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Member (Idle past 2514 days) Posts: 2965 From: Los Angeles, CA USA Joined: |
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Author | Topic: All in the Family - Guest star: Neanderthal | |||||||||||||||||||||||
arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1365 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Neanderthals have been described, not just as "all over the map", but in fact were described as some sort of missing link, very ape-like, from the beginning, and though we have known such descriptions were wrong since the early 50s, Neanderthals were depicted with exagerrated ape-like features and often shown a series of evolutionary links, and still are at times in educational materials. randman, here is the tree from the hall of human ancestors: notice that overlap at the bottom, and that we are fairly closely related? this is the current mainstream academic understanding. do you have evidence for your claim that they are currently depicted as "ape-like" in educational material? that is, significantly more ape-like than us. there are some minor features of neanderthals that they do have in common with higher apes that we lack, but enough to readily describe them as "ape-like."
Imo, if you remove the historical misrepresentation and view the evidence outside of the evolutionary paradigms, the best way to view Neanderthals is simple as an ancient tribe of people. Due to inbreeding, certain traits will be more dominant among ethnic groups and tribes, and during periods of longer isolation probably partly due to weather, it is not surprising that some groups developed more pronounced features. they differ from us in several marked ways. the proportions of the torso are completely different. they are much larger around the waist, skeletally, and generally more rotund. the angle of the back of the skull is different. neanderthals lack protruding chins, which all homo sapiens have. they were a bit more than a different tribe. they were a different species. there is variation in neanderthal specimens, and variation in h. sapiens specimens, but neither range of variation approaches each other.
Cro-Magnons were essentially identical to modern humans except generally taller is my understanding. shorter, iirc. still the same species, just on average shorter. due partially to diet, i'm sure. This message has been edited by arachnophilia, 01-07-2006 07:43 PM
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1365 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
we've been over some of this ground before as far as Neanderthals sometimes still being depicted as excessively ape-like. There are several past threads dealing with that ...in which you never actually gave an example.
All of the differences altogether in Neanderthals are still rather slight, imo. There is a tendency in scientists today to classify some organisms as different species even if they can mate and reproduce sexually. like lions and tigers? horses and zebras and donkeys? wolves and dogs? the differences are not "slight" in the respect that you seem to think. there are skeletal features of all neanderthals that no homo sapiens possesses, and vice versa.
So rather than argue semantics, I would just say, imo, Neanderthals were just a race of people, had people habits and beleifs like burying their dead, art, etc,....and that there is no reason to think Neaderthal people if alive today could not mate with and live among us as just people. They died out, but the racial mix-up of people tends to change as tribes are either more or less isolated. but they're not just a "race." they are a species. whether or not they are very similar, and whether or not they can (or did) interbreed with us. they are exactly as human as we are, just a different fork of the tree. and this is more than isolation of a tribe. it is isolation of a tribe to the extent of speciation. edit: oh and,
Cro-magnons were taller, I believe, not shorter quote: relatively tall when compared to earlier hominids. 5'5 to 5'7 is well within the paramaters of normal modern humans, just a little on the short side. 6'3 is not unheard of either. i happen to be 6'3. sounds like there's not really much difference here. This message has been edited by arachnophilia, 01-08-2006 01:27 AM
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1365 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
akhenaten (amenhotep iv)? or am i missing a joke because it's late AND YOU DON'T EVER USE ANY PROPER NOUNS?!?!
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1365 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Ape or person? yes.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1365 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
It would require some sort of time machine to verify finding a hybrid skeleton would do just fine. i've mentioned it before on here: i thought i had heard of one found, but i'm unsure of the veracity of the claim.
Personally, I'd love it if it turned out that Neanderthals bred with people in the past. I see the end of Neanderthals (a HUGELY successful group living in harsh conditions) as a red flag for modern man. Our hold upon the Earth is tenuous at best - we should not forget it. we all die sooner or later, and speciation will probably continue to happen...
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1365 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
The thing is - this child could have been a mule. well, yeah, maybe. i geuss you're right. that's kind of tricky. they obviously CAN interbreed, but the question is really can there be an interbreeding population.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1365 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
If we say that Neanderthal and Cro-Mag (and Flores for that matter) are all the same species, then clearly the range of morphology we consider viable would include Homo Erectus. although creationists probably would, i don't think it neccessarily follows from the logic.
It sounds like, by arguing that Neanderthals are just a form of people, you are infact endorsing gradual speciation. heh.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1365 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
I once did a thread asking people to honestly state how Neanderthals were presented to them. It was interesting. could you link that, please? i want to see. also, keep in mind that many people completely misunderstand science. popular opinion isn't really evidence of conspiracy or even sloppiness of the scientists' parts. afterall, in a poll 82% of americans believed that the phrase "god helps those who help themselves" is in the bible.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1365 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
homo erectus?
yeah, how about ergaster? or habilis? a. africanus? a. afarensis? pan troglodyte? don't get me wrong. i'm not claiming this a direct line. i just want to know when they stop being human. (most images stolen from here)
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1365 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
You commented on it. Do a search. if it's the thread i'm thinking of, most of us argued that we understood neanderthals were not excessively ape-like, but quite equivalent to modern humans in most ways except for skeletal morphology.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1365 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Look at those who just answered the question about what they were taught rather than the spin game. as i recall, you accused those who answered of playing the spin game.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1365 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Why don't you start a thread raising this issue then? We are talking about Neanderthals here. yes, we are. i'm trying to establish the basis for your identification of neanderthals as the same species as homo sapiens -- and exactly WHAT you consider ape-like, let alone excessively ape-like. where do you draw the line between "ape with human features" and "human with ape features," or do you not see any ape features present?
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1365 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
How effective is basing the relative size of a population on one beings remains? not very. it's a good thing we have more than one.
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