How Neanderthal Predation Created Modern Humans | Hacker News Reader

How Neanderthal Predation Created Modern Humans

themandus.org

12 pointsolliesaunders17 comments

The nicest thing I can say is that it may inspire some neat scifi stories. The author has some very odd theories about junk DNA ...

Anyway for those who'd like more background on Mr. Vendramini: http://www.theage.com.au/news/in-depth/origin-of-a-big-idea/...

edit: though to be fair, he does have a good point about the anthropomorphising assumptions behind all those "artistic reconstructions" of what Neanderthals might have looked like.

Well, it took a patent clerk to find the missing pieces to Newton's laws, and that took 150 years , so an "amateur biologist" evolving Darwin's theories? Why not.

But I'll agree it's unlikely. After all, the first comment on this site "I couldn't put it down once...etc" is from Don Burke on Radio 2UE ... well-known to all Australians as the long-running host of our favourite gardening program.

I don't know much about the subject, but I read through the first half of his paper ( http://themandus.org/abstract.html ) and it seems reasonably well argued, fair in assessing the strength of the evidence supporting his hypotheses, and overall very scholarly. I don't think his ideas can be dismissed out of hand.

According to the authors, this is a more realistic depiction of what Neanderthals probably looked like:

http://themandus.org/what_they_looked_like.html

The page on "Them" goes heavily into the importance of big, slitted eyes and how our wariness of such indicates the effect of millenia of Neanderthal predation.

As opposed to indicating the effect of millions of years of predation by a variety of large felines, many of which hunted at night.

Ah, apparently we've got some people with investment in this "theory" around.

EDIT: And yes, you don't normally comment about moderation. But someone voting people down for being skeptical about a bit of half-baked, book-selling, amateur speculation is worth noting.

A major problem with this idea is that Neanderthals were limited to Europe and the Middle East. That makes them a very unlikely candidate for a predator to reshape the evolutionary psyche of all humanity.

Those damn neanderthals look scary as hell. I'm telling you, I felt an primeval gut reaction looking at those pictures.

Maybe he's on to something.

They're definitely on to something with the eyes. I don't scare easily, but any vaguely hominid-shaped creature with big eyes gives me a visceral feeling of fright. The vertical slit has an affect, too. I think most people have this same reaction.

Another example of this which I don't think they cite in the article would be modern alien abduction mythology. Most of the renderings and conceptual drawings of them portray beings with enormous black eyes (also slanted in the same fashion as the rendered neanderthals in parent article).

Having said this, there are also many modern animals that, when shown snarling in the same manner as they portray these neanderthals, would be equally terrifying, I think.

there are also many modern animals that, when shown snarling in the same manner as they portray these neanderthals, would be equally terrifying, I think.

In person, yes. But in a picture? That's unusual for me.

I thought the snarl was overdone. Just the big eyes and vaguely human (yet alien) form was enough

I intuitively like the idea that another intelligent tool-wielding species put pressure on humans to evolve. I have no idea of the likelihood of the claim, but it would explain the sudden changes in our species in the last 100K years or so.

Having big eyes is a common threat trigger for animals. Putting big eye stickers on an inert object will scare away birds.

Are you serious? A scary picture means "Maybe he's on to something"?

For the record I didn't find the picture all that scary so what does that mean?

Yes. I am serious.

If you're asking me to comment on what I think might or might not have happened a hundred thousand years ago based on a few TV shows and books and classes and such I've had? My answer is going to be something like "That's a nice color. I like brown"

There is no right way to respond to these articles -- there is no frame of reference, the topics are imminently debatable, and to some degree we'll never know. So any answer is as good as any other. In fact, the tendency is for internet pundits to run on at length, taking on airs of expertise when in fact they're as lost as the next guy. If you asked me (you didn't) 99% of internet comments are people talking way out of their league. In this case, I don't think anybody in the world is able to do anything but idly speculate.

I decided not to do that.

And it means you do not like brown.

The reason they're drawn scary is to support the theory of Neanderthal as cannibal.

I'm not saying Neanderthal's didn't eat and rape humans, I'm just pointing out that the authors would be unlikely to include pictures of cuddly Neanderthals juxtaposed with paragraphs of rape.

Sometimes I look scary. Sometimes I look friendly. My skull shape does not change in either state. I suppose when humans were fighting Neanderthals, their facial expressions were equally fierce and scary.

I am very dubious of the pictures. For example why the jet black skin? Neanderthals were cold adapted creatures.

They lived and hunted in dark forests, so black would have been good camouflage. Cold doesn't have anything to do with it as long as the creature can get enough vitamin D through its diet.

To make the Neanderthal look more simian and threatening.

The art looks like very old pictures of gorillas, before people had a decent idea of what they looked like.

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