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8 billion people: How different the world would look if Neanderthals had prevailed
Phys dot org ^ | November 17, 2022 | Penny Spikins, The Conversation

Posted on 11/20/2022 7:08:40 PM PST by SunkenCiv

In evolutionary terms, the human population has rocketed in seconds. The news that it has now reached 8 billion seems inexplicable when you think about our history.

For 99% of the last million years of our existence, people rarely came across other humans. There were only around 10,000 Neanderthals living at any one time. Today, there are around 800,000 people in the same space that was occupied by one Neanderthal. What's more, since humans live in social groups, the next nearest Neanderthal group was probably well over 100km away. Finding a mate outside your own family was a challenge.

Neanderthals were more inclined to stay in their family groups and were warier of new people. If they had outcompeted our own species (Homo sapiens), the density of population would likely be far lower. It's hard to imagine them building cities, for example, given that they were genetically disposed to being less friendly to those beyond their immediate family.

The reasons for our dramatic population growth may lie in the early days of Homo sapiens more than 100,000 years ago. Genetic and anatomical differences between us and extinct species such as Neanderthals made us more similar to domesticated animal species. Large herds of cows, for example, can better tolerate the stress of living in a small space together than their wild ancestors who lived in small groups, spaced apart. These genetic differences changed our attitudes to people outside our own group. We became more tolerant.

(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...


TOPICS: History; Science; Travel
KEYWORDS: dnctalkingpoint; dnctalkingpoints; godsgravesglyphs; helixmakemineadouble; neandertal; neandertals; neanderthal; neanderthals; population
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To: Larry Lucido

https://www.yardbarker.com/entertainment/articles/the_25_most_memorable_phil_hartman_characters/s1__26476910#slide_1


21 posted on 11/20/2022 7:41:54 PM PST by EEGator
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To: SunkenCiv

22 posted on 11/20/2022 7:51:19 PM PST by Magnum44 (...against all enemies, foreign and domestic... )
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To: SunkenCiv

Interesting to think about, but this article has a lot of conjecture.


23 posted on 11/20/2022 8:01:15 PM PST by grimalkin (Communism is the final logic of the dehumanization of man. -Fulton J. Sheen)
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To: bagster

Like a Democrat controlled Congress?


24 posted on 11/20/2022 8:03:57 PM PST by MadMax, the Grinning Reaper (Figures )
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To: SunkenCiv

The increase in population really began when the smelting of ores and manufacture of metal tools began.

With metal for plowshares and pruning hooks, farmers could increase the amount of food produced far beyond what Neolithic farmers with stone tools could produce.

With metal for swords and spear points, cities could extract the produce from the farmers in their hinterlands and multiply the city populations. Serfdom and slavery became the lot of the rural populations.

It is said that humans are a cancer, but that is not true of pre-urban humans. Only when the city begins is it analogous to a tumor, which penetrates the surrounding tissues and appropriates an excessive amount of resources for its uncontrolled growth.

And cities also send out expeditions to explore other lands, found new cities and exploit new hinterlands, just as cancers emit cells which migrate to other tissues of the organism and metastasize.

The Age of Exploration beginning in the 1400s should really be known as the Age of Metastasis.


25 posted on 11/20/2022 8:16:25 PM PST by FarCenter
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To: SunkenCiv

Half the world is Chnese.
Good thing they only let`em have one kid per family.


26 posted on 11/20/2022 8:29:37 PM PST by bunkerhill7 (t)
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To: cuz1961
Chesterton covers this well in Chapter 2 of "The Everlasting Man".

