Game Mechanic Idea based on Interesting Neanderthal Theory - "Them + Us"

No offence, but this theory is complete Belgium, for reasons I'll try and explain below.

1. Cat-pupils are scary, but there's no evidence for them whatsoever (this feature isn't found anywhere outside of bushbabies and such when it comes to primates). Early in the video, Vendramini chides scientifically-grounded reconstructions for not being based on fossil evidence, since things like skin, hair, and eyes do not fossilise. Yet he reconstructs Neanderthal eyes in a far less plausible manner than scientists do.

2. The chimpanzee skull superposition. This made me want to bash my head through my desk, get up, and then bang it against a wall repeatedly. To explain how this makes extremely, extremely, EXTREMELY little sense;

A. The orientation is all wrong. Vendramini has the location of the chimp spine jutting out of the back of the Neanderthal's occiput- the back of the head is buried in the neck. Furthermore where the actual Neanderthal spine should attach to the skull, is the location of the chimp's windpipe. This is an incredibly wrong orientation- horribly incorrect. It's like screwing the tire of a car onto the passenger-side dashboard and concluding that it's located where it should be.

B. Vendramini forgot to put a jaw on the skull. Not quite helpful claiming a "perfect fit" when part of the skull is entirely absent from your image.

C. The ears would be roughly located on the chimp's throat if this orientation was correct- again, a product of the horrible mangling of anatomy.

D. It is far from a "perfect fit" as Vendramini claims- yes, the areas do, very roughly, link up, but so would parts of a human skull if a similar 'experiment' were performed.

E. It is no new trick- a similar superposition, of black people's skulls over a chimp silhouette, was used to "prove" the racial inferiority of Africans.

3. Vendramini claims for Neanderthals with flat noses, rather than human-like projected ones. However, Neanderthal skulls have a larger bony nasal projection than human skulls do. Which would imply that they had even more projected, or larger, noses, than we do.

4. Vendramini complains about anthropomorphism in neander reconstructions- which is a valid concern to some degree. Yet he goes on to purposefullly craft a non-human looking reconstruction, and throws scientific fact aside in the process. Aside from the utter inanity of the "compare them to apes, not humans" (what am I? A daffodil?) statement, which sounds more logical;

A. Comparing an organism with another organism in an entirely different genus, from which it has been seperated for millions of years?

B. Comparing an organism with another organism in the same species, which it is known to posses several morphological similarities to, and is only seperated from by a few hundred thousand years?

I don't know, but I think it would make sense to compare Neanderthals with their closest living relative. Even if they did have key differences to us- in things like hirsuteness or skin texture- odds are, they looked fairly similar.

5. Vendramini then colours his Neanderthals black. Of course, it's fine to have black-skinned 'primitive' humans, when they're carno-gorillas- and when they're monsters. Needless to say, there is a very wide range of skin colouration that could have been possible for them (even nonhuman apes have striking variation in skin colour- there are a lot of beige, etc, chimps). Living at the latitude that they did, it seems highly unlikely that they would have had such dark skin.

6. At least in the promo video, Vendramini starts out trying to "debunk" scientific reconstructions of Neanderthals, and then introduces his predation "theory". Why? Well, it's so much easier to paint Neanderthals as movie monsters when they... well... have the appearance of movie monsters. Which brings me to my next criticism;

7. Vendramini is no scientist- he is a TV/Film Writer, Director, and Producer (see here www.imdb.com/name/nm0892961/).

8. Vendramini claims that Neanderthal predation pressure essentially drove humans to sapience. He argues that "Neanderthal predation" occured in the area of the Medeterranean Levant. Considering that humans arose in Africa, and that humans with Neanderthal DNA (evidence of Neanderthal-human interaction, or in these terms, "Neanderthal predation", occuring) are found everywhere outside of Africa, what are the ramifications of this, exactly? It does not seem like humans from the Levant region re-colonised Africa and wiped out their pre-contact relatives.

So if Neanderthals drove humans to sapience, and Africans didn't have contact with Neanderthals- are black people not sapient!?

Nice response (apart from the race stuff... grazes Rule 6 a little).

You don't need to say "no offense," though, since I made this thread BECAUSE his theory's got more fiction than fact to it. Sounds like something in a video game; in other words, a fun scenario in a Thrive playthrough.

Weird... Could've sworn there was a "no politics" rule.

What do you mean "Race stuff"? Do you mean "racist" stuff? There was none of that, unless you consider human species as a "Race" and were referring to that. Jokes on you, cause you brought up the "race stuff" in your OP.
Also, I don't get how politics are involved? Why bring forum rules in to back up your claims that are directed at no one? I think we need to respect what valinoff said there. He soundly disproved your's/Vendramini's claims. He said no offense and there's no need to bring it up again. That's the point of "no offense"
Let's all calm down.

Is it OK if I try to address a small misunderstanding (which I believe will cool things down some)?



Well, valinoff made excellent points, although I must restate that I never did claim Vendramini's points as my own. My only problem with them is that he seemed to read too far into it; this thread is meant to be fairly fun and somewhat Thrive-centric (that's why I noted that the Neanderthals look a bit like Ewoks). I do agree that Vendramini did not think things through deeply, but accusing him of racism (when I find it far more likely that Vendramini (who seems to be the "pro-scaly dinosaurs" kind of guy) was just oblivious to the implications) is a big leap.

The only reason I brought up Vendramini's theory is that it sounded like something that would be fun in Thrive; a powerful related species would be a fun challenge to tango with. As gamers, don't we all appreciate a challenge?

Good point.

I didn't think it'd fit in the "Not Thrive" board (given that I intended for the thread to be somewhat Thrive-relevant), and since some other person's idea was the "backbone" of the thread (therefore making it difficult to place in "Future Game," since the idea wouldn't really be my own), I figured the "Science" board would be the best fit.

EDIT: Come to think of it, that'd explain everything else. "Huh, why's everyone so angry all of a sudden?"

Sounds good to me.