Save an extinct ethnic group

[Neoteros]

It is the Etruscans who are said to be that.

According to the latest findings, the Etruscans shared a lot of DNA with their Italic neighbours, but their culture (and language, most likely) descended from that of the indigenous Villanovan culture; more or less, in Etruria, the Indo-Europeans went native, probably due to how developed the Villanovan culture was when compared to their own.

There's a lot of places where this process could've occurred - for example, the Middle East and North Africa adopting the Islamic faith but avoiding outright Arabization, just like it happened in East Africa and Southeast Asia; this way, you could have Coptic, several Berber languages and African Romance survive as spoken languages in the latter, with the Aramaic-derived tongues continuing to be spoken by most of the population in the former.

Speaking of Muslim-majority peoples, the Cham have had it rough, as it was only in the 19th century that they were almost completely wiped out by the Vietnamese, while in the rest of the Sinosphere, the list of peoples that got on the wrong side of the Han is more or less infinite, but the fall of Dzungaria and Manchuria as viable entities is rather recent.

Gamer moment: somehow, a band of paleolithic, Cheddar Man-like Europeans makes it to Iceland and the Faroe Islands; quite a few millennia later, the Norse encounter a blue-eyed, dark-skinned people whose members resemble Avatar Korra to a rather unnerving degree.

 

[GameBawesome]

Don’t know if this thread was dead or not, but I’ll allow it to be revived

 

[Byzantion]

How about the very early non Indo-European people of the European Subcontinent ? Would be interesting to have them survive in some way. Maybe even as nomadic groups living a hinter gatherer lifestyle or somehow coexisting with later arrivals into Europe in some way.

 

[Zincvit]

According to the latest findings, the Etruscans shared a lot of DNA with their Italic neighbours, but their culture (and language, most likely) descended from that of the indigenous Villanovan culture; more or less, in Etruria, the Indo-Europeans went native, probably due to how developed the Villanovan culture was when compared to their own.

There's a lot of places where this process could've occurred - for example, the Middle East and North Africa adopting the Islamic faith but avoiding outright Arabization, just like it happened in East Africa and Southeast Asia; this way, you could have Coptic, several Berber languages and African Romance survive as spoken languages in the latter, with the Aramaic-derived tongues continuing to be spoken by most of the population in the former.

Speaking of Muslim-majority peoples, the Cham have had it rough, as it was only in the 19th century that they were almost completely wiped out by the Vietnamese, while in the rest of the Sinosphere, the list of peoples that got on the wrong side of the Han is more or less infinite, but the fall of Dzungaria and Manchuria as viable entities is rather recent.

Gamer moment: somehow, a band of paleolithic, Cheddar Man-like Europeans makes it to Iceland and the Faroe Islands; quite a few millennia later, the Norse encounter a blue-eyed, dark-skinned people whose members resemble Avatar Korra to a rather unnerving degree.

Well the Chams still retain their language and culture, though there are more of them (identified anyway) in Cambodia than Vietnam, but still, they don't have it rough like native North Americans (where specific ethnic groups only numbered in the thousands)

 

[Gabingston]

Tasmanians are interesting case, being the most isolated human population on Earth. 10 000 years of solitude. And Tasmania was the last place on Earth, where Middle Paleolithic lasted until historical times.

I find it difficult to believe that there was zero contact between Tasmania and the Australian mainland for 10,000 years. Surely someone must've gotten swept out to sea for some reason and washed up on the other shore, right? It's almost surreal that a population could be completely cut off from everyone else for that long. Their entire world would've been that one island.

 

[Coivara]

How about the very early non Indo-European people of the European Subcontinent ? Would be interesting to have them survive in some way. Maybe even as nomadic groups living a hinter gatherer lifestyle or somehow coexisting with later arrivals into Europe in some way.

The original dusky-skinned Europeans?

Yeah, that would be pretty interesting.
Maybe get them on a high Vitamin D diet along the way, so they retain their pigments and different look too.
I wonder how they looked like...

 

[Neoteros]

The original dusky-skinned Europeans?

Yeah, that would be pretty interesting.
Maybe get them on a high Vitamin D diet along the way, so they retain their pigments and different look too.
I wonder how they looked like...

Kinda like this:

That said, even if they'd been left alone, their skin tone would've gotten lighter - especially if they ended up migrating to the far north of the continent.

It'd be trippy, if they got stuck in some freezing cold places (the Faroes and Iceland, for example) and became even paler than modern day northern Europeans, as pale as a human being could possibly get without being an actual albino. The first people to sail to those islands would probably think they were ghosts.

 

[revachah2]

Edomites, Native Tasmanians, Moriori people, Red Deer Cave People, Minoans.

Tasmanians are interesting case, being the most isolated human population on Earth. 10 000 years of solitude. And Tasmania was the last place on Earth, where Middle Paleolithic lasted until historical times.

While their descendants are largely white today the Tasmanian community didn't just die off with Truginini, on various islands between Tasmanian and the Mainland White and even Maori fishermen and sailors kidnapped and enslaved Tasmanian and occasionally Victorian aboriginal women to the point that half and quarter Tasmanian community maintained itself into the 1970's/1980s

This photo was taken in 1893 but people had these phenotypes for almost 70 years after, some islands on the Bass Strait still had "no black" policies until that period

1. The Tellem: A mysterious ethnic group that survived in West Africa within the Bandiagara Enscarpment, who resemble pygmies, yet are unrelated to them. Their culture, bones, and buildings still survive today despite being gone for several centuries, only to be replaced by the Dogon. Had they survived, we would've have far greater insight in their culture and language. Sad they're only used to peddle conspiracy theories about Ancient Egypt, but ah well.

