Sleep With Neanderthals? Apparently We (homo Sapiens) Did

Seattle Times ^ | 8-13-2006 | Faye Flam

[blam]

Sleep with Neanderthals? Apparently we (homo Sapiens) did

By Faye Flam

The Philadelphia Inquirer

Though it's been 150 years since mysteriously humanlike bones first turned up in Germany's Neander Valley, the find continues to shake our collective sense of human identity.

Neanderthals are humanity's closest relatives, with brains at least as big as ours, and yet we don't know whether we should include them as members of our own species.

No longer does science consider them our direct ancestors but some suspect Neanderthals and modern homo Sapiens interbred during the 20,000 some-odd years we co-existed in Europe. The archaeological record doesn't tell us one way or another, but earlier, researchers announced they would seek more clues by scraping DNA from Neanderthal bones and teeth.

The question of sex with Neanderthals speaks to our understanding of ourselves, our origins and our uniqueness. If this other type of human being wasn't like us, what was he like?

As I started researching this issue, I found myself staring at a picture of a nude Neanderthal man — a forensic sculpture created by Duke University paleoanthropologist Steve Churchill that was published last year in the journal Science. The model, based on a skeleton found at La Ferrassie in France, is mesmerizing in its combination of familiarity and alienness.

To be honest, he's really not half bad looking. He's got a good, muscular body, and while he's nobody's idea of handsome, that could be forgiven if he had a nice personality or I was starving and he offered to throw some rhino steaks on the fire for me.

We're not talking about the stoop-shouldered, hairy, apelike Neanderthal of popular culture. There's no evidence they were hairier than modern people, says anthropologist Harold Dibble, a curator at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology. . .

[cripplecreek]

Cro-magnon was a modern man, no different from us.

For all intensive purposes yes. A bit taller and maybe a bit more robust but the same could be said about the Japanese of today compared to those from the 1940s.

[SittinYonder]

I found myself staring at a picture of a nude Neanderthal man

Neander-Tall porno ping

[Calpernia]

ROFL!

[Fatuncle]

You're too late. They are already there.

[AntiGuv]

To be honest, he's really not half bad looking. He's got a good, muscular body, and while he's nobody's idea of handsome, that could be forgiven if he had a nice personality or I was starving and he offered to throw some rhino steaks on the fire for me.

Yeah, as if Faye Flam has much to bargain with..

Just to reiterate a couple points I made in that other thread of BS conjecture and fantasies that I commented at length on, we do not find mixed communities in the fossil record. Moreover, we have no idea what level of communication Neanderthals might muster, but it is absolutely safe to say that if they spoke any language it was not the language of contemporary Cro-Magnons. In other words, it's not altogether clear how Ms Flam would even communicate her desire to put out for some rhino steaks.

Furthermore, we have no way to know what the Neanderthal disposition might've been like. Ms. Flam seems to think it matters more whether she would have sex with Mr. Neanderthal than it matters whether he would have sex with her. Moreover, what makes Ms. Flam assume that Mr. Neanderthal would think her putting out was worth giving up a rhino steak for? Hell, I can see right now that I wouldn't give up a rhino steak for that.

Anyhow, I could go on and on and on. The problem here is that it's so easy to 'humanize' Neanderthals so that they're nothing more than slightly mishapen Cro-Magnons in the popular imagination, but the truth is that we know nothing at all about their personality or whatever passed for culture among them, much less about their sexual disposition. But the fact of the matter is that Cro-Magnons and Neanderthal by all evidence were separated by hundreds of thousands of years of divergent evolution, and that neither modern nor fossil DNA evidence has turned up any sign of interbreeding.

[elcid1970]

Yeah, well, next time maybe do a little research!

[toddlintown]

"As I started researching this issue, I found myself staring at a picture of a nude Neanderthal man..."

Too much information!

[Solamente]

Therayza Heinz Kerry

[humblegunner]

Roll that beautiful Neanderthal-walk footage please, sir...

Y'all make this seem like a bad thing...

[DoctorMichael]

"Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?"

[HitmanLV]

Haunting eyes on that chick. Scary!

[freedumb2003]

I always thought they were rather Cro-magnon.

You know, Yaleys ;)

[expatpat]

You might have, but I can assure you that I did not.

[HitmanLV]

Hey give that guy a shave and a haircut and he looks a lot like me! Maybe I'm the missing link! :-)

[WhiteKnight]

I found myself staring at a picture of a nude Neanderthal man — a forensic sculpture created by Duke University paleoanthropologist Steve Churchill...

Unfortunately, just like everything else about evolution, this is a created sculpture, ie.. a fake

Evolution is bad sceince and its' theory does not pass the sceintific method.

IMHO, WhiteKnight

[AntiGuv]

In fact there was always a big mystery as to why there was zero evidence of crossbreeding despite the two groups living in close proximity for long periods of time. The DNA studies pretty much resolved the mystery. WE could no more interbreed with neanderthals than we could with horses.

There is much reason to think that modern humans could not interbreed with Neanderthals, simply because the vast preponderence of the evidence points squarely toward no interbreeding. But that being said, even if modern humans and Neanderthals could interbreed there are many, many sociocultural and behavioral factors that could very well make it never happen, or happen so rarely as to be of no consequence.

[freedumb2003]

I've dated a few

Hey Laz, people are talking about your dating history again.

[AntiGuv]

Haunting eyes on that chick. Scary!

Just bear in mind that they did not have make-up and tweezers 35,000 years ago. ;^)

[freedumb2003]

Evolution is bad sceince and its' theory does not pass the sceintific method.

IMHUO, WhiteKnight

Fixed your post. No charge.

[Calpernia]

LOL!