Talk:Neanderthal

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Article milestones Date Process Result February 16, 2005 Peer review Reviewed January 12, 2020 Peer review Reviewed April 5, 2020 Good article nominee Listed May 31, 2020 Featured article candidate Not promoted A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on May 1, 2020. The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that Neanderthals went fishing? A news item involving this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "In the news" column on May 7, 2010. Current status: Good article

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This isn't to question Neanderthals in Europe around the period, but despite the Bruniquel discovery being somewhat old when I recently searched about this I found hypotheses that these could have been made by Neanderthals, a study to date when the stalagmites broke, but when searching about developments like if evidence of sout and human artefacts were found it was more difficult. I then wondered how WP:DUE it is in this article. If there were more recent developments showing it wasn't natural or made by other animals (i.e. carnivores are known to pile up debris), it would alternatively be nice to update the section. Thanks, —PaleoNeonate – 23:11, 30 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Bruniquel Cave preserves burned bones, highly unlikely to have occurred naturally because how would a forest fire get so deep in a cave?   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  02:11, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, burnt bones are definitely an important finding that should be mentioned. —PaleoNeonate – 11:34, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You don't need anyone's permission to add it   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  22:04, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Since the default link only showed a few sentences of an abstract I initially believed searching for more sources was necessary, but the pubmed abstract was more complete and already mentioned fire and burnt bones (added). Thanks again, —PaleoNeonate – 03:31, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This page has become filled with speculation, if not outright fantasy. You see "[Neanderthals] may have...", "might have...", "could have" entirely too many times to approach the content seriously. The Neanderthal page used to be based on sound, scientific, peer-reviewed, evidence-based fact and theory. Now it appears to be one person's idealized fantasy of the Neanderthal. The page has also become long-winded, and shows a peculiar fixation on comparisons between Neanderthals and Anatomically Modern Humans. The same constant comparisons are not made between chimpanzees and bonobos, elephants and mammoths or even between remarkably similar bird species in their respective pages, and thus it seems as if there is a motive and bias in the writing. This bias becomes clear when one reaches the end of the page and sees the statement "resurgence of the multiregional hypothesis", when in fact, there has been no such resurgence in the scientific community.

Neanderthals might have cooked food by boiling...but there is literally no evidence anywhere on earth that they did. No stone or ceramic pots or eating/drinking/cooking vessels have been found and attributed to Neanderthals. They haven't even been unearthed at modern human sites prior to the late Paleolithic.

Neanderthals might have decorated themselves with red ochre...but again, there is no evidence, just speculation.

Neanderthals might have painted cave walls...no evidence. The "evidence" is a single cave that was occupied by Anatomically Modern Humans, and the date is disputed. More speculation.

Neanderthals might have had language...but the position of the hyoid bone, lack of figurative art, lack of engraving, and reduced brain areas associated with language, critical thought and emotion strongly suggest they did not have any type of language as we associate language with modern humans. Crows and dolphins are known to communicate, but we don't generally refer to their communication as "language". Any suggestion that Neanderthals had a fully developed language is speculative at best. So yet again, speculation without evidence.

Neanderthals might have made music...No evidence. All "evidence" for Neanderthal art, body decoration and music are contemporary with modern human presence in Europe. Lots of speculation...no proof.

In no other Wikipedia page is so much fantasy allowed to pass. Let's stick to the FACTS. Citing one researcher's speculation is not a substitution for a legitimate peer-reviewed source.

Wikipedia pages should be un-biased and objective. This page is not. In fact, it's dangerously close to "original research" in it's heavy use/citation of what is literally original research.

Earth Tones In Autumn (talk) 01:39, 23 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This is standard for any article on an extinct anything. For example, you can't say "T. rex was 8 metric tons on average," you can only say "T. rex is estimated to have been 8 metric tons on average" because there's no way of verifying things like these. You can't go back in a time machine, so all we really have is speculation, especially in anthropology. There is a huge debate on if Neanderthals had language and all the other items you mentioned; it doesn't matter which side of the debate you personally favor, to omit it would leave the article incomplete   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  02:02, 23 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Anthropologist John D. Hawks has argued that the genetic similarity to Neanderthals may be the result of both common ancestry and interbreeding, as opposed to just one or the other. doi=10.1146/annurev-anthro-092412-155548, Significance of Neandertal and Denisovan genomes in human evolution

This line seemed really weird to me because there's no sense in arguing that some aspect of genetic similarity between two species of the same genus have common ancestry unless you don't understand taxonomy, so I took a look at the paper. It's an annual review and makes no argument, and furthermore does not actually seem to address the topic: he mentions common ancestry once, in order to give background to his section on the research around direct ancestry. Since the line is superfluous and the citation does not support the line I have removed both.

