Archeologists find what they think is evidence of fire-making by early Neanderthals
Archeologists have found a Neanderthal campsite from 400,000 years ago that shows strong evidence of the ability to make fire.
The researchers found two fragments of pyrite, a mineral that can produce sparks when struck against flint, indicating that the early Neanderthals used them as “a fire-making kit.” These ancient deposits mark the earliest known evidence of fire-making, roughly 400,000 years ago.
…The Barnham site lies in a disused clay pit in Suffolk, UK, preserving traces of the period around 427,000 to 415,000 years ago. In this area, the team found a small patch of reddened sediment, about the size of a modest campfire, surrounded by two pyrites, 19 flints, and four broken hand axes, showing clear signs of heating. Pyrites are rare locally, and the early Neanderthals likely carried them in from elsewhere.
Previously, the earliest known evidence of the ability to make fire had been dated from 50,000 years ago, and was done by homo sapiens, not Neanderthals.
Analysis of the sediment said the heat there matched that of a campfire, not a wildfire. The data also said the spot had been used repeatedly.
This one campsite suggests Neanderthals in general had the knowledge and tools to make fire, but it also could simply show the work of one particularly smart Neanderthal.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Archeologists have found a Neanderthal campsite from 400,000 years ago that shows strong evidence of the ability to make fire.
The researchers found two fragments of pyrite, a mineral that can produce sparks when struck against flint, indicating that the early Neanderthals used them as “a fire-making kit.” These ancient deposits mark the earliest known evidence of fire-making, roughly 400,000 years ago.
…The Barnham site lies in a disused clay pit in Suffolk, UK, preserving traces of the period around 427,000 to 415,000 years ago. In this area, the team found a small patch of reddened sediment, about the size of a modest campfire, surrounded by two pyrites, 19 flints, and four broken hand axes, showing clear signs of heating. Pyrites are rare locally, and the early Neanderthals likely carried them in from elsewhere.
Previously, the earliest known evidence of the ability to make fire had been dated from 50,000 years ago, and was done by homo sapiens, not Neanderthals.
Analysis of the sediment said the heat there matched that of a campfire, not a wildfire. The data also said the spot had been used repeatedly.
This one campsite suggests Neanderthals in general had the knowledge and tools to make fire, but it also could simply show the work of one particularly smart Neanderthal.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Thus the movie Quest for Fire is completely anachronistic: Neanderthals knew not just how to maintain a fire but make fire an order of magnitude longer ago than when H. sapiens appeared on the scene—nor did neanderthals need the latter’s help.
Michael McNeil,
The advance of science has long had a side-effect of rendering works of fiction moot. Science fiction has been the field most directly and pervasively affected. The early planetary science probes rendered instantly obsolete vast swathes of previous stories of manned spaceflight, for example – no Venusians, no Martians, no Moon Men. Such is life. The stories are still fun reads, though.
There is a concerted effort by woke anthropologists to build up the Neanderthals. Somehow they associate Homo sapiens with white males. The evidence here, two pieces of rock, is weak enough that I completely discount this story..
Bob Wilson: Heh. I have the same sense about the desire to build up the Neanderthals for the same woke reasons, which is why I didn’t link to this story initially. Looking at it again today, the presence of the flints, pyrite, and other evidence suggesting a campsite returned to repeatedly, made me rethink my doubts.
The right way to look at this however is not that the Neanderthals were great, but that the evolution from ape to human was complex in so many ways that it is foolish to think this skill of fire-making occurred simply in one event. I bet it came, was lost, was rediscovered, and finally stuck, after many tens of thousands of years. And the sticking almost certain occurred after the coming of homo sapien.
I honestly don’t think there is any “woke” agenda regarding Neanderthals, only a justifiable redrawing of them as much less of grunting cavemen and of more of a relatively advanced species.
We have recently discovered Neanderthal art, jewellery, and perhaps even musical instruments ( although that is uncertain), what is certain is Neanderthal society was much more complex than previous believed. And some of them must have been attractive.. after all, we all have a small percentage of Neanderthal DNA in our genomes!!
A very happy new year to the BTB readership and our host. Here’s hoping for a peaceful and prosperous 2026!
