I've been watching too many Baldur's Gate Youtube videos on how to build a character, and one guy talks about the "power spike" when your character gets a particularly useful ability, like an extra bonus action per turn.
The biggest power spike of genus Homo may have been attaching a rock to the end of a stick. The spear changed our ancestors from sub-apex prey to predators ready to take on a lion in its cave. From meat to masters of all we surveyed. The next power surge of that magnitude may have been nukes.
Yet it couldn't save neanderthalensis from sapiens.
> Yet it couldn't save neanderthalensis from sapiens.
This is what I don’t understand. Neanderthals were strong and smart. Did Homo sapiens kill them outright I.e. war? Or was it more of a outcompete and outbreed situation?
Neanderthals were built for the winter and for the colder periods of the earth's weather. Cold temperatures would also lead to smaller group sizes. It then seems likely that Neanderthal groups were picked off one by one by large groups of homo sapiens. If you have a 1:100 or even a 1:10 numbers advantage (when you opponent's group doesn't exceed ~80 people), it often doesn't matter how advanced or smart your opponent is. They're going to get flattened no matter what they do. Bloodlust combined with very large group sizes usually leads to lower individual quality but there's a limit to how many one guy could pick off. After the 15th or the 20th guy you're likely to get hit a couple of times, no matter how skilled you are. And after that you're done for, no strongman can stand even a 10-man dogpile.
> Or was it more of a outcompete and outbreed situation?
There’s a lot of evidence we more or less absorbed the neanderthal population. Old school tribal genocide style – you win the war/battle, kill the men, take their wives. We don’t know if that’s exactly how it happened, but it stands to reason that pre-historic tribal warfare wasn’t much different than the more recent tribal warfare we do have records about.
my laymen's understanding: the weather changed, and with it, forests retreated and plains came about. Neanderthals hunted with handheld spears, ambushing pray in the forest (evidenced by denser bones on one half of the body). Homo sapiens were more adept at plains hunting and throwing spears and one population outgrew the other. Cross breeding eventually eradicated the former as evidenced by the fragments of Neanderthal DNA present in the modern population. I've also heard it said that sapiens were more social, leading to better communication between groups.
It must have been both, right? In the sense that higher populations would tend to be helpful when fights started, better resources lead to higher population, and winning fights leads to better access to resources.
True although that doesn't necessarily mean more intelligence – theoretically smaller could mean more efficient – like how our computers have decreased in size but increased in performance.
I’ve played most of the Far Cry games. Starting with the first one.
That one’s by far the most interesting. Dunno about “best” (to me, “interesting” adds enough appeal in this case that it’s probably also my favorite, but “best” depends on the player) but definitely most interesting.
The way it was balanced made Primal feel a lot more 'real' than the other Far Cry games. Normally in Far Cry you might shoot an enemy in the chest 20 times with a rifle and he won't die, simply because that rifle is cheap. In Primal, from what I recall, pretty much all the human enemies would go down with no more than a few arrow wounds. And if it took more than that, an enemy continuing to fight with a few arrows in him was at least easier to suspend disbelief for.
For those that find this kind of history interesting, I strongly recommend the book “Sapiens” by Yuval Harari.
Its distillation of the complexities of human evolution while being careful to admit things we don’t know and not over-assume make for a truly great read (so far*, Im not yet done with it!)
I read Guns, Germs, and Steel right before reading Sapiens. While I've heard that some of the ideas of GGS were not well received, I really enjoyed it. Sapiens felt more like a tech bro hand waving and jumping to conclusions that he thought was obvious and I thought was suspect.
Edit:
Two takeaways I did enjoy (can't recall from which book):
Humans were pray animals that quickly became dominant predators, not allowing us to develop the confidence of "real" predators, so we are still scared of the dark and everything else.
Humans were able to stay in practically the same state for 40k years in Australia. After killing some megafauna of course. In the last 1k years, we've upset the apple cart and may destroy the world as we know and need it. We _can_ coexist in our environment without utterly destroying it in 40k years - but we are not.
Ironically, the reason some of the ideas of Guns, Germs, and Steel were poorly received is that it, too, is perceived by experts in the relevant fields as rather egregiously engaging in handwaving and jumping to conclusions.
