[HN Gopher] Neanderthals, modern humans may have co-existed in E...
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Neanderthals, modern humans may have co-existed in Europe for at
least 10k years
Author : rntn
Score : 37 points
Date : 2024-02-07 18:59 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (theconversation.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theconversation.com)
| 7thaccount wrote:
| I saw a documentary on humans and Neanderthals about a decade ago
| and it melted my mind. Absolutely fascinating that there was
| another species that was very similar to us that we interbred
| with. Crazy!
| pavlov wrote:
| I kind of feel the opposite: the crazy part isn't that we had
| relatives, but that we're the only remaining species of the
| Homo genus.
|
| It's somehow unsettling that we are the only ones left. Most
| large mammals come from a genus with many cousins. We're alone
| either because we killed the others, or because intelligence
| actually has a hard time surviving in nature. Neither is really
| good news for us.
| throwup238 wrote:
| The taxonomy of archaic humans is debatable to say the least
| so "we are only the ones left" may just be an artifact of
| 19th century anthropology and prestige chasing. Realistically
| the genetic variation between the average human and
| Neanderthals is only about twice the variation within the
| modern human gene pool. Compared to our nearest primate at
| 10-50x the difference depending on how you measure.
|
| Given the number of genetic bottlenecks we have evidence of
| in our past, we may all be the same species and the modern
| human is just the last surviving group of inbred _Homos_.
| pavlov wrote:
| Isn't "genetic bottlenecks" another way of saying that
| intelligence has a poor track record of surviving?
| mjfl wrote:
| which implies that there are humans alive that are
| genetically as far apart from each other as the average
| human was from the average neanderthal (i.e. statistically
| there probably exists humans who's separation from each
| other is twice the average distance).
| mjfl wrote:
| they weren't necessarily killed off, rather blended into the
| human population through conquest and wife-stealing and the
| resulting interbreeding.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| indeed, wife-stealing appears to be a very successful
| formation over long periods of time.. woe to the peaceful
| shagie wrote:
| > or because intelligence actually has a hard time surviving
| in nature.
|
| Alas, I can't find it now... there was a book that I read
| (Bear / Brin / Benford as the author I believe... maybe
| Baxter... one of the great Bs I'm sure of) about the
| matrilineal line from a small shrew like animal in the time
| of the dinosaurs through neanderthals to modern times... and
| beyond.
|
| Part of the "and beyond" was the theme that intelligence and
| our brain is an extremely expensive organ to maintain (our
| brain consumes about 20% of the calories that we consume a
| day https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC124895/ ).
| After some catastrophe that reduces the energy budget that
| animals can use... well, intelligence is one of the things to
| go.
|
| (Late edit: It was Baxter -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_(Baxter_novel) )
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think that any forecasts are probably reading too much into
| a limited data set.
|
| Intelligence does have an incredibly hard time surviving in
| nature. Humans are hyper-optimized for it. We are far weaker
| than chimps, and burn 30% more calories. We are slow
| reproducing k-strategists, with infants that are helpless for
| years.
|
| That said, Humans are planet level apex predators, and
| universal omnivores that consume everything whales to yeast
| and synthetic foods made from elemental materials.
|
| Over the course of our existence, our capability for growth
| has vastly overshadowed any downside from intra-species
| hostility. We are also the most cooperative and social animal
| that has ever existed.
|
| This is a pretty strong position to be in, and certainly
| better than just about any other animal sharing the plant.
| golergka wrote:
| Or may be because we lived together for so long that
| individual differences disappeared and averaged out as people
| intermarried and had a lot of mixed babies.
|
| I'm not saying that this necessarily happened, only that the
| burden of proof for your theory should be higher.
| mrangle wrote:
| This is what happened, logically speaking. Though not
| averaged out in a balanced manner: instead, to the degree
| that Neanderthal genetics comprise anyone's genome.
|
| Not to say that there weren't interspecies genocides, but
| we interbred with them and then outcompeted, for resources,
| the pure species into extinction generally speaking. Which
| was inevitable, parallel to how homo sapien lineages also
| die out from simply being outcompeted.
|
| It is likely that the Neanderthal genome was outcompeted
| down to a percentage at which it was and is competitive.
| 50-50% Neanderthal-Modern Human? No dice, Darwin. It had to
| be reduced to a few percentage points, at which point
| individuals started being competitive. Was the last pure
| Neanderthal pair murdered, did they die from starvation, or
| did they just refuse to have kids? It could have been any
| of those, but the general procedure was likely defined by
| resource competition.
|
| And Neanderthal isn't the only alien-homo genome mixed with
| that of modern humans.
| hobs wrote:
| Don't forget that we intermixed with the Denisovans too.
| bjackman wrote:
| Based on modern DNA patterns there also seems to have been at
| least one other major population group around the same time
| that we have not found any remains of, which was related to
| both Sapiens and Denisovans.
|
| They probably lived mostly around southeast Asia.
| (Neanderthals were mostly in Europe and Denisovans are
| thought probably to have generally inhabited northern Asia).
|
| I can highly recommend The World Before Us by Tom Higham, it
| goes into the history of the archaeology and science and also
| goes over a pretty up-to-date understanding of the topic of
| recent Hominin evolution.
|
| (Also, it's very likely I've misconstrued some of it in my
| paragraphs above, apologies if so).
