Posted on 11/10/2007 8:37:25 AM PST by Fractal Trader
The Neanderthal extinction some 30,000 years ago remains one of the great riddles of evolution, with rival theories blaming everything from genocide committed by "real" humans to prehistoric climate change.
But a recent study introduces another explanation: Stone Age feminism. Among Neanderthals, hunting big beasts was women's work as well as men's, so it's a safe bet that female hunters got stomped, gored, and worse with appalling frequency. And a high casualty rate among fertile women - the vital "reproductive core" of a tiny population - could well have meant demographic disaster for a species already struggling to survive among monster bears, yellow-fanged hyenas, and cunning Homo sapien newcomers.
A spate of recent discoveries has yielded intriguing clues about humanity's closest cousin. Neanderthals and humans split from a common ancestor some 500,000 years ago. Neanderthals had Europe to themselves until Homo sapiens started swarming out of Africa about 45,000 years ago - the beginning of the end for these archetypical cave dwellers, although they hung on for 15 millennia.
No other prehistoric people had quite the same kinship with humans: just 2,000 generations ago, the blink of an eye in evolutionary terms, Neanderthals walked among us and we among them. They might have been our lovers. Almost certainly they were our rivals, competing for the same giant elk and reindeer.
Then they were gone.
[SNIP]
"If a Neanderthal were to come along, we'd think he was kind of weird. But we might also wonder whether to admit him to Harvard," Lieberman said. "They remain this touchstone species that evokes strong emotions."
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Maybe neanderthal men were gay.
It is still a mystery as to why they dissapeared.
Neanderthals ARE modern human being; they’re just a genetically different form much as Asians, Europeans, Africans, Indians and so on have different charecteristics!
Fred Flintstones car.
My understanding was that some of the Neanderthals were better hunters than others, so they ate better. Then along came a cavewoman named Rodhamia who said “bad hunter not really bad! Fault of good hunter!” So they made her head of the tribe and she distributed all the meat equally.
The good hunters stopped hunting as hard. Rodhamia blamed them for the poor hunts and had them thrown off cliffs as the the tribal council shouted a prehistoric chant that roughly translates into “for the children!” Pretty soon, all that remained were the lousy hunters.
Along came an ice age. The Neanderthals had survived past ice ages by working harder. This time, instead of working harder they said “ice come because we change earth with our fires! We sorry!”
They banned all fires and felt good about themselves for the rest of their lives. Admittely, that was only about six months.
LOL.
Has everyone noticed that each new discovery/revelation about Neanderthals is in the direction of placing them closer and closer to us (Modern Humans)?
Few places in science have such room for writters of soap operas - I can just hear the organ music.
Feminism = extinction
Ugh! No thanks...
Fess up! Maybe not now, but when you were a teenager, you would've...
Cute graphic.
Now, do you know why CaveMEN dragged their women by the hair instead of the feet?
So they wouldn’t fill up with sand!!!
Fred Flintstone's car SUV...
Ughhhh....I think I will take Helen over this picture.....
1) Soooo, you found my picture
2) I didn't look like that when she dragged me to the cave!
12) Oh she was for a while, but she swung that club a lot more after I escaped...(pinata patrol)
women even with all their faults were still well worth the rib....i love em
It is my opinion that a viral disease killed off the Neanderthals, a virus the invading homo sapien horde brought with them that they had immunity to. Kind of the way the invasion from South of the US has the potential to end our civilization with a whimper, for if the US dies the world will succumb to the virus of Islam.
This theory assumes that while the Neanderthal women hunted and performed ‘manly chores’, the Homo Sapiens women did not.
So were the Homo Sapiens women, like, blond valley girls who totally liked shopping over chopping?
“Doesn’t sound persuasive to me. If this situation were so bad, then Neanderthals would have never survived in the first place.”
If you have one man and a hundred women, you can have a hundred babies a year. If you have a hundred men and one woman, you can only have one baby a year.
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