Age of Hominids: The Four Races

Anyway, I'd like to import two relevant posts from different discussions, one by me and one by the inestimable DaleCoz:

Right about the open country part of this, but Neanderthal extinction supposedly came when the coldest part of the last Ice Age compressed forests against the Mediterranean, to the point where there wasn't enough forested habitat to sustain a viable Neanderthal population.

Piecing together various extinction theories, the picture I get is that Neanderthals could kick our ancestors' butts in a forested habitat because they were specialized for ambush-hunting and considerably more powerful--probably two or three times as strong on a pound for pound basis. Our ancestors specialized in open country and endurance hunting--nowhere close to as strong but much better at distance running and moving over long distances to follow game herds.

Our ancestors were adapted to move a lot, not just on the hunt but also because they had to in order to survive in open country. They lost strength compared to their ancestors but gained endurance. Since they were moving so much, they also had to pare down the weight of their tools compared to what the less mobile Neanderthals could get away with carrying. That's significant in terms of developing civilization, as we'll see later.

Neanderthal versus modern humans: Think football (American version) linebackers versus marathoners, only the Neanderthals were far more massive and stronger than even an NFL linebacker. The disadvantage: those massive bodies wore out their joints fast when Neanderthals had to move a lot to follow migratory game in open country. When you find Neanderthal skeletons in what had been open country, they're usually crippled with arthritis.

Neanderthals probably used open country only when they were forced to. It was sub-optimum habitat for them. At the same time, a residual ability to operate in open country may have saved them at the height of various glacial advances, as long as there wasn't competition in the open country.

When modern humans spread to the open country to the north of Neanderthals, they took away the ability of Neanderthals to use that habitat in emergencies, because modern humans were better in open country. At that point, it was just a matter of time until a glacial advance reduced the forests to the point where they couldn't support a viable Neanderthal population.

Implications if that's all true:
- Neanderthals generally used heavier, less specialized tools than moderns, because those tools took less effort to make and since they moved around less the extra weight didn't matter enough to justify the extra effort to develop lighter tools. When Neanderthals were forced into open country they developed lighter-weight tools.

If Neanderthals won out over our ancestors, there had to be a reason. Possible reasons: either forests pushed north and into the Middle East to create a continuous forested belt that let Neanderthals spread back into Northern Europe and south into North Africa or a branch of Neanderthals adapted to open country.

If Neanderthal adapted to open country and beat our ancestors there, then they would probably do so by adapting in a lot of the same ways we did, and would probably end up looking and acting more like us than their Neanderthal ancestors, which kind of defeats the purpose of this exercise.

If Neanderthals won because their forest habitat spread, I'm not sure you end up with civilization. If you did, that civilization would probably have less trade because Neanderthals weren't good at long-distance travel and because their tools didn't require specialized material (good quality flint, among other things) to the same extent.

I suspect that a Neanderthal civilization would have more trouble than our ancestors did in using aquatic resources and would be less likely to develop sea-faring. Those big, muscular bodies wouldn't float at all well, which means that swimming would be mostly shear power, and exhausting. That doesn't mean they would completely avoid aquatic resources, just that using them would be more dangerous to Neanderthals than to moderns.

There could also be subtle differences in the way Neanderthal minds worked. Modern humans can barely, sometimes, create complex political structures that last a few hundred years before they fall apart. Tweak the balance between selfishness and altruism or planning ahead versus short-term thinking even a little and you might end up with Neanderthals never being able to go beyond a tribal society. Or on the other hand, you might end up with them able to establish their equivalent of Egypt and have the same dynasty ruling three thousand years later.

Would Neanderthals be able to read? Ability to read couldn't have been selected for directly until civilizations developed, so there had to be some other use for the mechanisms that later let us read. Would Neanderthals have selected for those pre-reading mechanisms? Would Neanderthals be better or worse at math and physics? What about spatial relationships? Would they be master architects and engineers or would they stink at those things? Neanderthal lawyers? Accountants? Would some of them be good at those things?

