Our brothers in mind grew up too early. So they could not stand the competition with people.
Proven: Neanderthals are a separate species of people. They differed from us not only in appearance. Scientists discovered that the Neanderthals practically did not engage in creativity - they did not paint on the walls of caves, did not sculpt from clay, did not make jewelry. All their activities had a practical meaning, and the objects made by their hands were completely devoid of any symbolism.
Neanderthals had a short and difficult childhood
Photo: Max Planck Institute / kp.ru
At the same time, people of our kind, 50 thousand years ago, made pipes, carved figurines and other artifacts from ivory, made beads, covered the walls of caves with fascinating images based on their lives. And the sculpture known as "Venus of the Stone Age" is generally the height of the manifestation of symbolic thinking.
The famous Neolithic Venus was created by our kind of people
Photo: Max Planck Institute / kp.ru
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Why were we and Neanderthals so different - in terms of creativity? This question was asked by April Nowell, a Canadian Paleolithic archaeologist at the University of Victoria, Canada who studies the origins of arts and languages.
The answer is: the roots of the difference must be sought in the childhood of humans and Neanderthals, which lasted for different times.
As it turned out, Neanderthals matured much faster than humans. This has been demonstrated by studies of the teeth of Neanderthal and human children by Tanya Smith of Harvard University.
Rapid maturation led to the fact that Neanderthal children almost did not play - there was no time. They started living on their own early. But it is games that develop thinking, shape the brain. And the longer the child plays, the more difficult his games are. The better are the zones responsible for social behavior, for the ability to reason and abstract thinking, for imagination and, as a result, for the desire and ability to create, develop.
At the same time, the game world itself is fictional and symbolic. There is no symbolism.
Total: the ability to create in Neanderthals did not develop because they played little in childhood
April Nowell's findings complement those obtained by Simon Neubauer and Jean-Jaques Hublin of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. They found that the Neanderthal brain grew faster than the human brain. And this led to the fact that the environment had little effect on its development, on the formation of connections between neurons. Neanderthals, according to German researchers, resembled people with autism.
In a word, we perceived the world differently. And our perception ultimately won out. And the Neanderthals, alas, died out about 30 thousand years ago.
BTW
People started watching movies thousands of years ago. And the Neanderthals were not shown
A sensational discovery was made by researchers from Cambridge University and the Austrian University of Applied Sciences in the city of Sankt Poelten's University of applied sciences, looking from a completely unexpected angle at the rock paintings. On the so-called petroglyphs, with which ancient people covered the walls of the caves.
Photo: Max Planck Institute / kp.ru
“These are not just pictures,” explained Frederick Baker of Cambridge University's Museum of Archeology and Anthropology. - It's part of the audio-visual presentation.
According to scientists, in those distant times, when there was no real cinema yet, entertainment like it already existed. Ancient artists painted various scenes on the walls of the caves. And they tried to depict the sequence of events - one picture served as a continuation of another. Just like in animation. And on the screen.
- On the walls, the cave paintings, of course, did not move, - continues Baker, - but a certain illusion of movement arose in the minds of the audience. And they were going on purpose - to listen to the narrator and "watch a movie." A cave of a suitable size became a cinema.
Neanderthals were foreign to such entertainment.
