PiratMas17876

Super User

Question 36

posted 02 Jun 2012, 12:05

Our ancestors

They looked a bit different than we do today and they had qualities that we don't have now.
We have qualities that they did not have aswel. Most people think they had more hair than we do today but there is no real proof that that was the case at all.

I must say that sometimes in the winter i wish i was a neanderthal so i could withstand the cold better hehe!

Okej, question for today is: What do you know about our ancestors and do you believe that they had more hair back then?

Top Comments

Rgeneb14663 • 02 Jun 2012, 16:29

Actually early man/woman was very smooth skinned and protected themselves with fur lined clothes, as this image recovered from a recent archeological dig proves (probably from a security camera, those bloody things are everywhere, even 1,000,000 years ago)

SonOfWinds5198 • 02 Jun 2012, 14:19

In Sweden there were this belief that troll took your kids and replaced them with troll. A friend of me think that belief comes from the time when Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal people lived side by side. The Neanderthals was about to disappear due to climate change (or what it was) and my friend think that they (the Neanderthals) knew they were about to be extinct so they changed babies with the Cro-Magnon in order to keep their blood line alive... And after thousands of years the story changed... to troll. Who knows, it can be true... :)

bikers1233437 • 02 Jun 2012, 14:01

I believe this guy could answer your question.

All Comments

DomDom14363 • 02 June 2012, 20:42 Show comment

Our ancestors came before us. Hundred of thousand year ago, they were really hairy. Then eventually Mr Gillette invented the razor.

gregath6821 • 02 June 2012, 19:02 Show comment

Damn tough question

Rgeneb14663 • 02 June 2012, 16:29 Show comment

Rgeneb14663 • 02 June 2012, 16:30 Show comment

By the way I am really looking forward to tomorrows question, 37 is my lucky number so I'm expecting something special

AhrimanThorn12876 • 02 June 2012, 15:57 Show comment

It used to be believed that Neanderthals were covered in hair but this is now no longer considered to be the case. Because Neanderthals were cold climate adapted (they lived at the end of the last period of glaciation) they would probably have had a little more hair than modern humans but not very much. Heat was primarily stored in their bodies by their large musculature and it was this need to fuel their bodies with a much higher daily intake of calories than we modern humans that probably led to their demise. Global temperatures increased and the Neanderthals were forced to move further and further away from their territories until they eventually had nowhere else to go and probably died out due to starvation.
There is some evidence that interbreeding between them and modern humans occurred (Not with African humans though, there were no Neanderthals in Africa) The evidence is Nuclear however and not Mitochondrial which means that male Neanderthals may have bred with human females and produced young, but male humans did not breed with female Neanderthals resulting in children. It could simply be that humans raised as their own, children who were the result of cross breeding and Neanderthals killed them.
I think the extinction of the Neanderthals while inevitable is quite sad. They had brains that were the same size or even larger than ours and although they did not make the same intellectual advancements that we did in tool development they were almost certainly intelligent and lived just like us in social groups.

PiratMas17876 • 02 June 2012, 16:06 Show comment

They even buried there own and put sticks in the holes, like we put roses on our graves. I have seen it on a documentary that it had occurred of them to do so but i am not certain that it was so for everybody.

AhrimanThorn12876 • 02 June 2012, 16:33 Show comment

You are right; there is evidence that they mourned their dead. It is likely that they were very close to us indeed in the way they thought about things. It seems as though they were just a little bit behind us on the evolutionary ladder. They were about 95.5 percent the same as us genetically and if they had survived and lived amongst us today we would think of them as being very human. I fear that we would consider them to be second class humans though and would probably treat them very badly. Their low intelligence and great strength would probably mean we would have used them as slave labour. (I am afraid I have little faith in the ability of humans to behave with humanity)

Rgeneb14663 • 02 June 2012, 18:08 Show comment

Low intelligence and great strength? I think I've found the missing link living next door. I always put his indecipherable speech down to his Glaswegian heritage but neanderthal makes a lot more sense.