4 ms·

One thing always bothers me when reading about Neanderthal extinction. The fact that we have proof that interbreeding occurred between Sapiens and Neanderthal

One thing always bothers me when reading about Neanderthal extinction. The fact that we have proof that interbreeding occurred between Sapiens and Neanderthal should open the possibility that they quite simply were blended into a larger Sapiens population instead of mysteriously disappearing.

Oreb 3y ago
I’m not an expert, but isn’t the current consensus that this is pretty much exactly what happened?
adrian_b 3y ago
I have never heard of an example in earlier human history when two groups of humans have blended peacefully after their territories became in contact. I believe that the idea of blending by peaceful interbreeding is just wishful thinking based on modern ethics. Some Neanderthals have probably blended into modern human tribes, most likely some children or women. Other hybrid humans may be the result of random encounters. The majority of the Neanderthals have disappeared during a relatively short time span, of a few thousand years. Some of them might have died as a result of direct fights with the expanding modern humans, the others might have been forced to retreat into worse territories that provided less food, so their population has dwindled.
- krisoft 3y ago
  > the idea of blending by peaceful interbreeding is just wishful thinking based on modern ethics. I don’t see stephc_int13 writing anything about the peacefullness or non-peacefullness of the blending.
- stephc_int13 3y ago
  They very likely fought, but it does not mean that led to genocide. What I am suggesting is that Sapiens won by numbers, that they were more numerous.
- actionfromafar 3y ago
  The climate changed and the hunting grounds the Neanderthals were most fit for, disappeared. Sapiens were better adapted to the changed environment. The two groups existed in parallel for a long time. Also IIRC Neanderthals were always isolated in smaller groups compared to how Sapiens lived, even before Sapiens entered the shared stage.
- throw_pm23 3y ago
  Nah, the vast majority of groups of humans we think of as extinct (I mean in the historical era, say avars, thracians, cumans, vandals, etc. etc.) not in prehistory (of prehistoric groups hardly anything is known) blended into later populations and did not go extinct by the way of each member being killed. The further we go back into the past, such mass killing would be less possible technologically not more so.
- RandomLensman 3y ago
  The initial contact might not always have been peaceful, but the actual blend often is. Germany is not at war inside even though there is huge mixing between its states and the states themselves are not all historically "cut", one was also created by people voting to merge. People actually wanted to blend the various smaller states into one back in the 19th century (so the other way around).
- mcv 3y ago
  This event must have happened in prehistoric rather than historic times, but even in historic times, peaceful blending has happened. Not that everything was peaceful; human history is riddled with war and violence, even within homogenous groups of humans. But there are plenty of examples where one group conquered another and then assimilated into the population they conquered. We're quite often not genocidal. So it's entirely possible that Neanderthals were assimilated into Sapiens tribes.
- hyperthesis 3y ago
  It's thought to be 1.7% Neanderthal DNA in Europeans, which I think would require substantial interbreeding.
  - actionfromafar 3y ago
    Or some genes being promoted because of increased fitness.
- Anotheroneagain 3y ago
  >I have never heard of an example in earlier human history when two groups of humans have blended peacefully after their territories became in contact. Mexicans are roughly half Native American, half European. >The majority of the Neanderthals have disappeared during a relatively short time span, of a few thousand years. People did something that killed off the megafauna, and made people deformed at the same time. Genetically we are one species.
  - adrian_b 3y ago
    It is weird to provide Mexico as an example of peaceful blending. After most conquests, which have established a new ruling class in some territory, there has been a mixing between the former invaders and the previous native population. In many cases, the former invaders were less numerous than the natives, so after a few generations the mixed population has begun to resemble more the previous natives than the new incomers. Nevertheless, I do not consider that these are examples of peaceful blending. In all cases the original war has inflicted serious losses on the natives and the reason why in more recent times no more of them were killed than necessary was because they were needed as a work force. Before the organized states, which were able to tax the work of everybody, and before the use of slavery, there were no reasons to keep alive any vanquished tribe, which would compete for the food resources of the territory. The losers would have been forced to run away to other territories, to stay alive. Except perhaps for women and children, they would have never been adopted by the victorious tribe, to blend in it.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Anotheroneagain 3y ago
How do you determine that a gene variant is "Neanderthal", when most of the DNA is shared? Sapiens are Neanderthals.
- AlotOfReading 3y ago
  The answer to that question is the entire field of phylogenetics, especially computational phylogenetics [0]. Essentially, we sequenced a bunch of humans and neanderthals and the simplest explanation has certain genes evolving in the latter. One thing we're very confident in is that anatomically modern humans (i.e. us) are not neanderthals. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_phylogenetics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_phylogenetics
  - Anotheroneagain 3y ago
    It was based on the differences in mtDNA, but it's actually not true that such differences are unusual. The most striking example is from the Taï forest, where the 19 haplotypes show greater diversity than the entire human clade, even though they occur in a single breeding group. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC21819/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC21819/
  - throwup238 3y ago
    > One thing we're very confident in is that anatomically modern humans (i.e. us) are not neanderthals. We’re not neanderthals, but they are largely no longer considered a separate species. Neanderthals are now commonly known as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis in the literature. Their genetics are not that different from sapiens and the difference is only about twice as much as the variation in the global gene pool so they’re more an extinct branch of a much more diverse species which suffered a genetic bottleneck leaving only us.
    - AlotOfReading 3y ago
      The word "largely" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. It's nowhere close to consensus in any literature I'm familiar with. I do find it interesting that even among the people who are vocally supportive of the subspecies classification almost never use the terminology for it. In any case what I said is true regardless of the taxonomy.

