Occasionally in various works of fiction one comes across “fictoid”/“factoid” references to vestigial populations of humans more closely allied to Neanderthals than to Cro-Magnon (positing Neanderthal lineage to anything from the Basque to Bigfoot to Beowulf’s enemies !)
Is this all just coincidental “pigments” of several over-ripe imaginations, or is there some basis for all this ? (real or pseudoscientific, a la Von Daniken)
“Proverbs for Paranoids, 1: You may never get to touch the Master, but you can tickle his creatures.”
There is no actual fact behind it. Some racist theories in the past have been based on the notion. It could happen, in theory, but unless there’s a lost underground civilization somewhere in the Pyrinees, it looks like it ain’t so.
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
… although there are some antrhopologists who have found evidence recently that could imply that there was some cross-breeding between Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon. (I’m writing from work, I don’t have the magazine handy, but it was in Archaeology magazine either this month or last month.)
I had a summer McJob a few years back with a coworker who fit the classic Neanderthal body style. He was short, very stocky, and had the flattened, slanted forehead I’ve read about. He was also Robin Williams-hairy.
He was a pretty intelligent (and nice) guy, so I never thought much about it except that it was probably my over-active imagination linking him to the characters in Jean Auel’s “Clan of the Cave Bear” series that I had been reading around that time.
CkDextHaven: (hope I got that right…) Anyway, I believe Scientific American had a related story maybe a year or so ago. Basically, it implied that it was very likely that Neanderthals ceased to exist because they inter-bred with Cro-Mag man and the C.M. genes took over as there were more C.M. men breding than there were Neanderthals in the first place.
So, I guess we all are related
“I guess it is possible for one person to make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn’t.”
“Cro-magnon” and “Neanderthal” are names of early discoveries, like “Peking Man” and “Java Man”. These names are no longer working scientific terms, except when referring to specific historic specimens – except that “Neanderthal” is actually used as the name of the species Homo neanderthalis (or possibly subspecies Home sapiens neanderthalis).
Cro-magnon is Homo sapiens (or subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens).
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