romnempire (talk) 14:52, 23 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Dunkleosteus77: Hello, regarding this edit [[1]], is there a general policy that News articles, even those quoting scientists in the relevant feilds, can never be cited? I did not think that was the case. I recall a policy stating that they can be used in a supplementary manner (and many articles here here on scientific subjects do so). It seems relevant information that should be included that there is some uncertaintly regarding the the proposal of widespread Neanderthal admixture in Africans, and David Reich is certainly a prominant and notable expert in the field (his opinion is likewise notable). Skllagyook (talk) 05:03, 7 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The fact that scientific articles often quote news articles is not relevant as many editors do not understand the rules and often break them. I do not think there is a general rule against citing newspapers, but quotations of scientists' views by journalists are better avoided on a subject like Neanderthals, where there is a danger of comments being misquoted or sensationalized. It would be different if it was an article by Reich, and I cannot check the source as it appears to be a dead link. Dudley Miles (talk) 08:45, 7 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Dudley Miles: Here is a functioning version of the link:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/science/neanderthal-dna-africa.html

This is a quote from the article linked above (which you should be able to check):

"But while evidence has been building that modern humans left Africa in waves, and that those migrations began much earlier than once thought, some scientists disputed the evidence that people of African descent may be carrying Neanderthal genes."

"David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School, praised much of the study but said he had doubts about how extensive the flow of DNA back to Africa could have been. “It looks like this is a really weak signal,” he said of the data."

Am am not aware of a paper puplished by him on the subject. But it seems that skepticism of the recent paper's proposal by a scentist as notable as Reich deserves a mention on the page/should be incorporated somehow. Skllagyook (talk) 09:53, 7 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I cannot access the article as I get a message that I have exceeded my free allowance and I do not wish to pay. However, my point is as I state above that a journalist's account of what a scientist says is not a reliable source. In addition, it is not clear from your quote whether Reich (if he is quoted correctly) is saying that the signal is so weak as to be valueless or accepting it but querying the extent of the gene flow. I think we should wait for more clarity. Dudley Miles (talk) 12:55, 7 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• We just had this discussion Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Palaeontology#Do we cite news articles? regarding the inclusion of news sources on Homo longi even if they quoted "the experts". A peer-reviewed journal article is a secondary source since it's been viewed and approved by disinterested parties. A news article can only ever be a tertiary source summarizing the journal article (i.e., no better than Wikipedia), or a primary source hosting all kinds of opinions which may or may not pass peer-review. They may be used for some topics, namely discovery of specimens as details on this matter are oftentimes excluded from peer-reviewed sourced, but in this case I disagree, and, as Dudley pointed out, it's not clear what Reich is actually saying here   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  14:18, 7 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

a journalist's account of what a scientist says is not a reliable source - sorry, that's simply a load of bull. A reliable source is a reliable source, the New York Times IS such, and when it comes to quoting people in articles, that one of the things they're most stringent about. It is very safe to say that anything the NYT quotes David Reichs as saying is exactly what he intended for them to say, and they do review and confirm what they've quoted them saying before it goes to print. It doesn't matter if the journalist is a scientist or not - the SCIENTIST is the one that gave the god damn quote to the journalist and approved its being printed with his name attached to it! For all practical purposes, we can consider those words to be directly from Reichs, and your casting journalists as being haphazard when they quote people is bordering on libel. Ping @Skllagyook: @Dunklesteus77: @Dudley Miles: (note: I have no objection to its exclusion if there are OTHER GOOD REASONS to not include it, but claiming that the NYT is an unreliable source I strongly object to) 2600:1702:4960:1DE0:50F6:C1D6:31E7:5B10 (talk) 10:28, 28 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

From article as of 12 May 2022:

If it is likely Neanderthal skin colour differed significantly from region to region, such genetic variation may contradict the evidence of neanderthal homogeneity.[217][218]

Neither of these sources appear to verify. I'm not seeing anything in either link about skin, hair or eye color. "Pigmentation" is also absent from both papers. Here are the full text links to the sources cited:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6594762/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6880983/

It would appear that this is a case of original research. -- Hunan201p (talk) 22:08, 12 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I agree and the qualification "If..." makes the comment so vague it is meaningless. I have deleted. Dudley Miles (talk) 07:12, 13 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

When extinction of the neanderthals is mentioned in the article, why is no mentioning of assimilation or absorption? Jochum (talk) 21:17, 30 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]