If neanderthals did not become extinct...

[Mac]

What do you think would be different?

[Zealot]

More racism, more slavery. Everything bad x 20 unless they were considered white, as some of the neanderthals on stormfront are suggesting, (pun intended) but we would probably have a richer culture and more intellectuals/revolutionaries/nations/languages etc

[Le Rouge]

We would interbreed... naturally...and a new specie would be created? Homo Neanderthaiens? :)
Maybe this new specie would extinct over time, or maybe they would exterminate the remaining Homo Sapiens Sapiens and Homo Neanderthalensis (like we did with Neanderthal).

By the way, we've got 1% to 4% of Neanderthal DNA in our body ;)

[Cynic]

I agree with Le Rough that if they had not become extinct their would probably be a new species. What would be different? It would be really hard to tell but I theorize that this new species would have evolved technologically liked the Cro-Magnons, as for how society would look I don't think it is possible to predict.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I've always been interested as to what the difference between us and Neanderthals are.

I mean, sure we are a bit more evolutionised anatomically and psychologically, but is it not possible that we'd just interact with them like other humans?

[Nox]

I recently saw a documentary suggesting that humans and neanderthals actually met and interbred. Interesting theory

[Fopeos]

Many scientists believe we are carrying what's left of the neanderthals in our own DNA. As an independent species, they weren't able to cope with the changes of the Neolithic. What makes you think they'd have survived the Columbian exchange?

[gendoikari]

We would interbreed... naturally...and a new specie would be created? Homo Neanderthaiens? :)
Maybe this new specie would extinct over time, or maybe they would exterminate the remaining Homo Sapiens Sapiens and Homo Neanderthalensis (like we did with Neanderthal).

By the way, we've got 1% to 4% of Neanderthal DNA in our body ;)

yup that's one theory as to why they went "extinct", interbreeding. Some scientists even go farther and say we really are a mixture.

[Lynx]

Their greater bone density would have made them better at weight-lifting and similar activities?

[Olentzero]

I wish I could remember where I saw this, but I watched a documentary at one point where they'd found a cave that had evidence of Neanderthal occupation over a span of some 40,000 years or so. The one thing that struck the archeologists was how little their technology had advanced over that time period, while Homo sapiens was busy hogging all the nifty developments. The Neanderthals were pretty much outstripped from the get-go and their extinction as a species was probably always more a question of when, rather than if, once humans showed up in Europe.

Had they survived, however, it would probably be because they figured out how to adapt H. sapiens technology and use it for themselves. Which means they'd probably fight back if humans tried to enslave them. Makes for an interesting sociopolitical situation.

[Le Rouge]

Their greater bone density would have made them better at weight-lifting and similar activities?

Yes. They were stronger than us. But brute force don't mean your specie will survive.

[Magón]

What do you think would be different?

Well we wouldn't have to ask the question, of what it'd be like to not be the only species of the Homo-genis, around today.


Homo Neanderthaiens? :)

Neanderthals are already called scientifically as either Homo Neanderthalensis, or Homo Sapien Neanderthalensis.

Anyway, another theory I read awhile back in a NatGeo I think (I'll try to find it, could have been a TV doc.), was about some archeologists in France, who studied the camps and "villages" of both Neanderthal and Human in the country, and realized that everywhere Neanderthal and Humans were, the Neanderthal camps were small and few in number, while the Humans were large and many. They figure that because of this, and the vast territory both used to walk around, what ended up happening was the Neanderthals were kicked out of good hunting and foraging areas, isolated to these smaller and smaller areas (which cut the gene pool of mating quite small), which because of their different skeletal size and all that, they began to starve and die out while prehistoric man just went on overwhelming their last remaining territory.

[Rooster]

I've always been interested as to what the difference between us and Neanderthals are.

I mean, sure we are a bit more evolutionised anatomically and psychologically, but is it not possible that we'd just interact with them like other humans?

I'm sorry to nit-pick but, there's no such thing as being more evolved. Anyway, we did interact with them. It's a strange concept of there being a different species of humans but I'm pretty sure we'd be able to interact with them just like any other person.

[Le Rouge]

Homo Neanderthaiens? :)

Neanderthals are already called scientifically as either Homo Neanderthalensis, or Homo Sapien Neanderthalensis.