What about social structure? Would they be monogamous, polygamous, as flexible as human societies are? Would they easily form hierarchies with kingdoms and empires or would they be too independent?

Would Neanderthals develop religions? Modern humans as far as I know, pretty much universally develop religions of some sort, and substitute ideologies with strong elements of belief when those religions are discredited. Is developing religions a universal aspect of becoming intelligent or is it unique to modern humans? If Neanderthals didn't develop obsessions with the afterlife and forces beyond them, how would that influence how their societies developed?

And this is getting long even for me.

Perhaps a shift in perception? Rather than viewing Homo Florensis as small, stupid humans, consider them super-chimps.

And those giant rats from that island of theirs. Domesticable? Rats are ominvores, you could breed a pig-equivalent foodbeast, and an agressive hunting beast. Rats are also very good at transferring diseases to humans...Consider a specific culture of Homo Florensis...they were already tool and fire users, and cooperative hunters.

Cannibals, chimp-strong, with fire and communication and thrown rocks, with their gigantic rats, bred for agression to strangers over thousands of years, howling thought the black forests and mountains of Borneo and Sumatra. Complete with the occasinoal lethal disease...might discourage humans from moving down there.
 
Anything that can live on an island with 20 foot komodo dragons is pretty tough, but we still lack enough information on the Denisovans. I think that they would probably migrate a lot. If they went to North America, the equids that lived there at that time might not go extinct. We could have the Denisovans domesticate horses.
Ps. What if Neanderthals could ride Elasmotheriums?
 
The Neanderthals did not coexist with Humans according to Findings.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-02/unde-tln020113.php

The Archaic Humans closely related to Neanderthals which were both descendants of Homo heidelbergensis that were assimilated by Homo Sapiens* in East Africa creating the Species Homo Sapiens Sapiens then absorbed the Denisovans which was after the Andamans were isolated, the Genome of Homo-Sapiens were dominant in the mixture of the three especially after the Toba eruption because the Homo-Sapiens genes were more prolific than the Denisovans or the the Ancestor of Humans closer to the Neanderthals were less prolific or in decline.

The Humans inhabited Arabia and Persian Gulf before North Africa even before the Toba Eruption, If we want to have the Neanderthals survive we should have the Ice Age less severe in Europe or they were able to at least survive in North Africa and Southern Europe which was yet to be inhabited by Humans then expand back to their former habitat, I don't think the Neanderthals proper could interbred with Humans since the Chromosome number of Humans in Africa is different the Question is how would they interact with Each other?
 
The average Cranial Capacities of Homo neanderthalensis at the time they went extinct was higher than that of Homo sapiens from around the same time. Neanderthals averaged 1,900 cm^3 over Spaiens 1,530 cm^3 at the same time. For the Neanderthals however, this was primarily used for memory as opposed to problem solving.

Should both species survive at the same time they would no doubt begin interbreeding. You could expect that they would have become, by consequence, formed a new, intermixed species by the time we even have this debate. Cranial capacity would likely average 2,250 cm^3 and would likely be twice as dense as we are now. Meaning that this new species would be on average at least twice as intelligent as we are now. I bet that they would have began experimenting with genetic modification by now. And one adaptation they would have likley brought back is a full length, prehensile tail.

This new species would likely call themselves Homo Saiyan.

I like the idea! (except the name, I'd name them Homo super sapiens - to keep Latin naming)

The way I see it, the Floresiens have little, if anything, to offer modern man, and would likely be wiped out. When discovered by Homo saiyan, they would be seen as little more than smart monkeys. They would not interbreed and could likely use them as a source of food when other sources become scarce. if interbreeding did occur, it would likely only improve basic senses such as eye-sight and hearing. And those "improvements" would be minimal based off of the native hunting habits that come from the Neanderthals.

For the Denisovans, interbreeding would likely become a possibility. But not much more so than what already exists. If anything, it would simply provide for further genetic immunities to multiple diseases that plague humanity as of now. There would likely be the introduction of a third blood type base: C. ABCO blood typing could then allow for further increased immunities to disease. Even such as AIDS. However, because of Denisovan scarcity they wouldn't survive for long and would become entirely subsumed by H. saiyan.

