In the BBC series Walking With Cavemen they suggest an interesting theory that the crucial cognitive difference between homo sapiens and previous hominids is that we more actively care about and think about our future. This leads to active advance planning, where people do things now because it will pay off much later.
It also leads us to think about questions that seem to have never occurred to other hominids. For instance we put a surprising amount of energy into wondering about what happens when we die, and how we can get a better result. As a consequence every known human society - both now and in the archeological record - has burial rituals of some sort. But no other form of hominid, including Neanderthals, has shown evidence of that.
> As a consequence every known human society - both now and in the archeological record - has burial rituals of some sort. But no other form of hominid, including Neanderthals, has shown evidence of that.
Neanderthals buried their dead true but it is uncertain whether they performed burial rituals. So I would assign a value other than true or false. But it would be inline with the data to weight against burial rites by Neanderthals. Humans seem to have been cognitively more flexible than Neanders, with more varied tools, more complex burials and art.
Nevertheless, I am curious how they ascertained that Neanderthals could not plan ahead as well as humans. Their definition must be very restrictive because New Caledonian Crows, Chimps, Bonobos, Dolphins, Elephants and possibly even octopuses have been shown to be able to plan ahead.
I was quoting the BBC documentary for that claim. I am quite sure that their view represented a position that was defensible according to the state of what was known in 2003.
That said, to fit their "nature documentary format" they have to show things as fact which are in fact unknown and/or actively debated. And it was based on what was thought a decade ago.
So thank you for your information. I'll amend that tidbit that I saw with an appropriate question mark.
Can one seriously argue that the many animals who gorge themselves in preparation for hibernation or cache food for later are not actively planning ahead?
Yes, one could argue that on grounds that the animal is not actually planning for the future, but rather acting on instinct that happens to prepare it for the future.
At this point we are already making assumptions about the validity of distinction between conscious action and instinct. Is conscious action an instinct? Where do we cross that line? I am afraid the definition is recursive. Thus we are ascertaining the consciousness of the action by assuming/accepting/defining the consciousness of the actor based on the lack of instinctive behavior!
I don't know about you, but I can clearly distinguish between conscious decisions and instinct. You can argue about how all decisions are just chemistryy anywa, blah blah, but my decisions and my instincts clearly don't come from the same place.
Your distinction between conscious and instinctive is already based on the assumption of a definition for consciousness. What place does each one come from?
If every member of a species behaves the same way (eating a lot and falling asleep), it is instinct. If we see diversity and individual creativity (ordering midwinter delivery, building a freezer, barricading the door, planting a garden), it is planning ahead, on top of a simpler instinct.
Challenging reply. Are we all then using freezers from instinct? We have not all created it but I would say we "consciously" decided to buy one. Do common behaviors become instinct? What is the difference between instinct and social norms? Also diversity may exist within the same class of instinctive expression (e.g. fear could mean running away or freezing.)
At what point do we cease to call it "instinct" and begin to call it "preparation"? Such preparation for the future may be innate in us to survive future events. It is just that we have a higher level of comprehension on what we want (and how to do it). It is not as black and white as it may seem.
In any case, this article was quite interesting. It is funny that people seem to think neanderthals were stupid, when in fact they were quite a progression from those before.
I guess it's likely my fault, but I utterly fail to see why larger eyes necessitates more processing circuitry. I guess if it actually had higher resolution, but is that necessarily the case? If all the larger size does is let in more light, then what difference does that make to the post-processing except that the data is better?
If you assume the cones and rods in the eye are still the same size, but the eye is bigger, if the portion of the eye covered in receptors remains a constant ratio, a relatively small increase in eyeball size would probably make a large difference. I'm too lazy to go look up the surface area of a sphere and don't recall it of the top of my head, but if I'm not mistaken the surface area grows much faster than the diameter.
I assume that only letting in more light would be a bigger pupil, not a bigger eyeball, hence the bigger eyeball has a lot more data to process.
Only r^2 the r^3 is volume. That said your optic nerve does most of the resolution dependent processing well before you reach the brain so I don't think resolution increases would be vary demanding.
I'm inclined to agree there is likely a substantial increase in input, but I'm not sold on the idea we lack the bandwidth or capacity.
