We know now Neanderthals were a different species, but didn't scientists used to think that

[raccoon]

they were our ancestors?

[closeupready]

1. No, I believe the theory always was that they were an extinct branch of the

human species. Sort of like Saber-Toothed Tigers are an extinct branch of felines.

[mike_c]

2. generally speaking, no....

I say generally speaking because there was a time when relationships within Homo were more ambiguous than at present. However, as far as I'm aware the consensus has generally been that H. neanderthalensis (or H. sapians neanderthalensis, depending on your point of view) is a sister species or subspecies of H. sapians. That's certainly the way I learned it, back in the day.

[PurgedVoter]

3. Neanders are not gone, they are just spread thin in the gene pool.

A bit on info and linkage here.

[pokerfan]

13. You can still find them

working for Fox News.

[qnr]

4. What ^--- they said .... Their points are the way I'd always understood it to be too n/t

[SoCalNative]

5. Tea baggers

are direct descendants of the Neanderthal :rofl:

[raccoon]

6. What an insult to the Neanderthals! nt

[Warpy]

7. Neanderthals took care of the weak and infirm among them.

I think teabaggers have a preponderance of chimpanzee genes.

[chillspike]

11. There is a lot of truth to that

I think the Right unconsciously wants to turn us into a solitary species instead of the group species we are now. They want to rewrite thousands, even millions, of years of evolution and try to make us forget compassion and helping each other was how we evolved. The Right wants to put a price on every human interaction. Can anyone imagine our prehistoric ancestors charging for hunting lessons? Capitalism would demand that. Or requiring payment to help the other members of a tribe procure shelter? There was a time in our history when not everyone knew how to start a fire. Can you imagine if our ancestors charged other members of their tribe to build a fire? And if you couldn't pay, you'd freeze to death. We would have never risen out of the cave as a species if we started out with this Right Wing mindset that everything had to be bought and paid for to be good.

We are a group species, not a solitary species.

[gtar100]

15. Just like we do for college. We demand a high price for our

young men and women to get a higher education. If we valued humanity, we would all share the cost to educate as many as possible.

[chillspike]

16. Exactly

We should use technology like the internet to make education accessible to all. And even if we can't educate everyone, we should at least promote self-sufficient living models so people can support themselves, at the basic minimum, without having to be a wage slave or be at the mercy of an employer.

If we could solve THAT, to me, that would solve a lot of modern conflict.

[raccoon]

17. Some of what you mentioned is just what the corporations want...

"I think the Right unconsciously wants to turn us into a solitary species instead of the group species we are now."

"The Right wants to put a price on every human interaction."

What a remarkable coincidence! :sarcasm:


"We would have never risen out of the cave as a species if we started out with this Right Wing mindset that everything had to be bought and paid for to be good."

Amen to that.

[xchrom]

8. our dna is in excess of 99% in common -- and it looks like

that at sometime in the middle east the two groups did some schtuping.

asian and caucasion ancestory shows the most in common.

imagine the wedding parties and the those unions brought about -- oy -- and the bridezillas?!?

[zipplewrath]

9. They didn't allow that

They said it undermined the traditional institution of marriage and forbid it to happen. They insisted that Rah never meant Sue and Gobagod to marry.

[truedelphi]

10. Nova just had a program on how the Neanderthals had the speech gene

I watched some but not all of it.

But what I saw was rather fascinating.

[sofa king]

19. Almost every culture has their giants in myth.

Nephilim. Titans. Grendel. Yeti. Musk Ape.

[Crunchy Frog]

12. I think that was what they thought very early on

but I don't think it's been for many decades.

[laconicsax]

14. Kind of...back when it was first discovered that they weren't just oddly shaped humans.

Once the evidence started coming in, it was realized that they were closely related but not ancestral.

[semillama]

18. Did I miss something?

Wasn't it recently determined through DNA analysis that the Neandertals were simply a subspecies of H. sapiens? And that pretty much everyone who isn't African has up to three percent of their DNA from Neandertal ancestors during a brief period of interbreeding about 30,000 years ago?

[laconicsax]

20. Not a subspecies, a close cousin. n/t