Originally posted by NGC2736
I'm sure a photo hunt would show many images of people with physical characteristics of the Neanderthal (Neandertal). I have personally met some individuals that displayed the brow ridge commonly associated with them. I hold for a merging of the two cultures.

Both bats and birds have wings. That doesn't mean that they have anything else in common.

Originally posted by Thain Esh Kelch

Originally posted by NGC2736
I'm sure a photo hunt would show many images of people with physical characteristics of the Neanderthal (Neandertal). I have personally met some individuals that displayed the brow ridge commonly associated with them. I hold for a merging of the two cultures.

Both bats and birds have wings. That doesn't mean that they have anything else in common.

The evidence is piling up that Cro Magnon and the Neanderthal had lots in common--they were more alike than they were different, and that the Neanderthals were first. Cro Magnon thought enough of the Neanderthal tool kit to borrow it and didn't bother to improve on it for a very long time. Neanderthals were fully human, and most scientists are finally coming to terms with that fact.

Originally posted by reject
Neanderthals were less social & less aggressive. Homo Sapiens formed very large tribes & were more ruthless. Probably there was some interbreeding; mostly by dominant male homo sapiens.

Neanderthals were more beings that you could drink a cup of Jo with. Probably tyrants and guillotines are more apt to our culture and what we are and how our social domination is debatable to being "better" and more advanced. The winters in Europe had to have been cold so the Neandertals could survive the cold but not to the more adaptive Machiavellian Sapiens. I don't believe Neanderthals wrote books about athiesm, and had some faiths that made them really gung ho for a belief and then write books later (intellect) saying that belief was not real.

Originally posted by MarkScheppy

Originally posted by reject
Neanderthals were less social & less aggressive. Homo Sapiens formed very large tribes & were more ruthless. Probably there was some interbreeding; mostly by dominant male homo sapiens.

Neanderthals were more beings that you could drink a cup of Jo with. Probably tyrants and guillotines are more apt to our culture and what we are and how our social domination is debatable to being "better" and more advanced. The winters in Europe had to have been cold so the Neandertals could survive the cold but not the more adaptive Machiavellian Sapiens. I don't believe Neanderthals wrote books about athiesm, and had some faiths that made them really gung ho for a belief and then write books later (intellect) saying that belief was not real.

edit on 8-2-2012 by MarkScheppy because: add

Actually the latest evidence is that Neanderthals weren't cold-adapted at all based on studies of their noses and nasal aperture--they were warm adapted. That would explain why they were co-habitating in southern Europe and the Near East with Cro Magnon during the Ice Age. Note, too, that most Africans and Mongols/mongoloids, and Australian aborigines also have broad flat noses. That's a sign of heat adaptation. The anthropologists have had it wrong all this time.

I have always thought Neanderthals merged with homo sapiens.

What I ask now others believe the same. Why do you think it was homo sapiens that was the more advanced? Maybe it was the Neanderthal that added the spark that was needed to result in modern man.

We really need to get over our superiority complex

Originally posted by colin42
I have always thought Neanderthals merged with homo sapiens.

What I ask now others believe the same. Why do you think it was homo sapiens that was the more advanced? Maybe it was the Neanderthal that added the spark that was needed to result in modern man.

We really need to get over our superiority complex

Hi Colin,

This is my opinion as well. We got quite a bit of our DNA from them as well as alleles that strengthened our immune systems. Europeans most likely got their light skin and light hair from the Neanderthals. Another group to not rule out is the Denisovans.

They were not brutish, dumb cavemen. They survived for eons longer than we have. You don't do that unless you're adaptable and smart. They buried their dead with care. They took care of their sick. They were able to coordinate hunting strategies. They built houses out of mammoth bones, they had paints and art. I won't believe they didn't have language--I think Noam Chomsky is right and language is as natural to humans as breathing. In short, they were just as human as we are.

Cro Magnon, Neanderthal, and Denisovan were possibly (probably) all regional variants of the same species--we are all Homo sapiens. Kind of like there are morphological differences between the racial groups nowadays, but we don't differentiate, for example, by saying Homo sapiens caucasianus or Homo sapiens africanus or Homo sapiens orientalus.

Strange thing (maybe), that allot of species that seemed to be fit with the neanderthaler (by the looks and hair), mammoth, saber-tooth tiger, giant deers, you name it went also ''gone'' but really; what is ''gone''?
Basicly the same animals are still here and humans as well, but just with less hair, smaller, and just more modern looking?

I wonder if this will happen again? still basicly the same animals and humans, but maybe again more ''polished''?

Although megalodon, with the white shark (basicly looks the same), never much changed much, except in size.I guess some things don't need much fixing...

Originally posted by Plugin
Strange thing (maybe), that allot of species that seemed to be fit with the neanderthaler (by the looks and hair), mammoth, saber-tooth tiger, giant deers, you name it went also ''gone'' but really; what is ''gone''?
Basicly the same animals are still here and humans as well, but just with less hair, smaller, and just more modern looking?

There's a famous quote that says that if you put a Neanderthal in modern clothes, he'd fit in perfectly well on a subway. Neither they nor Cro Magnon was much shorter than modern humans, but both of those groups were more muscular and had bigger brains than we do now. The biggest difference was in the facial features, but we obviously found them attractive enough to mate with.

We probably all know someone who just looks like our image of a Neanderthal. And there's an old story that there were a pair of Neanderthal twins in Wales who died in the 1980's.