No, generally within science 'species' has a loose definition that roughly correlates with the actual underlying physical events occurring in the wild (the true population of the gene pool).

For example, if pressed, about as much as you could get from an evo biologist is that what distinguishes difference between species is their inability to interbreed.

Humans probably could tell neanderthal were "different" but not in a way where they thought they were truly "other".

Right, but any human could tell that a chimpanzee is not the same thing as themselves. Could they tell that with neanderthals?

Sure they did. Not so long ago, a lot of people thought that black humans were a different specie, or at least a subspecie.

If anything, humans tend to be more prone to look for differences than assume equality.

What? People are all the same species: Homo Sapiens. There's nothing political or controversial about that. Unless you've met living Neanderthals?

Sure, it can be said that different "races" among humans make up a variety of subspecies. Yet, subspecies is not an objective reality. It is an example of where humans invent words to attempt to categorize and quantify things with fuzzy, unclear boundaries.

Why do we invent words like this? Because they're useful for enhancing knowledge and communication. When a word stops doing that, for example because of some immense contextual baggage connected to it, there's no point in forcing the matter, because we can just use different words and still get the same knowledge we seek otherwise.

Humans are illogical and emotionally complex. Denying that fact and chalking it up to political maneuvers is, ironically, itself an example of illogical emotional reaction.

Just use the term "ethnicity" so we can get on with science instead of wasting time trying to dig up old words for personal gratification.

Subspecies is not an old word, it's a current word. The question is not whether we should apply old terminology or new terminology. It's whether it's OK to apply the same terminology to humans that we do to everything else.

The term "subspecie" implies that the two populations cannot interbreed unless artificially forced to. E.g. two populations living in isolation. Sometimes it also implies that the offspring has lower fitness (e.g. half of the descendency is sterile). Usually two subspecies show phenotipical differences, but it's not enough.

The term doesn't apply to humans because through all history black people has been in contact with non-black people, and interbreeding without any trouble. Having a bit more melatonine in your skin doesn't make you a new subspecie.

But if your head size is huge (like Neanderthal), so huge that half your iterbreed newborns die or kill the mother, you are on the path of speciation but still the same specie because interbreeding is possible.

They(we?) were more related to each other. I guess that like chimpanzee[1] and bonobos[2], perhaps closer, but my biology knowledge is not strong enough to choose the perfect example.

Note the humans and chimpanzees diverged like 5 million years ago. Neanderthal is very close to us and it's reclassified as it's own specie or as the same specie from time to time.

There is a nice graphic in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimpanzee%E2%80%93human_last_... Neanderthal is not in the graphic, but if you want to add it, you should put in near the top left, between us and H. Erectus, probably closer to us.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimpanzee

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonobo

Having just seen a comparison of human and Neanderthal skeletons in person, it seems rather far fetched that they couldn’t tell each other were different.

Forensic scientists can also tell what race you are from your skeleton. It's not necessarily a determining factor.

"Same thing" obviously has blurry boundaries. Neanderthals might have seemed to be a different race or the like.

Yeah, and any human can tell that you are not the same thing as me. We can form all sorts of groups… people with dark hair and light hair, skin color, eye color, nose shape, etc. Which differences determine that another person is too ‘other’?

I always recommend one of my favorite essays for this topic: “The categories were made for man, not man for the categories”

https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-ma...

You will have to ask them