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Humans Interbred with Four Extinct Hominin Species, Research Finds

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Re: Humans Interbred with Four Extinct Hominin Species, Research Finds

#131

Post by whenanother »

rjf72 wrote: post #40
lkrubner wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of these species are thought to be smarter than us, so you better be careful or you will end up the specimen in the zoo.

No, they're not. The only 'evidence' for this is cranial size. Neanderthals had larger brain sizes than modern humans. Now let's look at all the other evidence. Neanderthals existed longer than the entire existence of humans. And in that time they never managed to get out of the stone age. Stone age sounds nicer than it is. Beat two rocks together, sharp stuff falls off, use it => you're in the stone age. Contrary to…

history is filled with societies that fell due to aggressors attacking when they were at their weakest.

Re: Humans Interbred with Four Extinct Hominin Species, Research Finds

#132

Post by nathanvanfleet »

hashberry wrote: post #55

"Homo sapiens" is Latin for "wise man," but there were many Hominin species who possessed comparative culture, art, and intelligence. Neanderthals actually had larger brains compared to modern humans[0]. There are many theories on why Neanderthals became extinct[1]; my favorite is that we simply outbred them because of our sex appeal. What is Latin for "sexy human?" [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal#Anato…

That is weird that it would be how sexy we are and not how sexual we are.

Re: Humans Interbred with Four Extinct Hominin Species, Research Finds

#133

Post by fsloth »

laretluval wrote: post #127
camelNotation wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is understandable why we are eager to find capacities for language and culture in similar species, but the thing that gives homo sapiens the ability to survive is not just language or art, but our ability to organize large numbers of people under trans-familial identities (i.e. advanced political states and culture-defining religion). If they weren't politically (high level behavior control) and religiously (low l…

What is the evidence for this claim?

I think the fact that we can organize billion souls under the flag of a nation state speaks volumes enough.

Did neanderthals have this capacity? I don't know. But if their psychology did not facilitate large scale collaboration, a violent human tribe killing a bunch of them now and again would explain some part why they disappeared.

I'm not saying a human tribe hunted them - just that a violent human tribe would attack all hominids around them.

And if the Neanderthals did not have this capacity for mass violence, in time these conflicts would dwindle their numbers.

Re: Humans Interbred with Four Extinct Hominin Species, Research Finds

#134

Post by snackematician »

I would be very cautious interpreting these results. There are no DNA samples from the putative EH1 and EH2 hominin populations -- these populations are statistical constructs used to explain the data, but not (yet) directly observed.

I do think it's likely that H. sapiens intermixed with other hominins besides Neanderthal and Denisovan, but the models used to infer these results make a lot of assumptions and are at best a drastic simplification of reality.

Re: Humans Interbred with Four Extinct Hominin Species, Research Finds

#136

Post by whenanother »

peter_retief wrote: post #41

So its possible that modern races of humans are actually our archaic ancestors?

yes, I am hoping specific gene contributions from specific archaic humans will eventually be used to determine the ethnicity or race of a person. this will lead to better health outcomes as it's well known that drugs do not affect people of different races/gender the same. the push back from doing this probably comes from groups that are trying to hide past genocidal events.

Re: Humans Interbred with Four Extinct Hominin Species, Research Finds

#137

Post by whenanother »

danieltillett wrote: post #76
amelius wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> my favorite is that we simply outbred them because of our sex appeal. Then why didn't the smart and strong Neanderthal males mate with the sexy Sapiens females?

That is exactly what they did - all the Neanderthal genes in the current populations has come down via Neanderthal males and sapien female matings. Personally I blame Tinder, but it could have something to do with Haldane's Rule [0]. 0 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haldane%27s_rule

is this from analyzing dna outside of europe? if this information only came from analyzing european dna then during the bronze age all males in europe were effectively eliminated. this would imply that the eurasian steppe men who replaced them were the source for the neanderthal dna. this implies that the prior to this event europe was populated with people with no neanderthal dna.

Re: Humans Interbred with Four Extinct Hominin Species, Research Finds

#138

Post by sterkekoffie »

danieltillett wrote: post #76
amelius wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> my favorite is that we simply outbred them because of our sex appeal. Then why didn't the smart and strong Neanderthal males mate with the sexy Sapiens females?

That is exactly what they did - all the Neanderthal genes in the current populations has come down via Neanderthal males and sapien female matings. Personally I blame Tinder, but it could have something to do with Haldane's Rule [0]. 0 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haldane%27s_rule

If a human male and a neanderthal female mated and produced female offspring, who then also reproduced, etc., how could you later tell that it was a human female and a neanderthal male? As far as I can understand, all we can speculate about is the sex of the offspring who reproduced, not the original pairings, correct?

Re: Humans Interbred with Four Extinct Hominin Species, Research Finds

#139

Post by Bartweiss »

Symmetry wrote: post #117
orange8 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They had greater cranial capacity than us, but so do elephants and whales. And the animal with the greatest brain-to-body-size ratio is tree shrew, suggesting that size doesn't really matter when it comes to intelligence.

Elephants and whales have big brains but they don't have as many neurons as you'd think from their brain volume. For most mammals neuron count scales as roughly the 3/4 power of brain volume. For primates and birds it scales linearly.

An interesting aside: elephants and whales do still have more neurons than us - African elephants have about twice as many.

But fascinatingly, those neurons aren't evenly distributed, and in fact humans have far more neurons in the cerebral cortex than elephants. Their extra neuron count is almost all in the cerebellum. Primates are skewed towards the forebrain, but elephants are far more cerebellum-heavy than e.g. rodents, which implies that a lot of their extra brainpower is being 'spent' on operating their larger bodies.

By forebrain neuron count, humans are beaten only by pilot whales - and all of the other close contenders are also cetaceans. No one quite seems to know why pilot whales have twice the neocortical neurons humans do, but it's still the number that tracks best with observed intelligence.

http://nautil.us/issue/35/boundaries/the-paradox-of-the-elep...

Re: Humans Interbred with Four Extinct Hominin Species, Research Finds

#140

Post by Juliate »

simondw wrote: post #124
renlo wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I see a videos / images of wolves I don’t perceive that “intelligence” that I perceive from dogs. Not to say wolves are any less intelligent or cognitive, dogs just have had the constraint that they needed to be able to communicate with humans well or they could die. Kind of makes me think if we ever were to encounter extraterrestrial intelligence we might have trouble identifying them as intelligent, or, have t…

Depends on the situation in which we encounter the aliens. If wolves were building interplanetary spacecraft, we'd have a hard time saying they weren't intelligent.

If they were, we probably wouldn't be there to see it. :D

Where No Wolf Has Gone Before.

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