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This article really fails to explain anything. Headline just makes a statement then the text waffles on without actually making any arguments to support that statement.

So basically from the paper I think they are saying there is morphological variability in the area, but they can see technological consistency (centripetal lavallois, burnt ochre). But I still don't understand why this particular assemblage is evidence for that.

Not that I don't believe them, I'm just grumbling that they haven't explained it properly (at least, not well enough for my Sunday morning brain).

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-025-02110-y/figures/3

The link has images of some of the tools they found. Do you think we could teach a Neanderthal to code?

Sure. 95% of software development is banging rocks together until they fit the purpose anyways.
It's entirely possible that they were more intelligent in some ways than contemporary Homo Sapiens. How they were overwhelmed is open to question. Perhaps just numerically - they were adapted for cold environments and may have been less fecund.
I’ve also seen estimates that Neanderthals required 2x-5x more calories per day than us, which translates into 2x-5x less population density. That’s one way to get overwhelmed.
> required 2x-5x more calories per day than us, which translates into 2x-5x less population density

If you assume that they're equally productive, sure. Why assume that?

I think "than us" here is quite mistaken reasoning, particularly for those of us with lots of Neanderthal DNA.
Also, "than us doing what"?

Thru-hikers are often expecting to burn like 6000 calories a day.

Arctic explorers burned up to something like 10,000.

Would Neanderthals burn 30-50,000 calories in the same situation, or is that just "what Neanderthals did all day", as opposed to me, a guy sitting at a desk, burning 2000-2500 when I get my steps in?

3 of the 4 dna samples show signs of nonclassic CAH. This limited their reproduction abilities as 50% of babies would have CAH and die at birth until they integrated with proto-humans and had higher genetic diversity.
It's incredible to think that instead of isolated evolutionary tracks, early human groups were exchanging ideas, tools, and even burial customs
Iceman - 1984: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087452/?ref_=fn_all_ttl_3

A surprisingly touching film about a frozen Neanderthal brought back to life. Have a feeling you'll like it.

Thanks for the recommendation! I hadn't heard of Iceman before, but it sounds like something I'd enjoy. I'll check it out!
I preferred the 1992 remake.
Didn't know. Will check it out. [edit: nothing on imdb for that year. Are you sure?]
I expect it was a joke referring to the Pauley Shore vehicle Encino Man: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104187/
Why? People are people.

People have been people for 200k years. There’s a built in assumption in these sorts of stories that before the pyramids or whatever, everyone was running around like apes. Pounding their chests and each other.

I’d say of course people communicated and helped each other out. There were far fewer of us, and for the most part they lived in a world of great abundance.

I agree that people have always been people, with the capacity for communication and cooperation.But still...
Proto-religions probably too
Absolutely! Shared burial customs suggest shared beliefs about death and the afterlife
so we are all part, Ugg, or is it part Ugg-et, or is it both?, ie: y and x chromasones have nieanderthal bits?, if its both, then that is a strong indication that things were pretty casual, ,hanging out partying, looks like Ugg and Sue are hitting it off, some tasty mastadon on the fire, heard you and the other nieandethals got a saber tooth cat last week
There is no Neanderthal Y chromosome (male line) DNA in modern humans, and also no Neanderthal mitochondrial (female line) DNA in modern humans, but about half of Neanderthal DNA is still around scattered between different modern humans. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-human-y-chromo..., https://theconversation.com/modern-human-dna-contains-bits-f...

Neanderthals and mastodons never met, as they were on different continents.

Okay, they didn’t bother to completely sequence neanderthal dna…

And now we make the claim that their Y chromosone is non existent in humans.

Let’s finish the sequencing before being so definitively factual about it.

Y chromosomes and mitochondria don't have crossover, so you need unbroken patrilineal and matrilineal descent from a particular ancestor to inherit it.

So if you are Ugg, son of Ugg, son of Ugg, son of Ugg, you have ur-Ugg's Neanderthal Y chromosome, but if you are Ugg, son of Ugg, son of Uggette, daughter of Ugg, you have neither ur-Ugg's Y nor X chromosome (Uggette inherits Ugg's X, which gets crossed over with Maggie's [Ugg's Cro-Magnon missus] X's and passed on to Ugg II, but Ugg II doesn't pass on his X to you, he passed on Magnus's [Uggette's Cro-Magnon mister] Y).

Haha, yeah, the idea that early humans and Neanderthals were just casually intermingling around the fire, sharing stories and mammoth steaks, is a fun mental image
Why call Neanderthal ugg? Homo sapiens were probably Ugg too.
I mean, we already knew that we exchanged genes so is it not therefore self-evident that we also exchanged memes?
It's a matter of degree. Of course they learned some things from each other, but did or could the groups have largely similar cultures? The term used in the paper is "behavioral uniformity", which is more than exchanging a few memes. And what does that say about how much and how deeply they interacted? From the abstract:

The south Levantine mid-Middle Palaeolithic (mid-MP; ~130–80 thousand years ago (ka)) is remarkable for its exceptional evidence of human morphological variability, with contemporaneous fossils of Homo sapiens and Neanderthal-like hominins. ... We suggest that the development of this behavioural uniformity is due to intensified inter-population interactions and admixture between Homo groups ~130–80 ka.

Plunder/Raping raids don't necessarilyead to trading and meaningful conversations do they?
You have be able to communicate with your slaves.
It’s highly unlikely that a small nomadic hunter-gatherer band would have had the food surplus and hierarchical organization needed to control and keep slaves.

It’s as likely that ancient humans outcompeted Neanderthals for resources as killed them off directly.

This is not true, as evidenced by the slave taking exhibited by nomadic peoples in North America. It was a pretty routine practice, well documented in history. Losers in battles would often be assimilated by the winner as slaves.
The Uralic word for slave is very archaic and dates to well before they became sedentary. The Uralic tribes came into contact with the Aryas people on the steppes, and won battles with them enough to take captives as slaves, calling them orjat.
Surplus? The captives are there for labor and exploitation. They’re not house pets
Do we have to be able to communicate--in the sense of language--with our pets?
Wouldn't captives carry memes?
Only if you and your captives are able to communicate. If you have a fish tank, do your fish give you memes?
Sure they would. You would have to communicate intention. There would be assimilation where they would take their women and spend time with them etc.
> Plunder/Raping raids

What are you referring to? Is there evidence of that being most of the way they interacted?

There are indicators, for example, the neanderthals and all other human like great apes have mysteriously disappeared except for us. (Or gotten assimilated, I mean, we have a tiny bit neanderthal DNA)

Check out killer ape theory.

Also look at how violent humans are to their own species.

Ask the Vikings.
As a response to the headline? Sure. The article is trivially interesting, though.
Culture doesn't exist in a vacuum
Does this have implications for understanding the abilities of Neanderthals? For instance, might more advanced tools found in Neanderthal sites have been created by non-Neanderthals, and exchanged in trade or captured/ stolen?