Yeah– this popped up before Christmas sometime, essentially the same article repeated.
I’d quibble greatly with the definition of “ability to make fire,” and say the 50K year number was grossly underestimated from the start.
They do acknowledge the opportunistic management & use of naturally ocuring fire by our ancestors, for in excess of 1 million years.
Just because you don’t have a “fire-making kit,” composed of what “they” claim was required, doesn’t make it so.
It’s not ‘easy’ to “rub two sticks together,” but it is that simple, for example.
And keeping a naturally derived fire going for lengthy periods of time was a known skill going way back.
Far Side cartoon:
Woman and Neanderthal seated at table; woman needs a light for her smoke.
“While Thog struggled to make fire, Homo Sapiens, walking erect, offered Thelma a light.”
I think sometime after making stone tools, was when fire was made. The first few times, or several times, it was a mistake. But then somebody made fire intentionally. It was mostly curiosity. Then these proto humans noticed that fire gave off warmth. So they made fire to keep warm. Then came property. Chimps make tools, use them, and throw them away.
But you can’t find pyrite, and flint everywhere. So humans started keeping their tools. Those tools became the first possessions.
Maybe this site was close to where the Monolith appeared…
Mitch–
hilarious!
The Dawn of Man
2001
https://youtu.be/ypEaGQb6dJk
9:33
Har– saw this at a drive-inn movie theater as a kid. My Dad was wondering what he got involved in for the first 10 minutes…
Why is it such a stretch to think Neanderthals couldn’t make fire 400,000 years ago? They were similar enough to homo sapiens to be able to breed with us. I think the human line goes back a lot longer than we think.
Thank you Mr. Zimmerman for all your hard work on this site. I was relaying the summation of this report to my wife a few moments ago and her comment was that I guess we can blame the Neanderthals for all the evils of Global Warming! Thanks again for all you efforts as well as your intellect and ability to reason.
Pyrite is a pretty rock. It could very well have been kept around just for that reason.
It would never have been used as a striker for making flint tools.
Nothing woke about Neanderthals…a manly bunch.
One of the sadder documentary films I saw a decade or so ago reminded me of APOCALYPTO…showing a strong ‘thal surrounded by newer humans communicating via clicks.
As someone waiting to die in his own cave, I empathized with him…losing to a faster paced world he didn’t understand.
The pro-Neanderthal efforts in the last few years are definitely a Leftist propaganda game. Does the Left write anything that isn’t to some extent propaganda?
The game seems to be: If Neanderthals, who split from our ancestors ~800,000 years ago, were just as good as Homo Sapiens, then a fortiori all races of Homo Sapiens must be just as good as each other. Of course, the premise is wrong. Even if it were right, the follow-on claim would still be a non sequitur.
Evolution is an ongoing process.
It has always gone on and always will
humans have been getting steadily more intelligent as time has gone on. Generally the smarter you are the better you eat the better you eat the longer you live the longer you live the more you can reproduce.
Until we hit modern society. Now we no longer need intelligence to find food or survive. And who is reproducing more than other people and who is reproducing less.
In the US its generally the less educated people are reproducing more and the more educated are reproducing less..
I feel sorry for the whole of humanity in the future.
Idiocracy will come about.
@Craken
Tinfoil hat time!
The reporting of advances in archeology is neither right or left. It is simply reporting of advances in archeology.
The fact of the matter is that relatively recent discoveries show that Neanderthal society was more advanced and complex than previously thought. This is a fact. Facts have no political bias.
As a “lefty” I have seen nothing trying to make political hay from reporting on Neanderthal finds. Anyone that sees differently needs to consider that they are projecting their fears onto an innocuous subject, and perhaps go find a different hill to die upon.
“Cooking of meat & plants with fire is implicated in the raising of “IQ” in early man. The process of cooking allowed them to increase general palatability, extract more vital nutrients and essential proteins, with less physical effort, expand their food variety, and reduce exposure to harmful bacteria & parasites.”
As Cotour has often said, “First we Eat, then Civilization…”
———————————————-
Median “IQ” in Somalia is 67.
Low-IQ, Low-Trust, High-Fraud, Tribal.
