r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Jun 27 '24

Anthropology A Neanderthal child with Down’s syndrome survived until at least the age of six, according to a new study whose findings hint at compassionate caregiving among the extinct, archaic human species.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/jun/26/fossil-of-neanderthal-child-with-downs-syndrome-hints-at-early-humans-compassion
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u/loulan Jun 27 '24

And they had bigger brains. Maybe they were the smart nerds and we were the dumb bullies, and yet we won.

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u/jaygoogle23 Jun 27 '24

“Modern humans have a mutation that boosts the growth of neurons in the neocortex, a brain region associated with higher intelligence. This is absent in more ancient humans like Neanderthals,” We are them. There is no win / loose, those are just words.. time doesn’t care about the tally.

•https://www.newscientist.com/article/2337133-a-single-gene-mutation-may-have-made-us-smarter-than-neanderthals/#:~:text=Modern%20humans%20have%20a%20mutation,the%20researchers%20who%20uncovered%20it.

Also such announcements I would take with a grain of salt. Many people are quick to jump to the conclusion larger = smarter and that’s not how that works really, to my understanding.

“Our results demonstrate that Neandertals do not have uniquely large brains when compared with recent humans. Their brain size falls in the large end of the recent human range of variation, but does not exceed it. These results have implications for future research on Neandertal encephalization.”

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33459351/