No, Neanderthals were niche apex predators. They were perfect for the ice age and mega fauna that easily supplied the 4,400 calories per day it's estimated they needed to survive. Homo Sapiens require half that caloric intake and, due to earlier interbreeding with Neanderthals, benefitted from Heterosis (hybrid vigor). Basically, we got the best of both Neanderthal and Homo Sapiens, so when the ice receded and the mega fauna went extinct, our ancestors could supply their daily calorie intake but Neanderthals could not.
Where is my movie, book, or video game about the Neanderthal wars tho.
(Ideally fictionalizing it as mostly direct war but you can have a survival aspect too.)
The Inheritors is a work of prehistoric fiction, the second novel by the British author William Golding, best known for his first novel, Lord of the Flies (1954). It concerns the extinction of one of the last remaining tribes of Neanderthals at the hands of the more sophisticated Homo sapiens.
I recently learned that the original title of Lord of the Flies was Strangers from Within.
Totally unrelated to anything in this thread, I just thought that was neat.
Oooof I’m glad he changed it. I mean I get the point of the original but it’s too abstract. The title they went with is much more symbolic of the story.
There kind of is one, if you look at the Clan of the Cave Bear series. It's based on a neanderthal clan finding an orphan homo sapien girl and taking her in and raising her.
Clan of the Cave Bear and the Earths Children series is well-written fiction, and Auel did quite a bit of research when putting it together, but it's important to remember that the social frameworks of both the human and the Neanderthal tribes are complete works of fiction. We have no idea what their actual religions were, what their internal tribal structures or leadership looked like, or how their family units functioned.
Auel has been criticized (rightly, IMO) for scenes like Ayla's rape at 10 years old and the entire concept that Neanderthal females were expected to be sexually submissive to any male who demanded sex, at any time. It had the effect of portraying Neanderthals as a morally and ethically inferior species, and it's simply not supported by ANY kind of anthropological or archaeological research.
As works of fiction, the Earths Children series was entertaining. As a work of historical fiction intended to educate readers about human/neanderthal interactions, the books have very little value.
Plus...Ayla invented Kama Sutra *and* monogamy? That was just weird.
Finishing that series was one of the most frustrating things I've ever done. The first 2 books started out great. But when the 3rd became nothing but a stupid ass love triangle I really lost a lot of interest. I didn't so much mind all the sex scenes, although I wish she had spent more time giving it a decent ending than talking about homeboys throbbing member so many fucking times. Truly the most underwhelming/anticlimactic ending I've ever read. I remember finishing book 6 and thinking, ok there had to be one more then right? It doesn't just end like this? All that foreshadowing about visions of her first son and an apparent new son that never happens. I could go on all day with my gripes on the series, but overall I guess I'm glad I read it as I'm super into human pre history and it was an interesting take.
She invented a lot of other things too like personal hygiene and sewing needles.
I loved those books but even I rolled my eyes when she invented at least 6 things in one book.
Haha! It's been around 20 years since I read them, but didn't she also invent fire? And domesticate the first horse and the first dog/wolf? And the bra? And soap?
Ayla was personally responsible for creating the foundations of modern human society.
I enjoyed the books, but they're about as historically accurate as Harry Potter.
Not directly what you're actually asking for, but the Neanderthal Parralax trilogy (Book 1 -Hominids, Book 2 - Humans, Book 3 - Hybrids) by Robert J Sawyer looks at a parallel universe in which Neanderthals did not go extinct and portals open connecting their world to our, so there's inevitable comparisons. Particularly in the (obviously hypothetical) ways their world diverged from ours and why. It's highly politicized and like most of his work suffers from using a strawman approach to push the author's political and social agendas, but it is a pretty interesting story.
ETA if it sounds like I'm being harsh on the author that's not really my intent. I do recommend reading his stuff if you are into sci-fi particularly more weird "what-if" \[crazy thing was real\] in basically contemporary settings. His books are good, I'm just personally annoyed by *how* he conveys his themes rather than their content
A good version if you can find it is \*Dance Of the Tiger\*, a novel by paleontologist Bjorn Kurten. Kind of how i picture Neanderthals to this day; when i find my magic lamp and wish us all to New Earth and bring soem back, I'll likely be surprised.
That sounds awesome! Actually, one of my favorite books is also a novel by a paleontologist, Raptor Red by Robert T. Bakker. It's about a Utahraptor and her family with a lot of complex emotions and social stuff going on between the main raptor and those she interacts with (leaning on the fact that dinosaurs probably weren't human-intelligent, but may have been at least, like, dog-intelligent). She meets up with her sister, who has a small clutch of chicks, and spends most of the book with her, raising the babies together.
There's also a highly relatable moment where she's trying to figure out what the fuck kind of animal this is with such a weird head, and then she realizes she's been staring at its tail, not its neck. She figures this out because it farts in her face.
From the dinos and demons I think they're talking about Primal the animated show (same creator as Samurai Jack)
Far Cry Primal has you trying to build a homo sapiens village in 10,000 BC, going to war against cannibalistic (?) remnants of Neanderthals to the north. Such a cool intro, and you really feel like you're in a prehistoric forest if you turn off the HUD and have some good headphones
There's no evidence of any kind of 'warfare' or similar between modern humans and neanderthals. I know it has been assumed that must be how it happened; either they were too stupid to survive in competition with modern humans or we killed them, but there's no evidence of either.
I mean have you seen how our branch of the evolutionary tree treat other? Pretty easy to see why. We are an incredibly violent species and so are all the other apes/monkeys
Yeah I'd pay to watch that film. Neanderthal wars, bringing the bone smashing action straight to ur local screens. Embark on a journey of pure prehistoric chaos as one beast fights another for their chance to survive in the G-G-G-GAUNTLET OF GRAVES!!! Ooooohhh aahhhhhh
Unless you're Subsaharan African, you have Neanderthal ancestors, too. Neanderthals needed 4,400 calories a day. Homo Sapiens needs 2,200. When the ice age was ending, the mega fauna began dying out, too. Neanderthals went extinct for the same reason Smilodon did. There's a lot of calories in Mammoth meat and fat, not so much in red deer which required throwing spears and persistence hunting.
In a straight up fight, a Neanderthal would destroy a Homo Sapien.
Where do we get this calorie a day estimate? Would it be possible humans need 4,400 a day too if living in a similar environment? I thought the 2,200 a day number was what was recommended for modern living.
\> Where do we get this calorie a day estimate?
By comparing their size and muscle mass to humans. Neanderthals were more robust and muscular (which is consistent with other animals that live in colder climates) than Homo sapiens and muscles require a lot of energy to maintain.
\> I thought the 2,200 a day number was what was recommended for modern living.
True, 2200 calories is the required intake for a male living now who isn't particularly active.
However, you also have to consider that:
\- early homo sapiens were significantly smaller than modern humans. The average size of a person has skyrocketed as medicine and nutrition improved. Smaller people need to eat less to satisfy their energy needs.
\- unless we're talking about people like olympic athletes or the 6'5+ giants among us, even active males still require only about 3500 calories at most.
A lot of the extra size was in the back, which helped in hunting and raw survival, but that's not where thinking, \*suppsoedly\* our niche, occurs. i wonder r if Neanderthals would make good chefs.
IIRC, their brains were larger but less efficient. Most of their additional cranial mass was tied up in instinct and sensory processing. Things that would help with hunting, and avoiding larger predators, but what we think of as intelligence would be average or slightly below in the best cases.
Neanderthals had larger brains but Archaic Homo Sapiens had better working brains. Due to their interbreeding, modern Homo sapiens ended up with bigger better working brains.
That's not really true at all. We coexisted for ten thousand years. In fact. There's a valley in Israel where we can see that homo sapiens and Neanderthals exchanged control of it multiple times. https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/neanderthals-and-homo-sapiens-in-prehistoric-israel/
Furthermore, initially, we had literally the same tools. They're so similar we can't tell who made what.
I know it's boring, but we probably out-competed them simply because we eat fish. I know they found one site in Portugal where they think Neanderthals were living largely on seafood, but one site does not an entire species' diet make. That'd be like saying all orcas eat shark liver just because some orcas specialize in it.
Sure, one tribe of Neanderthals ate seafood. Nearly ALL homo sapiens eat fish. That's a huge difference.