“The lowest AFQT “Armed Forces Qualification Test” score generally accepted for entry into the U.S. military is a score of 31 out of 99. This corresponds roughly to an estimated IQ score of around 83.
Lee–
Have a minor in Anthropology, for what that was worth, one thing I can enlighten you on is; all these “-ologies,” have a definite Narrative about how they proclaim stuff really works or how things happened in the past.
The question is always, who’s Advances? What Facts?
(Until Ed Whitten dies, we are going to continue to blow billions of $$ on worthless string-theory. Same sorta thing goes on in every profession.)
-Having been trained in behavioral psych-ology, and mocked as ‘crazies,’ for decades, we of course know we were always right and everyone else was just slinging psychobabble. (sarcasm alert) Wait long enough, and suddenly the preferred and demonstrably effective applied-behavior-analysis (ABA) becomes a significant non-drug treatment thing for autism.
Lee S: Your comment here perfectly demonstrates why science has become debased with politics. You, an admitted lefty, want us to ignore the possibility that political biases might be entering into this archeological research, insisting it can’t possibly exist and for anyone to even suggest it makes them a “tinfoil hat” conspiracy theorist.
The truth is that good scientists must never dismiss the possibility that their biases (political or otherwise) are influencing their work, or else their work will become corrupted. It is a question that must be asked, not dismissed.
Academia is dominated by lefties like you. That political bias infuses everything they do, because it is a bubble they live in that prevents them from seeing other perspectives. Like you however they insist it can’t possibly be there, which means they aren’t questioning their conclusions as aggressively as any scientist should.
Nor are you. Instead, they (and you) dismiss it, and so, their work becomes poisoned.
As I say, this is why science has been so badly corrupted, especially in the soft sciences like archeology and anthropology.
Wayne: Here is anthropological puzzle for you:
Q: Why do most all Somalis look alike and why are their general average IQ 67?
LeeS: For your consideration: https://www.sigma3ioc.com/post/sweden-has-essentially-legalized-rape
A little more of a wakeup call for some of the more confused Liberal minded people who post here on BTB:
https://youtube.com/shorts/m1Fx4tKtQdc?si=aazkT2ZhgmUOyd9C
When does Liberal compassion become suicide?
When it is married to the U.N. Agenda 2030 and the Globalist Socialist agenda.
@Cotour…. I would never consider a website hosted by a fairly conspiracy minded guy a reliable source of facts
@Bob and everyone else…
In recent years there has been found evidence that Neanderthals had a grasp upon art, jewellery, tool making, and now, perhaps fire.
These are facts.
I subscribe to several scientific journals, and have not once detected any political or ideological leaning in the reporting … I see what you guys are reading into this… ” It’s a leftist plot to push forward the idea that everyone is equal “… Well… Believe me. You are suffering from right wing paradolia… No one is saying anything other than Neanderthal folk had a modicum of civilization in there culture.
There are a lot of recently discovered hominids with no evidence of any modern traits… These reports are not right wing, just reports of facts.
Along with astronomy, paleontology is my other scientific love. I especially enjoy the evolution of this bizarre race we find ourselves in, and I don’t find it hard to believe that the closest species to our own that we know of had similar skills. This is not left wing propaganda, it’s not propaganda at all… It’s science.
(For what it’s worth, I am not US loony left, I am a level headed, fairly intelligent, socialist leaning realist… If I caught out media trying to twist discovery for political reasons I would absolutely call them out. )
The level of racism, and idiocy expressed in this thread sickens me… I sympathise in as much as you guys have never experienced the world outside of your little windows, but while I absolutely defend your rights to express yourselves, I cannot in good conscience continue to use this site. Racism has no place in my world…
And even more stupid for the Liberal minded here on BTB:
https://youtube.com/shorts/SS50Hsu2ycA?si=NHPSMWq6sEGz_Ul6
The Liberal now Leftists really does make your brain hurt with their intellectualized reality.
Objective truth I. E. evidence presented right before your own delicate virtuous eyes is not racism.
Suicide is also not a requirement of the Constitution.
No one here on BTB is racist.
Was I just called a racist?
