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Comment by jrs99 | Hacker News Reader

They may have had a philosophy of nonviolence and were slaughtered by violent humans.

They may have been too gentle to kill another humanoid.

Or if they fought back, they may have been massively outnumbered by humans.

Obviously, humans love to kill and wipe out entire species. They may have had an agreement of peace with the neanderthals and then simply lied about it and killed and tortured them all. They may have raped their neanderthal children, which would have led to the gene transfer.

update: I'm sorry if I've offended anyone. Humans don't rape. I take that part back. And humans aren't that violent (except against native americans, maybe, which is pretty minor.)

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> They may have been too gentle to kill another humanoid. (...) Obviously, humans love to kill and wipe out entire species.

Wow, projection much?

History tells us that native Americans were just as capable of killing other native Americans as other individuals of homo sapiens. That doesn't make the crime made by European settlers lighter, but that does make the anachronistic idea of "Noble Savages" look like a lame attempt at feeling morally superior to other people of non-native American descent. (Not to mention objectifying native Americans: those peace-loving, naturalist sages.)

Also, "an agreement of peace with the Neanderthals", seriously? We are not talking about Napoleon, we're dealing with many different cave-dwelling tribes, mostly moving around by walking, scattered over Europe that displaced a different population in the course of thousands of years. Your statement makes no sense.

i don't know where you read that i believe native americans were NOT capable of killing other people. I believe that ALL groups of humans are capable of murder and rape. That's not something that I only believe in, but probably is just a simple fact.

I'm sorry if I was unclear when I say "they." I mean "they" as in the hominids the article says "may have been smarter than us."

Well, sorry about my unclear writing. I was trying to say that your argument is just a variation of "bad Europeans killed peaceful Indians" narrative, only applied to a bigger picture.

And just like that narrative, your story doesn't tell why those hominids would be less inclined to kill competitors (after all, having big brains than chimpanzees didn't make us saints). You just assumed it because it suits the narrative you chose.

i don't make any real conclusions here. I'm sorry if I sounded like this is the only thing I can accept. It's not. I only suggest a possibility. There's a possibility that this group of hominids killed each other in some kind of civil war or died in some drought.

And i hope this isn't a revelation, but the narrative is real. Bad europeans did kill peaceful indians. That doesn't mean that all europeans are bad and all indians were peaceful. But largely, that narrative is hard to deny. All kinds of humans have done bad things to people who really just wanted to be left alone. To me, though it may not be the whole story, it's a true fact. I merely suggest that it is a very real possibility that humans hunted this hominid group down and slaughtered them all while the hominids wanted to be left alone. I don't see how you can not consider that scenario if you are wondering how a group of hominids became extinct.

i include native americans in the group which i call "humans."

Not sure why you are being downvoted. This was my very first obvious conclusion.

i think because in a way i've insulted them by insulting all humans.

they can't face the reality. Which is even happening today. We hunt animals for sport and wipe them out. And we've wiped out even other humans that we've come into contact with and raped their women and children. Everyone has ancestors who were rapists and murderers. We have those same genes. It would not surprise me at all if it turns out that we hunted neanderthals for sport and wiped them out this way.

it is grim, but it's the truth.

There is no Neanderthal mtDNA in modern humans, so any raping was going the other direction. And, if indeed humans were regularly attacked by Neanderthals, that would explain why they disappeared, as pre-civilization humans would have had motive to exterminate them and no modern sense of temperance nor stigma against genocide.

if a human and a neanderthal had a child, hybrid offspring may have been less fertile, or even rejected by both societies, or even killed.

any humans that raped the neanderthals would probably not integrate those neanderthals into their human societies. any hybrid (with neanderthal mother) would probably remain in neanderthal societies.

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