Not Less Intelligent, Just Different
There is no definitive evidence yet that ancient hominids were inferior to Homo sapiens in cognitive development.
Were Neanderthals really just recent ancestors who were surpassed by the smarter and more agile Homo sapiens? This position may be wrong, writes IFLScience.
Neanderthals lived on Earth together with early Homo sapiens and died out about 40 thousand years ago. It is early humans who are blamed for the extinction of the Neanderthals, although this theory remains unproven.
Recent advances in paleontology have allowed scientists to study the likely structure of the Neanderthal brain in more detail. What is now known is that the Neanderthal brain was about the same size as a human brain, but had a different shape.
An analysis of 32 modern humans and 13 Neanderthal skulls showed that the latter had larger areas of the brain devoted to vision. This supports the fact that Neanderthals had larger eyes than modern humans. Neanderthal brains also had larger areas devoted to motor control due to their larger bodies.
The study authors suggested that because of all of the above, less cognitive weight was allocated to performing complex social processing. The consequence of this may have been that Neanderthals were unable to form strong social groups.
Another study shows that most theories about Neanderthals being knuckle-dragging are based on a misleading comparison of ancient hominids to modern humans. It’s like accusing 18th-century humans of being mentally retarded because they couldn’t make a TikTok.
A more fair analysis that compared Neanderthals with early humans was more clear-cut. A 3D reconstruction of the brains of both species showed smaller cerebellums in Neanderthals, which may have affected their cognitive and social functions.
In another recent study, scientists extracted a Neanderthal gene from ancient DNA samples and inserted it into the brains of mice and ferrets, as well as “mini-brain” organoids created from human stem cells. The brains with Neanderthal DNA formed new brain cells more slowly, suggesting that ancient hominins had a lower cognitive peak than Homo sapiens.
The authors of this latest paper said that even their innovative approach only hinted at reduced cognitive function in Neanderthals.
