
Neanderthals were people too - em3rgent0rdr
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/11/magazine/neanderthals-were-people-too.html
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themgt
I've been interested in paleoanthropology as a layman for a few years now. I
find the Mousterian [1] culture / tools quite interesting, because it appears
to be part of the history of hominid technological progress, the stepping
stone to Châtelperronian tools, and yet also seems almost wholly attributed to
Neanderthals.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but to me this suggests Neanderthals were
actually more technologically advanced than humans at this time, and that as
anatomically modern humans finally began to replace Neanderthal "civilization"
they also adopted and used Neanderthal technology as their foundation.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mousterian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mousterian)

~~~
cema

      Neanderthals were actually more technologically advanced than humans 
    

I understand why this choice of words, but I think it is important to remember
that Neanderthals were humans too. And, as we now know, not just "technically"
human, but in many ways.

~~~
themgt
Yeah, I should have stuck with homo sapiens / AMH / AMHS [1]

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomically_modern_human](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomically_modern_human)

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hasenj
I don't know if this is appropriate, but why are extinct humans classified as
different species while the still alive humans are all considered the same
species?

It seems political. Either some of the current races are different species, or
the so called extinct human species are just different races.

~~~
woodruffw
"Extinct humans" are not humans. They're _homo_ , not _homo sapiens_ (or, more
strictly, _homo sapiens sapiens_ ).

The genetic differences between you and any other human being of any other
race are vanishingly small both in proportion to the size of the human genome
and to the (known) differences between _sapiens_ and _neanderthalensis_.

It's not politics, it's parsimony.

~~~
ascotan
True they are genetically different but that's not the definition of a
'species'. There is a level of politics in biology over what constitutes a
species and what does not.

Technically a 'species' is something that interbreeds but does not breed with
members outside of it's species and mating produces reproductive offspring.
(at least this is the old mayr definition that everyone uses)

The problem is that neanderthals and humans matings produced viable offspring.
So is 'neanderthal' a species or not?

The same issue is a problem with the Galapagos finches, which are the holy
cows of darwinian genetics. By Mayr's definition they should not be able to
interbred and produce viable offspring. However, apparently they can
interbreed and therefore are not technically different species.

No one in science want's to badmouth the masters, so Darwin's theory of
Galapagos finch species will quietly be put back in the Victorian cabinet
while we invent a new 'genetics' based theory of 'species' that makes everyone
happy. However, life is not easily classified. Viruses? Species? Bacterial
plasmid replication?

There is a lot of politics in the life sciences. Naming a new species or
having your name on a species is a big deal. It reminds me of Cope/Marsh and
the dinosaur finds
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bone_Wars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bone_Wars))
of the early 20th century. They both screwed up the identification of many
species so that they could out publish the other and left the mess for future
scientists to clean up.

My feelings on this is that we still don't have enough evidence about the
genetic makeup of humans to really make any conclusions on anything. Example:
What is the blood type in the reference sequence for the human genome?? We
know that there is A, B, A/B and O which represent 4 different genotypes (an
AA sequence, a BB sequence, an AB sequence and a missing sequence from both
alleles).

If I sequence a neatherthal with blood type A and a human with blood type O,
are we genetically divergent?? How can you come to this conclusion unless you
know the plasticity of each genome. (i.e. I can't identify a nucleotide change
in blood type gene for a type O human because the gene is absent)

It looks like most of the research has been on mtDNA which is passed from
mother to child. If we can't find a mtDNA match, it might just mean that there
is no maternal linage that can be traced back to that sequenced individual.
(i.e. all the children of that mother died out at some point)

Different species? That's a question for politics imho. I personally think
that life shuns classification. BTW sorry for the ramble :0

~~~
simonh
Then you have ring species[1] that blow a nice big hole in the interbreeding
based definitions of species.

Species and race are vague terms we use for convenience. That's all. I think
keeping them vaguely defined is a feature not a bug, because it could help
prevent people assigning too much weight or meaning to them. If people get the
idea that race and species can be precisely defined, then maybe they can be
measured? Maybe we can use that to derive tests or policies? But trying to
precisely define race and species is futile, like trying to put light in a
box. I'd rather knowingly and consciously keep the ambiguity, to remind myself
that the terminology isn't the reality.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species)

~~~
hyperpallium
One definition of a "market" is people with the same needs _who reference each
other_ (i.e. talk to each other). This transmission of information ("word of
mouth") is important for marketung [...though perhaps a bit different today,
with referencing internet reviews.]

Similarly, the definition of species as individuals that breed with each other
has importance for transmission of genes. By this rationale, transitive gene
transmission makes ring species a "species".

A biologist told me that species are defined, not by theoretical
interbreeding, but by actual breeding...so that a single species divided
somehow in different environments, is now two species, even when no genetic
change has occurred.

By this strange extrinsic definition, the human races _were_ different species
before global travel... and now are one.

And that SV hackers who _only_ breed with other SV hackers, are a different
species (and the rise in autistism incidence evidences a genetic effect - in a
few million years, interbreeding will be impossible!). Similar for classes,
the 1% etc.Though there is crossbreeding in practice, so at most these are
ring species.