Lee S: Once again, your insistence that no such bias can possibly exist — typical of the entire left — means it almost certainly will creep in, because no one is watching out for it. Thus, the healthy skepticism you see by the commenters here.
Moreover, this inability to recognize and admit your biases is the main reason such distrust has grown. Leftist academia won’t admit error, and keeps faking data, and lying, and pushing woke ideology and global warming in the most ridiculous of places. (See my post just earlier today about that Danish lunar orbiter).
So while you keep calling this skepticism “right wing parodolia” [sic], we keep discovering our skepticism was warranted, as indicated by this list below:
Michael McNeil wrote: “Thus the movie Quest for Fire is completely anachronistic:”
Maybe not. The girl taught him how to start a fire rather than just preserve it. Presumably, her tribe and others knew this trade secret (tribe secret?) and were teaching it to their children — and obviously others.
In the movie.
However, I suspect that the chances of it being “the work of one particularly smart Neanderthal” is small. I suspect that this Neanderthal tribe, too, had been passing the secret through the generations, and we humans (modern homo sapiens) just happened to come across this one preserved campsite, one of many sites of the time, most of which were not preserved through the eons.
As Robert alluded to, and to quote Tom Wilkinson’s CEO character, Howard Tully, in the movie Duplicity:
So, with a Darwinian type philosophy like that, if the tribe’s secret is shared with other Neanderthals or stolen by them, then Neanderthal man as a species had the greatest chance of survival and a better chance to pass along the secret to the entire species, beating out Cro-Magnon man, when he came along, about 35,000 years ago. Which happened about the time that Neanderthal man disappeared. Poor Neanderthal.
If Neanderthals had the advantage, then did they lose it by having fire stolen from them by those Cro-Magnons? Did they make the mistake of giving the secret to Cro-Magnon?
But perhaps more important, with Neanderthal having the secret for ten times longer than Cro-Magnon, why were they unable to advance other technologies the way Cro-Magnon did in one tenth the time that fire was in Neanderthals hands? Was Cro-Magnon man just a little bit smarter than Neanderthal, and so found metals and a way to escape the Stone Age and invent the Bronze Age, which happened about 5,000 years ago?
If so, why was it that the Bronze Age was only in Europe and parts of Asia? Africa, the Americas, and Australia failed to invent better metals, such as bronze.
________________
pzatchok asked: “Was I just called a racist?”
Probably, yes, along with everyone else here. Lee S said it, so it must be true.
Lee S must think we actually mean something else when we say neanderthal.
To assume that is sort of bigoted. Verging on racist to even think modern people are intellectually different to a measurable amount.
Here we are talking about evolution and people a few million years ago and he assumes we are talking about people today.
I feel so sad.
It’s obvious to me that our differently abled First-Nation Ancestors-of-Color, were systematically exterminated by the lighter skinned homo sapien colonial capitalist oppressors, who stole their secrets of quantum physics and their creation of fire in order to further oppress the Neanderthal and completely wipe out the competing Australopithecus and their fascist Make-Australopithecus-Great-Again, movement.
Timing is everything in life: In today’s New York Post:
https://nypost.com/2026/01/02/opinion/how-woke-politics-defeats-science-slamming-the-door-on-discovery/
You just cannot make some things up, or can you? Data and Objective science V The woke “Anti colonialism” mind virus.
“Hidden away in an obscure notice in a federal register is a throwaway line that could rewrite human history.”
*LeeS: “I honestly don’t think there is any “woke” agenda regarding Neanderthals, only a justifiable redrawing of them as much less of grunting cavemen and of more of a relatively advanced species.”
“And the updated regulations “require deference to the Native American traditional knowledge of lineal descendants, Indian Tribes, and Native Hawaiian organizations.”
In practice, it means that even DNA evidence counts for nothing if a tribe says otherwise.
NAGPRA was meant to be a compromise between indigenous communities and scientists.
It aimed to return clearly connected human remains to their modern descendants, while leaving researchers free to study unaffiliated remains.
About 92% of such identifiably linked remains had been returned before 2022.
But an alliance of indigenous activists and progressive academics has pushed an unstoppable “everything back” movement, overturning NAGPRA’s original intent.”