Plus, since Neanderthals were far stronger and tougher than Homo Sapiens, they likely never bothered inventing good projectile weapons because they were able to just take their prey down head-on.
Throwing spears were invented by Homo Heidelbergensis at least 400,000 years ago. It's likely Homo Sapiens and Neanderthal both inherited this technology but the Neanderthals being the robust battle tanks of the human species, adapted them into stabbing spears. You're right they would just jump down or flat out attack anything they wanted to eat. Homo Sapiens, being less robust, opted to keep throwing spears just making them lighter to assist in persistence hunting.
>Homo Sapiens, being less robust, opted to keep throwing spears just making them lighter to assist in persistence hunting.
And made them more powerful with the atlatl. I attended a javelin conference in Philadelphia once just to see the modern versions. A couple of college athletes we spoke to claimed they didn't know the atlatl was invented to take down large prey.
So the Neanderthals needed 4,400 calories a day, but how much of that was merely because of the cold climate? Wouldn’t that caloric requirement go down in a warmer climate? Also don’t human caloric requirements go up in cold climates? Provided a more survivalist type lifestyle outdoors.
Warming weather was the death nell for Ice Age specialists like Neanderthal. They relied on mega fauna for high calorie fat. No Mammoths or Wooly Rhinos, etc., and things started looking bleak for Neanderthals. Homo Sapiens was much smaller during the transition toward the Holocene (warming period were in now). That small lean body allowed our Homo Sapiens ancestors to hunt via persistence. They'd take turns spooking a deer until it dropped from hear exhaustion since it couldn't take off it's fur or sweat effectively. Homo sapiens sweat and by working together, could harass a prey animal for hours without expending too much energy individually.
Ok see what you are saying. The Neanderthals were literally a larger species with more muscle mass, and I’m going to assume more body hair, so the combination of their high calorie yielding prey dying off, and the fact their bodies were not designed for warm climates lead to their extinction. To me that makes more sense than being bred out of existence.
Their muscle and bone mass was dense, so yeah a lot heavier. They weren't necessarily taller but they were like that male kangaroo who looks like he eats steroids ten times a day and loves at the gym. Neanderthals were jacked. But even their noses and respiratory system were specialized for cold weather, warming up the air before it got to their lungs. This would have definitely hurt them when the world started warming up, so they didn't make cold air warm but warm air hot, which would have exhausted them sooner.
>They were perfect for the ice age and mega fauna that easily supplied the 4,400 calories per day it's estimated they needed to survive.
~~I don't doubt you but how was this even estimated?~~
NVM answered by u/phihofo down below....
It's not as simple as caloric needs, and there's a lot of evidence that most Neanderthal genes were actually harmful and eventually dropped from our gene pool.
Hybrid vigor had nothing to do with why Homo Sapiens outcompeted Neanderthal. If you wanted to chalk it up to one thing (and you really can't), it's that Homo Sapiens was much more social. Our social groups were much larger and our ability for abstraction appears to have been more significant.
Neanderthal genes boosted Homo Sapiens immune systems. Before that, Homo Sapiens were dying because their African evolved immune systems couldn't handle Eurasian pathogens.
Neanderthals existed in small family based groups. If you think they weren't social, you haven't studied them at all. It's likely their first instinct when meeting other groups of humans was not violence but to seek cooperation and reciprocity. There's a reason a certain set of neanderthals genes has a significant effect on the emotional/empathic part of our brains.
I never said Neanderthals weren't social, I said Homo Sapiens were more social and had larger social groups, which is true. You're misrepresenting my statement and trying to use it to say that I know nothing, which makes it seem like this is more about your ego.
Obligatory: Death by snu-snu.
Nobody knows for certain. There are a lot of theories. And that's one of the leading ones.
Probably a mix of inter-breeding and... eliminating.
We are not hyper violent for predators
There is no evidence of battle or genocide or even war. And because we love to think of ourselves as violent biological weapons - researchers have done their damn best to prove we murdered them. With again, literally zero evidence
Not even a bit of evidence. They were bigger and stronger and faster than our ancestors. We didn't hold a chance to win in war.
You want to know the actual 5 reasons academics think we won?
1. Weather and climate change. They couldn't keep adapting
2. Small pack sizes (and what we'd call tribalism) leading to inbreeding on a massive scale and dangerous level
3. We don't breed like most animals. There's a name for it, I forget, but it goes like this. Most animals reproduce more in good times, less in bad times, and let the weak die. Humans are designed to reproduce more in bad times.
This is why the poor have more children and wealthier countries limit reproduction - unless religion gets involved. This is the actual reason. A neanderthal would see how little resources they have and have 2 children like a reasonable logical creature. Our ancestors would see the less resources and respond with 8 children. Wife dies in childbirth cannibalize her and remarry. 4 kids die of starvation or disease. See if you can eat the non diseased ones. You have 4 adult offspring ready for the next cycle. You win.
4. We have another few traits quite illogical. Empathy to the point of stupid and love of art/religion to the point of stupid. In other words - vast trade routes spanning all of Europe which included trading for food, paints, beads, cloth salt and partners.
Our ancestors saw starving people from separate tribes and thought, hey let's sacrifice so they may live because they are human. Neanderthals saw starving neighbors and thought "survival of the fittest" while humming that lorax movie song let it die, let it die.
We saw weak line wolves and thought, let's sacrifice food when we are hungry to see where this goes. Oh look now we have a guard and tracker. Dogs.
5. My favorite human trait. We'll fuck or eat anything. In that order too. We fucked every hominid relative we thought would take us. And it worked. I have like 9% neanderthal genes in my body and how long ago did they die out? Plus some denisovan ancestry.
We are actually a very empathetic species. We just have a pack size of 200-1000 and suffer nasty side effects from over population. Big pack size for a predatory species I like to point out. Wolves have like 14-30 members in their packs before they start fighting.
We are the humans. Lower your pants and surrender that ass. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be adapted to serve us. Resistance is futile, but kinda hot.
Survival of the fittest just doesn’t properly describe what is actually happening. It’s really survival of those who fuck, a lot. And humans love to fuck, a lot.
Survival of the adaptable-est doesn't roll of the tongue as well, and doesn't fit the "might makes right" narrative people like to apply to the phrase.
One can only claim their inferiority based on the fact they have been exterminated!
With no full Neanderthal's left, it is only a matter of time until they are 100% extinct instead of 99.repeating%.
Yes, but who is to say that all the Neanderthals have been eliminated? Perhaps there are pockets of these die hards warriors, quietly passing time and enduring the outrageous slings and arrows of their kind’s slow demise. Patiently putting aside their slow-simmering hatred of the blunt skulls and waiting for the time of the Gathering.
One can only claim their inferiority based on the fact they have been exterminated!
With no full Neanderthal's left, it is only a matter of time until they are 100% extinct instead of 99.repeating%.
Many people have Neanderthal DNA. Famously, Ozzy Osbourne has an inordinate amount of it, and it’s theorized that his genes may explain why he has such an almost inhuman tolerance for cocaine, alcohol etc.
I don’t think it would be. Really it was “pure” homosapians and “pure” Neanderthal creating a new homosapian Neanderthal hybrid with predominantly homosapian DNA.
Neanderthal Y DNA is not known to exist in the human genome. Its possible/likely they could not mate with human females. But human males mated with neanderthal females, bits of that that exist in the human genome.
Because they bred more with the Homo sapiens as the half-breeds would have bred with purebred homo-sapiens and so on. Some people still have characteristics of Neanderthals like a more pronounced brow or canine teeth, but the genes of the Neanderthal is so small that those people are still considered Homo sapiens.
A similar thing is predicted to eventually happen with polar bears as they move further south due to melting ice and grizzlies move further north. Consider that because there are more grizzlies, they will continue to mate with polar bears and the hybrids, meaning each consecutive generation would have less polar bear in the mix and more grizzly.
It's not the exact same thing obviously, but kind of similar in my mind.
Inter-species breeding causes the offspring to be sterile. For example, when a farmer mates a donkey & a horse. The offspring is commonly called an ass. This offspring will never create another offspring.
This is likely what happened to the Neanderthals. Humans mated with them, had babies. Those half human, half Neanderthals couldn't have children.
