[HN Gopher] What the debate about Neanderthals reveals about us
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What the debate about Neanderthals reveals about us
Author : Vigier
Score : 31 points
Date : 2023-09-21 18:10 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| user982 wrote:
| _> Perhaps that is a surer way to restore them to dignity than
| any other: to see them not as falling prey to our ancestors but
| as our ancestors._
|
| I did notice that the popular transition to recast Neanderthals
| from primitive troglodytes to advanced peers seemed to coincide
| closely with the revelation that all Europeans have some
| Neanderthal DNA.
| NotSuspicious wrote:
| Funny response and probably true to some extent although all
| human groups seem to have archaic hominid admixture whether
| it's neanderthal, denisovan or "ghost" dna (Why did they choose
| that name?). I think ultimately, controversy by controversy,
| the academic community will gradually admit that 'humanity' has
| a much longer "pre"history than we like to admit. Likely on the
| order of 1-2 million years. If I had to bet, within the next
| century some archeological evidence will be unearthed that
| shows some level of Civilization (tm) among humans that lived
| over 100 kya.
| marssaxman wrote:
| Indeed, something along those lines was announced just the
| day before yesterday:
|
| "Waterlogged deposits at the archaeological site of Kalambo
| Falls, Zambia, dated by luminescence to at least 476 +- 23
| kyr ago (ka), preserved two interlocking logs joined
| transversely by an intentionally cut notch. "
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06557-9
| dboreham wrote:
| This has to be (roughly) true because the energy to power the
| size of brain found in hominids post 2Mya can only come from
| cooked food (or living in the very small number of places
| where there's enough fruit available year round to provide
| equivalent diet).
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| civilitty wrote:
| Huh? The academic community has been clear on that for
| decades now. The problem is the oversimplification taught in
| schools, which is often decades behind the cutting edge
| science.
|
| See the timeline on the archaic humans wiki page [1]. The
| first migration out of Africa and the first use of fire were
| all _millions_ of years ago. The first stone tools made by
| _Australopithecus_ predate archaic humans altogether. It
| really just depends on where you draw the "human" and
| "civilization" lines.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaic_humans
| everdrive wrote:
| This a bit short sighted (both the view that Neanderthals are
| primitive troglodytes and also that that are sophisticated) as
| all (or nearly all? I'm not 100% sure here) human populations
| show evidence of admixture with other hominids. Whether or not
| that's a _good_ thing largely has to do with being able to
| understand the genes we received. We're not quite there yet,
| but research keeps advancing.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Regardless, is this change a step in the truth-seeking
| direction? Or is it motivated reasoning? I'm inclined to
| believe the former.
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| Why are you inclined to believe the former?
| yterdy wrote:
| The acknowledgement that GP's obersvation is significant
| might lead to further reevaluation of "set" attitudes, based
| on the recognition that self-serving bias was involved in
| their formulation.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| A brief wikipedia search suggests a lot of humanity has
| Neanderthal DNA, not just Europeans.
|
| _Neanderthals shared more alleles with Eurasian populations
| (e.g. French, Han Chinese, and Papua New Guinean) than with
| sub-Saharan African populations (e.g. Yoruba and San).[8]
| According to the authors Green et al. (2010), the observed
| excess of genetic similarity is best explained by recent gene
| flow from Neanderthals to modern humans after the migration out
| of Africa.[8] They estimated the proportion of Neanderthal-
| derived ancestry to be 1-4% of the Eurasian genome._
| bjourne wrote:
| That is because Homo Sapiens "returned" to Africa after the
| invention of animal husbandry and agriculture. They out-
| competed and drove away many traditional hunter-gatherer
| tribes.
| [deleted]
| gumby wrote:
| AFAIK they aren't our ancestors but cousins.
| daveslash wrote:
| Insert: _Zoidberg says: "Why not both"?_ meme
| ljf wrote:
| I'm about as high a percentage of neanderthal dna as is
| possible (2 to 4 percent) (according to 23andme) - so they
| certainly were my ancestors.
