This Is A Neanderthal.

[Guest]

In reverse order:

 

I'm not touting infrasound from lore, I'm talking from personal experience.  You can dismiss it if you wish.  I can't. 

 

Deer and raccoons are dumb animals which are not trying to avoid having their picture taken, they don't even know what a picture is so far as we know.  If you have not hear the idea, whether you choose to embrace it or not, that BF appear to be deliberately avoiding having their picture taken, you're not paying attention. 

 

We need to consider all the angles, starting with the data (reports), and follow them wherever it is they lead.   We cannot, as you seem to be doing, start with the pre-conceived ideas and only consider data that supports them if we wish to eventually find truth rather than just support dogma.

 

MIB

Personal experience can be fraught with error. I'm not sure how you identify your experience as infrasound. What sort of experiences do you have that allow you to identify infrasound?

 

I have heard that bigfoot tries to avoid the paparazzi, yes and I see no reason to jump to such a conclusion when the simple expedients of "no bigfoot there" and "something scared bigfoot away" are perfectly available. I do not believe bigfoot knows what a camera is for and considering their apparent curiosity about other human artifacts means that possibly something about camera placements or agitated human behavior while trying to get out the camera and focus it frighten the beasts away. Simplest explanations are usually the best.

 

While I do start with some presuppositions, I do remove or alter them when I am faced with evidence contradicting them.

Add, because the editor failed me: The approach you seem to take supports Science ... big "S", the institution, while violating the underlying premises it purportedly holds up as the ideal and proper methodology and approach.

I'm not the one proposing bigfoot without physical evidence. Claims of infrasound are not backed up with evidence. I'm merely stating that. One should not make conclusions based on suppositions in general. It's fine for a thought experiment to try to think outside the box but is in no way evidence.

To have the facility to even produce the same sounds as we do , which requires certain vocal tract proportions among apes actually puts them in the same category physiologically and neurologically concerning motor control and anatomy. They would likely have the same mutations in the gene FOXP2 which the other known apes do not have. This runs in the genus homo only from what we know right now.

I'm not purporting that bigfoot actually do talk but noted that they may be related to a species that does and hence may have some genetic proclivity for language also. As far as I know we do not know when the FOXP2 gene became what is in our species. Furthermore, there may well be other configurations of the speechifying apparatuses that could yield the same vocal results. Ours is not necessarily the only way to develop speech. look at ravens and parrots.

[Guest]

I'm not touting infrasound from lore, I'm talking from personal experience.

 

How does one know if one has experienced infrasound exposure, given it can't be heard or provably detected without appropriate electronic equipment?

[southernyahoo]

There has been plenty of study on the speech anatomy of humans, and I think the scientists have defined it well what makes us able to speak. There may be more genetics involved than just one gene for sure. Scientists have studied the birds that mimic sound along the way. It involves vocal tract shapes and the associated acoustics described as "source filter theory". It's grounded in physics. Parrots have the similar shape in the vocal tract or the acoustics wouldn't be possible, but they do emulate much of our sounds well.

How does one know if one has experienced infrasound exposure, given it can't be heard or provably detected without appropriate electronic equipment?

 

 There may be associated harmonics that are in the audible range. The effects would be felt as much as heard in that case.

[JDL]

Has anyone ever set up infrasound recording devices in an active area?

Edited June 8, 2014 by JDL

[southernyahoo]

^ JDL, I think it was tried some years ago with special microphones. I think the BFRO / MM was on one of the TV programs attempting to use the equipment but not sure if there was any live feedback to the user. It doesn't appear to be something anyone has pursued since then. I'm sure it would typically pick up lots of earth rumble etc. and potentially difficult to isolate biological sources from mechanical and geological ones.

[JDL]

Background emanations would have to be documented, then any calls that could be attributed to animals, then known animals correlated to their signals to isolate any unidentified signals.  If unidentified signals are common, then the timing and frequency of their occurrence would have to be logged.  Ultimately, with properly placed receivers, whatever is making any unidentified noises consistently in an area over time can be triangulated and tracked.

 

The possibility of replicating bigfoot ultrasound is interesting also.

[Guest]

For the record, I, Pteronarcyd, and others on this Board actually are scientists.

