April 17, 2005

• Man, I keep reading that headline as "Free Trade Killed Off The Netherlands".
• briank: me too (ack, the ultimate internet sin). Ok, having read the article, it seems the main push is that some economist ran three simulations that showed (in thier models) that having access to items obtained through trade somehow caused the Neanderthals to die. In the midst of all that they mention 'organized living spaces' and 'specialization'. These things allowed for 'greater innovation', according to a researcher in the article. So... here's my beef. They had to *die* somehow. WE killed them off. So here's my half-assed theory: Due to the fact the we are more selfish and prone to violence, WE killed them off. I'm pretty sure a more aggresive species with the same weapons as another species could overcome the other. We're just asshole monkeys that like to kill. Esp. when it benefits us.
• Are they sure there wasn't a mass effort by humans to kill off the Neanderthals for whatever reason? A primitive holocaust?
• fuck the Neanderthals. fuck them up their stupid asses.
• Had some problem neighbors?
• Neanderthals got busted Neanderthals got dead Probably because we went and bashed Their hairy little heads But maybe they're just hiding With their sasquatch pals Ready to kick some hairless ass And elope with hairless gals
• )))!!! Hurray for moneyjane!!!
• moneyjane rocks as usual!
• There is also the possibility no one killed them off. They may have simply been absorbed into the greater human population. Considering how little difference there was between us, and how highly sexed humans are -- we'll screw just about anything, it seems -- I would suspect it was actually a mixture of the two. Most likely we killed them off, and interbred. …due to the fact the we are more selfish and prone to violence… Evidence, please? We have no idea how selfish/not selfish Homo sapiens neanderthalensis were. For all we know, it may have been our relatively greater altruism that allowed us to prosper at their selfish expense. We just don't know. We weren't different species, just different subspecies. Odds are, we acted almost exactly alike.
• douggles, that's a matter of great debate. I believe Milford Walpoff (University of Michigan, from memory) is the greatest proponent of the "Neandertal=subspecies" theory, and there's not a lot of evidence to back it up, aside from the young male skeleton from Portugal which may have simply been a very robust H. sapiens. Plus I've just been reading a Jean Auel novel and ugh, she bugs me. :) Personally, I prefer the more widely-accepted idea that Neandertals were a dead-end species of their own, that there was little or no cross-breeding and that the species simply died out due to climatic changes and being forced out of their territory by a species that was infinitely more adaptable to new environments (ie. us). (I haven't read the links, but plan to. I'm probably repeating what's already been said.)
• I actually agree with your for the most part, tracicle. I probably consider the two a bit more closely related than you, but I also consider the fact that the two species can be so easily confused (such as the Portugal specimen), as likely evidence of our close genetic relation. Unless and until we can identify gene markers from Neanderthals, and look for them in contemporary European/Semitic populations, we'll probably never know if any interbreeding took place.
• IF i'm not mistaken, haven't they already done a DNA comparison?
• As far as I know, we haven't gotten any good samples of Neanderthal DNA, though I sadly don't keep up in the field like I once did. It's certainly possible that it's happened and I missed any papers on the subject.
• MonkeyFilter: We'll screw just about anything, it seems.
• mtDNA has been extracted and tested (by Svante Paabo in 1997), but all mtDNA can prove, I think, is that Neandertals were/were not in our direct evolutionary line. And we already know that they weren't - they were sort of a sideline - this just helps determine the point at which their species broke off from our evolutionary line. Mandyman is studying genetics I think...
• Thank you beeswacky and ktk...I am quite pleased to have debuted my singular example of Poetius Ridiculohootus Neanderthalensis right here in the fabled bananaed halls of Monkeylandia.
• Moneyjane, you win the big prize. I humbly offer this, the First Annual Monkey Poetry award to ya: ) [-] (It's a banana mounted on a pedestal).
• Raise your hand if you'd do a neandertal. *raises hand*
• Thank you, StoryBored! *goes up to podium in fabulously expensive dress* "Um...omigod! Thank you so much everyone, especially to beeswacky...*cries* Beeswacky, without your sterling example and encouragement, I never would have dared to write a Neanderthal poem...but you believed in me, dammit! And that's why I want to dedicate this award to you...thank you! Thank you!" *trips on dress, falls off stage, rescued and escorted back to seat by spider monkey security detail*
• *so touched .. he weeps .. hopes moneyjane didn't sprain anything in her memorable exit(
• I'm just hoping she didn't land on that thing!
• In the newspaper some years back, I read that a paleoanthropologist was doing comparative research on Neanderthals and modern Europeans, and was finding a lot of shared characteristics in Scandinavians. I'm not sure what DNA findings did to his theories, or how the DNA folks explain those "intermediate" skeletons that have turned up in the Middle East. I do know that I worked with a programmer at my first tech writing job who was a dead ringer for a Neanderthal. Dress him up in a fur kilt and stick him in a museum diorama, and nobody would have raised an eyebrow. (For the record, he was both extremely intelligent and very charming.) For the old Neanderthal-in-a-suit gimmick, see National Geographic, January, 1996. For an interesting alternate theory of what became of our fellow Homines sapientes, see Dance of the Tiger by Björn Kurtén. It loses a bit in translation (the author is a Finn, writing in Swedish), but it's a fascinating and compelling read, by someone who really knows his subject.
• LaGatta, I imagine the reasoning behind that is physical changes to adapt to climate. I believe (although this may be my flawed imagination) that comparisons can be and have been drawn between most people of near-Arctic regions and the Neandertals: stocky build, larger sinuses/nasal cavities, more complex nasal conchae for the purposes of warming the air before it enters the lungs, and so on.
• Speaking of adaptation, whatever happened to the theory that the Neanderthals were light-complexioned and passed along the trait of blondness to northern Europeans? As far as adaptation goes, it makes sense that the Neanderthals were fair and the Cro-Magnons were brunette, Mediterranean if not black-skinned by the time they arrived in Europe from Africa. Blondness is an adaptation to the weaker sunlight in northern regions, and the Neanderthals certainly had a few more millenia than we've had to adapt to life in subarctic regions. That being the case, I'm always tickled when popular-culture artists make the Neanderthal dark and hairy, and the Cro-Magnon lass he's menacing as a voluptuous blonde with lots of unhairy skin on display (Show of hands, Monkeys, how many of you think Ms C.-M. looked like Raquel Welch?)
• Neanderthals, FUCK YEAH! They were then ancestors of Homo sapiens. Neanderthals, FUCK YEAH! Their genes are being sequenced, so suck on my balls!
• Feminism killed off the Neanderthals!