Neanderthals' social isolation may have sped up their extinction | Hacker News Reader

Neanderthals' social isolation may have sped up their extinction

popsci.com

25 pointsgeox14 comments

Fascinating discovery. Bit of a nitpick/sanity check though:

"When compared to other previously sequenced Neanderthal genomes, Thorin’s genome most closely resembled an individual that was excavated roughly 1,000 miles to the northeast in Gibraltar. Slimak speculates that Thorin’s population likely migrated south to France from Gibraltar."

Shouldn't this be southwest and north, respectively, instead?

Ha, I thought the same thing.

obviously a case of polar wandering. /s

"We thus have 50 millennia during which two Neanderthal populations, living about 10 days’ walk from each other, coexisted while completely ignoring each other."

Nit: sexualy ignoring each other.

They were all trying to mate with humans?

> "This would be unimaginable for a Sapiens"

I think it would be unimaginable for any mammal. 50 thousand years living side by side, being interfertile, and without a genetic exchange? It's just impossible. Something doesn't add up.

Yes, difficult to imagine for any mammal, but humans are not any mammal and can go "against nature".

Still difficult to accept.

It's definitely not the case for modern sapiens, people have sex with anything, including animals and inanimate objects.

Well yes, but people also avoid having children till they are in the late thirties. We don't blindly follow our genetic programming.

People do all sort of things. Including copulating with animals and cutting off their penises to avoid copulating at all. The statement which I find hard to believe is that nobody for 50 thousand years ever did something. Especially when that something is completely in line with basic human (and non-human) nature.

“We thus have 50 millennia during which two Neanderthal populations, living about 10 days’ walk from each other, coexisted while completely ignoring each other."

note sure if :ignoring each other: or just unaware.

"We see evidence of early modern humans in Siberia forming so-called mating networks to avoid issues with inbreeding, while living in small communities, which is something we haven’t seen with Neanderthals.”

interesting when you consider that humans interbred with neanderthals.

"Sorry Grog, you weren't horney enough"

tl;dr: Neanderthals needed to go clubbing more.

Heaven forbid we encourage people to have fun. I personally like my jail cell and prison clothes.

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