| mjfl wrote:
| another interesting fact is that modern Europeans are descended
| from 4 distinct populations which were as genetically distant
| from each other as modern Europeans are from Asians: Western
| hunter gatherers, anatolian farmers, eastern hunter gatherers,
| and eurasian steppe herders. David Reich goes into it in his
| book 'Who we are and why we got here'.
| amelius wrote:
| > another species that was very similar to us that we interbred
| with
|
| Ok, if it is so similar to us and we interbred with it, then
| why is this so special? Might as well call it the same species
| by stretching the definition a little.
| itronitron wrote:
| Yeah, the interbreeding must have been uncommon as otherwise
| over 10,000 years there wouldn't be any meaningful
| distinction (I assume).
| acchow wrote:
| Either uncommon or many of the attempts were unsuccessful.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| That is one of the issues with species as a concept. There
| are quite a few differing definitions which are all useful.
| It's typically discussed as the 'species problem'.
| acchow wrote:
| We were only "separate" species because for a period of tens
| of thousands of years we did not interbreed and developed
| independently due to physical separation. But we _could_ and
| _did_ interbreed when the physical separation was crossed.
| Despite the separation, we remained similar enough
| genetically that interbreeding was possible.
|
| Were there a higher number of miscarriages than between 2
| humans? We will probably never know.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| They still do ;)
| begueradj wrote:
| I once watched a documentary where it was mentioned that homo
| sapiens co-existend with around 20 archaic human forms (Homo
| erectus, Homo floresiensis ...etc) , of which only homo sapiens
| survived and thrived.
|
| But this is a subject that always scared me especially with
| nowadays' politics.
| qdw wrote:
| During the period for which we have evidence, Neanderthals seem
| to have had smaller populations than Homo sapiens, and they
| reproduced more slowly (longer gestation plus longer interval
| between pregnancies). So it may be that they went extinct for
| those reasons.
| eBombzor wrote:
| What's so scary about it
| alex201 wrote:
| IMO it's not that there 'were' multiple species and only we
| survived; we are still multiple species, but we don't point that
| out for cultural correctness. Yes, the extent of our differences
| has narrowed as we passed through survival bottlenecks, but we
| never became a single species.
| ComplexSystems wrote:
| If every human can interbreed with every other and product
| viable, non-sterile offspring, then how could it possibly be
| that we aren't one species?
| InitialLastName wrote:
| To be pedantic about the fuzziness of the "species"
| delineation, not every human is capable of producing viable,
| non-sterile offspring (breeding partner notwithstanding).
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| The fact that some individuals are sterile has nothing
| whatsoever to do with species delineation. If there were
| entire pairs of population groups, say the Ainu and the
| Xhosa, which can no longer produce viable offspring with
| each other due to generic distance, _then_ we could begin a
| conversation about speciation of homo sapiens. But there
| aren 't, so we don't.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Do you have anything that will persuade others that we are
| actually multiple species? I know of no basis for it.
|
| And given no scientific basis (unless I'm wrong), isn't that
| the reason nobody believes it?
|
| The "cultural correctness" argument seems a rehash of the
| tired, preconceived argument applied to everything.
| acchow wrote:
| Given that there is a single species of human today and most of
| us have some percentage of Neanderthal DNA, it seems that we
| are one species today and we were also one species in the past
| (since we could and did interbreed)
| wkipling wrote:
| Bro science at its peak.
| calibas wrote:
| This is complete bullshit. We've sequenced neanderthal DNA and
| can tell exactly how much modern people have in common.
|
| If you want to promote some scientifically-accurate racism, the
| only "pure-blooded" homo sapiens come from central and southern
| Africa, everyone else is just a little bit neanderthal.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Right? Arthur Clarke has a story in which our long lost
| cousins finally come to rescue us from the shipwreck
| millennia ago, and offer also to correct the genetic mutation
| that reduces skin pigment...
| kromem wrote:
| In the 50s, it was thought that we were smarter than them and
| killed them all off (the author of Lord of the Flies even wrote a
| book on this).
|
| This seemed to inform futurists at the time thinking about what
| it would one day look like if there was something smarter than
| humans.
|
| Hopefully we do a better job at considering this revision to our
| picture of the past and correcting our anchoring bias in our
| estimation of such a future.
| goatlover wrote:
| It's not known for sure why they went extinct and the extent of
| their cognitive abilities. It's also only one example. Another
| might be Europeans coming to the Americas (with more deadly
| technology and infections diseases, not smarter). Or humans
| being super predators. We don't know what advanced alien life
| would be like. Or what AI might become. There's lots of
| possibilities. Sagan's Contact and The Culture are on on one
| end, with The Dark Forest and Skynet being on the other.
| labster wrote:
| I wonder how much both the early 20th century and the current
| postmodern views on relations with the Neanderthals was
| influenced by the politics of the times. Back then people
| wanted justifications for colonialism and promoted social
| Darwinism; now we're looking to promote multiculturalism and
| global trade. Both ways we're projecting onto the prehistoric
| past what we want to see there.
| huytersd wrote:
| Well we don't know that they were smarter than us. The EQ
| (brain to body ratio) of homo sapiens is 0.019 and Neanderthals
| was 0.017. They were probably considerably stupider.
| dools wrote:
| The origins of the 2 party political system.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe]
|
| Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39215750
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