I have previously mentioned on HN that I wonder what early Sapiens thought about the Neanderthals. Did they see them as that other tribe that is very strong, but acting a bit strange sometimes? As we have been the only remaining member of the Homo species for thousands of years now, living side by side with creatures that are only quite like us is an experience that has been lost in the collective human memory. I think it is pretty likely that Sapiens back then just thought of a Neanderthal tribe in a similar way they thought about another Sapiens tribe. I read somewhere that the body proportions of Neanderthals are within the range of body proportions of modern humans, and research suggests that there was interbreeding between Sapiens and Neanderthals.
(As a male homo sapiens, I have to say that if Neanderthal women looked like this [0], they may have looked a bit strange, but certainly not repelling or un-human.)
> living side by side with creatures that are only quite like us is an experience that has been lost in the collective human memory
I played with and interacted with chimpanzees quite a few times around Africa [1], and spent hundreds of hours watching them and just chilling while they ate, slept and played.
Sitting face to face with a large chimp on your lap is an incredible experience, and watching their facial expressions, emotions and reactions while checking out their fingerprints and having them groom your beard is a very powerful experience.
To my very core I had the feeling we are them and they are us.
Spending time with gorillas was cool too [2], but I didn't exactly play with them!
It was very clear how intelligent they are. I saw them distract and trick each other (and me), I saw them quickly hone in on my keys in my pocket and try to get them, I saw them be kind, gentle, hurtful, violent, angry, sad, lazy, sleepy. I saw and experienced them being extremely kind, patient and gentle, and very clearly try to communicate to me with hand gestures, smiles, and "follow me" hands.
Even the little ones ran over to me and held up their arms for "pick me up!"
(As a male homo sapiens, I have to say that if Neanderthal women looked like this [0], they may have looked a bit strange, but certainly not repelling or un-human.)
On a couple of occasions, I dated women who were considerably taller than me. One of them had a very big, toothy smile, and liked to wear horns when she went to Renaissance festivals. I used to call her my "wild thing," in reference to the Maurice Sendak book.
EDIT: Come to think of it, there's Robert Crumb's drawings of his getting piggyback rides with his wife at the time. Kind of similar in spirit.
If you live in any modern day melting pot big city, and somehow there existed a Neanderthal that was raised by modern day Sapiens, you might have walked past them earlier today without noticing.
>Humans are the apex predator. Not an apex predator. The apex predator. Other than a handful of bacteria and viruses, there’s pretty much nothing stronger, more intelligent, or more adaptable than Homo sapiens
One of my favorite youtube channels. Not sure why you are getting downvoted. Apparently there must be a bunch of haters of goldfish with Bronx accents on HN.
Neanderthals, Sapiens, and other close relatives like Denisovans could serve as analogues of fantasy races, like elves, dwarves, and hobbits. Non Neanderthals and Sapiens would have to be on the rare side to explain how they haven't been discovered today, but the fact that the entire region was submerged helps with that.
Perhaps certain factors could have made the region extremely prosperous by standards of the time and a nexus of prehistoric trade, giving rise to a rich culture attaining legendary status. However, none of its architecture used stone, and all of its knowledge was carried through oral tradition.
Humans are the apex predator. Not an apex predator. The apex predator. Other than a handful of bacteria and viruses, there’s pretty much nothing stronger, more intelligent, or more adaptable than Homo sapiens.
From what is known the people we call Neanderthal were intelligent and were empathetic. They made seashell jewellery and they buried their dead covered in flowers. I'd be proud to have a high percentage.
Frame your argument a little differently - you're saying you can't be proud / ashamed of anything your parents have done (that you didn't contribute to).
Pride or shame is by definition a feeling not legal culpability. A feeling.
Human brains seem wired to have strong feelings about their kin or tribe. So, yes, I would think having neutral feelings about your parents would be a hard thing to understand for most people.
From a purely logical point of view - there's not much point to anything humans do.
Can you break down what the logic of pride should be? Any who determines what that should is. You seem to imply that there's an objective standard for that.
You're technically correct and I agree with you, but you're missing the broader point: the goal of GP comment was to make the author of GGP comment feel better about having a high percentage of neanderthal DNA.
People... aren't smart by default. The belief that Native Americans were sub-human because they didn't demonstrate the highly developed behavior of gross public displays of affection was perpetuated by, if you couldn't guess, the early French. Others used that and similar ideas to perpetuate the image that they were irredeemable savages by nature, less evolved and stain on the bloodlines of modern man. How ironic.