 

That is actually more disappointing.  May I ask your specialty and what you would think of someone who suggests that your specialized knowledge is all biased and that you should accept wild conjecture as equally valid?

[Incorrigible1]

::pops popcorn, watches avidly::

[Guest]

How does one know if one has experienced infrasound exposure, given it can't be heard or provably detected without appropriate electronic equipment?

Infrasound will cause sickness in humans at certain low decibels. I did the experiment last year (here) with dogs, and my own 'infrasound' because even a human low rumble can sometimes make them behave differently, (but not enough to make an app for your phone). Some say their dogs reacted, some said did not effect them, etc.

 

An infrasound device would probably make an excellent bear/dog deterrent, but cell-phones don't go that low.

 

http://users.firstva.com/hale/Infrasound.html

 

Ah, infrasound detector, someone get to work!!

Edited June 12, 2014 by Wag

[JDL]

That is actually more disappointing.  May I ask your specialty and what you would think of someone who suggests that your specialized knowledge is all biased and that you should accept wild conjecture as equally valid?

 

 

If you re-read my earlier posts, I do not specifically advocate the whole of Vendramini's hypothesis, nor am I invested in it, but he does raise a couple of questions that I consider objectively valid.  I focus specifically on two points from the mindset of an educator (see below). 

 

1.  It is self-evident that the size and positioning of the eye orbits in the Neanderthal skull are markedly different from that of a human skull, yet the interpretation of a Neanderthal's appearance in the OP does not reflect this distinct divergence in morphology.  If anything, the interpretation seems to have somewhat beady eyes, and they are positioned as human eyes would be relative to the positioning of the eye orbits in a human skull.  I don't see how anyone could accurately interpret a Neanderthal's eyes as slitted cat eyes, though others seem to throw this out as if I believe it to be true, which I don't. 

 

2.  That the use of human facial reconstruction techniques to overlay the Neanderthal skull with a face is based on the very loose assumption that those techniques can actually be applied to Neanderthals.  Vendramini points out that the Neanderthal skull more closely fits the shape of a chimpanzee head than that of a human head, and looking at the two representative overlays, I have to agree with him on that point.

 

Other than that, Vendramini's hypothesis is largely conjecture regarding aspects that cannot be verified.  And his hypothesis actually agrees with the prevailing view of Neanderthals on other points.

 

I recall stating that both the OP's and Vendramini's interpretations were based on assumptions. 

 

Now it is appropriate to discuss my specialty and qualifications as requested.

 

1.  I am a government-licensed Professional Chemical Engineer.  This is akin to being licensed by the State in medicine or another discipline in that a person with my skill and qualifications is required to approve, on behalf of the State, industrial chemical processes, and also to approve the design of both the equipment used in the process line and of the building housing the process line before the whole lot can be constructed.

 

2.  I am the inventor of a novel technology that is going to market late this year.  I hold both method and device patents for this technology; two in the U.S., with others pending; and patent awards in the European Union (the U.K., Germany, and France), Mexico, Australia, Israel, Egypt, and South Africa so far.  I have patents pending in several other countries.  In short, I discovered how to produce a very important compound, that had never before existed in the gas state, as a gas with near-ideal characteristics, and invented devices to produce the gas for use in multiple applications and market verticals.

 

3.  I am a West Point Graduate, served in the Army Chemical Corps as a field grade officer, and hold additional skill identifiers in nuclear and chemical weapon target analysis, electronic warfare, and education, among others more operational in nature.  I have an MS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Virginia.  PhD's in my specialty offer less earning potential than a professional engineer's license (see points 1 and 2 immediately above), so I chose that path rather than remain in academia (reference point 4 immediately below).  I might also state that I served at the Army's High Technology Testbed and was a member of a NATO technology panel back in the day.

 

4.  I also served on the faculty at West Point for four years.  As a matter of fact, I directed West Point's largest academic course, with eighteen faculty reporting to me (ranking from Captain to Lieutenant Colonel, along with a few civilian PhD's).  I coordinated their instruction of over 900 cadets split into 52 separate class sections.  I very much enjoyed these four years.  I also had duties as an educator in other assignments, in professional development specifically, training junior officers to serve on battalion and brigade staffs, and to command a company, as I did.  And, of course, training is a daily part of military service, and supervision of that training is part and parcel of the culture.