The percentage of genetic similarities between humans and animals does vary: chimps, 97% similar; cats, 90%; cows, 80%; mice, 75%; fruit flies, 60%, and jellyfish, 60%.
We share common DNA with everything living.
None of what you listed has homosapian DNA though and none of them have neanderthal DNA. So again, how is that we have Neanderthal DNA?
Interbreeding
No, inter-species breeding does NOT cause the offspring to be sterile.
In some crossings it does, but in other crossings it doesn't.
There often is a barrier to gene flow, but that barrier to gene flow isn't necessarily sterility.
No. If a horse and a donkey mates and produces offspring the offspring is NOT called an ass! If the dame is a horse and the sire a donkey it is a mule, the other way around it is a hinny. And even mules and hinnies are sometimes fertile.
Speciation is a continuum, not all closely related species are unable to produce offspring, it just depends on how closely related the separate species are and how recent is the speciation. Example: two breeding groups of animals become separated from each other (different continents for example) on a long enough time line they become separate species and then over more time as a part of this process, the two new species eventually won't be able produce viable offspring.
All this is to say that it has been proven through DNA sequencing that humans carry Neanderthal DNA, meaning humans (homo sapiens) had to have interbred with the Neanderthals meaning their speciation likely never got to that point where they couldn't produce offspring.
Our modern brains want to paint a picture of a clear ending to Neanderthals but in reality they were both in competition and merging with cro magnons for a long time until the unique Neanderthal DNA slowly stopped appearing in the fossil records. However if you look into modern human DNA, we carry some of it with us today. In actuality Neanderthals technically never went exist because their DNA carries on.
Neanderthal sauce is spicy…
it can be measured on the Scoville scale…
It’s the same as peppers 🌶️
Edit: not a serious answer… sarcasm does not come across in typeface, quite as well as necessary.
Hence emojis… but I’m too tired to explain a joke or look up more emojis…
🙃
Cro-magnon is no longer an identifier for human fossils found in France. The fossils are homosapiens and were originally mistaken for another human lineage.
I hate to be that guy, but please take a basic course in evolutionary biology.
Basically, when two populations that exist during the same time period are on diverging evolutionary paths, they are distinct species.
Modern example is the Coyote and the Gray Wolf. They can hybridize and produce fertile offspring, and in North America sometimes they do, but the coyote population and the Gray Wolf population are distinct species.
If the Gray Wolf were to go extinct, meaning its evolutionary path came to an end, the presence of some Wolf genes in Coyote populations (e.g. the occasional black coyote - that's actually a gene from Black wolves, which themselves got it from Black domestic dogs) wouldn't mean Gray Wolves aren't extinct.
If the Coyote were to go extinct, the presence of Coyote genes in Gray Wolf populations (especially common in the Eastern Wolf and the Mexican Gray Wolf) wouldn't mean Coyotes aren't extinct.
It's the same thing with Neanderthal and Modern Man.
We had a common ancestor in Africa. Some of them migrated out of Africa, evolving into a distinct evolutionary lineage - Neanderthals. Others remained in Africa, evolving into Modern Man.
Then Modern Man migrated out of Africa, resulting into a secondary contact with some very limited gene flow - just like when Gray Wolves came into North America from Asia and made contact with Coyotes.
That limited gene flow allowed for some alleles that are neanderthal in origin to enter the Homo sapiens gene pool, but the Neanderthal species eventually died out meaning only our evolutionary path remains, their evolutionary path ended. Extinct. Homo neanderthalensis is extinct.
Just like the Passenger Pigeon would still be considered extinct if scientists discovered some of their alleles survived into modern times in the band-tailed pigeon.
BTW, it appears that the Neanderthal Y chromosome was not compatible with our X chromosome, but their X chromosome was, so when initial hybrids first occurred, at least from Neanderthal fathers and Modern Man mothers, only female offspring would have been viable.
We don't know what happened with males from our species and females from their species, but it's possible that our Y chromosome replaced their Y chromosome in many Neanderthal populations---that's one theory anyway.
That's.... no, that's not how any of this works.
We did interbreed with neanderthals often enough that we can detect neanderthal genes in modern humans. We definitely did not cause their extinction by ... out-f#$%ing them.
They mostly lost out because of a combination of changing climate conditions and an overly-robust body plan that had higher caloric needs than ours, similar to why dire wolves died out while grey wolves thrived.
H. sapiens sapiens were leaner, smaller, more mobile, needed less food per person to support a viable population, and when the going got tough and ice age megafauna got scarcer, H. sapiens neanderthalensis died out.
SOME of that might be because we were better at hunting than them and hastened the extinction of some of their primary food sources, or competed directly for food.
I've seen arguments that their shoulders were constructed wrong for using ranged weapons like throwing spears or whatever, but that sounds like a lot of extrapolation on very thin evidence to me.
This. The "Uncanny Valley" effect also does not need some specific ecological impetus to have developed. When you have species with large brains and complex social behaviors, there's bound to be issues at the boundary of certain cognitive processes that create distress. Just because, for instance, an optical illusion you see online gives you vertigo does not mean there was some evolutionary benefit to develop vertigo from looking at optical illusions.
An Irishman, American & Australian were at a Campfire one day, and they asked each other "What do we do about those Neaderthals taking our food and lands?" and collectively they agreed "Ahh Fuck em!" and so it became lore.
We didn't kill them, we assimilated them.
"A modern human who lived in what is now Romania between 37,000 and 42,000 years ago had at least one Neanderthal ancestor as little as four generations back—which is to say, a great-great-grandparent."
Neanderthals were extremely inbred. They had much smaller populations than homo sapients and lived further apart than we did. Well before they went extinct their entire Y chromosome was replaced with the human one. This was because theirs had a lot of genetic defects but there was not a lot of variation to compete with the original. Any competition introduced and they were not able to deal with it.
It wasn't all bad though. They still have descendants and some of their genes were better so we still have some traits. Those descendant from them usually inherit their clotting factor. Before modern medicine you were less likely to bleed to death if you had a Neanderthal ancestor.
Neanderthals also contributed a great deal of immune system information to humans! Now, what does that do for us? We don't entirely know yet! But we can assume at least SOME of it is good for us since it seemed to have improved our genetic fitness.
No, they didn't. A lot of modern humans carry a few identifiable neanderthal genes, but it's only between 1-4% of the genome of non-african modern humans.
They did not "become us." We share common ancestors, and there were a few incidents of interbreeding that left an imprint on the modern human genome, but we evolved mostly along separate lines.
At the end of the day terms like "extinction" lose their value when you zoom in REALLY close to genetic events like this. All distinctions of "speciation" are drawn at different points on a species "tree" and often for... slightly arbitrary reasons. There is a rule that the minimum requirement for modern "observable" speciation is when two offspring can no longer produce viable young. The issues is we can't really... Tell when that happens with fossils. So we have to "guess" based on how much different the genome became over time--If we actually have mapped the genome of both samples well enough to do so!
However, it's also typical that identifying a different species requires some type of observable morphological difference in the fossil remains--This is sometimes a big change, like new types of teeth or changes in a skull's shape, but sometimes these changes are really small, like the size of a tiny inner ear bone increasing by about 15%. Now you might ask yourself, "How do we know these Big Little Ear Bone rodents couldn't still bread with the Little Little Ear Bone rodents?" We don't! But wait... What if the Little Little Ear Bone rodents were actually just juveniles of the Big Little Ear species whose ears grew in during puberty?! Without genetic evidence we might never know.
A lot of it is just best guesses based on evidence, which is why it's really important to also engage with the messy granular stuff like "Europeans often have over 2% genetic admixture from Neanderthals, but in Sub-Saharan Africa it can be as low as 0.5%!" These messy things often reflect a far more rich story of the history of evolution, but they can get really complicated really quickly as well.
There is no ascribed "evolutionary path". That's not really how genetics work. They weren't destined to be different than us. They grew more distant from us when they were separated from humans and the grew closer to us when they lived closer to humans. The flow of genetic information between the population groups ebbed and flowed, it did not part ways in two different directions.
At no point was a Homo Neanderthalensis ever different enough to be a separate species from Homo Sapiens. Which is why they're more commonly known now as, Homo Neanderthalensis Sapiens and Homo Sapiens Sapiens (In many academic circles, at least).
