Neanderthals hunted dangerous cave lions, study shows | Hacker News Reader

Neanderthals hunted dangerous cave lions, study shows

phys.org

53 pointswglb51 comments

I've been watching too many Baldur's Gate Youtube videos on how to build a character, and one guy talks about the "power spike" when your character gets a particularly useful ability, like an extra bonus action per turn.

The biggest power spike of genus Homo may have been attaching a rock to the end of a stick. The spear changed our ancestors from sub-apex prey to predators ready to take on a lion in its cave. From meat to masters of all we surveyed. The next power surge of that magnitude may have been nukes.

Yet it couldn't save neanderthalensis from sapiens.

I think the gun was probably a big one, prior to nukes.

A bullet is just a really fast spear.

A really fast javelin (throwing spear), technically.

Provided that the nukes really exist of course :)

> Yet it couldn't save neanderthalensis from sapiens.

This is what I don’t understand. Neanderthals were strong and smart. Did Homo sapiens kill them outright I.e. war? Or was it more of a outcompete and outbreed situation?

> Or was it more of a outcompete and outbreed situation?

There’s a lot of evidence we more or less absorbed the neanderthal population. Old school tribal genocide style – you win the war/battle, kill the men, take their wives. We don’t know if that’s exactly how it happened, but it stands to reason that pre-historic tribal warfare wasn’t much different than the more recent tribal warfare we do have records about.

1% to 4% of human DNA, for people with non-African backgrounds, is Neanderthal: https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/genetics/ancient-dna-an... (cmd+f for “interbreeding”)

Mind you the whole “take their wives” aspect of human warfare is, uhm, pretty well documented: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wartime_sexual_violence

It must have been both, right? In the sense that higher populations would tend to be helpful when fights started, better resources lead to higher population, and winning fights leads to better access to resources.

Maybe the cave lions united together and hunted down all Neanderthals :)

AFAIK, there is a lot of evidence for climate change being a very large factor for neanderthals disappearing.

Neanderthals were built for the winter and for the colder periods of the earth's weather. Cold temperatures would also lead to smaller group sizes. It then seems likely that Neanderthal groups were picked off one by one by large groups of homo sapiens. If you have a 1:100 or even a 1:10 numbers advantage (when you opponent's group doesn't exceed ~80 people), it often doesn't matter how advanced or smart your opponent is. They're going to get flattened no matter what they do. Bloodlust combined with very large group sizes usually leads to lower individual quality but there's a limit to how many one guy could pick off. After the 15th or the 20th guy you're likely to get hit a couple of times, no matter how skilled you are. And after that you're done for, no strongman can stand even a 10-man dogpile.

Considering how low population densities were back in those days I’m not sure violent competition was really that necessary.

Even during the neolithic when farmers from the middle east started migrated into Europe they seemingly just lived side by side with the local hunter gathers for hundreds of years. As the farmer populations were growing at an extremely fast pace (for premodern times) eventually they started moving into the areas inhabited by hunter gathers but according to current evidence these societies just merged and there was no large scale genocide or something like that.

Back in the Neanderthal days population growth was much slower so this process probably took much longer but it’s not inconceivable that climate change and some sort of assimilation were the primary reason why the Neanderthals went extinct instead of violent conflict.

Oh, I don't mean conflict with other Neanderthals. I meant conflict with Homo Sapiens, who by all accounts seem to be much more comfortable with larger group sizes, and aren't cold-adapted.

Yes, violent competition isn't conducive to low population densities (especially in an environment as unforgiving as the Neanderthals') but that doesn't mean another larger group couldn't invade. After all, changing "humanoid" group sizes (aka "Culture") would take much longer than the introduction of the Holocene.

> conflict with Homo Sapiens

Yes, that was exactly what I meant (or tried to)

my laymen's understanding: the weather changed, and with it, forests retreated and plains came about. Neanderthals hunted with handheld spears, ambushing pray in the forest (evidenced by denser bones on one half of the body). Homo sapiens were more adept at plains hunting and throwing spears and one population outgrew the other. Cross breeding eventually eradicated the former as evidenced by the fragments of Neanderthal DNA present in the modern population. I've also heard it said that sapiens were more social, leading to better communication between groups.

I'm 2.3% Neanderthal.

We're still around!

Reading things like this, reminds me of how badass our ancestors were.

Armed with just primitive weapons they took on lions, bears, wolves, mammoths.

Don't forget that they have had larger brains too.

True although that doesn't necessarily mean more intelligence – theoretically smaller could mean more efficient – like how our computers have decreased in size but increased in performance.

It's not just a theory. Many animals have bigger brains than humans including mammoths.

The Neanderthals and earlier Homo Sapiens Sapiens (which have had larger brain than ours too), have had smaller bodies with larger brains though.

Actually, intelligence is a hindrance, not help when fighting a lion. I mean, it's useful to have one smart person in the tribe, to invent all those weapons, but smart people tend to overthink everything, making them worse fighters/hunters.

This is absurd. The only reason modern humans overthink things is because the modern environment and conveniences do not really challenge humans in the same way they evolved to be challenged. A group of male humans is excellently evolved to fight a lion or a mammoth or another group of male humans, and in doing so, execute complex strategies and tactics as a team.

Link to the paper with more context, maps, and images: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-42764-0

Hunting? Or the direction your companion stabbed as you were being mauled?

It said the lion was laying down on its side when it was stabbed by a spear which I guess they figured out with some forensics or analysis.

These are details that are impossible to ascertain.

