[HN Gopher] At Home with Our Ancient Cousins, the Neanderthals (...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       At Home with Our Ancient Cousins, the Neanderthals (2020)
        
       Author : diodorus
       Score  : 44 points
       Date   : 2021-03-08 02:36 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
        
       | ericra wrote:
       | Just a quick aside for uBlock Origin users viewing NY Times
       | articles:
       | 
       | You can typically bypass both the paywall and scroll lock that
       | comes along its removal via ubo by disabling javascript for the
       | site. This can be done on a per site basis in uBO by clicking
       | this button and refreshing the page:
       | 
       | https://imgur.com/a/HnCM4Su
       | 
       | Some articles will not load all images properly, but I have found
       | that most do work fine.
       | 
       | I know this will be basic knowledge for many here, but not
       | everybody knows how to fiddle with the various uBO settings.
        
       | float4 wrote:
       | I was going to say that a lot of this sounds like stuff already
       | discussed in the book Sapiens by Harari, but then I noticed that
       | this article is written by Harari. Anways:
       | 
       | > The Sapiens advantage probably lay in large-scale cooperation.
       | 
       | The most popular theory at the moment is, as far as I know, that
       | Sapiens were simply lucky, i.e. some mutations took place that
       | made the cerebellum in Sapiens slightly larger and that made
       | Sapiens more social.
       | 
       | This makes me wonder from time to time what "we" would have
       | looked/acted like in 2021 if neanderthals, who were physically
       | stronger and had larger skulls, were the ones with those
       | mutations.
        
         | lurquer wrote:
         | I'm not familiar with the reasons folks discount the absorption
         | hypothesis.
         | 
         | If there were more sapiens than Neanderthals, one would expect
         | the Neanderthals to interbreed and fade away.
         | 
         | Relative 'superiority' and mutations and the like don't even
         | come into it... if a Neanderthal thinks it's cool to have an
         | exotic sapient chick, or vice versa, the 'race' will disappear
         | in a few generations. I don't see many pure-bred Mayans in
         | Mexico these days. (Or, for that matter, pure-bred Spaniards.)
         | The Neanderthals certainly had some odd skeletal features...
         | but, if one were objective, you can find similar variety
         | amongst skeletons (particularly skulls) of modern humans. I
         | don't mean feature similar to Neanderthals; rather, I mean a
         | level of variety that is similar in degree to the differences
         | between Neanderthal bones and the 'average' modern.
        
         | kleer001 wrote:
         | > if neanderthals... were the ones with those mutations.
         | 
         | There's a fun trilogy from Robert J. Sawyer about that :
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Neanderthal_Parallax
        
           | Stratoscope wrote:
           | Now this is quite a coincidence. Just minutes ago I was
           | trying to remember the name of that series while writing this
           | comment:
           | 
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26400750
           | 
           | And then I saw your comment which answered my question!
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | stormqloud wrote:
       | Reparations for the neanderthals can be a new progressive goal.
        
       | vfclists wrote:
       | I know this won't go down well, but why are Neanderthals
       | white????
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2021-03-09 23:02 UTC)