Yes, but they also had more massive bodies, possibly 30% more massive than modern humans. I’m not sure that they had a higher brain/body mass ratio than we do and even if they had, a difference on the order of 10% isn’t strong evidence when comparing intelligence between species.
Maybe their additional brain mass was used to give them really good instincts instead of the more general purpose circuits we have.
This is a quote from Wikipedia supposedly paraphrasing Jordan, P. (2001) Neanderthal: Neanderthal Man and the Story of Human Origins.. “Since the Neanderthals evidently never used watercraft, but prior and/or arguably more primitive editions of humanity did, there is argument that Neanderthals represent a highly specialized side branch of the human tree, relying more on physiological adaptation than psychological adaptation in daily life than “moderns”. Specialization has been seen before in other hominims, such as Paranthropus boisei which evidently was adapted to eat rough vegetation.”
The theory is that they had bigger brains—e.g. see the reference at:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/165/how_inevitable_was_modern_human_civilization_data/124q
Yes, but they also had more massive bodies, possibly 30% more massive than modern humans. I’m not sure that they had a higher brain/body mass ratio than we do and even if they had, a difference on the order of 10% isn’t strong evidence when comparing intelligence between species.
Maybe their additional brain mass was used to give them really good instincts instead of the more general purpose circuits we have.
This is a quote from Wikipedia supposedly paraphrasing Jordan, P. (2001) Neanderthal: Neanderthal Man and the Story of Human Origins.. “Since the Neanderthals evidently never used watercraft, but prior and/or arguably more primitive editions of humanity did, there is argument that Neanderthals represent a highly specialized side branch of the human tree, relying more on physiological adaptation than psychological adaptation in daily life than “moderns”. Specialization has been seen before in other hominims, such as Paranthropus boisei which evidently was adapted to eat rough vegetation.”