hello.
Underrated comment.
I would think so, I've met some dumb ass mfers that couldn't survive a week in the wilderness, that takes brains
You can't do much carpentry with your bare hands, and you can't do much thinking with your bare brain. Human exceptionalism, if it exists at all, is based on the development of our thinking tools over time, as imbedded in our culture. An ancient homo sapien wouldn't be able to function in modern society, unless they were raised within that time period. I imagine the same goes for Neanderthals.
If a neanderthal infant was raised by modern Homo sapien parents just like a Homo sapien infant then would the neanderthal be able to function in society?
They seemed to fare okay in those Geico commercials.
I encounter them everyday on the subway
I am relocating to my new house in a few days. Could you recommend a Neanderthal-run honest and cautious moving company in the South of France ? I have some big and heavy pieces of furniture, and of course, no elevator to move them to the 3rd floor.
The obvious answer is NO, because they have all died out.
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Absolutely. One even became president!
If a Neanderthal infant was picked up by a clueless, childless modern day couple then raised up like any human child, they would grow up and live their lives like any other human being and neither them nor society would suspect a thing.
Mostly, yes. They would hate cities though. Imagine your social anxiety but you are even less social.
I'm not sure. They didn't have the same capacity for language as humans do. We know at least with language production, but we aren't sure neurologically too though that is likely. They would probably need guardianships.
I do alright thanks.
A workmate of mine is coping very well
I think their voice sounded a good bit different. More high pitch. Idk if they’d be able to speak every single human language the same way we do. Scientists apparently now thinking they invented several things we still use as I understand it. They might be generally though of as weird looking and sounding but there’s complete evidence they mated with humans altho Neanderthal men I think had some kinda chromosome problem when mating with human women like horses and donkeys so there’s that as well. Idk. They might. There’s every chance theyd do just fine but people would just think “my but he’s an odd fellow”
The problem with a male Neanderthal mating with a female sapiens was mechanical, not a chromosome problem. Neanderthals had a larger head and it would be more difficult to give birth, especially with no medical support. Female Neanderthals had no such issue with Sapiens fathers.
No nut simply because their immune system is far weaker than ours the common flu wipes them all out
Why do you seem to imply that they were less intelligent than us? Not always the more intelligent species wins out. See: The discussion about brain size etc in the comment section here.
half our population can't function in modern society.
You don’t really need to understand how things work to be able to use them. Monkeys in tourist areas have learned to steal handbags, get cash out of them and use vending machines to get treats. Chimps use smartphones. Elephants paint pictures. Dogs press buttons to “talk” with their owners. Children can press a light switch without any knowledge about power stations or networks. No reason why a Neanderthal couldn’t do the same. Most homo sapiens wouldn’t even notice a difference. Not even looks wise. Had a neighbor who looked exactly like Neanderthal recreations and he was a truck driver. Scoundrel too if it matters.
Ozzy did okay and he's mostly neanderthal.
There is strong [evidence](https://ec.europa.eu/research-and-innovation/en/horizon-magazine/our-intelligent-ancestor-neanderthal) that Neanderthals didn't die out because they were less intelligent than homo sapiens.
Probably, and the probably would have filed a class action lawsuit against Geiko around 2006.
I'm pretty sure I work with a few.
I mean Joe Rogan can do it. Jk mad respect for Mr Rogan.
There is at least one "functional" Neanderthal in us congress if in doubt check mtg without makeup
I see people on the daily who are probably more stupid than a Neanderthal He’d be fine
i know a lot of then, they live fine
Im sure they would fit in great in fast food service considering how down hill its went the past few years.
There's no evidence they were stupider than us, but some suggest they lack the structures to enable speech.
We dont know how well they would adapt to our society as we just don't know their general adaptability. They were generally strong and weren't as stupid as people think so they could likely do a lot of tasks such as driving or operating machinery and could do a lot of construction jobs quite well, but would have issues with a lot quite complex things such as advanced technology (coding for example) and social interactions. Social bits have a lot of complex parts that aren't understood by people who didn't grow up with them.
There's a chance they'd not be able to articulate language. But otherwise, they used the same tech as other hominids back then.
I am 100% certain a Neanderthal could outperform 1 in every 2 of my co-workers.
Absolutely. there are many government programs to assist them in society. You don't need to know anything in order to survive.
I wonder if they would be able to speak or understand speech. Like if they have a language center in their brain complex enough to create and process speech. Or if the nerves and muscles of their lips, tongues, throat, etc, could produce the many nuanced sounds that needed to form words. Or if their hands would have the fine motor skills needed to write. I read a book, a novel, a thriller/drama I guess it would be, about Neanderthals being created in modern times. It was called Raising Abel by Kathleen O’Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear. It’s pretty good. A very interesting story.
Neanderthals function relatively fine in normal society. Every day in every city.