Liberals “Under a spell”.
https://youtube.com/shorts/_c82g6L9m3Y?si=hBPlGIqrRXGFUOi8
And I know plenty on the Liberal Left, Democrats, on the extreme Left even that are really good and well-meaning people, LeeS included.
And I point out one more time that those in the Public Realm who apply their sense of truth and morality to those in the Political Realm and their underlying agenda in the political pursuit of power and control is part of a self-imposed self-created truth and morally model based “A” reality that is incongruous and in fact counter to that desired morality and truth.
But at some point in time there must a light bulb of Objective truth be realized that illuminates reality as it is and not as one wants it to be.
And I will use the current Socialist / Liberal / Leftist delusion being rolled out in NYC as an example. There is the A.I. version, something new and powerful confusing and distracting the human mind, and then there is my version.
https://www.sigma3ioc.com/post/the-rise-of-collectivism-zohran-mamdani-s-vision-for-new-york-city
Lee S wrote: “The level of racism, and idiocy expressed in this thread sickens me… I sympathise in as much as you guys have never experienced the world outside of your little windows, but while I absolutely defend your rights to express yourselves, I cannot in good conscience continue to use this site. Racism has no place in my world…”
Once again, Lee S amazes. He condemns us for having different opinions than his while claiming to defend our right of free expression, all in the same sentence. Here, rather than feeling that disagreement is scolding or hatred, he feels that disagreement is racism. He also continues to assume he knows how we live, feel, and think, that we have never left our country to experience any cultures other than our own small one.
He knows all about our culture, because he once visited some friends in Virginia (or one of the Carolinas, or something). One small mountain community showed him all he needs to know about every American everywhere. We don’t have the money to travel, like his poor American friends, and mountain folk are the exact same as plains folk and city folk, and we definitely don’t ever get immigrants who bring in their own cultures like they do where he lives.
(Unfortunately, we are suffering from a Somali culture of robbing the government for all they can, and being called racist there, too, for wanting our laws followed and not sympathizing with folk who are getting fancy things and posh travel from money we intended to spend on the poor and unfortunate. Of course, Lee also does not approve of the means that we prefer for supporting our poor, because for him only a marxist governmental system is adequate for that job. Individuals donating to private organizations that do a better job of making sure the donations help the poor rather than the corrupt is not good enough for Lee.)
The most interesting of all is that he complains about us discussing political topics, especially after he has himself brought up the topic. In this thread, however, he jumped into a political discussion, specifically how leftist-marxist woke-ism is destroying scientific studies, then he turns it from a topic of science to one of racism. Interestingly, Neanderthals actually are a different race, even by Lee’s own definition, which he informed us of, a few years ago, claiming that we were using the word “race” wrong, because we are all members of the human race.
He has said that he likes the technical and space topics, but then he gets upset when he reads the comments and discovered that there are people who dare to disagree with his own politics or worldview. This time, however, he expresses that he cannot continue to use (whether that means read or comment on) this site, because disagreement has no place in his worldview.
Oh, and pzatchok, you weren’t called just a racist. You were also called an idiot. We all were.
According to lefties we have modern animals who make “art” and make and use tools.
They must be just as smart as modern humans.
On a modern IQ scale just how smart were Neanderthals?
Remember that a modern IQ of 70 is functionally able to work in modern society perfectly fine.
An IQ of 40 can still do some complex tasks and learn. But language suffers.
pzatchok;
Historical IQ range classifications: (given that “IQ” tests and scores, are not meant to define you. They are however highly correlated with future success given appropriate levels of education adequately supplied. And there are subsets of IQ, performance & verbal, the 2 which impact the score greatly.)
(and assuming no mental illness)
0-24 “idiot”
25-49 “imbecile”
50-69 “feeble”
70-79 “borderline”
(These folks (0-79) require (under Law) supervision and assistance/guidance/direction with activities-of-daily-living. They can perform many useful, productive, and remunerative tasks.)
———————————-
80-89 “below average”
90-109 “average”
110-119 “above average”
Our Military will not take you unless your equivalent-IQ is 80 or above. (based on the military aptitude test.)
Neanderthal IQ?
