idle musings

[ratcreature]

After reading another article about how Neanderthals may have contributed even more to the genetic mix of modern humans outside of Africa than previously assumed, I've been wondering how these groups of humans would have seen each other.

Would they have actually thought the other group to be more different than other groups of their own "species"? (I'm actually not sure you can really call these human subtypes different species when they could and did reproduce with fertile offspring, but from what I gather the species concept overall just breaks down at certain points when you poke at it anyway.)

I mean, sure when you look at Neanderthal reconstructions they look somewhat different from us, but not different like a chimpanzee, and modern humans among ourselves also have quite a lot of variation (though I'm not sure how much of that had developed at what time), not just skin color, hair and eye color but facial features, size etc. leading to the whole "human races" construction, and the difficulty to get to a consensus that we are in fact all fundamentally the same. So if you are an early Homo Sapiens and see a Neanderthal would you think them really "other" or just somewhat "other" (i.e. like some unrelated other clan of Homo Sapiens)? They also had tools, fire and probably art too after all.

Of course we probably won't ever know, and afaik they haven't found sites of mixed groups that might be a sign that the mixing was even somewhat consensual. And there doesn't seem to have been that much mingling considering both kinds shared Europe several thousand years.

So then another interesting question is of course whether the later Neanderthals were aware that they were slowly going extinct. I imagine they must have been on some level, as their groups got rarer and modern humans more numerous, but then each group might think it a local problem?

I feel like there should be more speculative fiction about this. The examples with Neanderthal appearances I've read were either older (like Auel) and/or more like SF with alternate timelines where they didn't die out (like Neanderthal Parallax) and such.

Comments

[lilacsigil]

It is interesting - and it looks like people of European background are descended from female Neanderthals and male Homo Sapiens, and there's no trace of male Neanderthals left. Nobody knows whether this is because we weren't cross-fertile that way, or if genetic drift has (by chance) wiped out their contribution, or because Homo Sapiens males had sex with Neanderthal females but not the other way around. So there's another thing to add to the list of things to wonder about!

Some modern variation had developed at the time, including huge differences in skin colour. They used to think Neanderthals were all pale skinned with reddish brown or blonde hair, but apparently not - they were at least as varied as modern Europeans and Middle Eastern people and possibly more so.

[ratcreature]

I read a theory somewhere that differences in the Neanderthal Y-chromosome to ours were found that might have caused Homo Sapiens women to miscarry male babies from them.

Also in some other place that the current theory is that when Neanderthals reproduced among themselves the men stayed with their group and the women went to the other group to diversify.

So you could have multiple reasons for why the mixing played out as it did. Like maybe early on some Neanderthal women just went with groups of Homo Sapiens that migrated into Neanderthal territory because they would have gone to another group anyway, and this was easier than getting to another Neanderthal clan.

[kkglinka]

Yeah, and that's before we get to the raping and pillaging behavior we see in modern humans, in which we compete over resources and a (usually more dominant) group literally breeds out their competitors. Sadly, this behavior is not an invention of modern socialization but a rather ancient one found in many species. One would hope it was more tribal/village trade and intermarriage between groups that didn't view themselves as all that different. But, the aforementioned evidence suggests species/race based self-segregation, on the basis of tools, art, graves...likelihood of cannibalism, etc.

[ratcreature]

From what I've read the raping and pillaging has actually decreased over time. I guess as weaponry evolved conflicts become fewer because they get more devastating and costly.

Probably they treated each other about as well/badly as modern humans treat each other, with all sorts of violent and non-violent events happening over that long time when they had encounters. I mean, population density was sparse, but then I imagine the really good spots with the most favorable conditions weren't that common either.

It's really interesting to think about that there was a long time when there were two kinds of intelligent and self-aware humans species around (maybe even more with the Denisovans), but it isn't certain that they perceived it as such. I mean they might have just though that there were lots of different human clans and some looked more different than others, and each favored people looking similar to themselves (as humans today seem to do as well) when mingling, without thinking that there two distinct types in competition.