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 ...
Love with a Neanderthal? It could have happened
Fort Wayne News-Sentinel | Thursday, August 3, 2006 | Faye Flam
Posted on 08/03/2006 11:28:21 AM EDT by SunkenCiv
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The Neandertal EnigmaFrayer's own reading of the record reveals a number of overlooked traits that clearly and specifically link the Neandertals to the Cro-Magnons. One such trait is the shape of the opening of the nerve canal in the lower jaw, a spot where dentists often give a pain-blocking injection. In many Neandertal, the upper portion of the opening is covered by a broad bony ridge, a curious feature also carried by a significant number of Cro-Magnons. But none of the alleged 'ancestors of us all' fossils from Africa have it, and it is extremely rare in modern people outside Europe." [pp 126-127]
by James Shreeve
D@mn! That looks like my sister in law!
red hair is a neanderthal gene.
In short, for all we know Neanderthals may've been inclined to kill modern humans on sight, or vice versa. There's certainly plenty of fossil evidence to establish that Neanderthal fossils vanish from any given region almost immediately after the arrival of Cro-Magnons.
We know that over and over again that tends to be the initial reaction of aboriginal humans, for that matter. It isn't 'Oh, come screw us'; it's 'Get the $%#& off our land!" Eventually, by conquest or by diplomacy, a rapport gets established, and then the screwing comes along, but to reiterate yet again, there is no reason to think that we could communicate with Neanderthal in anything but the most rudimentary fashion.
Would you want to go to sleep beside some incomprehensible wild-eyed burly ape-woman scheming how to bash your head in with a rock for all you know?
Thanks, patton, you just ruined my day. I'm red-headed. The only one in my family. Must have been a Neanderthal Ice-man :-0
Oh, which brings me to the other point that I forgot to re-mention: In order to have Neanderthal intermixed with modern human populations, then what you have to have is not human men sleeping with Neanderthal women, but rather human women sleeping with Neanderthal men. That's because you have to have the progeny end up back in the human community. So, what you need is for human women to somehow go sleep with Neanderthal men, return or remain in the human encampment, then bring the pregnancy to term, then to raise the hybrid up to adulthood, and then to have that hybrid cross-breed back into the human community again.
"oh, puLLEEZE, anything to deny the existence of God..anything to duhumanize, anything to make us more LIKE MONKEYS."
LOL - Don't you have to blame God ? He wrote the book on how to make humbans and monkeys, and it looks like he simply cut'n'pasted most from one to the other.
"The new study found that 99.4 percent of the most critical DNA sites are identical in the corresponding human and chimp genes. "
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3744
The scinetists are simply learning how to read those instructions.
Neanderthal genes.
Also likely to have too many teeth, more muscles, lanky arms, and allergies, ranging from asthma to Crohn's disease. Sinus infections are almost guaranteed.
Oddly enough, ringworms help.
yep, um, we know ;)
Humbans = humans
Now if He only included the spelling gene ...
Red hair has been idly speculated to be a neanderthal gene, but probably isn't.
Did we interbreed with Neanders? I don't know. But I do know some of us would have tried.
Remember when Former President Clinton saw the mummified body of a 16 year old Incan girl? He immediately said She Sure Looks Good To ME! And a few other comments.
Oh, and one more thing: I'm not saying that I wouldn't hit it if all I had to work with was what they would've had 35,000 years ago. What I'm saying is that I would not trade a rhino steak for it. ;^)
I had hoped for something actually substantative; I see this may be beyond your capability.
W.K.
well, you see, we can't win for losing. It's been put forth by the scientist that either we slept with Neanderthals. Or, we up and killed all of them off.
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