Neanderthals got a similar wrap. Early ethnocentrists believed that what succeeds in time succeeds in quality, but from all modern evidence, you share ancestry with a more developed, intelligent race than most.
No guarantees you inherited any of those qualities, but still :)
It could've been the lack of public displays of affection. It could also have been things like the repeatedly observed acts including ritual cannibalism and other sorts of mistreatment of prisoners, such as in the Siege of Fort Henry for one famous example. [1] One should not white wash history, but going in the equal but opposite direction is absolutely no better.
Accurately recounting history is also the only way we can learn from it. If you turn a group into mindless evil idiots, then there's little to learn from such. But when you appreciate that there were real issues and awful acts that, in turn, drove no less awful responses from otherwise rationale and intelligent individuals behaving in what they felt was justifiable ways, in a sort of endless pendulum of death and destruction, until there was just one side left standing - it suddenly becomes strikingly similar to modern times in many ways, and there's yet much to learn from it all.
East Asians apparently have a higher percentage of Neanderthal dna than Europeans, with it going as high as 4%. It's hard to believe that at 2% it's greater than 99% of people, since 2% seems rather average for the average East Asian and the East Asian population being 1.7B or so. East Asians also have Denisovans dna as well.
I believe 23andme rounds down, so I could be at 2.49% and it would still show 2%. Anyways it's just a fun statistic based on probably not a proportionally representative sample of the entire human population, but what they have on hand.
I get a few strands of really really thick hair on my head. Sometimes in my nose too.
Also, I once had a single piece of hair that turned from fully black to fully white back to fully black in a span of maybe a dozen cm. And a few strands that turn orange-reddish, all for no apparent reason.
Though I'm just guessing this is related, maybe it's pure chance.
I wouldn't exactly say anything implies it is rare. 400,000,000 million people possess any particular trait at a greater prevalence than 95% of all people. It's more common than being an American.
You make it sounds like he choose to be insecure about it.
It's social conditioning and ego doing it's thing to create pointless suffering/insecurity as usual. Nothing new. It will keep creating suffering for pointless things. The dna % just one of the mere labels it uses.
I always like this Craig Venter / Bill Clinton anecdote:
VENTER: [Clinton's] genome is obviously totally unique, but all of our genomes are. There is this three percent difference. We got an honorary degree together a few years back. And he was the speaker. He said he learned from me that he was 4 percent Neanderthal and that explained all the problems he had in the White House.
(LAUGHTER)
CLINTON: It is true, you know. [...]
BURNETT: So, you're the maximum Neanderthal?
(LAUGHTER)
CLINTON: I don't know, when I'm told -- Hillary this wasn't surprised.
I don't mean this as a negative comment aimed at you, but I always hate these sort of anecdote. The joke hinges on something we know to not be explicitly true -- ie, that if someone had more, or less, neanderthal DNA, they would be seen to be less evolved, more crude, etc. The joke relies on a misreading of the consequences for the presence of neanderthal DNA, and is only "funny" if you intentionally misread that yourself, or if you are unaware of the actual facts.
That’s a leading theory. Afraid of the dark? It’s evolutionary adaptation to living side-by-side with humans who could see in the dark: and yes, Neanderthals could.
From the blurb: "...Neanderthal Predation (NP) theory reveals that Neanderthals were 'apex' predators - who resided at the top of the food chain, and everything else - including humans - was their prey..."
So if the neanderthals were "top flight predators" that predated on the scrawnier yet intelligent homo sapiens I can't help but be reminded of the passages of the Bible referencing the Nephilim.
From Genesis 6:4
> The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown.
Some higher power or the inscrutable workings of evolution and planetary change, spared us.
Because it takes an interesting premise that could possibly be followed up using genetic and archaeological data and turns it into some nonsense that happened what, 6000 years ago? It cheapens it.
I don't mean to belabour this, but I am sorry if you feel my original comment was taking factual research down an unrelated tangent. In referencing nephilim I am not trying to advocate for truth behind biblical writings, I just find it interesting to think that perhaps memories from tens of thousands of years ago survive in some form in our imagination and artistic expression. Perhaps living beside other people who are similar and also strange is a recurring pattern in human civilization and it is natural to project onto those "others" our fears and desires.
I see where you’re coming from. It’s a distant generational memory that imprints itself on a relatively recent religious text. That being said, I feel like Indian or Ancient Greek mythologies have so much more longevity and so many more entities that would readily avail themselves to this exact situation (asuras, devas, Jupiter and Zeus could be considered extensions of Neanderthal gods etc.)