In fact I'm kind of on the fence, we humans tend to approximate a lot of information not under our direct focus with memory and perception tricks? I guess you call them. I'm not sure whether this means we are maxing capacity as it is and have to approximate in order to handle the information, or if its simply more efficient energy wise. Anyway, my point is, while there may be more information coming in, it doesn't necessarily mean they used it all, or cost them anything in the way of processing power elsewhere.
I'm still holding onto the idea we were simply better looking and got all the chicks. (interspecies breeding)
Actually the article seems like a lot of conjecture. I should have prefaced my comment by saying that if they are right, perhaps there is a higher resolution and this might be why.
Whether they are right I don't think we have enough evidence either way, really.
> Studies on primates have shown that eye size is proportional to the amount of
> brain space devoted to visual processing. So the researchers made the
> assumption that this would be true of Neanderthals.
The did (marginally) and an occipital bun (an enlargement of the skull in an area roughly over the visual cortex) is characteristic of Neandertal skulls. Mind you, size does not imply complexity, but endocasts don't point to anything obviously less complex than H sapiens sapiens. (In fact, both Broca's and Wernike's areas seem to be about on par, and recent genetic evidence suggests that Neandertals had essentially the same FOXP2 gene we have. That would indicate, given current knowledge, that they likely had sophisticated language as well.)
Actually, a few days ago, an NPR article [1] suggested the possibility that the Neanderthals didn't exactly 'die out'. Rather: "We neither murdered them nor outcompeted them. We mated with them and, in time, simply folded them into our species until they disappeared."
Also, related to some other comments, the same NPR article claims that "there's evidence they thought about life in complicated ways" based on how they cared for an elder and their burial rituals.
26 comments
[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 77.1 ms ] threadIt also leads us to think about questions that seem to have never occurred to other hominids. For instance we put a surprising amount of energy into wondering about what happens when we die, and how we can get a better result. As a consequence every known human society - both now and in the archeological record - has burial rituals of some sort. But no other form of hominid, including Neanderthals, has shown evidence of that.
The latter assertion is false:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal_behavior#Burial_pra...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanidar_Cave
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/The-Skeletons-of-...
Nevertheless, I am curious how they ascertained that Neanderthals could not plan ahead as well as humans. Their definition must be very restrictive because New Caledonian Crows, Chimps, Bonobos, Dolphins, Elephants and possibly even octopuses have been shown to be able to plan ahead.
That said, to fit their "nature documentary format" they have to show things as fact which are in fact unknown and/or actively debated. And it was based on what was thought a decade ago.
So thank you for your information. I'll amend that tidbit that I saw with an appropriate question mark.
Neanderthals had ritual burial.
Millions of years of natural selection. Social norms are ephemeral, while instinct is backed up by genetic support.
However, lots of stuff in our lives are a mix of both, so the answer is: let's study feral children!
At what point do we cease to call it "instinct" and begin to call it "preparation"? Such preparation for the future may be innate in us to survive future events. It is just that we have a higher level of comprehension on what we want (and how to do it). It is not as black and white as it may seem.
In any case, this article was quite interesting. It is funny that people seem to think neanderthals were stupid, when in fact they were quite a progression from those before.
I assume that only letting in more light would be a bigger pupil, not a bigger eyeball, hence the bigger eyeball has a lot more data to process.
In fact I'm kind of on the fence, we humans tend to approximate a lot of information not under our direct focus with memory and perception tricks? I guess you call them. I'm not sure whether this means we are maxing capacity as it is and have to approximate in order to handle the information, or if its simply more efficient energy wise. Anyway, my point is, while there may be more information coming in, it doesn't necessarily mean they used it all, or cost them anything in the way of processing power elsewhere.
I'm still holding onto the idea we were simply better looking and got all the chicks. (interspecies breeding)
Whether they are right I don't think we have enough evidence either way, really.
I forget what it was that caused the demise of the Neanderthals two weeks ago. Maybe that they had red hair and sunburned easily.
I guess that means it's been three weeks since the last announcement that another "nearby earth-like planet" has been discovered.
Also, related to some other comments, the same NPR article claims that "there's evidence they thought about life in complicated ways" based on how they cared for an elder and their burial rituals.
[1] http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2013/03/08/173813194/what-...