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When Orcs Were Real
141–150 of 231 posts
Re: When Orcs Were Real
#142The work of Stanislaw Szukalski adds some interesting info to this topic.
https://web.archive.org/web/20080208204506re_/najmita.150m.c...
Re: When Orcs Were Real
#143I am very skeptical - they have 99.7% identical DNA, but supposedly an extremely different phenotype.
Eh, it's not that different. Humans have ineffective fur, and disorders exist that create a lot more of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertrichosis
Claims about skeletal differences are probably pretty well supported by physical evidence, and again, it's a reasonably small difference in size and scale.
Differences in facial structure seem likely just from differences in skeletal structure, our face maps pretty closely to skeptical structure. But also, we can see pretty wide genetic variation in facial structure in humans, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Pastrana
Humans are pretty cannibalistic already, I don't buy his evidence that neanderthals were, but a human could survive on an almost entirely meat diet, no reason to think neanderthals weren't more inclined to.
Pupil shape seems like the farthest out there, but there is variation in pupil shape within the human population too. It's plausible... again I don't really buy his evidence as proof https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coloboma
In general I don't think this article is meant to say "they looked exactly like this", but "they probably looked monstrous", if it turns out there pupils were the same as humans, but also they had sharper more claw like nails, the point wouldn't change in the slightest.
Re: When Orcs Were Real
#144I am very skeptical - they have 99.7% identical DNA, but supposedly an extremely different phenotype.
The similarity between human and chimpanzee DNA is about the same IIRC.
Googled this, quite a bit less is shared with a chimp.
https://thednatests.com/how-much-dna-do-humans-share-with-ot...
Re: When Orcs Were Real
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is what I thought when was evoked cannibalism: what if those were the traces of sapiens festing of neanderthalis (and not neanderthalis eating neanderthalis, as seems to be supposed in the text)?
As far as I understand Neanderthal genes in Humans don't actually exist in the Y chromosome. That means that only female Neanderthals transmitted their genes down the Sapiens gene tree. This could mean all sort of things. Maybe Neanderthal Males with Female Humans didn't generate viable off-spring. Maybe Our selection process favored non-Neanderthal genes and it was phased out of the Y chromosome gene pool? Maybe as…
Given how human babies are already at the maximum size a human female can deliver, I suspect you may be on to something. Other species don't have such traumatic births, but human babies barely fit through the birth canal. Neanderthal babies were probably much larger. In particular, their skulls. If a Neanderthal male impregnated a human female, I wouldn't be surprised if it killed her. Conversely, a Neanderthal female probably had an easier time delivering a hybrid baby.
Re: When Orcs Were Real
#146If this is being presented as a work of speculative fiction, it's pretty neat. If it's being presented as serious academic work, it's asinine bullshit.
Re: When Orcs Were Real
#147> and carried off and raped our women. (How did you think the Neanderthal DNA got into our genome?) I don't know if Neandertals were rapist, but given the behavior of Sapiens, it wouldn't be completely surprising if it was in fact the opposite: Sapiens abducting Neandertal females and raping them…
Obviously it is both. Rape in nature is extremely common (as defined by female trying to escape, but male pinning it down). There is no reason that both neanderthal and homo-sapient males wouldn't have engaged in this behavior...as it is only cultural taboos, norms, and theory of mind that prevent its occurrence.
Re: When Orcs Were Real
#148It makes for a good story to be sure, but probably little else. Much like the popular myth of the noble savage influencing academics of the time, contemporary popular disdain for the people and cultures of the past colors many contemporary academics. Another weird thing, So we have found evidence of the feathers of dinosaurs, but not the fur of something from 40k years ago? that seems rather unlikely. In this case, t…
I don't believe we have any ancient hominid integument at all, just a few strands of hair here and there. Soft tissues are extremely rare survivals (and we have very few examples of any ancient mammalian soft tissue), so it's not terribly surprising given the already scant hominid remains.
That we have a little bit of dinosaur skin impressions is down to said animals being around for a long, long time, and over much more territory.
The absence of evidence is certainly not evidence of absence here; there's simply no evidence one way or the other. Excavators are getting much better at recognizing non-skeletal remains, though, so perhaps we'll see something come up in the future.
Re: When Orcs Were Real
#149TIL what "InfoGalactic" is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vox_Day#Infogalactic After clicking some of the links in this article I went to what looked very much like wikipedia, so much so i went on a typical half hour wikipedia-dive, but wasn't actually wikipeida (I have a big monitor and the links I clicked all directed to subsections of articles so I didn't see the info-galactic logo at the top). Really puts this ar…
I am glad InfoGalactic exists and try to tell other about it. It grows tiring, the character assassinations of right-wing biographies on wikipedia, for example controversies are presented in the opening paragraphs instead of being a sub-section. For example from the opening paragraph of Vox Day: >>Theodore Robert Beale (born August 21, 1968), also known as Vox Day, is an American far-right activist,[2] writer, musici…
Okay. I never heard of this guy before, but for someone who has written "The answer for those who support Western civilization, regardless of sex, color, or religion, is to embrace white tribalism, white separatism, and especially white Christian masculine rule", these are exactly the adjectives that shuld be in the opening paragraph of an encyclopaedia article about him. He is politically active and very extreme, which is noteworthy information.
Re: When Orcs Were Real
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
That might be the shortest Wikipedia article I have ever seen. Here[1] is a review from NPR that provides more info. [1] - https://www.npr.org/2020/10/27/927772107/kindred-dismantles-...
Yea - I linked it to avoid a link to a bookseller :)
Yep, I was doing the exact same thing which is how I ended up at the NPR review despite booksellers being the top 3 results on Google.