I think they never were a distinct species. How can you tell something is "neanderthal DNA", if the vast majority of genes is shared anyway? So let's say we have three common alleles of a particular gene: GATTACA, GATCACA, and, GATAACA, then you find a neanderthal homozygous for GATAACA, and you somehow decide that all its occurence in modern people are from "neanderthal admixture"? Why?
You can see people looking more or less "neanderthal" in different times and places, even within the short period of photographic evidence. The difference is environmental.
"Species" is an artificial categorization created by humans to make it easier to talk about population groups, but as you note, the real world is more complex than that, so the lines are indeed blurry since both Neanderthals and homo sapiens share a relatively recent common ancestor and could apparently interbreed.
But over the decades of research into this field, scientists have had exactly this discussion about where to draw the line between "species" of Homo and have various standards for making this distinction, though certainly some of them disagree with the general consensus, and things change over time.
But there's plenty of genetic evidence and research that have gone into these findings, and plenty of Neanderthal genes that don't appear in modern humans. Just because it goes against your gut intuition doesn't mean they are wrong to make this distinction. There are decades of literature on the topic if you are actually interested in learning about it.
I thought species meant collection of individuals who could breed with one another.
So foxes and dogs/wolves are distinct because, while clearly very related, their chromosomes are factored differently (haploid numbers), whereas wolves and dogs and coyotes are all compatible, for examples.
Mitochondrial DNA is one way they could tell neanderthals were a distinct species. Teeth shape as well. It's not just looking at the DNA itself, but the behavior as well, such as isolated reproduction, different adaptations, and ancestors as well. Modern humans can be traced back to a particular ancestor, and Neanderthals can be traced back to the same ancestor, where they branched off from. Neanderthals diverged from homo heidelbergensis around half a million years ago, and modern humans did as well, though later. It's not just about looks.
Regarding your particular point about identifying "neanderthal DNA", consider that most genes are made up of thousands of base pairs. Even though there might be individual variation, it is trivial to distinguish between, say, chimpanzee and human versions of certain genes based on what we know about the populations. We also know the rate of evolution of genes and how they diverge, which means we can be pretty sure that a given version was acquired through interbreeding versus spontaneous mutation.
Nobody claims that we interbred with chimps though. And there is the recent historic evidence.
Native Americans look very neandertalish in old photos, and even older drawings suggest that they used to look even more so. The difference is so stark that they were believed to have been pretty much exterminated, until DNA showed that they probably joined the Spanish, and their descendants now call themselves "Mexicans"... When they adopted European lifestyle, they started looking almost white.
Or the Chinese. Slanted eyes used to be seen as the defining feature of Chinese people. Almost no modern Chinese have slanted eyes today. It can still be seen occasionally in people who came from some isolated place in Western China, or something like that, but it seems absurd that something so rare could make it into a stereotype.
Too much weight is put on genes. I think it's somebody's nice fantasy that we solve all our problems through gene editing, but it isn't so.
The movie name is formed from DNA letters on purpose.
Anyway, the main difference that distingueshes sapiens is the poorly grown face, and there is no known reason why people should evolve an ungrown face.
What do you mean by poorly grown? A robust neanderthal skull can handle injuries from megafauna better. Our better strategy (potentially through more developed language), finer weapons, and slightly better ballistic aim combined to make us the better hunter. The evolutionary pressure for robust facial structure was not there - we evolved in a hot environment where a more lithe body was better adapted to long-distance persistence hunting.
Your choice of "poorly grown" reveals that your mental model of evolution and development is poorly grown. In what way is it "poorly grown" or "ungrown" except by your standards of what a "human" should look like, which is only based on what modern humans _do_ look like?
I wonder how the neanderthals felt when a new, superior(?) species appeared out of nowhere. Is this how we're feeling about technology and AI now? Give technology another thousand years and humans may well be facing the same fate as neanderthals did. Or perhaps like nea/humans, we will find a way to interbreed?
With their bigger brains larger lungs and stronger bodies too expensive in the ice and snow. We the budget model had an advantage but in this time of plenty some neanderthal clones would give us a run for our money.
Wildly speculative unfounded thought experiment plot twist based on no evidence:
Neanderthals were the superior species and hunted humans into hiding. A global cataclysm occurred, devastating the food supply available to Neanderthals who required more fuel. Humans survived, only barely, because the few who survived on the run had acclimated to living in underground caves.