–Difficult to assign a number; inferences made due to the varied everyday survival skills required in the Truly Wild, point to “50-100.” Ability to manipulate objects & visual-spatial reasoning were felt to be on par with modern humans. (‘performance IQ,’)
Our ancestors weren’t “stupid,” they lacked knowledge and were hampered by their limited abilities to transmit acquired knowledge into the future. (“verbal IQ.”)
The varied everyday survival skills needed were pretty limited.
Bears, wolves and all other animals do it fine. Did they really have to be just as smart as modern human average. 100IQ.
They just had to be smart enough to move to the warm places. Which herd animals would show them how. If they just followed the herd animals they would have been just fine.
By just staying in a clan or pack any knowledge would have been passed around making any individual seen smarter.
Just like now, as a group they would look really smart, but as individuals not so much.
pzatchok,
You wrote: “The varied everyday survival skills needed were pretty limited. Bears, wolves and all other animals do it fine. Did they really have to be just as smart as modern human average. 100IQ.”
Well, no. animals do not need to be as smart as humans in order to have survival skills.
IQ, intelligence quotient, is not really intelligence, it is a score given for a specific kind of intelligence test. This test really only measures whatever it is that this test measures. No one is really sure, but people that we consider to be smart tend to get higher scores, so we think that it measures intelligence.
In addition, it is relative to the age cohort that takes the test. An IQ of 100 for a 6th grader is not the same as an IQ of 100 for a 12th grader (high school senior, for non-American readers). We assume that the 6th graders will be just as smart as the current 12th graders, when they get to the 12th grade.
An intelligence test for a bear or wolf would necessarily be somewhat different, but the average would still be 100, and again would have to apply to bears or wolves of the same age.
So, what would be the average IQ of the Neanderthal? 100, of course, for any given age group.
Were Neanderthals smarter than us? Probably not. Are we smarter than Neanderthals? I certainly hope so! If we have not developed better brains over the course of 400,000 years, then we are not doing it right? Are we smarter than Cro-Magnon man of 35,000 years ago? Again, I hope so.
Were Bronze Age and Iron Age man of Asia and Europe smarter than the Stone Age man of Africa, the Americas, and Australia? Well, that is a good question. We do know that the Egyptians had copper tools 4,000 years ago, when they were building the pyramids at Giza. They also had a written language, which is why we know so much about them.
On the other hand, Australia, Africa and the Americas are fairly temperate, and there was less reason to invent better tools and better methods of gaining food than there was for the Asians and Europeans who lived in the more inclement climates. So even if they were just as smart, there was little incentive to be inventive rather than enjoy their prolonged times in their Gardens of Eden.
Why are modern humans advancing so quickly? Because we are better able to communicate worldwide and to rapidly take advantage of advancements made half way around the world.
Why are Americans advancing so much faster than other places in the world? We aren’t smarter than those people in other places, because we come from all those other places. We advance faster because we are free to do so. We are free to and willing to try new things, including to do the impossible. It is why we are the entrepreneurial leader of the world. Elon Musk found investors willing to finance him in innovating things that just ten years ago were thought impractical, uneconomical, and even impossible. We don’t need an obelisk of intelligence to do it, we do it because we can, because we are free to do it.
The U.K. is not such a place. The U.K. is where launch companies go to die. The U.K. does not just assist humans to an early death, they put space companies to death. Virgin Orbit was going to make Britons feel good about their space program by launching a British spacecraft from British airspace, but instead British delays and overregulation put them out of business. What a difference a little too much regulation makes.
The message of the Statue of Liberty was intended to be a beacon to spread freedom around the world, not to call the huddled masses to our shore, and I wonder what the world would have been like if the eight billion people of the world were as free to try the impossible as we ⅓ billion Americans are. I’m sure that Russia would still have an amazing space program, India’s would now be close to rivaling Russias, and America’s space program would still be trying to catch up to Russias. And Virgin Orbit would be a British company, ramping up just like Rocket Lab is doing. Oh, and Rocket Lab would be a New Zealand company.
Huh. Maybe humans aren’t as smart as we think we are.
Lefties were more about Bonobos than the ‘thals as I recall.
