"New Evidence Debunks 'Stupid' Neanderthal Myth" chirps the ScienceDaily release:

Research by UK and American scientists has struck another blow to the theory that Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) became extinct because they were less intelligent than our ancestors (Homo sapiens). The research team has shown that early stone tool technologies developed by our species, Homo sapiens, were no more efficient than those used by Neanderthals. Published in the Journal of Human Evolution, their discovery debunks a textbook belief held by archaeologists for more than 60 years. (August 26, 2008)

Now, the obvious question is, who decided that the 'thals were dummies? They were around long enough (conventionally, from about 250 000 to about 28 000 years ago) so they must have fed themselves using their tools.

The textbook belief was in fact based on the now-rotting Tree of Life popularized by Darwin and his modern-day followers. They assumed that modern humans (homo sapiens) were "superior" to the Neanderdumbsters, and interpreted all facts about the latter to fit that view.

However, enterprising researchers from the University of Exeter, Southern Methodist University, Texas State University, and the Think Computer Corporation decided to do some investigation, so they themselves spent three years making both Neanderthal tools and Homo sapiens tools. And guess what:

... when the research team analysed their data there was no statistical difference between the efficiency of the two technologies. In fact, their findings showed that in some respects the flakes favoured by Neanderthals were more efficient than the blades adopted by Homo sapiens.

One researcher offers various speculations about why Homo sapiens preferred tools that didn't work as well, but the inferior intelligence of homo sapiens (hereafter saps) is not one of the options offered.

The researchers already done enough damage to the official materialist narrative for one decade.

I suggest that the next step should be this: Two groups of daring researchers should live for two decades in the manner assumed by the textbooks to be our ancestors' way of life 50 000 years ago. Some will be saps and others 'thals. The only rule would be, no felony offenses against humans because then the work would be eligible for publication only as a signed confession. But the researchers should report when they think that a felony offense would occur back then.

I wonder how long it would last? What they would learn? How many researchers would come back alive?

It's one thing to report that the 'thal tools were more efficient, but another to feed and clothe oneself with them.

These findings generally support the non-materialist view that human consciousness is not a slowly evolving thing. Once present, it changes everything very quickly. Assuming otherwise leads to mistakes about early humans.

See also: Consciousness: Half an oaf is better than none?

Also at The Mindful Hack Free will: Can you believe in it as a merely irrational preference?

Consciousness: Half an oaf is better than none?

Spiritual Brain sells out in Dutch translation

Religion: Why "evolutionary" explanations don't really work

The difference between thinking and consciousness

Mind: Current science less and less precise as it approaches the mind?

Atheist bigots: Avoiding serious questions and targeting ignorant religious folk

L’Intelligence spirituelle : Introduction (en francais)

A while back, a friend mentioned to me "Flatland (1884), a romance of many dimensions" - a book that is precisely what it claims - an attempt to understand what a two-dimensional world would be like. It is worth thinking about when we are asked to consider that there may be more than three dimensions of space.

Well, in part at least. The author Edwin A. Abbott (1838-1926) clearly intended quite a lot of social commentary as well.

Of course, the subject of two-dimensional thinking - or even one-dimensional thinking - obviously suggests a chance for an author to condemn short-sighted social policy.

But still, in addition to his two-dimensional world, Abbott also offers us a geometrical glimpse into a one-dimensional world, dominated inevitably by a supreme egotist. Needless to say, it is not a very interesting or promising place.

Having read this short book, available on line, I think it is a good way to understand dimensions. It may help us grasp what additional dimensions in our own universe would be like (assuming there are any). For example, Abbott makes the two-dimensional Flatlander in his story confront his three-dimensional companion,

But, just as there was the realm of Flatland, though that poor puny Lineland Monarch could neither turn to left nor right to discern it, and just as there was close at hand, and touching my frame, the land of Three Dimensions, though I, blind senseless wretch, had no power to touch it, no eye in my interior to discern it, so of a surety there is a Fourth Dimension, which my Lord perceives with the inner eye of thought. And that it must exist my Lord himself has taught me. Or can he have forgotten what he himself imparted to his servant? In One Dimension, did not a moving Point produce a Line with two terminal points? In Two Dimensions, did not a moving Line produce a Square with four terminal points? In Three Dimensions, did not a moving Square produce - did not this eye of mine behold it - that blessed Being, a Cube, with eight terminal points? And in Four Dimensions shall not a moving Cube - alas, for Analogy, and alas for the Progress of Truth, if it be not so - shall not, I say, the motion of a divine Cube result in a still more divine Organization with sixteen terminal points? Behold the infallible confirmation of the Series, 2, 4, 8, 16: is not this a Geometrical Progression?

Well, in the story, the three-dimensional human being obviously enjoys his superiority and can simply not easily confront that idea.

Go here to buy the book with Ian Stewart's notes. Most readers will benefit from the notes, I expect.