H. neanderthalensis. And hey, that was my thread!
As a reference point, it is thought that Moderns and Neanderthals diverged about 500k years ago. The two populations evolved in very different environments, so if the data is to believed, then speciation would take a pretty long time indeed, even when environmental factors played a big role.
Chronos:
But the teacup poodle and the great Dane don’t have to mate directly to be the same species, either. The poodle might, for instance, mate with a beagle, and the beagle might mate with a German shepherd, and the German shepherd might mate with the great Dane. So you could still get Dane genes into a poodle population, and vice-versa, over the course of generations. Likewise, you could get Viking genes into a pygmy population through a similar process (though probably not as convoluted, since humans aren’t nearly as varied in size as dogs).
You should google “ring species”. “Ability to mate with virile offspring” is just not transitive.
mbh
December 14, 2010, 1:31pm
44
aruvqan:
I don’t know, if I was a pygmy [whatever the current PC name is for them] female, and one of my hulking 2 meter tall viking gamer buddies was makign eyes at me, I would run far far away from them…I can not imagine an unassisted survivable birth between a 3 foot tall woman and a man twice her size. Sort of like a female tea cup poodle and a great dane.
Most human development takes place after birth. I don’t think scandihoovian babies are that much bigger than pygmy babies.
Anecdote: my grandmother’s dog was about the size of a sled dog. His mother was a Chihuahua.
septimus:
Y-chromosome studies tell an interesting story. The aborigines are mostly of C4 haplogroup, which is found only in Australia, but there’s a small percentage of a rare strain of R. Since the R haplogroup developed relatively recently, and now dominates Europe (R1b1b and R1a), and is also found in Central and Southwest Asia (R1a, etc.), Northern India (R1a), Southern India (R2) and West Central Africa (R1b1a), as well as the early spinoff to Australia (R1* ?), there must be a fascinating story of prehistory waiting to be deciphered.
That Marco Polo was quite the horndog, wasn’t he?