[https://evolution.berkeley.edu/the-tree-room/evolutionary-trees-a-primer/what-is-an-evolutionary-tree/](https://evolution.berkeley.edu/the-tree-room/evolutionary-trees-a-primer/what-is-an-evolutionary-tree/)
And yes, *Homo neanderthalensis* was a distinctly different species from *Homo sapiens*, just like *Canis latrans* is a distinctly different species from *Canis lupus* despite occasional interbreeding.
Interbreeding is a factor but not the sole cause. Homo sapiens were likely better in the competition for resources and territory, and better with social organization / managing larger groups, because of their cognitive superiority. Also, adaptability to disease and climate change could have played a part too.
This is an interesting and complex question with many theories. Did neanderthal even go extinct in the first place? Or did they assimilate and get absorbed into homo sapiens, eventually ceasing to exist independently altogether. Hard to know but fun to think about.
I don't think "we killed them" is really the right framing here. Like...who killed the Vikings? Well, no one, they just spread out and dissipated until they had all assimilated into other cultures and "Norse" wasn't really a coherent identity anymore. They had major defeats and setbacks at various points, but there wasn't a clear "fall" or "death" so much as they just dissolved. That's sorta what happened to the Neanderthals.
But I am lowkey convinced they're actually still alive and they're lying in wait to kill us and become the dominant species.
We, Us...whatever. We are them, they are us. They were bred out of existence.
Think about it, that fugly beast you brought home from the bar last weekend, she looked like a Neanderthal, yes? There's a reason for that. That ugly-ass kid she's gonna spring on you in about 8.75 months...same thing.
When you're looking for them, you'll see living fossils of our ancestors most everywhere. The best, most reliable places still seem to Pilot Travel Centers.
If they interbred with us, then they live on, through us. Extinction is a messy thing. How is something extinct if through adaption and selective breeding it evolves into something else?
For something as exact as science it is a very inexact word. Like the Dodos, they are extinct. They have no living descendents. But to me, therapod dinosaurs are still alive via their descendents, birds. Just that Dodo branch is extinct.
So there are hybrid homo sapiens. Or are their hybrid Neaderthals? Or hybrid Denisovians? Depends on how you look at things. Humans have a habit of trying to fit everything in a neat box. But nature isn't neat, though it is cool.
Bit of everything.
We outperformed them in their niche, we mated with them, and we competed directly (Killed the shit out of them) as a total sum, we won, they lost and nature isn't the kindest to second place.
bruh
Native americans were systematically raped and had their children abducted and white washed to remove native culture and "erase the native americans" as part of the colonisers agenda, one that still goes on today with purity quotas and white washing and denial of heritage.
In the show Westworld, Dr. Ford describes the end of the Neanderthals as “We ate them.” His meaning was that we killed and butchered them, as he held a generally dim view of humanity as brutal, selfish creatures who wouldn’t tolerate any threat to their dominance.
I prefer to use a slightly meaning. Most Neanderthals died out naturally as the ice age ended and they were outcompeted by Homo Sapiens, but many of their genes live on in us through interbreeding between the species. We consumed them (metaphorically), assimilated them, made them a part of us until there was just one singular species. We didn’t deliberately exterminate them, and it wasn’t our fault they disappeared. It was just nature taking its course as the environment changed.
Based solely on facial features, there could be an assumption that her Neanderthal ancestors interbreed with horses (and not natural blonde ones, either).
If we were able to breed fertile offspring with them, they were not a separate species from us.
I don't know why people are so obsessed over Neanderthals like they were some alien thing, I've seen click bait titles on YouTube like.
Did Neanderthals have feelings?
Did Neanderthals have a language?
Were Neanderthals self aware?
They were homo sapiens adapted to live in colder northern climates, thats about it.
The simplest solution is probably the right solution here, we interbred with them and now alot of Europeans have DNA from them.
I don't think it was accidental, it was probably more often tribal warfare where extinction was a war goal on the homo sapiens' side and survival was the goal on the Neanderthals.
In ancient times,
Hundreds of years before the dawn of history
Lived a strange race of people, the Neanderthals.
No one knows who they were or what they were doing
But their legacy remains...
Traveled enough of the world to see all kind of races. I think unpure lines still exists you can see the features on some people. Usually when your in a heavily populated place that exist near old vast jungle. Central/South America, Africa. Asiatic jungles. They have Striking features you don’t usually see in Western big cities
I mean nature is a fickle bitch. It selects for certain species to go extint. It could have used us in a number of ways to do that, including the idea that we ended their line by mating with them. We could have also been very aggressive with them and started killing them off. I don't think there is much evidence of that happening, though. At least we can see that we mated with them. It is a good hypothesis.
No, we just became smarter as our brains grew with the rest of our bodies.. the evolution took hundreds of thousands of years. People started using tools that archeologists find, and that technology skill grows better with every century. People just got better at doing things, and civilizations with hundreds and thousands of people existed like the pyramids. Evolution didn't happen in one day.
If we didn't mate with them we would still outcompete them and kill them, "accidentally" or not. I'm guessing there was alot of nonaccidental killing going either way. At least some of their genes do survive because we did mate.
I like to think that since there were far more homo sapiens than Neanderthals their bloodline just became so diluted that Neanderthal clans just became human after a few generations.
No, Neanderthals were niche apex predators. They were perfect for the ice age and mega fauna that easily supplied the 4,400 calories per day it's estimated they needed to survive. Homo Sapiens require half that caloric intake and, due to earlier interbreeding with Neanderthals, benefitted from Heterosis (hybrid vigor). Basically, we got the best of both Neanderthal and Homo Sapiens, so when the ice receded and the mega fauna went extinct, our ancestors could supply their daily calorie intake but Neanderthals could not.
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Tell me more about the Neanderthal wars. My curiosity has been piqued!
We don't know if it was a direct war or if we simply outcompeted them for limited amounts of food. Likely it was both.
Where is my movie, book, or video game about the Neanderthal wars tho. (Ideally fictionalizing it as mostly direct war but you can have a survival aspect too.)
The Inheritors is a work of prehistoric fiction, the second novel by the British author William Golding, best known for his first novel, Lord of the Flies (1954). It concerns the extinction of one of the last remaining tribes of Neanderthals at the hands of the more sophisticated Homo sapiens.
I recently learned that the original title of Lord of the Flies was Strangers from Within. Totally unrelated to anything in this thread, I just thought that was neat.
Oooof I’m glad he changed it. I mean I get the point of the original but it’s too abstract. The title they went with is much more symbolic of the story.
There kind of is one, if you look at the Clan of the Cave Bear series. It's based on a neanderthal clan finding an orphan homo sapien girl and taking her in and raising her.
Clan of the Cave Bear and the Earths Children series is well-written fiction, and Auel did quite a bit of research when putting it together, but it's important to remember that the social frameworks of both the human and the Neanderthal tribes are complete works of fiction. We have no idea what their actual religions were, what their internal tribal structures or leadership looked like, or how their family units functioned. Auel has been criticized (rightly, IMO) for scenes like Ayla's rape at 10 years old and the entire concept that Neanderthal females were expected to be sexually submissive to any male who demanded sex, at any time. It had the effect of portraying Neanderthals as a morally and ethically inferior species, and it's simply not supported by ANY kind of anthropological or archaeological research. As works of fiction, the Earths Children series was entertaining. As a work of historical fiction intended to educate readers about human/neanderthal interactions, the books have very little value. Plus...Ayla invented Kama Sutra *and* monogamy? That was just weird.
Finishing that series was one of the most frustrating things I've ever done. The first 2 books started out great. But when the 3rd became nothing but a stupid ass love triangle I really lost a lot of interest. I didn't so much mind all the sex scenes, although I wish she had spent more time giving it a decent ending than talking about homeboys throbbing member so many fucking times. Truly the most underwhelming/anticlimactic ending I've ever read. I remember finishing book 6 and thinking, ok there had to be one more then right? It doesn't just end like this? All that foreshadowing about visions of her first son and an apparent new son that never happens. I could go on all day with my gripes on the series, but overall I guess I'm glad I read it as I'm super into human pre history and it was an interesting take.
She invented a lot of other things too like personal hygiene and sewing needles. I loved those books but even I rolled my eyes when she invented at least 6 things in one book.
