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Not strictly, because species is not a strict definition. Whatever strict definition you adopt, you will arrive some "strictly speaking" problems. Think of Nea
by netcan 8y ago
Not strictly, because species is not a strict definition. Whatever strict definition you adopt, you will arrive some "strictly speaking" problems.
Think of Neanderthals and humans as two big statistical clusters (of gene prevelance). So individual genes from the neanderthal cluster exist, but the cluster does not.
So e Neanderthals do have descendants though, us.
- antpls 8y agoAmong today's humans, could we find similar statistical clusters that would be as important as the difference between Neanderthal and Homo sapiens? We would have to give new names for those clusters.
- netcan 8y agoImportance is largely a question of what happens after. What we don't have is clusters as distinct from eachother as Neanderthals/Sapiens. Even within the sapiens cluster, there were more distinct sub clusters then than now. But, sure.. clusters still exist. My family are more closely related to eachother than to yours.
- willpiers 8y agoThis is what we call "race"
- allemagne 8y ago>statistical clusters ... as important as the difference between Neanderthal and Homo sapiens No it isn't. Not even close.
- 08-15 8y agoProbably not. The difference between any human and any neanderthal is about twice as big as the biggest difference between two humans. One could now argue that if two differences in one thousand DNA bases constitutes different subspecies, then maybe one in a thousand does so, too, but at the very least it constitutes a different race. One could, and both thresholds would be arbitrary. Most biologists these days have decided that defining the terms "species" and "subspecies" properly is futile, and they stopped using the term "race" altogether. So... all differences are now officially unimportant. Neanderthals were humans, too! Sort of...