Oreb 3y ago

I’m not an expert, but isn’t the current consensus that this is pretty much exactly what happened?

adrian_b 3y ago

I have never heard of an example in earlier human history when two groups of humans have blended peacefully after their territories became in contact. I believe that the idea of blending by peaceful interbreeding is just wishful thinking based on modern ethics. Some Neanderthals have probably blended into modern human tribes, most likely some children or women. Other hybrid humans may be the result of random encounters. The majority of the Neanderthals have disappeared during a relatively short time span, of a few thousand years. Some of them might have died as a result of direct fights with the expanding modern humans, the others might have been forced to retreat into worse territories that provided less food, so their population has dwindled.

krisoft 3y ago
> the idea of blending by peaceful interbreeding is just wishful thinking based on modern ethics. I don’t see stephc_int13 writing anything about the peacefullness or non-peacefullness of the blending.
stephc_int13 3y ago
They very likely fought, but it does not mean that led to genocide. What I am suggesting is that Sapiens won by numbers, that they were more numerous.
actionfromafar 3y ago
The climate changed and the hunting grounds the Neanderthals were most fit for, disappeared. Sapiens were better adapted to the changed environment. The two groups existed in parallel for a long time. Also IIRC Neanderthals were always isolated in smaller groups compared to how Sapiens lived, even before Sapiens entered the shared stage.
throw_pm23 3y ago
Nah, the vast majority of groups of humans we think of as extinct (I mean in the historical era, say avars, thracians, cumans, vandals, etc. etc.) not in prehistory (of prehistoric groups hardly anything is known) blended into later populations and did not go extinct by the way of each member being killed. The further we go back into the past, such mass killing would be less possible technologically not more so.
RandomLensman 3y ago
The initial contact might not always have been peaceful, but the actual blend often is. Germany is not at war inside even though there is huge mixing between its states and the states themselves are not all historically "cut", one was also created by people voting to merge. People actually wanted to blend the various smaller states into one back in the 19th century (so the other way around).
mcv 3y ago
This event must have happened in prehistoric rather than historic times, but even in historic times, peaceful blending has happened. Not that everything was peaceful; human history is riddled with war and violence, even within homogenous groups of humans. But there are plenty of examples where one group conquered another and then assimilated into the population they conquered. We're quite often not genocidal. So it's entirely possible that Neanderthals were assimilated into Sapiens tribes.
hyperthesis 3y ago
It's thought to be 1.7% Neanderthal DNA in Europeans, which I think would require substantial interbreeding.
- actionfromafar 3y ago
  Or some genes being promoted because of increased fitness.
Anotheroneagain 3y ago
>I have never heard of an example in earlier human history when two groups of humans have blended peacefully after their territories became in contact. Mexicans are roughly half Native American, half European. >The majority of the Neanderthals have disappeared during a relatively short time span, of a few thousand years. People did something that killed off the megafauna, and made people deformed at the same time. Genetically we are one species.
- adrian_b 3y ago
  It is weird to provide Mexico as an example of peaceful blending. After most conquests, which have established a new ruling class in some territory, there has been a mixing between the former invaders and the previous native population. In many cases, the former invaders were less numerous than the natives, so after a few generations the mixed population has begun to resemble more the previous natives than the new incomers. Nevertheless, I do not consider that these are examples of peaceful blending. In all cases the original war has inflicted serious losses on the natives and the reason why in more recent times no more of them were killed than necessary was because they were needed as a work force. Before the organized states, which were able to tax the work of everybody, and before the use of slavery, there were no reasons to keep alive any vanquished tribe, which would compete for the food resources of the territory. The losers would have been forced to run away to other territories, to stay alive. Except perhaps for women and children, they would have never been adopted by the victorious tribe, to blend in it.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Anotheroneagain 3y ago

How do you determine that a gene variant is "Neanderthal", when most of the DNA is shared? Sapiens are Neanderthals.

AlotOfReading 3y ago
The answer to that question is the entire field of phylogenetics, especially computational phylogenetics [0]. Essentially, we sequenced a bunch of humans and neanderthals and the simplest explanation has certain genes evolving in the latter. One thing we're very confident in is that anatomically modern humans (i.e. us) are not neanderthals. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_phylogenetics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_phylogenetics
- Anotheroneagain 3y ago
  It was based on the differences in mtDNA, but it's actually not true that such differences are unusual. The most striking example is from the Taï forest, where the 19 haplotypes show greater diversity than the entire human clade, even though they occur in a single breeding group. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC21819/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC21819/
- throwup238 3y ago
  > One thing we're very confident in is that anatomically modern humans (i.e. us) are not neanderthals. We’re not neanderthals, but they are largely no longer considered a separate species. Neanderthals are now commonly known as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis in the literature. Their genetics are not that different from sapiens and the difference is only about twice as much as the variation in the global gene pool so they’re more an extinct branch of a much more diverse species which suffered a genetic bottleneck leaving only us.
  - AlotOfReading 3y ago
    The word "largely" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. It's nowhere close to consensus in any literature I'm familiar with. I do find it interesting that even among the people who are vocally supportive of the subspecies classification almost never use the terminology for it. In any case what I said is true regardless of the taxonomy.