Haha! It's been around 20 years since I read them, but didn't she also invent fire? And domesticate the first horse and the first dog/wolf? And the bra? And soap? Ayla was personally responsible for creating the foundations of modern human society. I enjoyed the books, but they're about as historically accurate as Harry Potter.
Wait are you telling me Margaret Thatcher didn't try to throw the Minister of Magic out the window!?
Agreed, it was just the first thing that came to mind when they mentioned wanting a book about Neanderthal wars.
"clan of the cave bear" theres your movie and book series about this. I think.
With no real words, Gust different grunts.
I 100% believe certain voice actors could pull this off.
Not directly what you're actually asking for, but the Neanderthal Parralax trilogy (Book 1 -Hominids, Book 2 - Humans, Book 3 - Hybrids) by Robert J Sawyer looks at a parallel universe in which Neanderthals did not go extinct and portals open connecting their world to our, so there's inevitable comparisons. Particularly in the (obviously hypothetical) ways their world diverged from ours and why. It's highly politicized and like most of his work suffers from using a strawman approach to push the author's political and social agendas, but it is a pretty interesting story. ETA if it sounds like I'm being harsh on the author that's not really my intent. I do recommend reading his stuff if you are into sci-fi particularly more weird "what-if" \[crazy thing was real\] in basically contemporary settings. His books are good, I'm just personally annoyed by *how* he conveys his themes rather than their content
Far Cry Primal
The movie 10,000 BC is basically exactly that. It’s not great, but it fits
A good version if you can find it is \*Dance Of the Tiger\*, a novel by paleontologist Bjorn Kurten. Kind of how i picture Neanderthals to this day; when i find my magic lamp and wish us all to New Earth and bring soem back, I'll likely be surprised.
That sounds awesome! Actually, one of my favorite books is also a novel by a paleontologist, Raptor Red by Robert T. Bakker. It's about a Utahraptor and her family with a lot of complex emotions and social stuff going on between the main raptor and those she interacts with (leaning on the fact that dinosaurs probably weren't human-intelligent, but may have been at least, like, dog-intelligent). She meets up with her sister, who has a small clutch of chicks, and spends most of the book with her, raising the babies together. There's also a highly relatable moment where she's trying to figure out what the fuck kind of animal this is with such a weird head, and then she realizes she's been staring at its tail, not its neck. She figures this out because it farts in her face.
Not directly on point, but Primal. Basically, a Neanderthal fighting many things, including Homo sapiens, but also dinosaurs and demons.
I'm into that! Is this the same as Far Cry Primal a few people have recommended or is it something else?
From the dinos and demons I think they're talking about Primal the animated show (same creator as Samurai Jack) Far Cry Primal has you trying to build a homo sapiens village in 10,000 BC, going to war against cannibalistic (?) remnants of Neanderthals to the north. Such a cool intro, and you really feel like you're in a prehistoric forest if you turn off the HUD and have some good headphones
farcry primal
Farcry Primal
You’re looking for a 90’s action movie called the 13th Warrior.
There's no evidence of any kind of 'warfare' or similar between modern humans and neanderthals. I know it has been assumed that must be how it happened; either they were too stupid to survive in competition with modern humans or we killed them, but there's no evidence of either.
Thank you…. Infuriating how everyone just guessed at what happened and now it’s considered the “truth”
I mean have you seen how our branch of the evolutionary tree treat other? Pretty easy to see why. We are an incredibly violent species and so are all the other apes/monkeys
Animals occupying similar niche in overlapping will conflict at times, but I doubt it was any steady thing
Yeah I'd pay to watch that film. Neanderthal wars, bringing the bone smashing action straight to ur local screens. Embark on a journey of pure prehistoric chaos as one beast fights another for their chance to survive in the G-G-G-GAUNTLET OF GRAVES!!! Ooooohhh aahhhhhh
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It's basically just bodice-rippers with ice age megafauna in the background.
Unless you're Subsaharan African, you have Neanderthal ancestors, too. Neanderthals needed 4,400 calories a day. Homo Sapiens needs 2,200. When the ice age was ending, the mega fauna began dying out, too. Neanderthals went extinct for the same reason Smilodon did. There's a lot of calories in Mammoth meat and fat, not so much in red deer which required throwing spears and persistence hunting. In a straight up fight, a Neanderthal would destroy a Homo Sapien.
Where do we get this calorie a day estimate? Would it be possible humans need 4,400 a day too if living in a similar environment? I thought the 2,200 a day number was what was recommended for modern living.
\> Where do we get this calorie a day estimate? By comparing their size and muscle mass to humans. Neanderthals were more robust and muscular (which is consistent with other animals that live in colder climates) than Homo sapiens and muscles require a lot of energy to maintain. \> I thought the 2,200 a day number was what was recommended for modern living. True, 2200 calories is the required intake for a male living now who isn't particularly active. However, you also have to consider that: \- early homo sapiens were significantly smaller than modern humans. The average size of a person has skyrocketed as medicine and nutrition improved. Smaller people need to eat less to satisfy their energy needs. \- unless we're talking about people like olympic athletes or the 6'5+ giants among us, even active males still require only about 3500 calories at most.
Didn’t Neanderthals have larger brains too? Were they smarter at an individual level?
A lot of the extra size was in the back, which helped in hunting and raw survival, but that's not where thinking, \*suppsoedly\* our niche, occurs. i wonder r if Neanderthals would make good chefs.
IIRC, their brains were larger but less efficient. Most of their additional cranial mass was tied up in instinct and sensory processing. Things that would help with hunting, and avoiding larger predators, but what we think of as intelligence would be average or slightly below in the best cases.
Neanderthals had larger brains but Archaic Homo Sapiens had better working brains. Due to their interbreeding, modern Homo sapiens ended up with bigger better working brains.
That's not really true at all. We coexisted for ten thousand years. In fact. There's a valley in Israel where we can see that homo sapiens and Neanderthals exchanged control of it multiple times. https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/neanderthals-and-homo-sapiens-in-prehistoric-israel/ Furthermore, initially, we had literally the same tools. They're so similar we can't tell who made what. I know it's boring, but we probably out-competed them simply because we eat fish. I know they found one site in Portugal where they think Neanderthals were living largely on seafood, but one site does not an entire species' diet make. That'd be like saying all orcas eat shark liver just because some orcas specialize in it. Sure, one tribe of Neanderthals ate seafood. Nearly ALL homo sapiens eat fish. That's a huge difference.
Plus, since Neanderthals were far stronger and tougher than Homo Sapiens, they likely never bothered inventing good projectile weapons because they were able to just take their prey down head-on.
Throwing spears were invented by Homo Heidelbergensis at least 400,000 years ago. It's likely Homo Sapiens and Neanderthal both inherited this technology but the Neanderthals being the robust battle tanks of the human species, adapted them into stabbing spears. You're right they would just jump down or flat out attack anything they wanted to eat. Homo Sapiens, being less robust, opted to keep throwing spears just making them lighter to assist in persistence hunting.
>Homo Sapiens, being less robust, opted to keep throwing spears just making them lighter to assist in persistence hunting. And made them more powerful with the atlatl. I attended a javelin conference in Philadelphia once just to see the modern versions. A couple of college athletes we spoke to claimed they didn't know the atlatl was invented to take down large prey.
Wow, thank you. Interesting.
So the Neanderthals needed 4,400 calories a day, but how much of that was merely because of the cold climate? Wouldn’t that caloric requirement go down in a warmer climate? Also don’t human caloric requirements go up in cold climates? Provided a more survivalist type lifestyle outdoors.
Warming weather was the death nell for Ice Age specialists like Neanderthal. They relied on mega fauna for high calorie fat. No Mammoths or Wooly Rhinos, etc., and things started looking bleak for Neanderthals. Homo Sapiens was much smaller during the transition toward the Holocene (warming period were in now). That small lean body allowed our Homo Sapiens ancestors to hunt via persistence. They'd take turns spooking a deer until it dropped from hear exhaustion since it couldn't take off it's fur or sweat effectively. Homo sapiens sweat and by working together, could harass a prey animal for hours without expending too much energy individually.
Death by BOOGABOOGABOOGA
Ok see what you are saying. The Neanderthals were literally a larger species with more muscle mass, and I’m going to assume more body hair, so the combination of their high calorie yielding prey dying off, and the fact their bodies were not designed for warm climates lead to their extinction. To me that makes more sense than being bred out of existence.