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typaux
One thing that many don't realise is Neanderthals aren't gone, because many of
us are part Neanderthal. The distinction between what is Neanderthal and what
isn't has just been blurred. It would be kind of like saying your mother's
lineage went extinct because she had a child with your father.

~~~
jboggan
Not exactly, Neanderthal admixture of 1-4% of the genome is present in all
populations except sub-Saharan Africans.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaic_human_admixture_with_m...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaic_human_admixture_with_modern_humans)

~~~
Camillo
If 1-4% of the Eurasian genome comes from Neanderthals, but sub-Saharan
Africans have no Neanderthal genes, does that mean that the EA genome differs
from the SSA one by 1-4%? And even more so the Melanesian genome, which has
4-6% Denisovan DNA. But at the same time, chimpanzees and humans supposedly
share over 99% of their genome. How is that possible? Are these all
percentages of the same whole, or is there something else going on?

~~~
scatters
That's measuring different things. We can tell whether a particular copy of a
gene came from the Neanderthal gene pool or the main SSA gene pool by looking
at its sequence (esp. at SNPs), but the overall base pair sequence of that
gene will still be 99.9% the same.

When we say that chimpanzees and humans share 99% of their genome, we're
looking at base pairs, but when we say that modern Eurasians have 1-4% of
their genome from Neanderthals we're looking at genes.

~~~
Camillo
Thanks, that makes sense.

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j0e1
> I’ll start with a confession, an embarrassing but relevant one, because I
> would come to see our history with Neanderthals as continually distorted by
> an unfortunate human tendency to believe in ideas that are, in reality,
> incorrect — and then to leverage that conviction into a feeling of
> superiority over other people. And in retrospect, I realize I demonstrated
> that same tendency myself at the beginning of this project.

A humbling confession.

~~~
mbroncano
It seems he didn't learn much from the experience. Gibaltrar conflicts with
Spain are not exclusively about the territorial aspect but rather it being a
prominent haven for human and drug trafficking. Their locals are a constant
embarrassment source for the U.K. government and for the most part treated
like corsairs, tolerated in public but rather frown upon in private. Possible
the worst of both Spanish and British 'maritime' traditions.

The coastal towns in the area are splendid though, and worth visiting indeed.

~~~
s-phi-nl
According to the US State Department

> Gibraltar is adjacent to known drug trafficking and human smuggling routes,
> but the territory is heavily policed on land and at sea due to the risk of
> these activities occurring within its borders or territorial waters

[https://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/2014/supplemental/227...](https://www.state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/2014/supplemental/227786.htm)

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danieltillett
I find it interesting that the "solution" to the scientific question if all
living humans are the same species is to claim that all the ancestors of
living people belong to the same species despite all the genetic evidence
saying otherwise.

Rather than deny reality, the alternative would be to say that current
populations are not the same species, but that the differences are
unimportant. Why does it matter if we are not all the same species if the
differences are minor?

~~~
mmjaa
>Why does it matter if we are not all the same species if the differences are
minor?

Because like it or not, we still live in highly volatile, dangerous political
times, and scientists getting behind the idea that there are clear racial
lines dividing us all will not contribute to the peace-making. Its an
uncomfortable truth that sometimes science is really hindered by politics, and
this is one of those situations where its a highly, highly charged subject
with potential to create a significant degree of upset in the world. The human
species is very rarely actually prepared for the truths of science.

~~~
danieltillett
So your solution is to pretend science hasn't found what it has found because
of the fear it might be misused?

Rather than corrupting science, isn't it better to say we have no evidence of
any important genetic difference between the different populations of the
world? There are better ways of avoiding the evils of racism without
destroying science.

~~~
mmjaa
Science isn't being corrupted - people can still write the papers they want,
and the eugenics thing is all about that, as well as CRISPR, et al., - but
would you be content with a tin-pot dictator in Europe using these kinds of
"scientific facts" as a means of developing policies which encourage ethnic
cleansing? Because, well, that's sort of still happening as a thing, and won't
go away as a thing, until we find a scientific solution to hatred and
intolerance. Which are still very much huge things.

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bobsgame
Can we clone a Neanderthal yet?

~~~
FreeFull
No, we don't even have a full Neanderthal genome.

~~~
MikeGale
There are claims that an entire Neaderthal genome has been mapped, see doi:
10.1038/nature12886, from 2014.

There are also some low coverage genomes.

Not sure what has been done since 2014.

(Many of us are actually part Neanderthal so talking about this gets fairly
odd. The "pre-admixture" populations had maybe 99.7% shared DNA anyway.)

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seppin
If anyone is interested in this topic, read the book "Sapiens". It expands on
how just 10,000 years ago there were 5 species of humans on earth.

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dkarapetyan
Science got it wrong because there isn't much science to it at all. It's like
bone reading and the article manages to say that in a much more eloquent way.

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fdsaaf
If neanderthals were alive today, respectable people would call them _homo
sapiens sapiens_ and it'd be racism to suggest otherwise. Any evidence that
you could distinguish neanderthals on the basis of genetics or morphology
would be called pseudoscience and people like Stephen Jay Gould would publish
elaborate sophistries explaining why anyone who notices differences between
neanderthals and humans is a wicked person.

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HillaryBriss
> _We’ve always classified Neanderthals, technically, as human — part of the
> genus Homo._

I feel uncomfortable letting scientists decide whether an organism is 'human'
or not.

Shouldn't that designation be the province of a great _human_ , a Nobel Peace
Prize winner, someone like Mikail Gorbachev, Henry Kissinger or Yasser Arafat?

~~~
simonh
Because success in one field, such as politics, is no indicator whatsoever of
aptitude in an completely unrelated field, such as genetics or anthropology.

