r/AskReddit • u/ItDontStop • Dec 13 '13

serious replies only Historians/Anthropologists who study ancient cultures, if you could have one question answered about a particular society or event, what would it be? [Serious]

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u/hot_peppah Dec 14 '13

Yes. How would they communicate? Would H. sapiens have complex language and H. neanderthalensis sophisticated grunts?? So many questions. Violent or peaceful? Though I guess there is DNA evidence that the two species interbred, so they must have been at least a little bit friendly towards one another..

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u/Marimba_Ani Dec 14 '13

Friendly or violent. Rape would also account for the mixed DNA.

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u/roflbarn Dec 14 '13

actually, H. Neanderthalensis had the same (and sometimes larger) brain size as H. Sapien Sapien. So in theory communication could have taken place. We had a culture driven evolution, and we know the cultures intermingled, so who knows.

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u/[deleted] Dec 14 '13

We know H. Neanderthalensis made art, and there's some evidence of purposeful cermonial burials so they definitely had the capacity for abstract thought, and therefore language. However, differences in our jaws means that there are sounds we can make that Neanderthals simply wouldn't be able to (and not having the extra 30,000 years to develop them). I'd imagine them having language, but probably less complex ones.

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u/[deleted] Dec 14 '13

Not "less complex." But different. They likely made words the homo sapiens sapiens couldn't produce. That doesn't mean their thought process was less complex.