Evidence that Neanderthal and Homo sapiens engaged in cultural exchange

Why? People are people.

People have been people for 200k years. There’s a built in assumption in these sorts of stories that before the pyramids or whatever, everyone was running around like apes. Pounding their chests and each other.

I’d say of course people communicated and helped each other out. There were far fewer of us, and for the most part they lived in a world of great abundance.

Iceman - 1984: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087452/?ref_=fn_all_ttl_3

A surprisingly touching film about a frozen Neanderthal brought back to life. Have a feeling you'll like it.

Proto-religions probably too

It's a matter of degree. Of course they learned some things from each other, but did or could the groups have largely similar cultures? The term used in the paper is "behavioral uniformity", which is more than exchanging a few memes. And what does that say about how much and how deeply they interacted? From the abstract:

The south Levantine mid-Middle Palaeolithic (mid-MP; ~130–80 thousand years ago (ka)) is remarkable for its exceptional evidence of human morphological variability, with contemporaneous fossils of Homo sapiens and Neanderthal-like hominins. ... We suggest that the development of this behavioural uniformity is due to intensified inter-population interactions and admixture between Homo groups ~130–80 ka.

Plunder/Raping raids don't necessarilyead to trading and meaningful conversations do they?

As a response to the headline? Sure. The article is trivially interesting, though.

Culture doesn't exist in a vacuum

It's entirely possible that they were more intelligent in some ways than contemporary Homo Sapiens. How they were overwhelmed is open to question. Perhaps just numerically - they were adapted for cold environments and may have been less fecund.

Sure. 95% of software development is banging rocks together until they fit the purpose anyways.

There is no Neanderthal Y chromosome (male line) DNA in modern humans, and also no Neanderthal mitochondrial (female line) DNA in modern humans, but about half of Neanderthal DNA is still around scattered between different modern humans. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-human-y-chromo..., https://theconversation.com/modern-human-dna-contains-bits-f...

Neanderthals and mastodons never met, as they were on different continents.

Y chromosomes and mitochondria don't have crossover, so you need unbroken patrilineal and matrilineal descent from a particular ancestor to inherit it.

So if you are Ugg, son of Ugg, son of Ugg, son of Ugg, you have ur-Ugg's Neanderthal Y chromosome, but if you are Ugg, son of Ugg, son of Uggette, daughter of Ugg, you have neither ur-Ugg's Y nor X chromosome (Uggette inherits Ugg's X, which gets crossed over with Maggie's [Ugg's Cro-Magnon missus] X's and passed on to Ugg II, but Ugg II doesn't pass on his X to you, he passed on Magnus's [Uggette's Cro-Magnon mister] Y).

Haha, yeah, the idea that early humans and Neanderthals were just casually intermingling around the fire, sharing stories and mammoth steaks, is a fun mental image

Why call Neanderthal ugg? Homo sapiens were probably Ugg too.

To claim that "we are Neanderthals" is wrong because while modern humans and Neanderthals share a common ancestor and interbred, Neanderthals were a distinct species that went extinct. Genetic contributions from Neanderthals to modern humans are minor, typically around 1-2% in non-African populations, and do not make us Neanderthal in any meaningful sense. Moreover, the idea that specific Neanderthal genes explain large behavioral differences among human populations is not supported by scientific consensus—human behavior is shaped by a complex mix of genetics, culture, and environment. While some Neanderthal-derived genes may have influenced traits like immune response or altitude adaptation, the assertion that they drive major behavioral differences is speculative and echoes outdated, often racially charged ideas about genetic determinism. Biologists do discuss these topics openly, but they do so within the rigorous framework of evolutionary genetics, not unfounded assumptions about "large portions of variances" in human behavior.

I'm a biologist, I wouldn't be caught saying it in private or public because it's incorrect.

Lots of good discussion here about should Neanderthal and Homo sapiens be a separate species. Like most nature questions the answer seems to always be "It's complicated."

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/mq5u7n/why...

A neat map here showing how much Neanderthal DNA exists in modern humans. Never goes much above 3%.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/hgdioe/prevalence_...

Genetic differences do exist among different human populations. Even so, attributing broad behavioral traits to Neanderthal ancestry is not supported by science.

Human behavior is shaped by many factors like genetics, culture, environment, and social structures. No credible geneticist argues that Neanderthal ancestry “explains large portions of variances in human behavior.”

As for your comment that “Biologists know this, you won’t catch them saying it in public though.”, this is a classic conspiracy-style statement. You’re suggesting that experts are hiding the “truth,” which is a tactic often used in pseudoscience and race-related theories.

> Clearly, certain populations have much different mixtures, which explains large portions of variances in human behavior.

Citation needed.

Geneticists can, at best, sometimes figure out what any particular gene does, and yet here you are claiming that you can tie broad behavior differences to traces of the Neanderthal genetic code (Weird, since geneticists can at best, barely correlate the smallest differences in behaviour to particular genes). That's an extraordinary claim, and would require some truly extraordinary evidence.

Behavioral genetics does not have the predictive power that you think it does.

Couching scientific racism behind the fig leaf of 'Behavioural geneticists all know this but refuse to talk about it', fortunately, requires absolutely no actual evidence. In fact, the absence of evidence for it is viewed as evidence for it!