 

And this brings me back to the point of my earlier posts.  Though not an anthropologist, I am somewhat acquainted with the scientific method, and I do recognize when someone stretches it.  So, as I did with students and trainees, I pointed out a flaw or two in scientific reasoning evidenced in the OP, most importantly that the OP was presenting assumption and interpretation as accepted fact.  Assumptions and interpretations are not fact.  In subsequent posts, I recall pointing out that the suffix "ology", defined as "the study of", accurately characterizes the disciplines to which it is appended as The Study of This, or The Study of That.  By definition, the suffix "ology" is a tacit acknowledgment that the knowledge of such fields is incomplete or, more charitably, an ongoing process of discovery and development.  And this actually applies to the hard sciences such as Chemistry and Physics also, and of course the applied sciences represent by the fields of engineering.  If this weren't the case, I wouldn't be able to discover, invent, and patent something new.

 

As an aside, my father was a geologist, and growing up in Northwestern Nevada, I spent quite a bit of time poking around geological, archeological, and anthropological sites with him.  Lots of fun.  We reported Native American remains when we found them (exposed by erosion), but kept arrowheads when we happened upon them.

 

With regard to bias and wild conjecture, I have actually faced that.  It is an integral part of the patent application process as one's claims are subjected to scrutiny by patent examiners worldwide.  As indicated above, I successfully asserted the novelty, inventiveness, and value of my intellectual property.  Then there is the matter of convincing a Board of Directors who do not have scientific backgrounds that certain testing and regulatory processes are objectively necessary rather than subjectively nice to have based on my "biased" advice.

 

Finally, once my points were made and understood that assumptions and interpretations are not fact, that competing interpretations of the same data (each with some value) can exist, and that new information and data within a field of knowledge regularly cause old hypotheses and interpretations to be refined, I withdrew from the discussion. 

 

Subjectivity and objectivity are a theme in most threads on this board.  We have tons of fun going back and forth with each other over them.

 

Thank you for keeping me occupied while waiting up for the airline to have my lost bag delivered.

[the parkie]

Background emanations would have to be documented, then any calls that could be attributed to animals, then known animals correlated to their signals to isolate any unidentified signals. If unidentified signals are common, then the timing and frequency of their occurrence would have to be logged. Ultimately, with properly placed receivers, whatever is making any unidentified noises consistently in an area over time can be triangulated and tracked.

The possibility of replicating bigfoot ultrasound is interesting also.

http://bigfootforums.com/index.php/topic/46561-infrasound-event-preliminary-report/

JDL,

It may interest you to read the above linked ongoing thread over in the 'In The Field' forum, if you haven't already done so.

I dare say you could offer some practical advice as well as encouragement.

I look forward to anything you might be able to add.

Great last post by the way. It is good to hear more of your background.

Edited June 12, 2014 by the parkie

[Guest Stan Norton]

The key point of the OP is that none, not one, not a single one of the many thousands of highly educated and highly experienced researchers working on Neanderthals is saying a thing about them being anything other than human. No theories on weird large eyes by anyone other than a wacky Australian theatre man who people seem to think is some kind of authority. Neanderthals were human and that model I posted is near as dammit what they really looked like based on good science. Accept the truth!

[Guest]

We just got done with this nonsense. They were lesser-than-modern-humans. They were stupid in comparison to modern humans. They had LESSER brain development. This is all well-known. They were NOT the SAME as MODERN-HUMANS.

The 'same as us' kumbya crowd has no credibility.

 

If a bunch of idiots want to believe against all scientific evidence and rational thought, that NEANDERTHAL= (SAME) MODERN HUMANS, because of the degradation of Anthropology, being DISALLOWED to study human differences, because it makes said people upset and tearful, (great scientific attitudes), the inevitable outcome would be to extend this 'philosophy'' to the stupid, moronic brute known as neanderthal.

 

 

 

How do we know they were stupid brutes, compared to modern humans? Duh, been there done that.

 

Different enough to get wiped out by modern humans and unable to adapt to conditions.