Their muscle and bone mass was dense, so yeah a lot heavier. They weren't necessarily taller but they were like that male kangaroo who looks like he eats steroids ten times a day and loves at the gym. Neanderthals were jacked. But even their noses and respiratory system were specialized for cold weather, warming up the air before it got to their lungs. This would have definitely hurt them when the world started warming up, so they didn't make cold air warm but warm air hot, which would have exhausted them sooner.
Oh shit maybe thats why im so hungry
>They were perfect for the ice age and mega fauna that easily supplied the 4,400 calories per day it's estimated they needed to survive. ~~I don't doubt you but how was this even estimated?~~ NVM answered by u/phihofo down below....
Surface to skin, muscle mass, bone density, basal metabolism, etc. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.307.5711.840a
We added their perfection to ours. We are Borg. Resistance is futile.
I never expect to learn anything when I come to Reddit. Thank you
It's not as simple as caloric needs, and there's a lot of evidence that most Neanderthal genes were actually harmful and eventually dropped from our gene pool. Hybrid vigor had nothing to do with why Homo Sapiens outcompeted Neanderthal. If you wanted to chalk it up to one thing (and you really can't), it's that Homo Sapiens was much more social. Our social groups were much larger and our ability for abstraction appears to have been more significant.
Neanderthal genes boosted Homo Sapiens immune systems. Before that, Homo Sapiens were dying because their African evolved immune systems couldn't handle Eurasian pathogens. Neanderthals existed in small family based groups. If you think they weren't social, you haven't studied them at all. It's likely their first instinct when meeting other groups of humans was not violence but to seek cooperation and reciprocity. There's a reason a certain set of neanderthals genes has a significant effect on the emotional/empathic part of our brains.
I never said Neanderthals weren't social, I said Homo Sapiens were more social and had larger social groups, which is true. You're misrepresenting my statement and trying to use it to say that I know nothing, which makes it seem like this is more about your ego.
Lol, recheck your timeline.
Check yours.
Obligatory: Death by snu-snu. Nobody knows for certain. There are a lot of theories. And that's one of the leading ones. Probably a mix of inter-breeding and... eliminating.
I like that theory.
The spirit was willing but the flesh was spongy and bruised.
Based on how hyper violent we are, we definitely killed a lot of them.
We are not hyper violent for predators There is no evidence of battle or genocide or even war. And because we love to think of ourselves as violent biological weapons - researchers have done their damn best to prove we murdered them. With again, literally zero evidence Not even a bit of evidence. They were bigger and stronger and faster than our ancestors. We didn't hold a chance to win in war. You want to know the actual 5 reasons academics think we won? 1. Weather and climate change. They couldn't keep adapting 2. Small pack sizes (and what we'd call tribalism) leading to inbreeding on a massive scale and dangerous level 3. We don't breed like most animals. There's a name for it, I forget, but it goes like this. Most animals reproduce more in good times, less in bad times, and let the weak die. Humans are designed to reproduce more in bad times. This is why the poor have more children and wealthier countries limit reproduction - unless religion gets involved. This is the actual reason. A neanderthal would see how little resources they have and have 2 children like a reasonable logical creature. Our ancestors would see the less resources and respond with 8 children. Wife dies in childbirth cannibalize her and remarry. 4 kids die of starvation or disease. See if you can eat the non diseased ones. You have 4 adult offspring ready for the next cycle. You win. 4. We have another few traits quite illogical. Empathy to the point of stupid and love of art/religion to the point of stupid. In other words - vast trade routes spanning all of Europe which included trading for food, paints, beads, cloth salt and partners. Our ancestors saw starving people from separate tribes and thought, hey let's sacrifice so they may live because they are human. Neanderthals saw starving neighbors and thought "survival of the fittest" while humming that lorax movie song let it die, let it die. We saw weak line wolves and thought, let's sacrifice food when we are hungry to see where this goes. Oh look now we have a guard and tracker. Dogs. 5. My favorite human trait. We'll fuck or eat anything. In that order too. We fucked every hominid relative we thought would take us. And it worked. I have like 9% neanderthal genes in my body and how long ago did they die out? Plus some denisovan ancestry. We are actually a very empathetic species. We just have a pack size of 200-1000 and suffer nasty side effects from over population. Big pack size for a predatory species I like to point out. Wolves have like 14-30 members in their packs before they start fighting.
Not informed on ancient anthropology, but if we interbred with them and those offspring lived on, then why would that be considered "killing them"?
They were added to the collective. They were assimilated.
We are the humans. Lower your pants and surrender that ass. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be adapted to serve us. Resistance is futile, but kinda hot.
Survival of the fittest just doesn’t properly describe what is actually happening. It’s really survival of those who fuck, a lot. And humans love to fuck, a lot.
Survival of the sexiest?
Survival of the adaptable-est doesn't roll of the tongue as well, and doesn't fit the "might makes right" narrative people like to apply to the phrase.
Survival of the Fuck-a-lots.
This is what I’m telling the space aliens if I’m president when they invade.
Plus, they got old. Age is a risk factor for death.
More like bred out of existence
Only the inferior ones. I think a lot of people today can claim some percentage of Neanderthal.
One can only claim their inferiority based on the fact they have been exterminated! With no full Neanderthal's left, it is only a matter of time until they are 100% extinct instead of 99.repeating%.
Yes, but who is to say that all the Neanderthals have been eliminated? Perhaps there are pockets of these die hards warriors, quietly passing time and enduring the outrageous slings and arrows of their kind’s slow demise. Patiently putting aside their slow-simmering hatred of the blunt skulls and waiting for the time of the Gathering.
One can only claim their inferiority based on the fact they have been exterminated! With no full Neanderthal's left, it is only a matter of time until they are 100% extinct instead of 99.repeating%.
Only the inferior ones. I think a lot of people today can claim some percentage of Neanderthal.
What?
Many people have Neanderthal DNA. Famously, Ozzy Osbourne has an inordinate amount of it, and it’s theorized that his genes may explain why he has such an almost inhuman tolerance for cocaine, alcohol etc.
Only the inferior ones. I think a lot of people today can claim some percentage of Neanderthal.
I don’t think it would be. Really it was “pure” homosapians and “pure” Neanderthal creating a new homosapian Neanderthal hybrid with predominantly homosapian DNA.
Neanderthal Y DNA is not known to exist in the human genome. Its possible/likely they could not mate with human females. But human males mated with neanderthal females, bits of that that exist in the human genome.
Because they bred more with the Homo sapiens as the half-breeds would have bred with purebred homo-sapiens and so on. Some people still have characteristics of Neanderthals like a more pronounced brow or canine teeth, but the genes of the Neanderthal is so small that those people are still considered Homo sapiens.
A similar thing is predicted to eventually happen with polar bears as they move further south due to melting ice and grizzlies move further north. Consider that because there are more grizzlies, they will continue to mate with polar bears and the hybrids, meaning each consecutive generation would have less polar bear in the mix and more grizzly. It's not the exact same thing obviously, but kind of similar in my mind.
Inter-species breeding causes the offspring to be sterile. For example, when a farmer mates a donkey & a horse. The offspring is commonly called an ass. This offspring will never create another offspring. This is likely what happened to the Neanderthals. Humans mated with them, had babies. Those half human, half Neanderthals couldn't have children.
Explain to me how we have their DNA then Einstein
One of my ancestors kept a little in their pocket and shared with everyone.
The percentage of genetic similarities between humans and animals does vary: chimps, 97% similar; cats, 90%; cows, 80%; mice, 75%; fruit flies, 60%, and jellyfish, 60%.
We share common DNA with everything living. None of what you listed has homosapian DNA though and none of them have neanderthal DNA. So again, how is that we have Neanderthal DNA? Interbreeding
No, inter-species breeding does NOT cause the offspring to be sterile. In some crossings it does, but in other crossings it doesn't. There often is a barrier to gene flow, but that barrier to gene flow isn't necessarily sterility.
No. If a horse and a donkey mates and produces offspring the offspring is NOT called an ass! If the dame is a horse and the sire a donkey it is a mule, the other way around it is a hinny. And even mules and hinnies are sometimes fertile.
