Neanderthals Quotes

• Faced with the challenge of an endless universe, Man will be forced to mature further, just as the Neanderthal-faced with an entire planet-had no choice but to grow away from the tradition of savagery.

  Dean Koontz

  Science, Men, Choices

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• Neanderthals might think differently than we do. We know that they had a larger cranial size. They could even be more intelligent than us. When the time comes to deal with an epidemic or getting off the planet or whatever, it's conceivable that their way of thinking could be beneficial.

  George M. Church

  Intelligent, Thinking, Epidemics

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• What keeps the world from reverting to the Neanderthal with each generation is the continuing, ongoing mythos... the huge body of common knowledge that unites our minds as cells are united in the body of man.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Men, Cells, Mind

  "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Book by Robert M. Pirsig, 1974.

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• It should soon be possible dramatically to increase the intelligence and life span of a few individuals. They and their offspring could become a master race. Evolution pays no regard to social justice. It was not fair on the Neanderthals they were replaced by modern humans.

  Stephen Hawking

  Race, Engineering, Justice

  "Gods of science: Stephen Hawking and Brian Cox discuss mind over matter". The Guardian Interview, www.theguardian.com. September 10, 2010.

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• Neanderthals were pretty smart, and if we actively killed them off, then probably we did so in the same way that humans kill each other.

  Elizabeth Kolbert

  Smart, Way, Humans

  "Ask the Author Live: Elizabeth Kolbert on Neanderthals". The New Yorker interview, www.newyorker.com. August 12, 2011.

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• Like Neanderthals, men prefer to hunt alone or, if in a pack, at the head of it. Women, whether in the field or in a campfire, are collaborative, and when they hunt...they work together.

  Russell Banks

  Men, Working Together, Fields

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• It seems that the Neanderthal DNA that modern Europeans and Asians (and also Native Americans and basically all non-African people) are carrying around is random. This means there are different bits and pieces in different populations, but it doesn't seem to amount to much that's significant.

  Elizabeth Kolbert

  Native American, Mean, Dna

  "Ask the Author Live: Elizabeth Kolbert on Neanderthals". The New Yorker interview, www.newyorker.com. August 12, 2011.

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• The definition of who's literate and who's not keeps changing. So, in Neanderthal times, if you painted on a cave wall, that was enough to transmit how you hunt, how you eat, how you cook, how you dress, and we can read about that.

  Juan Enriquez

  Wall, Dresses, Caves

  Source: bigthink.com

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• Chauvet Cave is rather like the awakening of the modern human soul or I would say the awakening of modern human culture. Because Neanderthal men who still rode the landscape parallel to the people who did these paintings didn't have culture. There's no evidence of culture, no symbolic depiction, no evidence of music, no evidence of sculptures, no evidence of religious beliefs.

  Werner Herzog

  Religious, Men, People

  "Cave of Forgotten Dreams (3D) - Werner Herzog interview". Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• The recreation of Neanderthals would be mainly a question of societal risk avoidance.

  George M. Church

  Risk, Would Be, Recreation

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• Men are not as sophisticated as women. They're not as mature as women. They're not as connected with their emotions as women...There's a very Neanderthal quality that still exists in a lot of men... And if you're in the public eye, to me, it's very boring to say what you have to say and be media trained to the extent that you don't ever reveal any truth. There was a time in my life when I lived probably a bit more on the primal level. And it was amazing.

  Adam Levine

  Eye, Men, Media

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• I like to imagine that the Neanderthals were all really good artists.

  Jim Drain

  Artist, Imagine, Good Art

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• Asian Homo erectus died without issue and does not enter our immediate ancestry (for we evolved from African populations); Neanderthal people were collateral cousins, perhaps already living in Europe while we emerged in Africa... In other words, we are an improbable and fragile entity, fortunately successful after precarious beginnings as a small population in Africa, not the predictable end result of a global tendency. We are a thing, an item of history, not an embodiment of general principles.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Cousin, Successful, Science

  "Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History".

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• I did not mean to suggest that autism could be traced to Neanderthal genes. The point is that some genes that have been implicated in autism changed pretty significantly between the time Neanderthal line and human line split.

  Elizabeth Kolbert

  Mean, Autism, Splits

  "Ask the Author Live: Elizabeth Kolbert on Neanderthals". The New Yorker interview, www.newyorker.com. August 12, 2011.

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• The 'control of nature' is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man.

  Rachel Carson

  Nature, Philosophy, Men

  Rachel Carson (2002). “Silent Spring”, p.297, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I know at times I come across like a Neanderthal or a babbling idiot, but I like that person.

  Mike Tyson

  Idiot, Persons, Knows

  "Mike Tyson on Broadway" by Avi Steinberg, www.newyorker.com. August 9, 2012.

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• Neanderthal man listened to stories, if one may judge by the shape of his skull.

  E. M. Forster

  Men, Skulls, Judging

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• I've talked to biblical cats, and Neanderthals who been here since day one. No one here has even seen the Big Boss. Ever.

  Lenny Bruce

  Cat, Biblical, Boss

  "The Lenny Bruce Interview, Jill Bourque’s How We First Met and Stage Time With Steven Alan Green". jewishjournal.com. April 7, 2013.

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• Liberals in blue states just think that they are on the right side of history, and anybody that disagrees with them has to be a troglodyte or a neanderthal.

  Andrew Breitbart

  Thinking, Blue, Sides

  Source: www.newsbusters.org

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• In the 50,000 years that followed—a time four to eight times shorter than the entire length of time the Neanderthals existed—the replacement crowd not only settled on almost every habitable speck of land on the planet, they developed technology that allowed them to go to the moon and beyond.

  Svante Paabo

  Moon, Technology, Eight

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• Literature was not born the day when a boy crying "wolf, wolf" came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels; literature was born on the day when a boy came crying "wolf, wolf" and there was no wolf behind him.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Running, Writing, Boys

  Lectures on Literature "Good Readers and Good Writers" (1980)

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• Back when we were Neanderthals or whatever, we evolved to think along tribal lines. Survival was based on this idea of who are we and who are the others who will come and take our resources. I think it's an animal and a human thing that we all see in terms of us vs. them, and race is a very easy way to separate who is us and who is them.

  Jordan Peele

  Thinking, Animal, Race

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• The control of nature is a phrase conceived in arrogance.

  Rachel Carson

  Arrogance, Phrases, Silent Spring

  Rachel Carson (2002). “Silent Spring”, p.297, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• This is the birth of the modern human soul. The artists are like us, not like the Neanderthals, who had no culture - and who incidentally were still roaming the landscape at the time the paintings were made. It is striking that there is a distant cultural echo that seems to reach all the way down to us, over dozens of millennia.

  Werner Herzog

  Artist, Echoes, Soul

  "'The Birth of the Modern Human Soul'". Interview with David Gordon Smith, www.spiegel.de. February 16, 2011.

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• At times, I come across as crude or crass, that irritates you when I come across like a Neanderthal or a babbling idiot at times. But I like to be that person. I like to show you all that person because that's who you come to see.

  Mike Tyson

  Idiot, Crass, Crude

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