Posted on 08/13/2006 4:11:37 PM PDT by blam
Sleep with Neanderthals? Apparently we (homo Sapiens) did
By Faye Flam
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Though it's been 150 years since mysteriously humanlike bones first turned up in Germany's Neander Valley, the find continues to shake our collective sense of human identity.
Neanderthals are humanity's closest relatives, with brains at least as big as ours, and yet we don't know whether we should include them as members of our own species.
No longer does science consider them our direct ancestors but some suspect Neanderthals and modern homo Sapiens interbred during the 20,000 some-odd years we co-existed in Europe. The archaeological record doesn't tell us one way or another, but earlier, researchers announced they would seek more clues by scraping DNA from Neanderthal bones and teeth.
The question of sex with Neanderthals speaks to our understanding of ourselves, our origins and our uniqueness. If this other type of human being wasn't like us, what was he like?
As I started researching this issue, I found myself staring at a picture of a nude Neanderthal man a forensic sculpture created by Duke University paleoanthropologist Steve Churchill that was published last year in the journal Science. The model, based on a skeleton found at La Ferrassie in France, is mesmerizing in its combination of familiarity and alienness.
To be honest, he's really not half bad looking. He's got a good, muscular body, and while he's nobody's idea of handsome, that could be forgiven if he had a nice personality or I was starving and he offered to throw some rhino steaks on the fire for me.
We're not talking about the stoop-shouldered, hairy, apelike Neanderthal of popular culture. There's no evidence they were hairier than modern people, says anthropologist Harold Dibble, a curator at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology. . .
(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.nwsource.com ...
You seem to have an agenda and want to pigeon hole me into having the opposite agenda. I care if Neanderthal and humans interbred only in relation to the fact that it is of scientific interest and I would like to know. I believe they did in fact, I even believe that Neanderthals are merely homo sapiens that are cold adapted and not a separate species at all. That is my opinion on this subject.
and i state my opinion as opinion and am not trying to convince anyone here my opinion is fact. You might want to check if you are trying to convince other that your opinion is fact.
Your opinion is that in thousands upon thousands of years of Human-Neanderthal interaction that no sexual relationships occurred. I think your a bit myopic in that view. Hell in the 8-9 thousand years goats and sheep have been domesticated Humans have had sexual relationships with them and I seem to recall a Roman Emperor who married a Horse.
I understood your meaning, just unclear as to what made you think I was either belligerent or bellicose. My intent was a rational discussion. Unfortunately, others did not wish the same.
Now, if you were in west Texas, it would go something like "Sugar, what have you got your panties in a knot over?" I'm sure there are other regionalisms that would describe this situation - these are just two that I would use.
Which is why I am familiar with both, having been in El Paso and Lubbock. Although, I'm not sure if Lubbock qualifies as West Texas.
At your service, WhiteKnight
Your sequence of events are wrong. If Humans and Neanderthals could produce viable offspring that were not mules then they did and some genetic material of Neanderthal is present in Human society today. It is that simple. It will take long term genetic study to prove one way or the other and no study to date is sufficient or even close to sufficient to determine this.
If they could not produce viable genetic offspring then there is none. This does not mean that Neanderthals and Humans had the occasional roll in the hay or even that there were long ternm stable relationships between the species.
I'm hardly surprised. That is the most common reason why some people wish so badly for Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon to have interbred. Another common reason is the racial dimension that also popped up above from someone else. That's OK by me, but no matter what your motivation and no matter how intense your motivation there is still no more evidence of Neanderthal/Cro-Magnon admixture than there was before (nil).
Your opinion is that in thousands upon thousands of years of Human-Neanderthal interaction that no sexual relationships occurred.
No, that isn't my opinion. My deduction, to use the correct word instead, is that in thousands upon thousands of years of Human-Neanderthal interaction no meaningful genetic admixture took place.
Hell in the 8-9 thousand years goats and sheep have been domesticated Humans have had sexual relationships with them and I seem to recall a Roman Emperor who married a Horse.
