RE: Why are we the only members of the homo genus?
June 11, 2012 at 6:40 pm
(This post was last modified: June 11, 2012 at 6:58 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
Absolutely Chuck, and that is what an evolutionary biologist will tell you if you ask them who the winners of any given competition were.
(ah speaking of, and ignoring that my grand winner bit was more a turn of phrase than a scientific assessment, have you considered that the mechanism by which the HN's genome surviving, if it were due to its being carried by some part of the HSS genome (or at least those half that carried it) would leave it as a piggybacking freeloader..speaking "darwinianly"..lol. HSS still wins, HN simply grifts from the winners table.)
A good link Min, lets not overlook an important line in that article
""Unlike earlier, more typical Neanderthal tools"
I'm not personally one of those folks that imagines neanderthals as mouth breathing idiots. Their points for example, probably worlds better than our own for hunting big game. We also, iirc, have reason to believe that their spears would have likely been much sturdier than our own. But we did end up with the better tools, and we are still here. Their technology vanishes, and (unless the interbreeding bit becomes rock solid) so did they. I'm trying to find you a link btw with regards to possible competition between our respective populations. I cant recall the name of the researcher but they provided a compelling case that we might have our dates mixed up a bit and that HN and HSS may not have coexisted for quite enough time for competitive pressure to have played a role at all. You know me though, I always parrot the convention (but I do usually give a nod to emerging data when I'm aware of it don't I?).
Oh, and speaking of the tools, since I rarely get the chance to have a discussion about this with anyone who I know is even remotely interested. I've been musing recently on the advantage the types of tools we were making as the mega-fauna disappears and how they would have conferred an advantage by default, through no conscious effort on our own parts. The hafted spears, smaller projectiles (the darts and increasingly complicated Atlatls). The definite trends towards smaller finer points may not have been any adaptation to available game, it could just as easily have been the toolmaker skimping, making the materials stretch a little farther. A sharp point is the business end, and the bulk of the tool behind it isn't strictly speaking required, nor is there any reason not to annihilate a rabbit with a massive point.
(ah speaking of, and ignoring that my grand winner bit was more a turn of phrase than a scientific assessment, have you considered that the mechanism by which the HN's genome surviving, if it were due to its being carried by some part of the HSS genome (or at least those half that carried it) would leave it as a piggybacking freeloader..speaking "darwinianly"..lol. HSS still wins, HN simply grifts from the winners table.)
A good link Min, lets not overlook an important line in that article
""Unlike earlier, more typical Neanderthal tools"
I'm not personally one of those folks that imagines neanderthals as mouth breathing idiots. Their points for example, probably worlds better than our own for hunting big game. We also, iirc, have reason to believe that their spears would have likely been much sturdier than our own. But we did end up with the better tools, and we are still here. Their technology vanishes, and (unless the interbreeding bit becomes rock solid) so did they. I'm trying to find you a link btw with regards to possible competition between our respective populations. I cant recall the name of the researcher but they provided a compelling case that we might have our dates mixed up a bit and that HN and HSS may not have coexisted for quite enough time for competitive pressure to have played a role at all. You know me though, I always parrot the convention (but I do usually give a nod to emerging data when I'm aware of it don't I?).
Oh, and speaking of the tools, since I rarely get the chance to have a discussion about this with anyone who I know is even remotely interested. I've been musing recently on the advantage the types of tools we were making as the mega-fauna disappears and how they would have conferred an advantage by default, through no conscious effort on our own parts. The hafted spears, smaller projectiles (the darts and increasingly complicated Atlatls). The definite trends towards smaller finer points may not have been any adaptation to available game, it could just as easily have been the toolmaker skimping, making the materials stretch a little farther. A sharp point is the business end, and the bulk of the tool behind it isn't strictly speaking required, nor is there any reason not to annihilate a rabbit with a massive point.
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