All modern nature documentaries looked as if Rifenstahl made them…showing everything we never wanted to know about some snail or other, using their favorite word “encroachment,” then reducing all of humanities endeavors to two images of a smokestack or a landfill.
Now, if all I ever filmed was some wombat eating and defecating–I could make it look pretty wasteful too.
pzatchok–
We cannot discount the development of verbal-behavior in humans. We appear to be unique in our ability to verbally manipulate internal wants, needs, and desires, and to label or describe objects, actions, or events, to other humans. And to eventually store and transmit all that into the future.
Non-human animals are uniquely skilled within their evolutionary niche, but I would put forth: they are running on “instinct” rather than being operantly conditioned by the environment or other members of their species.
all that being said, “With great power, comes great responsibility.”
We went from Kittyhawk to the Moon in a very short time, but we’re still just animals’ all the way down.
———————————-
“I Act as if God Exists”
Peterson / Akira (2018)
https://youtu.be/SG7mKcIVvQQ
(6:44)
Oh I know the IQ system is from 0 to 200 with 100 being the average.
So of course the average Neanderthal would have an average of 100 on a neanderthal scale.
But if placed on the modern IQ scale They would be viewed as mentally defective.
Modern lefties are trying to imply that neanderthals were only a point or two less than modern man.
Every article you read on some new evidence implies they are just like modern man.
As for modern humans being smart how many of us have seen the videos of collage kids not being able to name three countries or three continents.
Individually we are stupid but as a group we look pretty smart.
“The varied everyday survival skills needed were pretty limited.”
There is a point being overlooked here, while Neanderthals were more human like what is being missed here is the ability to think in complex abstract terms.
And I believe that the Neanderthal does to some degree fit this requirement. To some degree.
We are all animals based in DNA / biology and live in that reality but homo sapiens as I suspect Neanderthals also live in an intellectualized reality where they can think in abstract terms I.E. fire, art, spirituality thinking conceptually in a way that results in technology and complex culture and society structures focused on fulfilling the prime directive.
(What is the prime directive: Successfully reproduce)
Lower animals successfully reproduce but lack the complexity of the intellectualized second reality reality.
Neanderthal brains were as I understand it larger per volume compared to homo sapiens, but homo sapiens brain structure apparently was more adapted / wired to the complex abstract conceptual intellectualized second reality reality.
YOU in real terms live fully in two realities, your biological / DNA reality and your intellectualized reality and that is what makes you a human being. And I do not believe that Neanderthals had that full ability and capacity and that is why they no longer are here.
Slight clarification–
Modern 20th century western civilization IQ scores have been normed & converted to a mean-score of 100. Standard deviation is 15 points.
Our limited verbal skill ancestors would score low on… verbal skills, for example. But inferred to hold their own on (ability for) spatial reasoning and object manipulation.
Diagnosing & IQ assigning of our distant ancestors is based on inference and speculation.
2/3rds of the population have an IQ roughly between 85-115.
95% of the population is between 70-130.
99.7% of the population is between 55-145
0.30% of the population is below 54 or above 141
I think this whole discussion about IQ and intelligence is missing the main attribute that distinguishes homo sapien from its predecessors: The ability to make tools and re-shape his environment for his own benefit, a thinking ability I suspect is directly tied to homo sapien’s sophisticated language skills related to abstract thought.
It is this skill that is unique. Experiments have shown apes and chimpanzees have it to a very slight extent, as does this new evidence show the Neanderthal’s had it to the same extent. In both cases, it wasn’t passed on to others, and did not inspire other tool improvisations and adaptions.
With modern humans, such improvisations are natural, continuous, and uncontrollable. If anything, it is why we are so impossible to control, and why we fight so hard for freedom. It is part of our nature to try new things, and any time someone tries to stop us we rebel, and often do so violently.
All good points:
https://image1.slideserve.com/1988980/hyoid-bone-l.jpg
I think we can all agree that human beings are a very strange and unique species, intelligent, competitive, ingenious, treacherous and deadly if existentially threatened.
“Homo sapiens, the species to which all modern human beings belong. Homo sapiens is one of several species grouped into the genus Homo, but it is the only one that is not extinct.”