I don't disagree with you.

I do think you are using language to ascribe perceived value.

"I think that Europeans and Asians are smarter, and they share a common link to Neanderthal. So what makes them better must be what was better about Neanderthals." It doesn't actually make sense, but it sounds so purdy.

I could make similar argument that would show how this isn't as great a logical leap as you present. Neanderthals were well muscled, with big bones. Nothing to indicate they had lots of fast twitch happening, but lots to indicate plenty of muscle. Yet Asians and Europeans are not more muscled nor bigger than Africans. In a pure statistical way, you might say that they are smaller and less muscled in general. So perhaps the ancestor sapiens of Asian/Europeans were a feebler human, less desirable and so pushed out. Where the one thing they had going for them, being better than the remnant populations are breeding was their advantage.

Far less a romantic story, but just as likely as your's.

Remnant populations of other closely related humans probably were subsumed all over migratory path from Africa into warmest areas of Europe and Asia. Including in Africa. Maybe especially in Africa.

I suspect when more is discovered, our greatest advantage compared to our co-humans and competitors is going to turn out to be that we are better breeders, and that human women's immune systems have some sort of malfunction that allows for them to carry babies from a greater breadth of species time, and that trait has been advantageous enough to overcompensate for the fact that our reproductive systems tend to kill us.

Originally posted by Aeons
I don't disagree with you.

I do think you are using language to ascribe perceived value.

"I think that Europeans and Asians are smarter, and they share a common link to Neanderthal. So what makes them better must be what was better about Neanderthals." It doesn't actually make sense, but it sounds so purdy.

That's actually not what I said, and I took care not to attach a value such as "better" or "superior" to my reasoning concerning Europeans and Asians, which should be clear if you read my OP again.

If anything, I wanted to liberate the Neanderthal from similar values, such as 'extinct', therefore 'inferior' to modern man, or 'precursory', therefore 'less developed'. As uva3021 already mentioned in this thread, a species can be perfectly adapted to it's environment and be on top of the food-chain, and still go extinct because of a environmental cataclysm or something similar.

So the point was, the Neanderthal could have been as intelligent and developed as us, our match in more than one sense, but one factor or another could have led to his demise.

As to what and how much of the Neanderthals Europeans and Asians got, well that's up for debate.

Neanderthal man is no missin link, it still amazes me how people can be so ignorant all in the name of evolution. The same people employ the whole "i'm smarter than u" character when asked about what they're believin in, talk about blind faith.

I think people have to realise how similar cro magnon man and neandertal would have actaully been. The difference would have not been much greater than the difference between to different races of modern man. In the animal world any to organisms that can breed and produce fertile offspring are one and the same species. It is only due to the fact evolutionary anthropologists want to make a name for themselves that we have so many subdiviosns of the human species.

Neantherthals were more robust, stronger and slower whereas cro magnon man was gracile, not as strong, but faster and probably needed much less resources to survive. I'm sure there would have been a a large number of wars but I'd say on the whole the Neanthal were simply bred out. I'd hazard a guess that due to the hasher European environment there would have been far less nanderthal than cro magnons , and over time their distinct genetic heritage just slowly became watered down. I favor this theory over anything to do with fertility rates as it makes more sense. If you look at early man in Europe the popultions were always fairly low until they were invaded and became 'civilised'. The high fertility rates in sub-Saharan Africa probably has a lot more to do with the amount of unprotected sex that goes on, the fact that their culture on the whole is a lot less 'prudish', and the fact that they are probably exposed to a lot less chemicals and carcinogens than people living in 1st world countries.

Civilization only arises out of need. Note that many of the greatest early civilisations sprung initially from the deserts of the Middle East and then spread to the colder climes of Europe. Humans in such places simply needed to become more organised to survive in any great numbers.

Culture as associated with race generally spreads laterally across the globe following areas of similar climatic environment. This is why there are Caucasians all the way from Ireland to Siberia. But below the Caucasian domain there are Arabs, Indians and Asians. This is because what worked in the UK also works in Russia. Similar cultural ideas (especially regarding survival) would not work however in the Arabian deserts, India, or the tropics of Asia.

The point of what I said in the last two paragraphs is that Africans (and this also fits with other cultures that were once deemed 'primitive' e.g the Americas or Australia) did not form civilisations simply cos there was no need, and the areas they lived in did not allow for culture to spread laterally as Africa, Australia and the Americas are isolated entities.

As for skin colour, there are 3 main ways that a species can change, or evolve:

*Natural Selection, where a species develops a trait that is beneficial to its survival.

*Sexual selection, where a species develops a trait which gives it a higher chance of successfully scoring a mate. This is most prominantly seen in birds e.g peacocks

*Parental Selection, where offspring are born with trait which encourages its parents to look after more than other offspring. This is now the leading theory of how humans became hairless.

It is believed when humans migrated to the northern hemishere the last 2 were the main causal factors for humans becoming lighter skinned. Vitamin D may play a minor role but keep in mind by the time humans reached Europe they were covered in skins and furs to keep warm, so this sort of discounts this theory. Not at all trying to be racist, but many leading evolutionary anthropologist now believe that early Europeans for whatever reason favoured lighter skin. Obviously this wasn't the case in Africa or Asia as there's nothing attractive about a sunburnt whitey.

Finally I highly doubt any comparison study between Caucasians, Asians and Africans would shed any useful info regarding Neanderthals. Any discernible culture they may have had would long since have been lost as culture changes so quickly - better to look at the archaeological evidence. Mental ability is a product of both nature and nurture, and varies highly even amongst individuals with very similar physical and cultural backgrounds. Physical characteristics maybe, but most of it has long since been watered down. One would probably glean far more information from from studying their physical remains and their genetic code.

Originally posted by Wyn Hawks

...my alternative opinions are what set you off on this little hissy fit and you want more... find someone else to feed your sadomasochistic tendencies... i'm not interested...

Hey your probably right........if I really wanted to get into an argument that involved a lot of sarcasm and put downs but no real substance or facts i'd just go talk to my mom........

Originally posted by Maslo
But I have yet to see any source to support your ideas.

...there are no terms and conditions on ats that require a poster to back-up their personal opinion via a source... do you state a source everytime you post your opinion?... no, of course not... so, you should ask yourself why you are demanding something from me that you dont do yourself...

Originally posted by Maslo
Why should I believe you over mainstream science?

...who says you have to?... no one...

On the topic of ethnicity... When we're talking about humans who were milling around hundreds of thousands years ago, debating what race they were is... well... kind of stupid. There were none of today's races or ethnicities; they had a whole different basket of looks and features than we do today. The neanderthals and Cro-magnons may have had paler skin than their contemporaries in southern latitudes, but this hardly pegs them into any modern classification; they were no more "caucasian" than their forefathers were "negros"

Trying to turn the racial ideologies of today into something of import a hundred thousand years ago just gets silly

Very cool post, and it makes perfect sense. I'm not sure why the one guy is so hellbent on debunking this. It's proven via genetics, and has nothing to do with one race being smarter than another. Having a bigger brain does not always indicate more intelligence. This sure explains a lot!