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I came across this video about Neanderthals.
Some interesting stuff.
They were generally taller than homo sapiens of that time, but shorter than modern humans. It's possible they might be even bigger if they were around today with modern nutrition.
They have thicker bones with more mass. It seems they could take damage and heal from them better than we can.
They're just generally thicker and have more muscle mass. I don't know how they can know this but apparently the average untrained male Neanderthal could probably bench 200kg while a female could bench 160kg. That's a huge strength difference between us.
They have a wider rib cage to make more room for bigger lungs so they have more lung capacity even compared to modern athletes.
They're built for short bursts of speed and power, but not long distances.
They have bigger heads and eyes than us so they could see better and a part of the reason for their larger brain is to process all that visual information. Their bigger heads meant thicker necks to support them.
They have thicker hands and longer thumbs than we do. A downside of this is that they were not as good at fine motor skills, which explains why they relied on their speed and power to attack animals with melee weapons, rather than developing more refined weapons like bows and arrows.
They also had to eat way more than we do to survive.
If Neanderthals were around today, they would absolutely dominate combat sports or sports like football and rubgy. Even a female Neanderthal would probably destroy most human males.
But when competing with homo sapiens for survival, it seems we had the advantage despite being weaker individually. We didn't need as much food, we can travel longer distances to hunt/forage, and we could use more sophisticated weapons.
Some interesting stuff.
They were generally taller than homo sapiens of that time, but shorter than modern humans. It's possible they might be even bigger if they were around today with modern nutrition.
They have thicker bones with more mass. It seems they could take damage and heal from them better than we can.
They're just generally thicker and have more muscle mass. I don't know how they can know this but apparently the average untrained male Neanderthal could probably bench 200kg while a female could bench 160kg. That's a huge strength difference between us.
They have a wider rib cage to make more room for bigger lungs so they have more lung capacity even compared to modern athletes.
They're built for short bursts of speed and power, but not long distances.
They have bigger heads and eyes than us so they could see better and a part of the reason for their larger brain is to process all that visual information. Their bigger heads meant thicker necks to support them.
They have thicker hands and longer thumbs than we do. A downside of this is that they were not as good at fine motor skills, which explains why they relied on their speed and power to attack animals with melee weapons, rather than developing more refined weapons like bows and arrows.
They also had to eat way more than we do to survive.
If Neanderthals were around today, they would absolutely dominate combat sports or sports like football and rubgy. Even a female Neanderthal would probably destroy most human males.
But when competing with homo sapiens for survival, it seems we had the advantage despite being weaker individually. We didn't need as much food, we can travel longer distances to hunt/forage, and we could use more sophisticated weapons.
