Stupid questions

Ajsoprano

Lads this stuff sometimes fascinates me but I never had much encouragement to learn about it or time as I got older.

A lot of time I wonder about the cave people and think of stupid questions that maybe obvious to you lads.

If you ever have a plumbing question or any question I can help you with I’ll be knocking about the forum ready to help so I’m hoping I don’t offend you guys with the odd stupid question.

Today I went out the back for a smoke. The gutters looked like they were on their last legs so I got a broom and scraped as much snow off them as I could reach. I stepped barefoot on a pile of snow and realised how much we have become wimps.

What did the cavemen do in time of snow? Would anyone have any good info on footwear or hibernation or tools?

Wibbs

I wish I could but humans can't hibernate...

Well they likely were just tougher AJ, just like tribal folks today who walk around on bare feet in jungles and the like where we would be stepping very gingerly and saying "ow" a lot. It's also likely with later humans, Neandertals/Us, that they would have fashioned basic "shoes" from animal hides.

For most of human history people would have avoided snow if they could. Preferring to stay in more temperate and warm environments. Our invention of the needle was a major jump forward. A game changer. From what we know we were the first to make bone needles around 40,000 years ago, though if previous peoples had used wood or thorns they might have had them but just didn't survive. We know previous humans made quite sophisticated wooden items but they were so rarely preserved we didn't know until quite recently. But yeah needles. They meant we could make more tailored clothing which better insulates against the cold(and wet) and move into more inhospitable climates compared to previous humans(though Neandertals could be found pretty far north, though usually were people of more southerly forests. There's even a site in the UK that was inhabited by even more primitive people(Homo Erectus) nearly 800,000 years ago and in a particular chilly time. Very tough and they hadn't the use of fire at that stage(in that part of the world anyway).

Fire was another major step forward. Beyond cooking and keeping animals away it of course gives off lots of heat. Shelters were another innovation. Neandertals seems to have made both temporary and more permanent shelters from various materials like wood, animals skins, even Mammoth bones and tusks. Here's a reconstruction made from real Mammoth tusks and bones..



Some physical adaptation was in play too. For example Neandertals body shape has long been thought to have been an adaptation to the cold. Compared to us, who had first come out of a much warmer African environment so are taller and thinner in frame(best to lose heat), they were a little shorter and much stockier with more muscles, which loses heat more slowly and the muscles generate more heat in the first place(though need more calories which is a disadvantage). They may have had other adaptations that don't show in the bones. EG modern Eskimos have over the span of about 10,000 odd years developed changes in response to the cold. They have bigger livers to cope with their near 100% animal diet, like Neandertals(though not as much), tend to be shorter and stockier and their skin haas many more capillaries in the hands, feet and face than say Africans or Europeans. This keeps more warm blood in the extremities.

On clothes, to give you some idea here's a reconstruction of a chap they called Otzi the Iceman who was found with all his kit frozen up a French alp about 5000 years ago(He was murdered too. Oh and was climbing in winter, the tough bugger). Now he's from the Copper age, so not a Stone Age "caveman", but it's likely enough that his much earlier ancestors who were living in such conditions would have had similar.



Other than his copper axe the rest could have been quite easily made by the first Europeans from 40 odd 1000 years ago.

Ajsoprano

Fascinating thanks a lot. Also explained in layman’s terms which is always a plus.

Capt'n Midnight

Until recently people went barefoot. Even a few generations ago rural children wouldn't have shoes.

Calluses and thick skin would have functioned as shoes.

The weren't couch potatoes either. So would have had body heat too.


The indigenous people of Tierra del Fuego have adoptions to the cold, including letting their core temperature drop and use of grease insulation and they were nearly naked despite the cold. Europeans who tried to sleep in the same conditions couldn't.

Wibbs

Yeah, we can kinda forget in our modern comfortable world just how resilient ancient peoples could be, physically and mentally. If those folks from Tierra del Fuego could take the often bitter cold in that neck of the woods then Stone Age folks almost certainly could, especially if they were physically cold adapted like the Neandertals. Some have even suggested based on their physical characteristics that they would have generated so much internal heat going about their day that wearing clothes all over could have led to overheating.

Those folks and our own ancestors were very tough peoples. They had to be and their environment shaped them, even within lifetimes. They lost many of their kids in childhood to illness and disease and famine and likely cold too. In harsh environments it could be over half that wouldn't make it to adulthood. Those that did were going to be the toughest, even then they didn't live long lives for the most part. 50 was a good age, people hitting their 70's didn't come until much later on in our history. Every single male Neandertal so far found suffered pretty heavy trauma in life. They all had broken bones. A couple had head injuries, including injuries that would have caused partial blindness, another deafness and balance issues and most had arthritis by 30. One lad had one of his arms amputated above the elbow and they all survived that. The amputee dude lived twenty years after that injury and primitive surgery*. :eek: Hard as nails.



*surgery sounds far fetched, but consider that these guys and gals were apex predators, carnivores who butchered their prey on a daily basis(and it seems sometimes killed, butchered and ate other Neandertals in times of hardship), so they were far more up to speed with the anatomy of bones, joints and muscles than anyone today outside of the medical sciences. And they had extremely sharp stone tools. A freshly knapped flint blade is sharper than a razor and one made from obsidian is far sharper than any metal blade. Add in recent discoveries that show that they were selecting certain herbs for medicinal reasons(analgesics and even antibiotics) and plenty of practice with injuries it stands to reason they'd be good at it. Modern surgeons have noted that some were extremely expert bone setters. Our direct ancestors were also up to speed with this stuff. They also had a go and successfully at dentistry(though that was rarely needed back then) and even trepanning, which is skull surgery.

