In his one intelligent specie per planet column column, Cecil gives a few hypotheses why H neanderthalenis left the scene. One that makes sense to me was that those robust Neanderthal bodies needed more fuel, about 5,000 calories per day vs. about 3,000 for the hardest working H sap. Throw in a few seasons’ bad hunter-gathering and they simply got out bred.
Robert J Sawyer’s Neanderthal Parallax trilogy explores human and neanderthal societies developing in parallel universes. One interesting detail I remember is that, thanks to their hairier pelts, neanderthals have in their homes a scratching post with a height adjustable peg to take care of that hard to reach spot on the back. I don’t know what they did in public.
In Jasper Fforde Tuesday Next series of novels, the neanderthals are brought back via genetic engineering to be army material, but proved too sensitive for the job.
What about dolphins? Sure, some of them are occasionally killed in nets or captured for sea parks, but the rest of them live a life of vacation, swimming in tropical waters, playing and eating sashimi all damn day. By comparison, they are the more intelligent species.
I ma**y not be a scientist, but believe me, I see Neanderthals around us every day. I don’t think they were so much assimilated through interbreeding as that many simply got with the program and intermingled with the “human” humans. So today here we are, some of us “human” some of us descendents of Neanderthal-Cro-Magnum illicit behavior and some of us have ancesters who were registered Neanderthals and proud of it. They have made progess. Many now have dogs.
According to Paul Levinson’s rather peculiar science fiction/detective novel, The Silk Code, Neanderthals still live among us and are secretly engaged in a cold war against the Amish.
I think it comes down to symbolic thinking. We have music, art and stories. We can teach our children general lessons through metaphor. Stories and song can teach lessons over several generations.
“Normal people duking it out with House Republicans”…is this kind of intolerant, demonizing hate speech really needed? I expect more from you, Cecil. Perhaps you should move to Detroit and tell us of the utopia 50 years of "normal people’ governing has done for a once prosperous city.
Republicans don’t want the poor to have access to health care. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee did not want to raise the state minimum wage despite a rise in the cost of living index.
They seem like a bunch of selfish wealthy people to me.
A couple of corrections to Cecil’s article re gene assimilation from Neandertals:
First, 4% is a LOT of genes. You only need a handful of the right genes–perhaps only one or two if they’re really good ones–to drive differences among descendant lines. We do not yet know to what extent the modern eurasian owes a debt to Neandertals.
Second, the 4% estimate is not “even less in africans.” It’s essentially non-existent in (sub-saharan) african lines who remained behind and the intermixing with post-M/N haplogroups has been fairly trivial in the ensuing 40,000 years (particularly in southern african lines).
Or how wonderfully intelligent and ‘normal’ Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters and Harry Reid are.
Cecil lost me about 10 years ago. The only reason to come back to this board from time to time, is to see Sam Stone, Shodan and Bricker duking it out with the morally superior types.
