• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Homo erectus

If we're being pedantic, all the binomial names in this thread have been incorrectly capitalized. Our species binomial name is Homo sapiens. Our particular subspecies is Homo sapiens sapiens. The Neanderthal man is classified as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis.

Binomial names are always spelt with only the genus capitalized. :)

Au contraire

Homo sapiens neadertalis

OK, I got the suffix wrong, but I still don't like that 'h'.
 
Pedant alert; it's Neander THAL, named after the Neander Valley in Germany where the first type specimen was found, valley in German=Thal, hence Neanderthal, although it's pronounced as if there was no H. And years ago I posted about a chap I used to work with that I was conviced was a throwback to them,can't be arsed to seach for the post, but he was immensly strong ,barrel chested, browridges etc, if archeaologists found his skeleton sometime in the futue they would think Neanderthals were still alive today.

According to Wikipedia (which, as we all know, is never wrong):

Neanderthals are named after one of the first sites where their fossils were discovered in the 19th century in the Neandertal in Erkrath, Germany.Thal is an older spelling of the German word Tal (with the same pronunciation), which means "valley" (cognate with English dale)

And thus, perhaps one could argue that "Neandertal" would be a modern spelling?

Either way, a fascinating bunch of people (or not quite people).
 
  • Like
Reactions: Jim
Started to watch Neanderthals-Meet your Ancestors on BBC i-player. Guess what ,the narrator keeps saying thal not tal.Great research if they can't even get the pronounciation right,can't watch it. BBC pile of sh*t these days (excepting Sir David A).
 
I think the Neanderthal, Denisovian and possibly others really were people. They were slightly different from Homo-Sapien but truly equal in intelligence and self awareness. Do not sell these people short. Had they existed longer in a pure state they could very well have advanced beyond homo-sapien. Keep in mind that 4 to 6 percent of most homo-sapien genes are from the Neanderthal and they will probably find the denisovians contributed as well. Some scientists consider them to be Homo-Sapien Neanderthal. I agree.
 
I think the Neanderthal, Denisovian and possibly others really were people. They were slightly different from Homo-Sapien but truly equal in intelligence and self awareness. Do not sell these people short. Had they existed longer in a pure state they could very well have advanced beyond homo-sapien. Keep in mind that 4 to 6 percent of most homo-sapien genes are from the Neanderthal and they will probably find the denisovians contributed as well. Some scientists consider them to be Homo-Sapien Neanderthal. I agree.

Exactly.

Take a member of Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis, give him a wash and shave and put him in a suit and he would be pretty well indistinguishable from errm Nikolai Valuev...

IMG_0431.JPG
 
Last edited:
Started to watch Neanderthals-Meet your Ancestors on BBC i-player. Guess what ,the narrator keeps saying thal not tal.Great research if they can't even get the pronounciation right,can't watch it. BBC pile of sh*t these days (excepting Sir David A).

That's a very petty criticism. The point of the programme was to depict via the latest CGI a 'realistic' Neanderthal based on actual skulls & bones to determine build/facial characteristics.

They mapped an athletic man & woman for movement & actor Andy Serkis to map facial expression & techniques such as mapping movement on foam rubber to simulate walking through snow, & a couple of dutch guys who specialised in facial reconstruction based on skulls, for the look/musculature etc. As such it was well done I thought, resulting in a CGI Neanderthal up there with the sort of thing seen in Lord of the Rings for example.

The pronounciation of the word is neither here nor there in regard to this.

Along the way some interesting info emerged, such as that in all examples found so far, bearing in mind no complete skeletons have been found, the bones in their right arm were larger than the left. The speculation was that using heavy spears when hunting made their spear arm more developed. There was also speculation as to what vocal/vowel sounds they could make.
 
Wrong thread anyway - this is for Homo Erectus etc, not Neanderthals.
 
Started to watch Neanderthals-Meet your Ancestors on BBC i-player. Guess what ,the narrator keeps saying thal not tal.Great research if they can't even get the pronounciation right,can't watch it. BBC pile of sh*t these days (excepting Sir David A).

As an aside, I believe Sir David pronounces it "thal".
 
I wonder how George and Ira Gershwin pronounced it? Could have been another verse, there.
 
Wrong thread anyway - this is for Homo Erectus etc, not Neanderthals.

It's Homo Erectus etc. and as there was probably a significant overlap between Erectus, who finally disappeared around 160,000 years ago and Neanderthal, who first appeared some 260,000 years ago and as the evidence is growing that every ancient hominid bred with every other they met, I see no problem in expanding the subject matter a bit.
 
Fair enough. My point is that criticising a programme you stopped watching because you didn't like the pronounciation of a word is a bit ludicrous. He missed an interesting programme.
 
Fair enough. My point is that criticising a programme you stopped watching because you didn't like the pronounciation of a word is a bit ludicrous. He missed an interesting programme.

I think the point was more hatred of the BBC than the mispronunciation. But that's getting off-topic.
 
Even I watched that programme. Before that, I can't remember the last time I watched a BBC production.
 