Ajsoprano

Jesus amputation?
I honestly believed they’d have been far more primitive. To think they’d not only know how to amputate an arm but to actually care enough to do it to somebody else is another thing.
I could ask questions about it all day.

Did modern man just start getting all the ladies, did they stop breeding, did a global change occur? Is it simple evolution? What’s the reason we don’t have a few different type of humans today like you have a few different type of cats or dogs or lizard

Wibbs

Ajsoprano wrote: »

Jesus amputation?
I honestly believed they’d have been far more primitive. To think they’d not only know how to amputate an arm but to actually care enough to do it to somebody else is another thing.
I could ask questions about it all day.

You wouldn't be the only one AJ. Here's a pic of his arms to compare;



He was found in a cave in modern day Iraq, called Shanidar cave, along with other Neandertals. He's known as Shanidar 1. He was around 50 and the poor bugger had had a hard life. He suffered a blow to one eye that likely caused blindness in it. He was partially deaf because of other trauma and had one arm. Oh and walked with a painful limp. Here's a pic of his skull;



You can make out the distortion around the eye socket on the right hand side. The tooth loss in the bottom jaw was after death. In the majority of cases they had good teeth. Though they all show wear in the front teeth. One theory is they used it like a third hand, where they would grip leather in it and use their hand to work the leather, or they chewed the leather to soften it. Actually from this alone we can see that they followed the same ratio of left hand folks to right handed that we do.

Thing is he survived for decades with all that going on. It seems he was considered valuable, even loved enough to keep the old guy around. This is one possible reconstruction of him;



Impressive noble looking fecker he is too. Of the other remains in the cave they were all male. Shanidar 2 was killed by a rock fall from the roof of the cave and might have had some funeral ritual for him after he died. He was about 30.

Shanidar 3 walked with a limp because of arthritis was again around 50 and was killed by what looks like a projectile weapon(arrow/dart/spear) that went into his chest. Bone growth suggests he lived for a couple of months after the injury and likely died of infection. Like I said hard as fook these guys were. Given that Neandertals at this time show no evidence of throwing weapons like spears it could be that one of us, modern humans, who had that technology, were the ones that shot him. Call yer wan off Murder She Wrote, she'll get to the bottom of it.

Shanidar 4 was another lad of about 50 and for years many thought showed evidence of burial among the Neandertals because of clumps of pollen from flowers that looked like "wreaths", but recent examinations suggest it was a local mouse species that stores such plants before winter and buried that stuff near his body.

Interestingly the Shanidar lads were taller than the average Neandertal. Between 5 feet 8 and 5 feet 11. Imagine a lad near six feet in height, with a 50 inch chest and pure muscle that would turn someone like Conor McGregor into a bloody broken mess in seconds. Actually their women were stronger than modern men. One lass who was in her late teens when she died was stronger in the arms than a modern world champion arm wrestler. If we did shot the Shanidar 3 lad, no wonder we did so at a distance.

Though since folks today who aren't from Africa(they have their own mixes going on) show Neandertal DNA there was more than one "spear" going on and we were also making love as well as war. Well we are human after all.

Did modern man just start getting all the ladies, did they stop breeding, did a global change occur? Is it simple evolution?

There's all sorts of theories AJ. It's likely a mix of many pressures. Climate change, small groups being more isolated, disease, better technology with us. Though for me I would reckon it was our culture that really made the difference. Why? Well those guys and gals had lived through much worse climate shifts, their technology was bloody good and had worked for over 400,000 years and no doubt they had faced disease. The only different thing in the mix is our culture and art and much bigger groups of people. They were both rare and isolated in the landscape. They very rarely traded with others. They kept to themselves. Whereas we'll talk to and trade with anyone. And we had an artistic package on top to unite us across many hundreds of miles. You really can't compete with that, no matter how strong you are.

Maybe a better comparison might be computers? I dunno how old you are AJ, but you might remember back in the 80's when personal computers came out, or you know about that time. They were all the rage and "cool" and you could play games on them but beyond a minority of nerds and geeks they weren't really very useful for everyday life. Then the internet happens in the 90's. They became connected and more and more "normal" people bought them and used them. Today every fecker with a phone is doing "computer" stuff without realising it. What changed was the connection, the connection between people. So Neandertals were kinda like the Sinclair Spectrum or whatever early 80's computer; clever and could do cool sh1t, but only to a point. Us, modern humans, we were the same basic computers connected by the internet. And that's why we won.

What’s the reason we don’t have a few different type of humans today like you have a few different type of cats or dogs or lizard

Well we kinda do. The same species, but different populations. So we have African Pgymies and Eskimos and Irish people and Tibetans and Native Australians and... so on. We're an incredibly diverse bunch of folks that make up the human race. And we all have slightly different "extras" from all those older groups of folks that are dusty bones in museums now. It's a pretty damn cool story we're living.

Ajsoprano

Seriously thanks for that. You should run a weekly class on cavemen stuff. I tried reading bits of this forum but it gets all megolithic and hard to follow a bit. Great help

Adam Khor

Alternatively, Wibbs, you should write a book. I know I'd buy it :B