Sheep and horses don't fight back if seduced properly. Gorillas and lions do. Neanderthals probably did too. Get back to me when you find some stories of sexual relationships between humans and gorillas or lions that would've resulted in progeny were that genetically possible.
Infanticide was common in premodern societies. Visibly deformed infants were almost always killed. It is an error to ignore that factor.
If they could not produce viable genetic offspring then there is none. This does not mean that Neanderthals and Humans had the occasional roll in the hay or even that there were long ternm stable relationships between the species.
No, it doesn't. Hell, it doesn't even mean that Humans and sperm whales didn't partake of the occasional roll in the hay or even long term stable relationships, but still, they probably didn't.
"Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?"
Ce soir?
I don't get it. Why couldn't Cro Magnum and Neanderthal interbreed? What would prevent them from doing so? They sure looked enough like humans.
If you are going to be ludicrous leave the debate. Humans and sperm whales have never shared hunting grounds :)
Your wrong visibly deformed children are not always killed in Hunter Gatherer cultures especially those cultures in very rich environments such as Western Europe. You are getting your evidence of this practice from African H&Gs living in very marginal environments.
Also how do you know what Neanderthal societies did with deformed children? I mean you are the one that keeps saying they were so strange we can't even understand them.
However I can show ample evidence that cripples and the deformed were cared for in cultures at the time from the fossil record. Hell Neanderthals were known for caring for their crippled and deformed members.
It's clear that evolutionary divergence is not a linear temporal curve. Some (sub)species diverge rapidly while others diverge much more gradually. Based on genetic tests of modern humans and paleolithic fossils, the most recent common ancestor between Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon was extant about 500,000 years ago. There are many possible reasons that may have prevented them from interbreeding once the two lineages were reunited. It's entirely unclear which, if any, was the culprit, but the stubbornly persistent inability to find evidence of admixture (short of very creative interpretation of some evidentiary fragments) strongly suggest that one or more of these factors was the case. We may never know which.
It's worth noting though that recent genetic research indicates that the genes for language and intelligence evolved rapidly in the time frame that modern human ancestors were separated from Neanderthals, so that supports the notion of a very rapid divergence.
For our purposes it doesn't matter what Neanderthal societies did with deformed children. 100% of Neanderthal societies are extinct, along with any hybrids that might have remained in them.
As I have stated if Neanderthal societies interbred with Humans and had viable offspring the societies died only because they gradually became Human societies (this is especially true if Neanderthal is simply a cold adapted Homo Sapien). This could happen in as little as two generations and leave almost no evidence other than Humans now living where Neanderthals once lived. These societies die out because the new children are brighter and faster than their parents and would out compete their companions for food, sex, and control. Homo Sapiens are just more capable than the cold adapted Neanderthal.
LOL - I expected as much - as simple ad hominem attack, instead of addressing the science.
Very interesting. Thanks for the info.
For that matter, I'd say it's an open question whether Homo sapiens could interbreed with Homo erectus, if the two were somehow united in coitus. It's even possible that a modern human could interbreed with a Homo erectus but not with a Neanderthal (it's less likely, to be sure, but it's possible). It all depends on where the genetic divergence took place in the respective populations.
My guess is that if it happened it was of such a low incidence rate as to be a freak occurrence of no meaningful consequence. Kind of like Caligula marrying his horse. Sure, it proves that out of billions upon billions of humans that have ever lived, at least one married a horse (if the slur is true). Big whoop. It hardly establishes any kind of norm.
BTW Hybrid fossils have been found so their is really no debate here.
As I already stated above, you are perfectly free to imagine any scenario you want so long as it would leave behind no evidence. For what little my opinion matters, I have no problem with that so long as you don't claim that there's evidence of scenarios that produce no evidence.
To call that arguable would be charitable IMHO. I'm not gonna rehash the debate again here, at all, except to note that this is hardly a consensus view. If it were, this debate would not even exist, and of course this debate does exist, which underscores just how inane your declaration is.
How do you get vomit out of a keyboard?
Are you going for the Hank Aaron award on this thread or what? You got your favorite pitcher of a topic, and just keep swinging.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.