I only gave a fictive name to my fictive creature.

[A Marxist Historian]

I recently saw a documentary suggesting that humans and neanderthals actually met and interbred. Interesting theory

Not a theory at this point, but pretty well established.

Inteestingly, not all humans are part neanderthal. As the interbreeding occurred in Europe and Asia, those from Africa don't have that tiny Neanderthal share in their gene pool, but are "pure human stock" as it were.

Though, given how amazingly few genetic differences between orthohumans and Neanderthals exist, this means nothing. It is a nice refutation of the white racists however, as if you do in fact think that there is a separate "black race," scientific evidence would seem to indicate that it is the "superior" race.

It's also pretty well established how the displacement happened. It wasn't any matter of "survival of the fittest" except in the crudest sense. There is sufficient evidence for the conclusion that what happened is that orthohumans exterminated them, in addition to interbreeding with them.

So why were humans so successful vs. Neanderthals? There is much speculation on this. One theory discussed in the current issue of the New Yorker, which the scientist who is the great world expert, Svante Paabo, recently came up with, is that Neanderthals had a genetic predisposition to autism, based on a single gene pair difference between them and orthohumans (with no connection whatsoever, by the way, with any other possible "racial traits.") He's been doing DNA analysis on Neanderthal fossils.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/08/15/110815fa_fact_kolbert

(only the abstract, doesn't include the autism business)

-M.H.-

[Blackscare]

It would have made it a lot harder to dispute racist rhetoric (though not impossible, I think), given that evidence suggests that they progressed very slowly technologically and when they adopted human tech, it was only in a rather crude cargo-cultish way. Having a different sub-species of obviously lower intellectual ability living side-by-side with "us" would fundamentally change people's views. It's hard enough arguing against imagined or constructed differences, let alone genetically and behaviorally verifiable ones.

Basically they would have been a lot less intelligent I think, and probably would have made up a genuine underclass without much in the way of a hope for integration into human society, given that they would be far too human to exist "in the wild" as animals without being bothered and simultaneously too deficient in intelligence to operate effectively. They'd probably be slaves. It's actually a really disturbing thought, probably better for them to have gone extinct, considering the implications otherwise.

Cro Magnon man may have faired better, but IDK.

[Devrim]

Cro Magnon man may have faired better, but IDK.

We did.

Devrim

[A Marxist Historian]

It would have made it a lot harder to dispute racist rhetoric (though not impossible, I think), given that evidence suggests that they progressed very slowly technologically and when they adopted human tech, it was only in a rather crude cargo-cultish way. Having a different sub-species of obviously lower intellectual ability living side-by-side with "us" would fundamentally change people's views. It's hard enough arguing against imagined or constructed differences, let alone genetically and behaviorally verifiable ones.

Basically they would have been a lot less intelligent I think, and probably would have made up a genuine underclass without much in the way of a hope for integration into human society, given that they would be far too human to exist "in the wild" as animals without being bothered and simultaneously too deficient in intelligence to operate effectively. They'd probably be slaves. It's actually a really disturbing thought, probably better for them to have gone extinct, considering the implications otherwise.

Cro Magnon man may have faired better, but IDK.

Except that the best evidence seems to indicate that Neanderthals *were not* less intelligent (and by this I don't just mean that they had larger brains, which is true but irrelevant).

It's just that the particular form of intelligence they had was slightly different, and for one reason or another less given to technological creativity. I rather like the autism theory. Some autists can be geniuses, but they just don't work well with others.

-M.H.-

[DienBienPhu]

Less dialectic !

[smellincoffee]

I really can't imagine human beings peacefully coexisting with Neanderthals, unless there were Neanderthals living in an isolated location (like the Americas). Our hostility toward outsiders and the constant need to expand would pretty much damn them, I think.

[gendoikari]

I really can't imagine human beings peacefully coexisting with Neanderthals, unless there were Neanderthals living in an isolated location (like the Americas). Our hostility toward outsiders and the constant need to expand would pretty much damn them, I think.

Nah, we'd have interbred long ago. And if not they'd simply be the racial boundary that the capitalist use to divide us, as well as the ones the capitalists use for their dirty work.

[Invader Zim]

What do you think would be different?