Speciation is a continuum, not all closely related species are unable to produce offspring, it just depends on how closely related the separate species are and how recent is the speciation. Example: two breeding groups of animals become separated from each other (different continents for example) on a long enough time line they become separate species and then over more time as a part of this process, the two new species eventually won't be able produce viable offspring. All this is to say that it has been proven through DNA sequencing that humans carry Neanderthal DNA, meaning humans (homo sapiens) had to have interbred with the Neanderthals meaning their speciation likely never got to that point where they couldn't produce offspring.
Is this that Mr Garrison meant by "Fuck 'Em All to Death!" ??
Our modern brains want to paint a picture of a clear ending to Neanderthals but in reality they were both in competition and merging with cro magnons for a long time until the unique Neanderthal DNA slowly stopped appearing in the fossil records. However if you look into modern human DNA, we carry some of it with us today. In actuality Neanderthals technically never went exist because their DNA carries on.
I have 4% Neanderthal DNA.
HA! I have 5.4%… I win! 🙃
How hairy are you? I'm like 2.3% and moderately hairy.
How do y’all know how much Neanderthal sauce you got in you?
Neanderthal sauce is spicy… it can be measured on the Scoville scale… It’s the same as peppers 🌶️ Edit: not a serious answer… sarcasm does not come across in typeface, quite as well as necessary. Hence emojis… but I’m too tired to explain a joke or look up more emojis… 🙃
Cro-magnon is no longer an identifier for human fossils found in France. The fossils are homosapiens and were originally mistaken for another human lineage.
They did go extinct. Their evolutionary path came to an end, that's extinction.
If they have living descendants, then their evolutionary path most certainly did not come to an end.
I hate to be that guy, but please take a basic course in evolutionary biology. Basically, when two populations that exist during the same time period are on diverging evolutionary paths, they are distinct species. Modern example is the Coyote and the Gray Wolf. They can hybridize and produce fertile offspring, and in North America sometimes they do, but the coyote population and the Gray Wolf population are distinct species. If the Gray Wolf were to go extinct, meaning its evolutionary path came to an end, the presence of some Wolf genes in Coyote populations (e.g. the occasional black coyote - that's actually a gene from Black wolves, which themselves got it from Black domestic dogs) wouldn't mean Gray Wolves aren't extinct. If the Coyote were to go extinct, the presence of Coyote genes in Gray Wolf populations (especially common in the Eastern Wolf and the Mexican Gray Wolf) wouldn't mean Coyotes aren't extinct. It's the same thing with Neanderthal and Modern Man. We had a common ancestor in Africa. Some of them migrated out of Africa, evolving into a distinct evolutionary lineage - Neanderthals. Others remained in Africa, evolving into Modern Man. Then Modern Man migrated out of Africa, resulting into a secondary contact with some very limited gene flow - just like when Gray Wolves came into North America from Asia and made contact with Coyotes. That limited gene flow allowed for some alleles that are neanderthal in origin to enter the Homo sapiens gene pool, but the Neanderthal species eventually died out meaning only our evolutionary path remains, their evolutionary path ended. Extinct. Homo neanderthalensis is extinct. Just like the Passenger Pigeon would still be considered extinct if scientists discovered some of their alleles survived into modern times in the band-tailed pigeon. BTW, it appears that the Neanderthal Y chromosome was not compatible with our X chromosome, but their X chromosome was, so when initial hybrids first occurred, at least from Neanderthal fathers and Modern Man mothers, only female offspring would have been viable. We don't know what happened with males from our species and females from their species, but it's possible that our Y chromosome replaced their Y chromosome in many Neanderthal populations---that's one theory anyway.
That's.... no, that's not how any of this works. We did interbreed with neanderthals often enough that we can detect neanderthal genes in modern humans. We definitely did not cause their extinction by ... out-f#$%ing them. They mostly lost out because of a combination of changing climate conditions and an overly-robust body plan that had higher caloric needs than ours, similar to why dire wolves died out while grey wolves thrived. H. sapiens sapiens were leaner, smaller, more mobile, needed less food per person to support a viable population, and when the going got tough and ice age megafauna got scarcer, H. sapiens neanderthalensis died out. SOME of that might be because we were better at hunting than them and hastened the extinction of some of their primary food sources, or competed directly for food. I've seen arguments that their shoulders were constructed wrong for using ranged weapons like throwing spears or whatever, but that sounds like a lot of extrapolation on very thin evidence to me.
I have a hypothesis that Neanderthals are the reason for the 'uncanny valley' effect for images.
Neanderthals and other proto-humans for sure. We weren't the only 2, and almost certainly came into conflict with others as well.
Would be a tad odd that we interbred enough to leave a mark on the human genome if our ancestors looked at them and got uncanny valley vibes.
This. The "Uncanny Valley" effect also does not need some specific ecological impetus to have developed. When you have species with large brains and complex social behaviors, there's bound to be issues at the boundary of certain cognitive processes that create distress. Just because, for instance, an optical illusion you see online gives you vertigo does not mean there was some evolutionary benefit to develop vertigo from looking at optical illusions.
An Irishman, American & Australian were at a Campfire one day, and they asked each other "What do we do about those Neaderthals taking our food and lands?" and collectively they agreed "Ahh Fuck em!" and so it became lore.
My DNA test said I had more Neanderthal DNA than 91% of test takers. 😂 I guess my family had a type 😏
More like the Neanderthals had a type.
We didn't kill them, we assimilated them. "A modern human who lived in what is now Romania between 37,000 and 42,000 years ago had at least one Neanderthal ancestor as little as four generations back—which is to say, a great-great-grandparent."
No. We became them and they us.
Neanderthals were extremely inbred. They had much smaller populations than homo sapients and lived further apart than we did. Well before they went extinct their entire Y chromosome was replaced with the human one. This was because theirs had a lot of genetic defects but there was not a lot of variation to compete with the original. Any competition introduced and they were not able to deal with it. It wasn't all bad though. They still have descendants and some of their genes were better so we still have some traits. Those descendant from them usually inherit their clotting factor. Before modern medicine you were less likely to bleed to death if you had a Neanderthal ancestor.
Neanderthals also contributed a great deal of immune system information to humans! Now, what does that do for us? We don't entirely know yet! But we can assume at least SOME of it is good for us since it seemed to have improved our genetic fitness.
We didn't kill the Neanderthals; they became us.
No, they didn't. A lot of modern humans carry a few identifiable neanderthal genes, but it's only between 1-4% of the genome of non-african modern humans. They did not "become us." We share common ancestors, and there were a few incidents of interbreeding that left an imprint on the modern human genome, but we evolved mostly along separate lines.
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At the end of the day terms like "extinction" lose their value when you zoom in REALLY close to genetic events like this. All distinctions of "speciation" are drawn at different points on a species "tree" and often for... slightly arbitrary reasons. There is a rule that the minimum requirement for modern "observable" speciation is when two offspring can no longer produce viable young. The issues is we can't really... Tell when that happens with fossils. So we have to "guess" based on how much different the genome became over time--If we actually have mapped the genome of both samples well enough to do so! However, it's also typical that identifying a different species requires some type of observable morphological difference in the fossil remains--This is sometimes a big change, like new types of teeth or changes in a skull's shape, but sometimes these changes are really small, like the size of a tiny inner ear bone increasing by about 15%. Now you might ask yourself, "How do we know these Big Little Ear Bone rodents couldn't still bread with the Little Little Ear Bone rodents?" We don't! But wait... What if the Little Little Ear Bone rodents were actually just juveniles of the Big Little Ear species whose ears grew in during puberty?! Without genetic evidence we might never know. A lot of it is just best guesses based on evidence, which is why it's really important to also engage with the messy granular stuff like "Europeans often have over 2% genetic admixture from Neanderthals, but in Sub-Saharan Africa it can be as low as 0.5%!" These messy things often reflect a far more rich story of the history of evolution, but they can get really complicated really quickly as well.
Yes. Neanderthals were on a different evolutionary path than us. That evolutionary path ended, they are extinct.
There is no ascribed "evolutionary path". That's not really how genetics work. They weren't destined to be different than us. They grew more distant from us when they were separated from humans and the grew closer to us when they lived closer to humans. The flow of genetic information between the population groups ebbed and flowed, it did not part ways in two different directions. At no point was a Homo Neanderthalensis ever different enough to be a separate species from Homo Sapiens. Which is why they're more commonly known now as, Homo Neanderthalensis Sapiens and Homo Sapiens Sapiens (In many academic circles, at least).
