[midjji]

It makes for a good story to be sure, but probably little else. Much like the popular myth of the noble savage influencing academics of the time, contemporary popular disdain for the people and cultures of the past colors many contemporary academics.

Another weird thing, So we have found evidence of the feathers of dinosaurs, but not the fur of something from 40k years ago? that seems rather unlikely. In this case, the absence of evidence for fur is evidence of its absence, much like the absence of worked neanderthal clothing is. A better simpler explanation would be, they had decent subdermal isolation and brown fat. While most people today think humans cant work outside on a typical winter day in northern europe without clothes, they are just wrong. Go to any country with a snowy winter and ask the first person you meet if they have that one friend or acquaintance who goes about in shorts and tshirt during winter, who seems just absurdly resistant to cold in general. They will give you a name. Luck, ample food and cold growing up, and you too could be walking barefoot through the snow with me, feel the refreshing -5 C wind on your chest when snowboarding in a tshirt, and alway be told you everytime you leave somewhere that you arent wearing enough jackets, pants, scarfs, gloves, and hats.

Besides its unnecessary for the story being told. Humans lived next to chimps and gorillas for millenia and they are furry, cannibalistic, violent tribal monsters. Fitting the story of orcs and goblins even better. But even that is unnecessary, people just like making shit up, but people are also terrible at actually doing that. So almost everything looks like a human or animal or combination.

[gpm]

> So we have found evidence of the feathers of dinosaurs, but not the fur of something from 40k years ago? that seems rather unlikely

Does it? Dinosaurs existed for hundreds of millions years, that's a lot of time for things to be preserved. Neanderthals for hundreds of thousands of years, that's not nearly as much.

Sure, fur/feathers is less likely to be preserved for 65 million years (+ however far into the mesozioic you go) than 40 thousand years (+ however far back into the history of neanderthals you go), but by how many orders of magnitude? Is it enough to make up for the many orders of magnitude difference in the number of times it could be preserved?

[13of40]

I think it's interesting how much traction the question of whether Neanderthals had body is getting in this discussion. I haven't read into it too deeply, so I'm not confident to say which side is correct, but the fact that nearly all mammals, and every extant primate species save one have thick body hair, regardless of what climate they live in, means it wouldn't surprise me to find out that Neanderthals also did. It also wouldn't surprise me to find out they walked around with crude animal skin drapings (like Wikipedia claims) or that they had expertly tailored leather suits as described in that linked article. What surprises me is that so many people really, really want it to have been one way or the other. Here's a theory: Their range was so vast, and the time they spent on earth was so long, that some of them were bald and made clothes, and some of them were hairy from head to toe (like some modern people) and walked around naked. Probably some of them were mean and some were nice, and sometimes they traded with Homo Sapiens, and sometimes they dined on them.

For what it's worth, my dad was an anthropologist and he liked to point out that their women probably had beards.

[evilduck]

In addition, dinosaur feathers that have been discovered have been in fossils where it's obviously still part of the animal, or preserved in amber where feathers were unexpected and it raised questions.

Who's been looking for neanderthal fur at any scale? It could be hiding in plain sight. AFAIK, geologists and archeologists don't try to run DNA tests on every bit of biological matter they come across. Humans are known tool users and clothing (and fur) wearers. If someone found fur near a hominid and it wasn't on their head, would anyone be jumping to this conclusion?

[jccooper]

I don't believe we have any ancient hominid integument at all, just a few strands of hair here and there. Soft tissues are extremely rare survivals (and we have very few examples of any ancient mammalian soft tissue), so it's not terribly surprising given the already scant hominid remains.

That we have a little bit of dinosaur skin impressions is down to said animals being around for a long, long time, and over much more territory.

The absence of evidence is certainly not evidence of absence here; there's simply no evidence one way or the other. Excavators are getting much better at recognizing non-skeletal remains, though, so perhaps we'll see something come up in the future.

[midjji]

Soft tissues and hair need not survive for its imprint to survive on the surrounding clay. I think its strange we dont have more neanderthal finds than we do, but suspect part of the reason is most aren't distinguishable from cro magnon. If an intact adult skull is found, sure. But if the fragmented remains of a neanderthal child were found in a bog, could we tell the difference?