It's always an estimation of course. But if you are going to damage a bone sufficiently to leave a deep mark with a (probably sharpened rock) spear then it really helps to have a hard surface underneath to do so. It could have been standing and then pushed up against a wall but two hands thrusting it downward is safer bet.

Why not both ?

Yeah?

Up until relatively recently African tribes used to hunt elephants, lions, hippos, rhinos and more with just spears.

Of course humans hunted animals back then too.

>Neanderthals hunted dangerous cave lions

I was wondering what other kind of cave lions were they likely to encounter?

Or maybe it was Homo Sapiens that domesticated the harmless cave lions, and there you go.

Perhaps more risk-averse but wiser in the long run.

Sounds like Far Cry Primal

I’ve played most of the Far Cry games. Starting with the first one.

That one’s by far the most interesting. Dunno about “best” (to me, “interesting” adds enough appeal in this case that it’s probably also my favorite, but “best” depends on the player) but definitely most interesting.

I gave it up. Too much crafting. Maybe I should go back to it...

It’s got more of a simulation element than the others (though it’s still very game-oriented, to be clear—I’ve played modded Skyrim that was more simulationist than FC:Primal, without even cranking those mods as far toward realism as they go) which is probably a downer if you’re in for a fun casual romp like most of the other far cry games (especially 3 on).

What I found interesting was that it, at times, made me feel a tiny fraction of the kind of awe and fear—and power—that I expect Stone Age people really did feel, for similar reasons.

It’s also one of the few games that’s ever taught me a practical non-computer skill. I string my recurve bow the way the first-time longer crafting animation for a bow shows you doing it :-)

The way it was balanced made Primal feel a lot more 'real' than the other Far Cry games. Normally in Far Cry you might shoot an enemy in the chest 20 times with a rifle and he won't die, simply because that rifle is cheap. In Primal, from what I recall, pretty much all the human enemies would go down with no more than a few arrow wounds. And if it took more than that, an enemy continuing to fight with a few arrows in him was at least easier to suspend disbelief for.

For those that find this kind of history interesting, I strongly recommend the book “Sapiens” by Yuval Harari.

Its distillation of the complexities of human evolution while being careful to admit things we don’t know and not over-assume make for a truly great read (so far*, Im not yet done with it!)

> “Sapiens” by Yuval Harari

I was looking forward to this book but found it to be almost unreadable. I don't remember my specific issues, just that I was discouraged after several attempts and gave it up which rarely happens with me.

I believe I had just read a few other novels about human evolution/ancient civs and found some of Yuval's assertions to conflict (IMHO) with what I read elsewhere, most likely The Dawn of Everything (not certain).

what other books have you read? I'd be interested in that list.

I looked back, my issue was with another Yuval book: Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow

Maybe I'll try Sapians it give Yuval another try.

My recent list:

The Half Known Life

Born a Crime

American Prometheus

Operation Mincemeat

Leonardo Da Vinci

Powers and Thrones

The Icepick Surgeon

Destiny of the Republic

The River of Doubt

Red Famine

Under the Banner of Heaven

In Order to Live

The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream

Homo Deus

The Confidence Men

The Bomber Mafia

Calypso

Termination Shock

Red Platoon: A True Story of American Valor

The Dawn of Everything

The Secret Life of Groceries

The Hidden Life of Trees

I think Sapiens may be a product of it's time. It may still true today, but I think this became really popular during the Joe Rogan era prior to covid.

This type of content was taking off then. Lots of shrewd observations that seem to point in a convenient direction. Then you realize that most of these things were never really meaningful, if they were even true to begin with.

Just a collection of interesting annectdotes at best. Bunch of interesting factoids that are patched together, with no real meaning.

I read Guns, Germs, and Steel right before reading Sapiens. While I've heard that some of the ideas of GGS were not well received, I really enjoyed it. Sapiens felt more like a tech bro hand waving and jumping to conclusions that he thought was obvious and I thought was suspect.

Edit: Two takeaways I did enjoy (can't recall from which book):

Humans were pray animals that quickly became dominant predators, not allowing us to develop the confidence of "real" predators, so we are still scared of the dark and everything else.

Humans were able to stay in practically the same state for 40k years in Australia. After killing some megafauna of course. In the last 1k years, we've upset the apple cart and may destroy the world as we know and need it. We _can_ coexist in our environment without utterly destroying it in 40k years - but we are not.

Ironically, the reason some of the ideas of Guns, Germs, and Steel were poorly received is that it, too, is perceived by experts in the relevant fields as rather egregiously engaging in handwaving and jumping to conclusions.

> In the last 1k years, we've upset the apple cart and may destroy the world as we know and need it. We _can_ coexist in our environment without utterly destroying it in 40k years - but we are not.

It’s extremely unlikely that whatever we do to the environment will decrease QoL in developed countries below that which was experienced by the Australian aboriginals (when measured by child mortality, life expectancy, access to stuff etc.) though.

That strikes me as incredibly confident that humanity (and developed countries), will avoid even some of the pessimistic consequences of climate change, let alone some of the potentially dire scenarios. Please share why you are so confident. I could use a mood boost on this friday... :)

Aborigines didn't just hunt megafauna to extinction they managed their environment to make it what it is to day. This is true of Native Americans too.

Any thing we do in sufficient numbers has an effect on the environment regardless of our tech level.

It's not at all proven that the megafauna extinction is a result of overhunting.

Well now we know why they went extinct.

However many points you take away, the joke was worth it.

Instead of a boring article, I wish they used some kind of AI to make a movie with AI voices and AI sound to illustrate that word salad.

Word salad is "confused or unintelligible mixture of seemingly random words and phrases." Which part of the article seemed confusing/unintelligible/random to you?

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