AHC: Humans as genetically diverse as dogs?

I thought it was shown that early humans interbred with various humanoid species? Where does the "weakly interfertile" assertion come from? (Not saying its not true, just that I never heard it before)

At the point where we have separate species, we have evidence of intermixing, but it's somewhat weak (about 5% in populations which would have lived next to Neanderthals).

Basically like dolphins today; they can almost all interbreed and are even second-generation fertile, but their overall fertility is depressed relative to same-species breeding and their social institutions/environmenal niches keep them separate enough to maintain that.

Same as early modern humans and their contemporaries, basically. Except for the whole part where we (probably) killed them off (unlike dolphins who only impact each other's populations slightly).
 
I guess if some isolated civilization develops a rough kind of Mendelian genetics (the intuition of some wise man or Men?) we could have a caste society in wich people are bred for different phenotypes based on caste. Said civilization could then expand in other lands or be discovered by europeans and some of their more ethical methods adopted. You could have fat and allmost immobile genii in the Philosopher Caste, allmost carnivore smart and deadly living weapons in the warrior caste and so on. Else you can just let homo florensis and neanderthals survive somehow...
Both options flirt heavilly with the alien bats from outer space.

The wise men discovering genetics by accident is not that far-fetched. It could have happened in Egypt or Babilon, IMHO. They kept enough pets and grew enough stuff to notice the laws (and were intelligent enough).

It does not necessarily have to go ASB route, either.

There was a TL in the ASB section based on a similar idea. The author was Saturn, I don't remember the title.
 

SATOR

Banned
It's not the wise Men discovering genetics that's ASB per se. It's the fact they manage to build a civilization on that despite generational lenght and other factors. They would have to start 8000 bc at least
 
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