In the end, purebred H. neanderthalensis and H. sapiens would still exist in small, isolated communities scattered throughout the globe. Yet as H. saiyans grows they will overtake the remaining populations. I'd give it until roughly *5000 BCE when H. Saiyans begins to civilize. And *1000 ADE when H. sapiens and H. neanderthalensis are functionally/entirely extinct.

By *1850 they would begin genetic experimentation within their genome, which in turn could create a new species. Chromosome 24 would contain traits that otherwise wouldn't exist within the human genome: plastid genomes, night vision, IR sensitivity, etc. And then you would have two new species of human. One that was originally created scientifically to produce a species that is far more capable than we are now (physically at least). With the other, parent species, eventually being unable to compete with their own creation.

I want such a TL!!!

@ up: Regardless of the Spanish neanderthals, some interbreeding must have taken place:

Two quotes (footnoted) from Wikipedia:

Cro-Magnon (early-modern-human) skeletal remains showing certain "Neanderthal traits" have been found in Lagar Velho (Portugal) and dated to 24,500 years ago, suggesting that there may have been an extensive admixture of the Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal populations in that region.[4]

Genetic evidence published in 2010 suggests that Neanderthals contributed to the DNA of anatomically modern humans, probably through interbreeding between 80,000 and 50,000 years ago with the population of anatomically modern humans who had recently migrated from Africa. According to the study, by the time that population began dispersing across Eurasia, Neanderthals genes constituted as much as 1–4% of its genome.[12][13][14]
 
This. Whoever invents farming (which will be Sapiens, because as far as we know, they are the only hominid mentioned that both has the ability to farm, and the desire to do so having an appetite for vegetables) will have a population boom that will in all likelihood result in some serious interbreeding.

People in this thread seem to be implying that Neandertals were strictly carnivorous. This is not true. Carbon isotopes showed they ate a lot of meat, but really no more than one would expect for any human hunter-gatherer group which lived in a cold climate where plant resources would be seasonal. There is evidence from tooth plaque that vegetables (including gathered grain) were indeed a substantive part of the Neandertal diet.

The only way to guarantee Neanderthal survival is to get their ancestors into Europe, then keep everybody else out forever. Neanderthals were highly adapted to ice age conditions, and when those disappeared, they simply couldn't compete with us.

It's wrong to say Neanderals died out due to climate. They might have been cold-adapted, but they were never able to live in open tundra, and kept retreating into forested southern Europe during the harshest parts of the ice ages. Modern humans, due to technological innovations, expanded into the tundra easily, and the worst ice age came after the effective extinction of the Neandertals.

Well, Native Americans and Europeans are the same species, so, not really. Have different species adapted to different immunities, you can definitely do some damage. If it was an STD, that would really put a stop to human interbreeding, if you wanted to go that route.

Epidemic disease is really rare in hunter-gatherer groups, because populations aren't high enough to keep the infection going - it just burns itself out. Parasites, on the other hand, are a considerable problem, but parasitic lifeforms usually require another vector besides humans, and thus are limited to certain climates where the other vector lives.
 
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So no Homo Saiyans? I really want a few things confirmed.

1. Human population is kept low because of a super-charged malaria, which is transmitted by mosquitoes.
2. Humans and Neanderthals can't interbreed, but work together, with humans chasing animals into Neanderthal ambushes.
3. Denisovans migrate into the Americas where they evolve farther apart from humans, they don't hunt the American equids, but tame them into the first horses millenia later.
4. Floresiensis sees the benefits of other hominids, and tries to mimic them, intelligence becomes a desired trait for them.
 
So no Homo Saiyans? I really want a few things confirmed.

1. Human population is kept low because of a super-charged malaria, which is transmitted by mosquitoes.
2. Humans and Neanderthals can't interbreed, but work together, with humans chasing animals into Neanderthal ambushes.
3. Denisovans migrate into the Americas where they evolve farther apart from humans, they don't hunt the American equids, but tame them into the first horses millenia later.
4. Floresiensis sees the benefits of other hominids, and tries to mimic them, intelligence becomes a desired trait for them.

