How do we know that Neanderthal skeletons are Neanderthal skeletons?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I'm tired of this childish bullshit.  And you should stop, too, Boru.

Oh, please. If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t even know what childish bullshit WAS.

Boru

[Gwaithmir]

[Jehanne]

What I find interesting is that, outside of Africa, all H. Sapiens have a small amount (a few percent) of H. Neanderthalensis DNA. What this proves is that H. Neanderthals were developing as a divergent species of Homo, the sexual relations between H. Sapiens males and H. Neanderthal females likely not being consensual, probably occurring after the murder and massacres of H. Neanderthal males by H. Sapiens.

[Angrboda]

Once you go neanderthal, you'll never go back.

[Anomalocaris]

What I find interesting is that, outside of Africa, all H. Sapiens have a small amount (a few percent) of H. Neanderthalensis DNA.  What this proves is that H. Neanderthals were developing as a divergent species of Homo, the sexual relations between H. Sapiens males and H. Neanderthal females likely not being consensual, probably occurring after the murder and massacres of H. Neanderthal males by H. Sapiens.

Once you go neanderthal, you'll never go back.  

that’s reading way too much into it.  the genetic separation of HN and HS certainly results from mostly from geographic isolation.  that does not imply the eventual re-encounter is necessarily more hostile or violent than what would be typical between two groups of previously unacquainted HS groups.

[Jehanne]

What I find interesting is that, outside of Africa, all H. Sapiens have a small amount (a few percent) of H. Neanderthalensis DNA.  What this proves is that H. Neanderthals were developing as a divergent species of Homo, the sexual relations between H. Sapiens males and H. Neanderthal females likely not being consensual, probably occurring after the murder and massacres of H. Neanderthal males by H. Sapiens.

Once you go neanderthal, you'll never go back.  

that’s reading way too much into it.  the genetic separation of HN and HS certainly results from mostly from geographic isolation.  that does not imply the eventual re-encounter is necessarily more hostile or violent than what would be typical between two groups of previously unacquainted HS groups.

Plenty of Neanderthal skeletons show evidence of violence at the time of death. It's reasonable that we killed them off, committing some rape in the process.

[The Grand Nudger]

There's actually no evidence that any hss ever killed a single hsn. Doesn't mean they didn't, but it probably does speak to whether that's a rational belief, or a misanthropic one.

If we wanted to be reasonable..and still posit rape and murder...we might posit that the most likely explanation for signs of violence in hsn, was violence by other hsn. There are other theories. That hsn went out by indirect conflict over resources as a fellow apex predator. That they were bred out by hybrid infertility. That they couldn't adapt to a changing climate. Probably safe to call it a combination of all of the above - but a campaign of rape and extermination..even if we were going the route of pure misanthropy (especially if) would be unlikely. Hss wasn't at a point where we could organize anything like that. Took awhile to git gud at genocide.

[Fireball]

There's actually no evidence that any hss ever killed a single hsn.   Doesn't mean they didn't, but it probably does speak to whether that's a rational belief, or a misanthropic one.

If we wanted to be reasonable..and still posit rape and murder...we might posit that the most likely explanation for signs of violence in hsn, was violence by other hsn.  There are other theories.  That hsn went out by indirect conflict over resources as a fellow apex predator.  That they were bred out by hybrid infertility.  That they couldn't adapt to a changing climate.  Probably safe to call it a combination of all of the above - but a campaign of rape and extermination..even if we were going the route of pure misanthropy (especially if) would be unlikely.  Hss wasn't at a point where we could organize anything like that.  Took awhile to git gud at genocide.

Indeed. Given a local population that's mostly Hsn, what's the probability that it's them on them, vs Hss on them?

[Jehanne]

I don't think that any expert is claiming that violence on the part of HS was highly organized. Fact is that small villages of groups of several hundred human beings in Western Europe predate the city states of Sumer and Jericho by 10,000 years, which means that some level of organizational skills predate that all the way back to the discovery of fire some 2 Mya. If people were smart enough to build wooden huts in an organized fashion, they will likely smart enough to "gang up" on similar, but different, looking rivials who were living in the nearby valley. After all, why produce things when you can simply steal it, killing your neighbors in the process? As some HS men felt sexual attraction to HN women, it is likely that those encounters were not consensual; who, after all, wants to have sex with some strange man who has just murdered your husband? As we did not descend from HN, their DNA got in (most of) us somehow.

[The Grand Nudger]

There's actually no physical evidence of any conflict, ever, between hsn and hss.

But lets take this in order.

HSN blipped out 40k years ago. 30k years before the oldest evidence of any wooden huts or structures or associated tools in HSN. You could roll the tape to just a few centuries ago..when, with the aid of guns and machines and a whole lot of murder and rape and 40k more years of practice..... we still failed to complete genocides against natives.

The case for HSS stealing HSN artifacts is less credible than the reverse..but we have no evidence of either in any event.

Husbands?

Yes, either through a shared ancestor (HSH) or by variable rates of reproductive success in hybrid genetic lines.

With no particular reason to suggest that we eradicated hsn, it's generally believed to have been a combination of factors that drove them both to extinction, and possibly into our beds. Maybe we'll get a natural experiment one day to that effect, when (or if) some other version of humans comes around. To be blunt, the idea that we killed them off was mostly based on notions of our obvious supremacy. I wouldn't put my money on the hss in a cage fight, though. Hell, I wouldn't put my money on the hss in a cage fight with the hsns "wife"..either.