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A long anthropological debate may be on the cusp of resolution

From Scientific American

Over the past half-century, our understanding of human evolution has changed dramatically. And now, it seems that one of the outstanding debates about Homo sapiens has become a lot more complicated — because both sides may be right.

Most sensible people have probably always thought that. Those who fall for the "pure" race ideologies usually don't spend a lot of time thinking about it or perhaps may know their history but haven't thought through the long term consequences of all the invasions and trading that went on or maybe like them because it feeds in to their prejudices.

LarsMac;1430251 wrote: A long anthropological debate may be on the cusp of resolution

From Scientific American


There can only be one implication from that article. For whatever reason all of the inter-racial pregnancies involved a homo sapiens woman with a neandertal / denisovian / hono florientis man.

Was the other way a sterile union? That would be odd but possible.

Were the matings of a ritual nature? Difficult to imagine.

Any other ideas?

Bryn Mawr;1430471 wrote: There can only be one implication from that article. For whatever reason all of the inter-racial pregnancies involved a homo sapiens woman with a neandertal / denisovian / hono florientis man.

Was the other way a sterile union? That would be odd but possible.

Were the matings of a ritual nature? Difficult to imagine.

Any other ideas?


Don't see how you come to that conclusion from the article, there's nothing to suggest it was always homo sapien woman and neanderthal man

Look at it another way. Maybe the racists that din't want to live together were eventually replaced by the more intelligent and stronger hybrids.

gmc;1430473 wrote: Don't see how you come to that conclusion from the article, there's nothing to suggest it was always homo sapien woman and neanderthal man

Look at it another way. Maybe the racists that din't want to live together were eventually replaced by the more intelligent and stronger hybrids.


If, as is stated in the article, all modern humans are descended from one Homo Sapiens woman born in Africa long after the Neandertal had left as traced through the mitochondrial DNA and if, as also stated, the nuclear DNA shows a mixture of Homo Sapiens and Neandertal genes then all of the non-Homo Sapiens genes must have come from the father, otherwise the mitochondrial DNA would be that of the Neandertal mother.

Bryn Mawr;1430471 wrote: There can only be one implication from that article. For whatever reason all of the inter-racial pregnancies involved a homo sapiens woman with a neandertal / denisovian / hono florientis man.

Was the other way a sterile union? That would be odd but possible.

Were the matings of a ritual nature? Difficult to imagine.

Any other ideas?That's what the research that I've read seems to say. Neanderthal DNA shows almost no close relation to modern human DNA but the modern human shows a fair amount matched with the Neanderthal. There's lots of possibilities but, It appears Neanderthal males were more attracted to Sapien females than Sapien males were to Neanderthal females, though I suppose Neanderthal females could have been turned off by Sapien males. Then there's always the probability (at least in my mind) that sex wasn't necessarily consensual in most cases back then.

Ahso!;1430506 wrote: That's what the research that I've read seems to say. Neanderthal DNA shows almost no close relation to modern human DNA but the modern human shows a fair amount matched with the Neanderthal. There's lots of possibilities but, It appears Neanderthal males were more attracted to Sapien females than Sapien males were to Neanderthal females, though I suppose Neanderthal females could have been turned off by Sapien males. Then there's always the probability (at least in my mind) that sex wasn't necessarily consensual in most cases back then.


For it to be 100% to 0% I feel it must be more than consent or even who can rape who. This appears to be a systematic difference - one way works and the othre way does not.

Cross-species mating has always been somewhat difficult, and when successful the female tends to be more likely to produce viable offspring than the male. That would help explain the mtDNA persistence, I think.

Bryn Mawr;1430535 wrote: For it to be 100% to 0% I feel it must be more than consent or even who can rape who. This appears to be a systematic difference - one way works and the othre way does not.Yeah, I should have thought of that. I assumed if it works one way it probably works the other way.

Apparently Neanderthals never did have a large population. I wonder if female Neanderthals had difficulty conceiving in general. Too selective, sort of.

It seems that Neanderthals were don't in by the ice age,they weren't built for it.

johnmont;1430661 wrote: It seems that Neanderthals were don't in by the ice age,they weren't built for it.Hi John and welcome to FG. Actually the Neanderthal and Homo Sapien overlapped in existence by somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 years or so. Also, for the period of time the Neanderthal existed there was no Ice Age per se, though there were periods of hot and cold weather for them to deal with.

The popular opinion is that the Neanderthal's demise was caused by a variety of things, one being due to anatomical differences between us and them; violence; direct competition with the homo sapien and their possible inability or refusal to change their diet.

Here's an article from wikipedia that might interest you. It's not very long.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderth ... hypotheses