The only way is to keep the Humans out of Europe which is by having the Sahara and Syrian desert remain hostile to Humans and the the only area that humans will live near Europe is Mesopotamia and when the Neolithic people flee when the Sea level rises they flee east and to Arabia and Africa and never north to Europe.
 
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I don't want humans to stay out of Europe, I want them to have lower populations. This could prevent humans from drowning out Neanderthals. If humans and Neanderthals were equals, then they could work together, this would be isolated at first, but spread as it becomes a successful practice.
 
I don't want humans to stay out of Europe, I want them to have lower populations. This could prevent humans from drowning out Neanderthals. If humans and Neanderthals were equals, then they could work together, this would be isolated at first, but spread as it becomes a successful practice.
You could have the Modern Human arrival in Europe delayed to Neolithic once the Neanderthal population has recovered at that time the Neanderthals would had started to learn Agriculture from Humans or invent Agriculture themselves.
 
You could have the Modern Human arrival in Europe delayed to Neolithic once the Neanderthal population has recovered at that time the Neanderthals would had started to learn Agriculture from Humans or invent Agriculture themselves.

I still think that super-charged malaria to suppress the population would be the best bet, that way humans and Neanderthals are equals number-wise. The two can meet whenever.
 
Does anyone want to make something up about Denisovans since science knows next to nothing about them?

It had been hypothesized that Denisovans had blond hair, because all modern populations which have Densiovan admixture in Oceania also display the atypical gene for blond hair despite dark skin. This may have been true for the "race" of Denisovans who interbred with humans, but it's clear that the individual genotyped had brown hair.
 
I still think that super-charged malaria to suppress the population would be the best bet, that way humans and Neanderthals are equals number-wise. The two can meet whenever.
Actually that did happen in the form of the Toba eruption..so the best way is that the core of the Human population is to prevent the migration of Humans in Europe before any advancement of the Neanderthals.
 
Except that those "Neanderthals" that interbred with Neanderthals aren't Neanderthals but a people closely related to Neanderthals in Africa absorbed by Homo Sapiens.

That's only one way to consider that evidence. It also may be that there was back-migration of Eurasians into Africa, which added some Neandetal genes.

In addition, there may have been multiple episodes of interbreeding. On the whole, it seems modern East Asians have more Neandertal DNA than Europeans. But Otzi (the famed copper-age Iceman) has far more Neandertal DNA (something like 5%) than any modern human. Meaning some Neandertal-like population must have survived relatively late in/around the Mediterranean, which admixed with Otzi's ancestors at a later date.

Edit: Also, there's clear genomic evidence of some component in modern African hunter-gatherer groups (pygmies and the Hadza and Sandawe from Tanzania), is from a now extinct archaic population. So there was clearly some interbreeding in Africa.
 
Also, there's evidence of immune system genes in New Guinea which diverged from the base human stock 2.5 million years ago. This is probably the result of two different admixture events. Denisovans picked them up from Homo erectus, and Homo sapiens picked them up from the Denisovans.
 
That's only one way to consider that evidence. It also may be that there was back-migration of Eurasians into Africa, which added some Neandetal genes.

In addition, there may have been multiple episodes of interbreeding. On the whole, it seems modern East Asians have more Neandertal DNA than Europeans. But Otzi (the famed copper-age Iceman) has far more Neandertal DNA (something like 5%) than any modern human. Meaning some Neandertal-like population must have survived relatively late in/around the Mediterranean, which admixed with Otzi's ancestors at a later date.

Edit: Also, there's clear genomic evidence of some component in modern African hunter-gatherer groups (pygmies and the Hadza and Sandawe from Tanzania), is from a now extinct archaic population. So there was clearly some interbreeding in Africa.
yeah..

there is a TL where in there are many Hominid groups.

http://althistory.wikia.com/wiki/Humanity_Divided
 
Humans and neanderthals work together until they interbreed. sterile hybrids keep their populations low enough for everyone else to catch up.
 
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