Cotton socks I attended college with a fellow that looked more Neanderthal than Nikolai, except he wasn't heavily built. His facial form was very pronounced in the Neanderthal form. Yet he was quite intelligent and had a great sense of humor. I don't think of the Neanderthal as extinct. They are a part of us.
 
Cotton socks I attended college with a fellow that looked more Neanderthal than Nikolai, except he wasn't heavily built. His facial form was very pronounced in the Neanderthal form. Yet he was quite intelligent and had a great sense of humor. I don't think of the Neanderthal as extinct. They are a part of us.

I can easily believe it. There's certainly plenty of people with robust features, who do look to have Neanderthal traits. Would be interesting to know whether, genetically, this means they are at the higher end of possessing a commonality with Neanderthal genetic makeup (up to 5% I believe).

Another good example is the reporter Beth Rigby who, if she had fairer hair, would look very similar to the classic reconstruction of a Neanderthal girl:

IMG_0434.JPG

IMG_0435.JPG
 
Last edited:
When I was a kid we saw a man whose hairline started about an inch above his eyebrows and he had a Neanderthal-looking face as well. We had a laugh behind his back and called him Captain Caveman. Equally amusing was the fact he was wearing a blue boiler suit like Oddbod from Carry On Screaming.
 
Cotton socks: I taught school for 42 years. Grade school for 30 of them. The Neanderthal child you have pictured could have sat into any of those grade school classes and fit right in. In fact, I had several girls who could have been that girl's sisters. Neanderthal is a part of who we are.
 
While it's not universally accepted, there is certainly a trend towards Neanderthal being renamed Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis in the literature, and them being recognised as a much closer relative than we used to think.

I attended a handful of lectures on Neanderthals and early humans around a year or so ago, and had a few interesting pub discussions with the lecturer on public perception - it was a source of endless frustration to him that, every few years, we get a news story revealing some exciting new bit of research to show how relatively advanced Neanderthals really were, and then everyone forgets about it and goes back to assuming they were nothing but lumbering cartoon cavemen, until the next story comes along, and we go through it all again.
 
That's because too many cute young misses delight in calling some males "Neanderthals". Then they turn around and marry a Homo Erectis or worse
 
Cotton socks I attended college with a fellow that looked more Neanderthal than Nikolai, except he wasn't heavily built. His facial form was very pronounced in the Neanderthal form. Yet he was quite intelligent and had a great sense of humor. I don't think of the Neanderthal as extinct. They are a part of us.


I do find myself these days glancing at fellow commuters on the train and thinking "blimey! He's got some quite pronounced brow ridges." or "her jaws look a bit prognathous, with a receding chin" or spotting other robust traits like large, widely-spaced eyes, protruding nose, wide mouth or even a stocky build or slightly stooping or bandy-legged gait etc. and wondering at the extent of Neanderthal or indeed Erectus DNA which has persisted in today's human population.

I understand that Neanderthal DNA may constitute up to 5 or 6% of our genetic makeup today but, with no Erectus DNA having been successfully extracted (afaik) we can only speculate as to their contribution to what we are today.
 
Last edited:
I'm not certain whether or not the following is still considered true. A few years back freckles, red hair, and white skin were all considered traits we picked up from the Neanderthal. On the other hand whiteness has been considered natures way of getting light colored people enough sensitivity to gain vitamin D from the Sun. It does appear that the closer a people were to the equator the darker the skin coloration. The farther from the equator the lighter the skin color.
 
I'm not certain whether or not the following is still considered true. A few years back freckles, red hair, and white skin were all considered traits we picked up from the Neanderthal. On the other hand whiteness has been considered natures way of getting light colored people enough sensitivity to gain vitamin D from the Sun. It does appear that the closer a people were to the equator the darker the skin coloration. The farther from the equator the lighter the skin color.
Chinese?
 
I'm no expert. It's just a theory I've read. Actually Chinese are mostly light skinned; their chief concession to the Sun is the extra fold in the eyes that give them a slightly slanted expression. In the deep past people were less likely to move over large areas. But as we all know, they did occasionly migrate to new areas. Skin color is primarily an adaptation to the Sun Vitamin D. Lighter skinned [people take in vitamin D more easily than dark skinned people. In the tropics the dark skin protected people from the intense Sun, but still gleaned vitamin D from it. In the extreme north skin became light to better facilitate the obsorbiing of vitamin D.
 
I'm no expert. It's just a theory I've read. Actually Chinese are mostly light skinned; their chief concession to the Sun is the extra fold in the eyes that give them a slightly slanted expression. In the deep past people were less likely to move over large areas. But as we all know, they did occasionly migrate to new areas. Skin color is primarily an adaptation to the Sun Vitamin D. Lighter skinned [people take in vitamin D more easily than dark skinned people. In the tropics the dark skin protected people from the intense Sun, but still gleaned vitamin D from it. In the extreme north skin became light to better facilitate the obsorbiing of vitamin D.
I'm not disputing your theory because it coincides with my own thinking.
Perhaps the Chinese forked away in a different evolutionary direction because their diet gave them enough vitamin D.
It's possible that the eye development in Asiatic people may be to help them avoid snow glare, rather than being a sunlight adaptation.
 
Back
Top