And one last clarification on my last post:
There's an implicit assumption in my wording that Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals were different species. In any case, the basic points I'm making apply just as well if they were sub-species (500,000+ years genetically removed from one another).
But FWIW my very strong personal view is that if Neanderthals were just today being discovered for the first time they would clearly be labeled a separate species. It is the fact that they were discovered decades ago, and that all this mythology grew up around them including the utterly false notion that the Cro-Magnon descended from Neanderthals, that keeps this debate going. IMHO.
And then of course you also have the fringe motivations: racists who want a separate evolutionary lineage for each race and creationists who want to abolish any evidence of hominid speciation. (And by no stretch am I assigning these motivations to even a majority of those who argue in favor of Neanderthal/Cro-Magnon admixture. But they are a motivation for some. I did say "fringe"..)
Your point about the differences in sexual appetites of Neanderthal vs Hss makes sense.
We also don't know, I am surmising, whether Neanderthal women were having a menstrual cycle in the manner of modern women.
This would make a large difference in the potential attractiveness, as well as viability of cross-breeding attempts.
Could it be that what you call "the fringe motivations: racists who want a separate evolutionary lineage for each race and creationists who want to abolish any evidence of hominid speciation" -- are not fringe points at all, but your main issue?
You go on:
(And by no stretch am I assigning these motivations to even a majority of those who argue in favor of Neanderthal/Cro-Magnon admixture.
But they are a motivation for some. I did say "fringe"..)
Indeed you did; you call those interested in the origins of race a "fringe". I prefer to call the origins of race a central issue in human anthropology.
-- The Multiregional Model, as Milford Wolpoff presents, is a rational hypotheses, far from a fringe study. -- And I see a Neanderthal "admixture" as an important addition to Wolpoff's theories on racial origins.
We need to discuss 'race', not put it in a closet, seeing we're on the edge of a racial/religious world war.