| flextheruler wrote:
| Not a geneticists but mathematically speaking isn't that
| actually lower than what you'd expect for cousins. Parent =
| 50 Grandparent = 25 Cousin = 12.5
| saalweachter wrote:
| Mathematically, 2-4% is equivalent to one of your great-
| great-great-grandparents being a full-blooded
| Neanderthal.
| [deleted]
| hef19898 wrote:
| Species =|= individuals
| [deleted]
| renewiltord wrote:
| Something I liked from _Sapiens_ is this idea of how all these
| other hominids existed and we whacked them. In some sense, we had
| aliens among us and we killed them and vilified them. It would
| have been so cool to have seen alternative related species, but I
| suppose this was a winner-take-all market.
|
| It may be that describing our victims as villains (itself such a
| word) is an adaptive trait.
|
| In that vein, "anyone who downvotes this is a moron"!
| stewbrew wrote:
| Or maybe they had sex, interbred, and nobody cared until some
| white anthropologist from an elitist school came along.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| But at least racial hatred lives on - not least in your
| comment.
| networkchad wrote:
| [dead]
| edgyquant wrote:
| Replace the word white with Jewish and maybe you'll realize
| how fucked up your belief system is
| jsndidneske wrote:
| Well... if it is any solace to you, as time moved forward the
| way we valued life, saw mortality and death in ouraelves and
| others, what we value, has changed.
|
| People were violent and death was a much more normal thing.
|
| When we look at it in modern time with all our accumulated
| knowledge we seek to not cause it. Even tyranical and psycotic
| individuals hold nihlistic or anarchic philosphies.
|
| Truely to understand the worlds pardigm change over history is
| multifaceted in regard to demographics, and skills aquired, and
| scarcites and suppluses come into effect too.
| adr1an wrote:
| Technically those 'aliens' were humans too. Different species,
| same genera. We had interbreeding with them, though it's a
| small proportion of neanderthal and some other species dna that
| were discovered.
| nextaccountic wrote:
| I like to believe that we viewed them as close as another
| ethnicity, rather than a different species altogheter
| edgyquant wrote:
| Doubtful. They were probably viewed as demons
| kej wrote:
| You don't get 1.5-2% neanderthal genes in modern humans
| by viewing them as demons.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Possible. The native americans had (have?) the word ghost
| to describe the europeans who conquered their land.
| ericmcer wrote:
| Was it an intentional genocide? Or was it repetitions of
| human/neanderthal clashes that resulted in us wiping out male
| neanderthals and breeding with the females until their genetic
| contribution got reduced to current levels (~2% on the high
| end). I guess technically we are still slowly killing them off
| every time someone with a high % procreates with someone who
| has none.
| Jensson wrote:
| Evidence points towards the opposite, Neanderthal males bred
| with us but Neanderthal females didn't.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC368159/
|
| We don't know why, but that would suggest we didn't conquer
| them, maybe our males didn't find their females attractive
| enough to have sex with. Neanderthals are more masculine
| looking than us, so their males would be attractive, but
| their females maybe looked too much like males to us.
| mo_42 wrote:
| I think the debate reveals how flawed and entitled our thinking
| is.
|
| A bit over-simplistic, we find a couple of bones in a cave and so
| a few pieces of evidence. From this, we patch up a full picture
| of the Neanderthals (flawed) and we do it in a way to convince
| ourselves how great we are (entitled).
|
| With "our thinking" I'm talking about the not-so-scientific
| public. I guess the scientists get this right. They know about
| their unknowns. But these subtleties are lost on their way to the
| general public.
| ulizzle wrote:
| A lot of people just believe whatever the supposed science is.
| I don't think I've ever seen anyone question science outside of
| HN.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| You must have missed all the debate about the Covid vaccines.
| kibwen wrote:
| Allow me to also gesture broadly towards every discussion
| regarding anthropogenic climate change, or any US school
| that's still teaching creationism as a valid alternative to
| evolution.
| b59831 wrote:
| [dead]
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| 5G? Homeopathy? chemtrails?
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