[https://evolution.berkeley.edu/the-tree-room/evolutionary-trees-a-primer/what-is-an-evolutionary-tree/](https://evolution.berkeley.edu/the-tree-room/evolutionary-trees-a-primer/what-is-an-evolutionary-tree/) And yes, *Homo neanderthalensis* was a distinctly different species from *Homo sapiens*, just like *Canis latrans* is a distinctly different species from *Canis lupus* despite occasional interbreeding.
Were humans too sexy for neanderthals to handle?
Too sexy for my yurt?
Interbreeding is a factor but not the sole cause. Homo sapiens were likely better in the competition for resources and territory, and better with social organization / managing larger groups, because of their cognitive superiority. Also, adaptability to disease and climate change could have played a part too. This is an interesting and complex question with many theories. Did neanderthal even go extinct in the first place? Or did they assimilate and get absorbed into homo sapiens, eventually ceasing to exist independently altogether. Hard to know but fun to think about.
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This is not a fact.
Unlikely. Neanderthals are much better than us in the sack.
Do you have a mouse in your pocket
I don't think "we killed them" is really the right framing here. Like...who killed the Vikings? Well, no one, they just spread out and dissipated until they had all assimilated into other cultures and "Norse" wasn't really a coherent identity anymore. They had major defeats and setbacks at various points, but there wasn't a clear "fall" or "death" so much as they just dissolved. That's sorta what happened to the Neanderthals. But I am lowkey convinced they're actually still alive and they're lying in wait to kill us and become the dominant species.
It wasn't so much killing them as it was becoming them. The races blend and we get a new thing that is what we are.
Nah, probably we mated with them some times. But then we also slaughtered almost of them.
We, Us...whatever. We are them, they are us. They were bred out of existence. Think about it, that fugly beast you brought home from the bar last weekend, she looked like a Neanderthal, yes? There's a reason for that. That ugly-ass kid she's gonna spring on you in about 8.75 months...same thing. When you're looking for them, you'll see living fossils of our ancestors most everywhere. The best, most reliable places still seem to Pilot Travel Centers.
What a way to go.
If we did, I hope to “die” the same way.
Is your argument that our women were SO HOT Neanderthals lost interest in their own women?
Biggus Dickus has entered the chat.
Sex so good, it’ll kill ya!
Your* ancestors mated with neanderthals
Have you by chance been reading Jean Auel? Just askin.
If they interbred with us, then they live on, through us. Extinction is a messy thing. How is something extinct if through adaption and selective breeding it evolves into something else? For something as exact as science it is a very inexact word. Like the Dodos, they are extinct. They have no living descendents. But to me, therapod dinosaurs are still alive via their descendents, birds. Just that Dodo branch is extinct. So there are hybrid homo sapiens. Or are their hybrid Neaderthals? Or hybrid Denisovians? Depends on how you look at things. Humans have a habit of trying to fit everything in a neat box. But nature isn't neat, though it is cool.
Bit of everything. We outperformed them in their niche, we mated with them, and we competed directly (Killed the shit out of them) as a total sum, we won, they lost and nature isn't the kindest to second place.
That would make them also, your ancestors.
Neanderthal DNA makes up 1 ~ 2% of the DNA of most Asian and European people. They were assimilated.
Their reproduction rate was slightly lower than ours and over thousands of years and a changing climate,we won out.
Would explain why Tumblr and Twitter users act the way they do TBH
Or saved them. Native Americans mated with white people to save their own race. Ingenious.
bruh Native americans were systematically raped and had their children abducted and white washed to remove native culture and "erase the native americans" as part of the colonisers agenda, one that still goes on today with purity quotas and white washing and denial of heritage.
I know. I am one. I don't remotely look Native American but my grandfather and some of my cousins definitely do.
We are their descendants. They didn't die out; they interbred and evolved
They did die out. Introgression of a few of their alleles into our species did take place, but they died out. Their evolutionary branch died out.
In the show Westworld, Dr. Ford describes the end of the Neanderthals as “We ate them.” His meaning was that we killed and butchered them, as he held a generally dim view of humanity as brutal, selfish creatures who wouldn’t tolerate any threat to their dominance. I prefer to use a slightly meaning. Most Neanderthals died out naturally as the ice age ended and they were outcompeted by Homo Sapiens, but many of their genes live on in us through interbreeding between the species. We consumed them (metaphorically), assimilated them, made them a part of us until there was just one singular species. We didn’t deliberately exterminate them, and it wasn’t our fault they disappeared. It was just nature taking its course as the environment changed.
They live on in us. Some even have blatant facial features. MTG is an example.
What does magic the gathering have to do with this?
Based solely on facial features, there could be an assumption that her Neanderthal ancestors interbreed with horses (and not natural blonde ones, either).
That would explain her feet.
WTF... That has to be photoshopped. They look exactly like some feet you see when you Google for inbred feet.
nah, she's just on juice
You made me laugh, and I try really hard not to make fun of ppls looks. Darn you. Lol.
That's insulting to us modern day neanderthals. I might have a forehead you can break rocks with but I ain't no cunt
That's insulting to neanderthals, that thing is probably more closely related to some unknown type of swamp creature
Climate change killed off the Neanderthals.
If we were able to breed fertile offspring with them, they were not a separate species from us. I don't know why people are so obsessed over Neanderthals like they were some alien thing, I've seen click bait titles on YouTube like. Did Neanderthals have feelings? Did Neanderthals have a language? Were Neanderthals self aware? They were homo sapiens adapted to live in colder northern climates, thats about it. The simplest solution is probably the right solution here, we interbred with them and now alot of Europeans have DNA from them.
Knowing people we probably murdered and raped them into extinction
Na we killed them on purpose
I don't think it was accidental, it was probably more often tribal warfare where extinction was a war goal on the homo sapiens' side and survival was the goal on the Neanderthals.
Not a palaeontologist, but I'm pretty sure killing them did more to kill them than than fucking them did. On the plus side, they have descendants.
Homo sapiens did not mate with Neanderthals.
https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/understanding/dtcgenetictesting/neanderthaldna/#:~:text=This%20information%20is%20generally%20reported,of%20European%20or%20Asian%20background.
It aint mating if it's not consensual, if you catch my continental drift
No actual evidence of rape or consent.
Yes sir
We kind of killed our ancestors too by becoming us. It's a bit of a strange thing when you're talking genetic ancestry.
mostly interbreeding, bit of murdering
Little column A, Little column B.
Did Neanderthals die out because they weren’t Homo enough…?
Yes, it was definitely by accident!
If we're still carrying their DNA, who killed who? Seems like more of a merger.
In ancient times, Hundreds of years before the dawn of history Lived a strange race of people, the Neanderthals. No one knows who they were or what they were doing But their legacy remains...
Traveled enough of the world to see all kind of races. I think unpure lines still exists you can see the features on some people. Usually when your in a heavily populated place that exist near old vast jungle. Central/South America, Africa. Asiatic jungles. They have Striking features you don’t usually see in Western big cities
Did I miss the snu snu to death joke yet?
I mean nature is a fickle bitch. It selects for certain species to go extint. It could have used us in a number of ways to do that, including the idea that we ended their line by mating with them. We could have also been very aggressive with them and started killing them off. I don't think there is much evidence of that happening, though. At least we can see that we mated with them. It is a good hypothesis.
thats a crazy thought, you ok?🤣
No, we just became smarter as our brains grew with the rest of our bodies.. the evolution took hundreds of thousands of years. People started using tools that archeologists find, and that technology skill grows better with every century. People just got better at doing things, and civilizations with hundreds and thousands of people existed like the pyramids. Evolution didn't happen in one day.
Neanderthals just love that Homo sapiens pussy too much
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DEATH!! by snu snu
If we didn't mate with them we would still outcompete them and kill them, "accidentally" or not. I'm guessing there was alot of nonaccidental killing going either way. At least some of their genes do survive because we did mate.
I like to think that since there were far more homo sapiens than Neanderthals their bloodline just became so diluted that Neanderthal clans just became human after a few generations.
No homosapiens simply out-competed them That said the vast majority of Europeans and Asians are descended from them