 

This artistic rendition is just as appropriate: Yea, add hair, duh, he would sort of look human, except that his face would be much larger, his eyes would be larger in comparison to humans. He would, as he does now, look like a circus freak. He would be a brutish, stupid moron, just as we have humans we consider brutish stupid morons. He would be that in spades. This idiot would NOT be going to the moon anytime soon, much less develop complex modern....gee wizz.....

 

Now, imagine that these clowns breed with, eachother, and make more stupid morons. This is the high model, not the low-average. This is 'as good as it gets' with Neanderthal.

I know that's impossible for some people who have this weird belief system of Neanderthal=modern, but really is anyone on the fence about this? Based on what? There is no evidence being put forth even now, that they are equal. All this nonsense stems from trying to make them look like cute little humans buy artists stretching the limit, and not with direct 'comparison'' to humans, but by purposefully ignoring comparison to humans side by side, because it MIGHT HURT NEANDERTHALS FEELINGS.

 

I REPEAT, NO ONE IS SAYING NEANDERTHALS WERE EQUAL TO HUMANS, THIS IS ALL BASED ON ARTISTIC MODELS AND WISHFUL THINKING OF THOSE ARTISTS.

 

This is the ''high model'' of Neanderthal. This is the best they can get: Brutish, stupid, thugish morons.

 

(*It DOES resemble a BF BTW from many descriptions. No chin, pointed head, no neck, brow ridge, etc.)

 

Actually, this image is one of the BEST descriptions of Neanderthal because you can see they, have NO NECK. Yea, sort of looks like grandad. But sort of looks like a mafia strongman. And that's all they were.

 

Edited June 12, 2014 by Wag

[JDL]

The key point of the OP is that none, not one, not a single one of the many thousands of highly educated and highly experienced researchers working on Neanderthals is saying a thing about them being anything other than human. No theories on weird large eyes by anyone other than a wacky Australian theatre man who people seem to think is some kind of authority. Neanderthals were human and that model I posted is near as dammit what they really looked like based on good science. Accept the truth!

 

 

Stan, without criticizing you, you can't expect me to look at a Neanderthal skull side by side with a human skull and not conclude that a Neanderthal's eyes were larger (weirdness aside) and positioned higher on the face.  Neanderthal's were certainly human in that they could interbreed with us, but that doesn't mean that they looked so much like us as to be unremarked.  I submit that the size and positioning of the eyes alone, would have made them immediately distinguishable as different.

[Guest]

  That's a lovely CV.  What I didn't notice you answer in your proud post was how you'd react if Stan or I would suggest that our theory on a chemical engineering problem was equally valid to yours based on some rough/crude observations.  It implies that Stan, and the rest of the scientists working on the issue have taken for granted something so basic as simple skull morphology.  Stan provided the current best science recreation of neanderthal appearance.  Skepticism is great if born from knowledge, but incredible claims require incredible evidence.  Simply stating that the methods used were incorrectly biased without providing evidence should be beneath you.  

 

As for the skull looking more chimp than human, I think your google must be broken.  Let me help.

If you re-read my earlier posts, I do not specifically advocate the whole of Vendramini's hypothesis, nor am I invested in it, but he does raise a couple of questions that I consider objectively valid.  I focus specifically on two points from the mindset of an educator (see below). 

 

1.  It is self-evident that the size and positioning of the eye orbits in the Neanderthal skull are markedly different from that of a human skull, yet the interpretation of a Neanderthal's appearance in the OP does not reflect this distinct divergence in morphology.  If anything, the interpretation seems to have somewhat beady eyes, and they are positioned as human eyes would be relative to the positioning of the eye orbits in a human skull.  I don't see how anyone could accurately interpret a Neanderthal's eyes as slitted cat eyes, though others seem to throw this out as if I believe it to be true, which I don't. 

 

2.  That the use of human facial reconstruction techniques to overlay the Neanderthal skull with a face is based on the very loose assumption that those techniques can actually be applied to Neanderthals.  Vendramini points out that the Neanderthal skull more closely fits the shape of a chimpanzee head than that of a human head, and looking at the two representative overlays, I have to agree with him on that point.

