
Neanderthalese: A Constructed Language for the 42nd Millennium BC - KhoomeiK
http://jbr.me.uk/pleisto.html#IIIII
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dwohnitmok
I have a debt to
[http://jbr.me.uk/futurese.html](http://jbr.me.uk/futurese.html) for kick-
starting (ironically enough for an article speculating on the future of
English) an armchair interest in historical linguistics.

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Gys
Unfortunately without audio examples...

~~~
guiriduro
Ugh.

~~~
ithkuil
> [..] syllables that either were or weren't “voiced and/or nasal”, [..] If
> you add them up, you'll find there were barely five thousand combinations
> (and “ug” wasn't one of them).

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_nalply
Looks somewhat like Vietnamese.

~~~
grenoire
In terms of the diacritics used or the actual grammatical structure?

~~~
_nalply
This, too, but mainly that one word has one syllable.

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JoeAltmaier
Interesting concept.

Btw a bit of spin, presenting them as about the same as modern Homo Sapiens.
They killed and ate their neighbors when times were tough; they had a very
hard time mastering crafts more complex than 'break a rock'.

~~~
nocut12
As far as technology, modern humans weren't really too different at the time
(in Europe at least). And of course, modern humans and neanderthals were
similar enough that we were willing/able to interbreed, which certainly says
something.

I do think people overstate how similar we were though -- we don't have any
super clear examples of neanderthal artwork (people make arguments, but this
stuff isn't exactly Chauvet
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal#Art](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal#Art)).
To me, this seems to indicate that their brains might have worked pretty
differently.

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benj111
"we were willing/able to interbreed, which certainly says something"

Does it?

Men like to spread their seed, and I'm not sure what the rules were regarding
giving women a choice in the matter. I'm guessing rape wasn't in their
vocabulary though.

~~~
AlotOfReading
The ability to produce viable offspring is generally considered the primary
differentiating characteristic between species and subspecies. That's one of a
number of arguments in the debate over whether Neanderthals should be named H.
neanderthalensis or H. sapiens neanderthalensis.

~~~
ncmncm
That criterion has had to be abandoned, replaced with "forms reproductive
groups with practical boundaries".

Sometimes a river is that boundary, or a preferred prey species, a mating
strategy, or odor preference.

Otherwise, we cannot distinguish bear, dog, or great-cat species.

~~~
derefr
Isn't there already a separate word— _subspecies_ —for "isolated reproductive
groups, with different phenotypes, which could still interbreed if the
opportunity arose"? My understanding was that every phenotypically-distinct
isolated reproductive group was considered a _subspecies_ until its genetics
diverged enough to have _speciated_ , at which point it was now a species.

It seems to me that if e.g. American black bears and Asian black bears can
interbreed, then we _could_ call them all one species—black bears—and put all
their subspecies together in into that taxonomic category. Maybe with some
optional taxonomic level between "species" and "subspecies" for describing
their phenotypic groupings.

But I see, looking at various sources, that those two types of bears are
indeed considered separate species. Why do we do that? What's better/more
useful about drawing the species boundary there?

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ncmncm
"Species" is an organizational convenience for biologists. Nature doesn't have
such a boundary. It just has varying degrees of reproductive compatibility,
inclination, and opportunity.

"Subspecies" is a concession to what lumpers call splitters.

~~~
derefr
There is certainly a conservative definition for speciation, though: the point
where something has _zero_ reproductive compatibility—where there is no known
example of viable offspring. At that point, inclination and opportunity cease
to matter.

Why not just define “species” by that clear formal boundary, and then call
everything that doesn’t manage to reach that line “subspecies”?

~~~
ncmncm
Because the line is very hard to discern, where it exists as a line at all,
and it is nowhere sharp. Lions can be bred with tigers, in captivity. Are
their offspring fertile? Well, sorta. Does it make sense to call lions and
tigers subspecies? Hell, no. Say lions and tigers are one species and
biologists will call you a lumper. You don't want that.

Sometimes the product of mating between species becomes, instantly, another
species, if they prefer mating with one another over either progenitor. That
just happened, with some birds, in the Galapagos.

Legally, there are no endangered subspecies, only endangered species. So,
claiming some variety is "just a subspecies" may mean they get no legal
protection against extermination. To me that's more than enough reason for a
species.

