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Re:Modern human incursion into Neanderthal territories 54k y... by hunterb123 on Thursday February 10, 2022 @01:42PM (#30290601)
Doesn't seem like a very sound theory, it's just more "Neanderthals were more stupid" with a backwards reasoning why they lasted so long.

It's more likely they were successful but slowly bred into the larger Homo Sapien population over time, judging from everyone's genetics today. Caucasians have way too high of a percentage of Neanderthal for them to have been killed off. Most of their population bred in.

Re:Modern human incursion into Neanderthal territories 54k y... by thehappypm on Thursday February 10, 2022 @01:59PM (#30290853)
It’s a core argument in Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari.
Re:Modern human incursion into Neanderthal territories 54k y... by hunterb123 on Thursday February 10, 2022 @02:01PM (#30290875)
Ok, he's most likely wrong.

Interbreeding is pretty much proven.

Do you know why he thought they didn't have strong language skills and how he linked that to deception and such or was he guessing?

Because we have genetic tests nowadays, and it looks like they all bred in from the high percentages people have.

Re:Modern human incursion into Neanderthal territories 54k y... by thehappypm on Thursday February 10, 2022 @04:35PM (#30292977)
Interbreeding did happen but it’s probably not true that Neanderthals got wholesale assimilated into Homo sapiens. More that there was some low level of interbreeding.

I recommend reading the book, and also I would not recommend dismissing a respected book in one sentence, but I will say that the argument is largely anthropological. that the millions of years of human existence without development into more advanced civilizations can best be explained by language and oral history. More specifically, the ability to think in abstract and communicate it to others.

Re:Modern human incursion into Neanderthal territories 54k y... by hunterb123 on Thursday February 10, 2022 @05:35PM (#30293702)
> Interbreeding did happen but it’s probably not true that Neanderthals got wholesale assimilated into Homo sapiens. More that there was some low level of interbreeding.

Why is it probably not true? It's the simplest reasoning. Why did they have to be deceived through language or annihilated, but slightly fornicated?

> I recommend reading the book, and also I would not recommend dismissing a respected book in one sentence

Seems reading the book wouldn't help me if you read it and can't argue the points on it's behalf.

I'll ask this again:

Do you know why he thought they didn't have strong language skills and how he linked that to annihilation via deception and such or was he guessing?

Re:Modern human incursion into Neanderthal territories 54k y... by amanaplanacanal on Thursday February 10, 2022 @02:53PM (#30291550)
Wouldn't current percentages depend more on how adaptive those particular genes are than what the starting percentage was? How many generations between then and now?