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@haritulsidas I always shared the opinion that #neanderthals were really empathic humans who weren't much different in relation to our species. Unfortunately the picture illustrating the neanderthal community shows persons who are dressed in simple skins of bears or other wild animals. We should assume that they, according to the climate they had to cope with, were able to get dressed appropriately.

@arielle @haritulsidas In a local museum of Schöningen, they intentionally depicted a reconstructed Homo Heidelbergensis, a precursor of the neandertal, nude, because they don't know scientifically, how the clothes looked like, since they were not preserved.

But the found evidence at the museums location at least suggests, that they where able to have fur clothes, they had already pretty sophisticated culture, tools and arts. So, for me, they clearly were well dressed for the paleolithic age.

@urwumpe @haritulsidas of course I know the #schoeningen museum and the Homo heidelbergensis without clothes. It is always an ambivalent feeling between scientific correctness and the imagination of realistic living conditions

@urwumpe @haritulsidas well, and it's a problem of predjudice, what we imagine prehistoric people are like or what we think they should be. A very good example is the film 'La guerre du feu' - 'Am Anfang war das Feuer' of Jean Jacques Annaud of 1981. There were lots of just the same predjudices which made us students laugh for weeks.

@arielle @haritulsidas Its a common thread in human history, that less scientifically accurate people always try to make the (usually pretty smart) people of the past more stupid and misguided than the most stupid people of their present. Despite the evidence.

Like pretending nothing good happened between the fall of the Roman Empire and Charlemagne. Or the constant depiction of the european middle-ages as dark and grim.

@urwumpe @haritulsidas there is a long tradition of underestimation of facilities and skills. This can be seen in archaeology as well as in relation to colonialism and many other special fields, dependant e.g. on political attention....
Wie der alte Fontane schon sagte: das ist ein weites Feld....