> In the last 1k years, we've upset the apple cart and may destroy the world as we know and need it. We _can_ coexist in our environment without utterly destroying it in 40k years - but we are not.
It’s extremely unlikely that whatever we do to the environment will decrease QoL in developed countries below that which was experienced by the Australian aboriginals (when measured by child mortality, life expectancy, access to stuff etc.) though.
I was looking forward to this book but found it to be almost unreadable. I don't remember my specific issues, just that I was discouraged after several attempts and gave it up which rarely happens with me.
I believe I had just read a few other novels about human evolution/ancient civs and found some of Yuval's assertions to conflict (IMHO) with what I read elsewhere, most likely The Dawn of Everything (not certain).
I think Sapiens may be a product of it's time. It may still true today, but I think this became really popular during the Joe Rogan era prior to covid.
This type of content was taking off then. Lots of shrewd observations that seem to point in a convenient direction. Then you realize that most of these things were never really meaningful, if they were even true to begin with.
Just a collection of interesting annectdotes at best. Bunch of interesting factoids that are patched together, with no real meaning.
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The biggest power spike of genus Homo may have been attaching a rock to the end of a stick. The spear changed our ancestors from sub-apex prey to predators ready to take on a lion in its cave. From meat to masters of all we surveyed. The next power surge of that magnitude may have been nukes.
Yet it couldn't save neanderthalensis from sapiens.
This is what I don’t understand. Neanderthals were strong and smart. Did Homo sapiens kill them outright I.e. war? Or was it more of a outcompete and outbreed situation?
There’s a lot of evidence we more or less absorbed the neanderthal population. Old school tribal genocide style – you win the war/battle, kill the men, take their wives. We don’t know if that’s exactly how it happened, but it stands to reason that pre-historic tribal warfare wasn’t much different than the more recent tribal warfare we do have records about.
1% to 4% of human DNA, for people with non-African backgrounds, is Neanderthal: https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/genetics/ancient-dna-an... (cmd+f for “interbreeding”)
Mind you the whole “take their wives” aspect of human warfare is, uhm, pretty well documented: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wartime_sexual_violence
We're still around!
Armed with just primitive weapons they took on lions, bears, wolves, mammoths.
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Up until relatively recently African tribes used to hunt elephants, lions, hippos, rhinos and more with just spears.
Of course humans hunted animals back then too.
I was wondering what other kind of cave lions were they likely to encounter?
Or maybe it was Homo Sapiens that domesticated the harmless cave lions, and there you go.
Perhaps more risk-averse but wiser in the long run.
That one’s by far the most interesting. Dunno about “best” (to me, “interesting” adds enough appeal in this case that it’s probably also my favorite, but “best” depends on the player) but definitely most interesting.
Its distillation of the complexities of human evolution while being careful to admit things we don’t know and not over-assume make for a truly great read (so far*, Im not yet done with it!)
Edit: Two takeaways I did enjoy (can't recall from which book):
Humans were pray animals that quickly became dominant predators, not allowing us to develop the confidence of "real" predators, so we are still scared of the dark and everything else.
Humans were able to stay in practically the same state for 40k years in Australia. After killing some megafauna of course. In the last 1k years, we've upset the apple cart and may destroy the world as we know and need it. We _can_ coexist in our environment without utterly destroying it in 40k years - but we are not.
It’s extremely unlikely that whatever we do to the environment will decrease QoL in developed countries below that which was experienced by the Australian aboriginals (when measured by child mortality, life expectancy, access to stuff etc.) though.
Any thing we do in sufficient numbers has an effect on the environment regardless of our tech level.
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I was looking forward to this book but found it to be almost unreadable. I don't remember my specific issues, just that I was discouraged after several attempts and gave it up which rarely happens with me.
I believe I had just read a few other novels about human evolution/ancient civs and found some of Yuval's assertions to conflict (IMHO) with what I read elsewhere, most likely The Dawn of Everything (not certain).
This type of content was taking off then. Lots of shrewd observations that seem to point in a convenient direction. Then you realize that most of these things were never really meaningful, if they were even true to begin with.
Just a collection of interesting annectdotes at best. Bunch of interesting factoids that are patched together, with no real meaning.
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