But they did, so the question is moot and unaswerable unless you - or anybody else [has], have the power to view into alternative dimensions.

[DienBienPhu]

I readed a very interesting hypothesis about reasons that could have lead their extinction.
Their language had been much less sophisticated than homo sapiens sapiens one, and therefore they couldn't build enough strong social system and were incapable to settle their internal conflicts by discussion, and that lead to their social break-up, above all in a situation of competition with homo sapiens sapiens for resources.
So, it's a satisfactory response in a dialectic point of view.

[AnonymousOne]

True story, we actually did interbreed long ago:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/05/100506-science-neanderthals-humans-mated-interbred-dna-gene/

Neanderthals to some extent, live on, as their DNA survives in a good chunk of humanity.

[Hit The North]

Greater intelligence and a greater capacity for sociability (i.e. not tending towards autism) are unlikley to account for the domination of modern humans, given that there is no evidence that Neanderthals were more deficient in these regards. Neither can it be demonstrated that modern humans were technologically more innovative, given the slow pace of technological development in the first 200,000 years of our species' existence.

What is of interest, is that we developed a technology which was distinctive from Neanderthal technology in the shape of projectiles. There is no evidence that Neanderthals used projectile weapons for hunting. Their spears were used for close fighting, deployed as stabbing weapons. The ability to kill from a distance is a distinct evolutionary advantage. Recent evidence points to the Neanderthal having a different type of shoulder joint to modern humans which disabled his ability to hurl spears or wield slingshots. In the parlance of my modern sexist culture: your average Neanderthal threw like a girl.

Neanderthal Weaponry Lacked Projectiles (http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/01/14/neanderthals-weapon.html)

[A Marxist Historian]

Greater intelligence and a greater capacity for sociability (i.e. not tending towards autism) are unlikley to account for the domination of modern humans, given that there is no evidence that Neanderthals were more deficient in these regards. Neither can it be demonstrated that modern humans were technologically more innovative, given the slow pace of technological development in the first 200,000 years of our species' existence.

What is of interest, is that we developed a technology which was distinctive from Neanderthal technology in the shape of projectiles. There is no evidence that Neanderthals used projectile weapons for hunting. Their spears were used for close fighting, deployed as stabbing weapons. The ability to kill from a distance is a distinct evolutionary advantage. Recent evidence points to the Neanderthal having a different type of shoulder joint to modern humans which disabled his ability to hurl spears or wield slingshots. In the parlance of my modern sexist culture: your average Neanderthal threw like a girl.

Neanderthal Weaponry Lacked Projectiles (http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/01/14/neanderthals-weapon.html)

Hey, that's possible too. The autism theory is still a paleogenetic hypotheis based on gene pair analysis, with no absolute proof yet that this particular gene pair is related to autism.

I'm a little skeptical though, as spears and slingshots don't seem to me to be enough to explain the suddenness and thoroughness with which the Neanderthals were wiped out. Remember, with their superior strength they would have been better in close in fighting.

There is no solid evidence indicating they were inferior in intelligence, just conjecture. For all we know they were more intelligent, just used their intelligence in different ways.

-M.H.-

[Frank Zapatista]

More racism, more slavery. Everything bad x 20 unless they were considered white, as some of the neanderthals on stormfront are suggesting, (pun intended) but we would probably have a richer culture and more intellectuals/revolutionaries/nations/languages etc
I don't think people would try to classify them as a race. They're not classified as humans. Technically they're not the same species. Needless to say though, everything would be different.

[Olentzero]

I don't think people would try to classify them as a race. They're not classified as humans.Says who? They're part of the genus Homo, which last I checked pretty much was the definition of being human.
Technically they're not the same species.Nothing technical about it - they are the species Homo neanderthalensis. But that alone doesn't disqualify them as human - for example there are 55 species of duck in the subfamily Anatinae alone (and some 10 subfamilies in the family Anatidae) and yet they are all considered ducks. So it would be inconsistent to say that in the case of ducks, widely differing species in different subfamilies can be considered ducks, but that in the case of Neanderthal man, they're not human because they're a different species within the same genus.

[Luís Henrique]

I recently saw a documentary suggesting that humans and neanderthals actually met and interbred. Interesting theory

Neanderthals were human. Homo sapiens as much as us, just a subspecies.

Luís Henrique