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 ...
Please don't misunderstand - ringworms HELP control your (red head) immune system. Not designed to work in a sterile envrinonment.
LOL Maybe if I keep at it I'll figure out why I get so irked by this whole topic of Neanderthal lineage (or absence thereof). It's difficult to find an issue of less practical significance, and yet I just can't seem to leave it alone.
Put it in the dishwasher?
Let's see: I've discussed goat diapers, naughty veggies, cave-sex, and rubber duckies on FR today. I think it might be time to call it a night. I shudder to guess what I'll dream about. :)
And I. Magnin Woman.
To paraphrase Jonas Acme, fair-haired pharaoh of American Industry---
(In stentorian, pontificating voice:)
"The human brain,
is so powerful,
that it can only be used,
for good or evil."
sigh. subtlety never works with you people.
Well, exactly what trajectory would you predict for the result of inbreeding between Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals?
She seemed so nice at the bar...
Yes if you believe my declaration is inane your continued declaration of absolutes that you posit here must be totally idiotic.
For starters, I would predict that Celtic peoples would be among the first to advance, rather than among the last,* since Celtic peoples would be expected to retain the most Neanderthal genes.
* And that almost entirely derivative of non-Celts.
PS. To be more precise, that's the trajectory I would predict in the event that 'accelerated Northern Hemisphere advancement' was attributable to Neanderthal/Cro-Magnon interbreeding. Something else I would predict in that case is for civilization to arise and flourish in those regions first, rather than in the Nile, Euphrates, Indus, and Yellow river valleys. Within Europe itself, I would predict the northwest to be more advanced than the southeast, which was not the case until very modern times.
The only advance, albeit a huge one, that was first achieved in northwest Europe was the Industrial Revolution.
"sigh. subtlety never works with you people."
LOL again ... Now you're into type-casting with your "you people" remark.
Why don't you try again and leave out the subtlety ?
Nah, the Dutch invented modern capitalism long before (the 1600's), along with notions of tolerance that took a long time to take elsewhere. The Brits invented limitations on the authorithy of the executive, and the rule of law, before that, the modern sense of both.
You are absolutely right about that, but I was effectively conflating early market capitalism with later industrial capitalism. That was an error of sloth on my part; I was just speed typing in my rush out the door. :)
At least, in the meaningful sense that you intended, I should add.
Ya, Greece did a lot of things first, and inspired later generations, far later, and still inspire. But, I was being as you know, a bit more time specific. In any event, Britian did it first on a much larger and more complex scale. Rome also had laws before Britain, but well, Britain invented an independent judiciary, with teeth, along with juries, again in a state systematic way.
Well, I haven't the slightest dispute with any of that. So, what does that tell us in terms of the question at hand? Perhaps Neanderthal ingenuity was just dormant within Celtic blood and simply need to get activated by a Teuton/Norse infusion?
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