It is necessary to say plainly that all this ignorance is simply covered by impudence. Statements are made so plainly and positively that men have hardly the moral courage to pause upon them and find that they are without support. The other day a scientific summary of the state of a prehistoric tribe began confidently with the words ‘They wore no clothes.’ Not one reader in a hundred probably stopped to ask himself how we should come to know whether clothes had once been worn by people of whom everything has perished except a few chips of bone and stone. It was doubtless hoped that we should find a stone hat as well as a stone hatchet. It was evidently anticipated that we might discover an everlasting pair of trousers of the same substance as the everlasting rock. But to persons of a less sanguine temperament it will be immediately apparent that people might wear simple garments, or even highly ornamental garments, without leaving any more traces of them than these people have left. The plaiting of rushes and grasses, for instance, might have become more and more elaborate without in the least becoming more eternal. One civilisation might specialise in things that happened to be perishable, like weaving and embroidering, and not in things that happen to be more permanent, like architecture and sculpture. There have been plenty of examples of such specialist societies. A man of the future finding the ruins of our factory machinery might as fairly say that we were acquainted with iron and with no other substance; and announce the discovery that the proprietor and manager of the factory undoubtedly walked about naked—or possibly wore iron hats and trousers.
27 posted on 11/20/2022 8:46:10 PM PST by Dr. Sivana (What was 35% of the Rep. Party is now 85%. And it’s too late to turn back—Mac Stipanovich )
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To: SunkenCiv

I guess Africans never left the continent so they do not have any Neanderthal DNA in them, unlike the Europeans and Asians.

28 posted on 11/20/2022 9:01:38 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
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To: SunkenCiv
given that they were genetically disposed to being less friendly to those beyond their immediate family.

On which chromosome is that genetic difference? Or is the author just talking out of her ass about it being a genetic disposition rather than a cultural one or not a disposition at all?

29 posted on 11/20/2022 9:02:17 PM PST by KarlInOhio (Soon the January 6 protesters will be held (without trial or bail) longer than Jefferson Davis was.)
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To: Magnum44

You win the thread!


30 posted on 11/20/2022 9:08:27 PM PST by grey_whiskers ( (The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.))
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To: KarlInOhio

The second one. :^)


31 posted on 11/20/2022 9:22:39 PM PST by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
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To: BipolarBob

😂


32 posted on 11/20/2022 9:41:35 PM PST by BiteYourSelf ( Earth first, we'll strip mine the other planets later.)
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To: MinorityRepublican

Modern humans have been on this earth three hundred thousand years.
They say it took humans ten thousand years to go from hunter gatherers to walking on the moon.
So, I wonder how many civilizations rose and fell in that time?🤔


33 posted on 11/20/2022 9:47:26 PM PST by BiteYourSelf ( Earth first, we'll strip mine the other planets later.)
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To: KarlInOhio

Homo S

apiens were so “friendly” they killed off the Neanderthals.


34 posted on 11/21/2022 3:14:55 AM PST by .44 Special (Taimid Buacharch)
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To: BipolarBob

LMAO!!!! Exactly!


35 posted on 11/21/2022 3:20:38 AM PST by FrdmLvr
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To: SunkenCiv

Klaus Scwab announces the WEF’s Return to Neanderthal Project, funded by Bill Gates.


36 posted on 11/21/2022 3:21:39 AM PST by I-ambush (We watched the moment of defeat, played back over on the video screen. )
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To: SunkenCiv

The neanderthals and the sapiens disappeared. But the homos abound.


37 posted on 11/21/2022 3:24:33 AM PST by dforest
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To: SunkenCiv; Chode; SkyDancer; Salamander; Carriage Hill; Lockbox; MtnClimber; nascarnation; ...

Is this where the Hatfield and Mc Coy thing got started ?


38 posted on 11/21/2022 4:12:49 AM PST by mabarker1 ( (Congress- the opposite of PROGRESS!!! A fraud, a hypocrite, a liar. I'm a member of Congress !7)
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To: mabarker1

Could Neanderthals play banjo?


39 posted on 11/21/2022 4:55:05 AM PST by Carriage Hill (A society grows great when old men plant trees, in whose shade they know they will never sit.)
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To: Magnum44

You own the internet for the rest of the year. Do with it as you may.


40 posted on 11/21/2022 5:06:01 AM PST by BlackbirdSST (Trump WON!!! He will win 2024!)
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