 

Other than that, Vendramini's hypothesis is largely conjecture regarding aspects that cannot be verified.  And his hypothesis actually agrees with the prevailing view of Neanderthals on other points.

 

I recall stating that both the OP's and Vendramini's interpretations were based on assumptions. 

 

Now it is appropriate to discuss my specialty and qualifications as requested.

 

1.  I am a government-licensed Professional Chemical Engineer.  This is akin to being licensed by the State in medicine or another discipline in that a person with my skill and qualifications is required to approve, on behalf of the State, industrial chemical processes, and also to approve the design of both the equipment used in the process line and of the building housing the process line before the whole lot can be constructed.

 

2.  I am the inventor of a novel technology that is going to market late this year.  I hold both method and device patents for this technology; two in the U.S., with others pending; and patent awards in the European Union (the U.K., Germany, and France), Mexico, Australia, Israel, Egypt, and South Africa so far.  I have patents pending in several other countries.  In short, I discovered how to produce a very important compound, that had never before existed in the gas state, as a gas with near-ideal characteristics, and invented devices to produce the gas for use in multiple applications and market verticals.

 

3.  I am a West Point Graduate, served in the Army Chemical Corps as a field grade officer, and hold additional skill identifiers in nuclear and chemical weapon target analysis, electronic warfare, and education, among others more operational in nature.  I have an MS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Virginia.  PhD's in my specialty offer less earning potential than a professional engineer's license (see points 1 and 2 immediately above), so I chose that path rather than remain in academia (reference point 4 immediately below).  I might also state that I served at the Army's High Technology Testbed and was a member of a NATO technology panel back in the day.

 

4.  I also served on the faculty at West Point for four years.  As a matter of fact, I directed West Point's largest academic course, with eighteen faculty reporting to me (ranking from Captain to Lieutenant Colonel, along with a few civilian PhD's).  I coordinated their instruction of over 900 cadets split into 52 separate class sections.  I very much enjoyed these four years.  I also had duties as an educator in other assignments, in professional development specifically, training junior officers to serve on battalion and brigade staffs, and to command a company, as I did.  And, of course, training is a daily part of military service, and supervision of that training is part and parcel of the culture.

 

And this brings me back to the point of my earlier posts.  Though not an anthropologist, I am somewhat acquainted with the scientific method, and I do recognize when someone stretches it.  So, as I did with students and trainees, I pointed out a flaw or two in scientific reasoning evidenced in the OP, most importantly that the OP was presenting assumption and interpretation as accepted fact.  Assumptions and interpretations are not fact.  In subsequent posts, I recall pointing out that the suffix "ology", defined as "the study of", accurately characterizes the disciplines to which it is appended as The Study of This, or The Study of That.  By definition, the suffix "ology" is a tacit acknowledgment that the knowledge of such fields is incomplete or, more charitably, an ongoing process of discovery and development.  And this actually applies to the hard sciences such as Chemistry and Physics also, and of course the applied sciences represent by the fields of engineering.  If this weren't the case, I wouldn't be able to discover, invent, and patent something new.

 

As an aside, my father was a geologist, and growing up in Northwestern Nevada, I spent quite a bit of time poking around geological, archeological, and anthropological sites with him.  Lots of fun.  We reported Native American remains when we found them (exposed by erosion), but kept arrowheads when we happened upon them.

 

With regard to bias and wild conjecture, I have actually faced that.  It is an integral part of the patent application process as one's claims are subjected to scrutiny by patent examiners worldwide.  As indicated above, I successfully asserted the novelty, inventiveness, and value of my intellectual property.  Then there is the matter of convincing a Board of Directors who do not have scientific backgrounds that certain testing and regulatory processes are objectively necessary rather than subjectively nice to have based on my "biased" advice.

 

Finally, once my points were made and understood that assumptions and interpretations are not fact, that competing interpretations of the same data (each with some value) can exist, and that new information and data within a field of knowledge regularly cause old hypotheses and interpretations to be refined, I withdrew from the discussion. 

 

Subjectivity and objectivity are a theme in most threads on this board.  We have tons of fun going back and forth with each other over them.

 

Thank you for keeping me occupied while waiting up for the airline to have my lost bag delivered.