[whakim]

The fur thing just isn't compelling. Hominims lost their fur prior to developing tools in order to develop sweat glands all over their body, allowing them to expel heat better than their prey (and so hunt by literally chasing an animal until it got hyperthermia). Neanderthals may have been hairier to help in colder climates, but it's pretty remiss of the article to not mention that losing fur was one of the key developments in hominim evolution.

[You_All_R_Cunts]

Meaning fur was lost before we split from neanderthals, so they would have had to lose their sweat pores and regrown that hair? Seems like a large mutation to take place.

[Baeocystin]

Maybe not as much as you'd think. As an example, the EDAR Gene (https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/2/21/sweat-gene-iden...) affects, among other things, hair thickness and sweat gland density. It's isn't a small effect, and yet it's a single gene change in an otherwise highly conserved gene pathway.

[whakim]

Yes - hominims lost their fur before homo neanderthalis/homo sapiens. (Also it's probably more than a single mutation - more like a series of them.)

[jacobolus]

> chimps and gorillas for millenia and they are furry, cannibalistic, violent tribal monsters

Gorillas are largely vegetarian, and generally peaceful. Humans are much better example of “violent tribal monsters” than gorillas.

Cf. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1977/12/25/t...

[taneq]

Are they? http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20161128-groups-of-gorillas-h...

[N00bN00b]

Easy enough to guess how that works.

Give chimps/gorillas/humans enough territory and they're peaceful, make them compete with others of the same species for limited resources and they'll turn violent.

I don't need much more than basic evolutionary theory to support that.

[Robotbeat]

Maybe you’re right about gorillas, but chimps are much more closely related to us, and they’re hyperviolent at times, engaging in (essentially) genocide, just like us humans.

[abakker]

I always personally thought descriptions of Grendel were very much that of a silverback gorilla. Fangs, Fur, Loping gait, strength. Its a pretty good image.

[midjji]

There is a similar idea about Conan and there is a bit of ambiguity in the collected stories of the oc. There are ancient kingdoms and fallen empires of creatures that are described like apes or furless apes, notably gorillas and similar creatures here and there. The inhabitants of these, if they are sane, sometimes call themselves, and are sometimes called either man, or superior to man or degenerate from man. Basically everything from lovecraftian space elves to goblins. Conan himself is quite often described in way that is ambiguous, but certainly includes both things like thick maned, long armed, barrel-chested, and even gorilla like. In particular by some of the people of the kingdoms he visits. Described as black maned, hairy, sometimes to the point of fur, and in his latter years, as with it falling like a coat of silver over his back. Overall its a silly idea. Leaving the racism aside, I think the author intended Armenian or persian. Black haired, golden tanned skin, sometimes with pale golden irises, certainly not white or nordic as often depicted much like some other middle eastern mythical characters of note. A simpler explanation is bad writing and gorillas commonly thought of as the epitome of strong men at the time of the early novels. The stories are mostly set in southern hyperborea i.e. middle africa also lends itself to this. I wonder if this may be why Grendel is like that as well. A popular english translation of Beowulf was made by Tolkien (who grew up in africa) written in the same era as the early Conan? A popular translation makes Grendel more akin to a nordic troll, which is more similar to a bear, weakly supported by aglæca ambiguity which sometimes seems to confuse grendel and beowulf which would make more if the name beowulf even if literally translated to bear, still meant bear hunter/killer or strong as a bear. I'd lean towards tolkien, but it shows how cultural context flavors translation. There is just not much description either, and even without the inevitable translation errors in visual descriptions of things that dont exist, ambiguity caused by bad writing is nothing new.

[nyolfen]

grendel-as-neanderthals is actually the premise of a novel from the 1970s by michael crichton, eaters of the dead/the 13th warrior

[midjji]

I think the film is really good, though I suspect a film critic might disagree. I'll look up the bok, thanks for the tip:)

[gautamcgoel]

Came here to say this. The book is captivating, can't speak to the movie.

[tomjen3]

Dane here.

I had friends who were shorts all the time, but almost everybody will wear thick clothing in winter, and walking barefoot in the snow will cause frostbite and/or is extremely painful (yes I did that, just to see what happens. I was young once. It may have been one of the most painful things I ever did). Humans can survive in the cold because we are smart enough to cover up, not because some of us are so hardcore that we break the laws of physics.

[birdyrooster]

Given that your cells will die at a certain temperature, this seems like congenital insensitivity to pain (CIPA).