Sometime in the next few centuries, another cataclysm will occur, wiping out the surface dwelling human species.
Dolphins inherit the earth, and one day look back at the “primitive human species” that clearly gave way to the “superior” dolphin.
Superior, is good enough adapted to circumstances. Evolution turns your blood into anti-freeze as a inherited sickness, and this bug is a feature near the arctic. For the rest of the planet you are a very sick fish.
Imagine a water-world, with one volcano caldera above water. In that volcano caldera there is a geysir, and th at geysir, keeps a giant diamond ball rolling, since the dawn of time.
Evolution is not a refree, rewarding smartness or excellence. It just a process rewarding even foolish adaptions, in my example, the ability to become flat and squeeze into rift and cracks. It also rewards cultural taboos, like sticking your flatworm head up and wonder at the sky.
So superior, the word, assumes the idea of progress, of going forth towards the end of history, that the process can not crash and get stuck in a million years looping till the sun goes out. And that "getting stuck" is a very real thing, a very real danger, a "reasonable" voice from the gut, to return to reliable roots and thrust your "gut-instincts."
In biology they use terms like "fitness" or "reproductive success" for this. "Superior" is a bit loaded since many people have more or less neanderthal dna.
Also "superior" implies some sort of objective measure of progress that evolution is moving towards. Whereas "reproductive success" better captures the idea that selected biological traits are situational. Always remember that lowly rodents were "superior" to the mighty dinosaurs during the Cretaceous extinction period.
Depends on which naming convention you subscribe to. Most people just use H. neanderthalensis for convenience rather than writing out H. s. n. since everyone knows what they mean either way. Neither classification is obviously correct either, hence the introduction of more nuanced categories like "allotaxa" that aren't reflected in binomial nomenclature (yet?).
Not sure what is your angle here, but Neanderthal are considered to be "archaic humans" and while it is not technically wrong to write "humans" instead of Homo sapiens then it would be more correct in this context to be more specific and write "modern humans" in my personal opinion.
EDIT : Well, the original comment disappeared, but now that I have spent time reading around, I might as well still post it...
They did go extinct ? [rather than heavily interbred to make European Sapiens, unlike, say Latinos, which, in addition to their Native American "base", have quite a lot (~20% ?) of European ancestry (and even more culture)]
The most interbred Homo Sapiens individual(s?) we found, that lived (very roughly) around the disappearance of Neanderthals has only 6-9% of Neanderthal DNA.
We're talking, by definition, about averages over groups of people here.
And I did mention culture, and how it might be different. Also, how do you NOT conflate "place of origin" with culture and/or ancestry, after all, memes and especially genes spread most effectively by proximity. (Especially before the modern era).
Also, this extremely strong claim of yours sounds dubious to me, any examples of self-described Latinos with actually zero native american ancestry ? As proved by either reliable and comprehensive family trees going back to the middle ages, or DNA analysis ?
Anyway, my point was that the current population of (especially Southern and Central) Americas is a result of heavy genetic (and cultural) mixing of Europeans and Americans, while the same thing doesn't seem to have happened for Sapiens and Neanderthal (roughly, then Africans and then Europeans ?), at least genetically (any clues for the culture ??)
> Also, this extremely strong claim of yours sounds dubious to me, any examples of self-described Latinos with actually zero native american ancestry ? As proved by either reliable and comprehensive family trees going back to the middle ages, or DNA analysis ?
Case in point, me - my ancestors fled Europe in the early 20th century to a Latin American country due to lack of work, famine, wars and whatnot. One of them was Spanish, so by definition, I have Hispanic blood. Zero native american ancestry. You will see that this is a very common situation for many Latin Americans.
For more examples, see the Brazilian government whitening policy right that happened after slavery abolition. Lots of Europeans (Italians, Germans, Poles, Spaniards, Portuguese, etc) were brought to work in plantations and to decrease the relative % of the newly freed Black population.
When miscegenation happened, it was with Black people, as the Native Brazilian population was already decimated by this point.
This also happened in other countries, like Argentina.
Oh, my apologies, I didn't think of Europeans arriving much later. (And it's very unlikely that genes would go from Americas to Europe before the 20th century.)
(As a male homo sapiens, I have to say that if Neanderthal women looked like this [0], they may have looked a bit strange, but certainly not repelling or un-human.)
[0] https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/scifindr/articles/image2s...