The Tellem weren't literal pygmies nor resembled them, the Dogon called them little people but that was exaggerated by Huizinga who 1. wasn't a scientist and 2. has been critiqued a lot by scientists and researchers in the 1960s and 70s . He also is the reason why graverobbing and the desecration of cliff sites occurred/occur to this day so now we may never know the various group of the area. For example everyone talks about Tellem (who are probably today the speakers of Bangime) but conflate them with the first cliff dwellers the Toloy.

 

[Interwarped y Death]

More south Cushitic groups surviving would be cool, the iraqw in Tanzania are the last of the group remaining

 

[Byzantion]

The Cumans would be interesting. The last Cuman speaker died in the 1770es, the rest of the Cumans had already been assimilated among Magyar Hungarians. Still officially the Cuman priviliges had been maintained by Hungarian law until 1876. The Turkic Cumans had been once a feared imperial power, had been associated with the Mongols and than travelled more and more west. until reaching Europe where they eventually had been 'Europeanized'.

 

[Hearkener]

I mean from skeletal remains it was obvious from day one when neanderthal were first discovered they were not exactly human.

Neanderthals were humans. Every member of Homo is a human being. Secondly, the remains of the first Neanderthals looked so human that a number of German biologists insisted they were simply disfigured Homo sapiens sapiens. They were probably not that different from us, given that they buried their dead, created art and got along with us well enough to produce offspring. We are one species.

 

[Arkenfolm]

Neanderthals were humans. Every member of Homo is a human being. Secondly, the remains of the first Neanderthals looked so human that a number of German biologists insisted they were simply disfigured Homo sapiens sapiens. They were probably not that different from us, given that they buried their dead, created art and got along with us well enough to produce offspring. We are one species.

By the very definition of species, we aren't one species, and I doubt you could call early ancestors of humans like Homo habilis anything but a glorified ape given their culture and behavior was more apelike than human.

 

[Hearkener]

By the very definition of species, we aren't one species, and I doubt you could call early ancestors of humans like Homo habilis anything but a glorified ape given their culture and behavior was more apelike than human.

If two individuals can create fertile offspring, they are of the same species. Horses and asses can't, therefore they are seperate species. H. s. sapiens and H. s. neanderthalensis could, and therefore constitute two sub-species of the same larger species, Home sapiens. The biological definition of a human is a member of the genus Homo, so yes, H. habilis was a species of human. We don't know a lot about their culture and behaviour, but they made permanent tools and worked with stone, which no ape does. Saying they were basically apes is like saying that a chimpanzee is basically a baboon.
Further, H. s. neanderthalensis was very far from an early Homo. They cared for their dead and wounded, they wore body-paint and they knew fire. Apparently we were fine with mating with them, so likely they neither looked nor behaved like apes.
Personally I consider it dangerous to consider any human being an animal.

 

[Crazy Boris]

If two individuals can create fertile offspring, they are of the same species. Horses and asses can't, therefore they are seperate species. H. s. sapiens and H. s. neanderthalensis could, and therefore constitute two sub-species of the same larger species, Home sapiens. The biological definition of a human is a member of the genus Homo, so yes, H. habilis was a species of human. We don't know a lot about their culture and behaviour, but they made permanent tools and worked with stone, which no ape does. Saying they were basically apes is like saying that a chimpanzee is basically a baboon.
Further, H. s. neanderthalensis was very far from an early Homo. They cared for their dead and wounded, they wore body-paint and they knew fire. Apparently we were fine with mating with them, so likely they neither looked nor behaved like apes.
Personally I consider it dangerous to consider any human being an animal.

We’re very closely related to Neanderthals, but not the same species, otherwise they would actually be considered an H. sapiens subspecies (or we would be considered an H. neanderthalensis subspecies) by scientists. Fertile hybrids across species are unusual, but not unheard of. Male ligers are sterile, but females aren’t and can reproduce with other ligers or with either parent species. According to Haldane’s rule, the heterogametic sex is sterile, but that doesn’t mean the homogametic one will be. For all we know it could have applied to Neanderthals

Also, humans of any species are both animals and apes, so saying Homo habilis is an ape is 100% correct, as are Neanderthals and modern humans. Saying H. habilis is an ape is nothing like comparing chimps and baboons, it’s like saying dolphins are a subgroup of whales, which they are. Behavior doesn’t define what is and isn’t in a certain group. Termites and ants have a lot in common behaviorally but termites are way, way, closer related to cockroaches than they are to any kind of hymenoptera. Humans, gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutans all share a common ancestor and are closely related, thus, they’re all apes, and all apes are animals (because they sure as hell aren’t plants, fungi, or bacteria unless everything I know about biology is wrong) and therefore, all humans, including you, me, Neanderthals, H. habilis, and every other lineage in the hominid family tree, are animals. It’s not “dangerous” it’s just what it is.

 

[kasumigenx]

The ethnic group of Tondo, the lowland equivalent of the Remontado Agta they were the ones who built Tondo.

 

[Lothal]

The Cumans would be interesting. The last Cuman speaker died in the 1770es, the rest of the Cumans had already been assimilated among Magyar Hungarians. Still officially the Cuman priviliges had been maintained by Hungarian law until 1876. The Turkic Cumans had been once a feared imperial power, had been associated with the Mongols and than travelled more and more west. until reaching Europe where they eventually had been 'Europeanized'.

I think more interesting is the legitimate possibility of a Catholic steppe horde, near the time of their demise on the steppe the Cumans who lived in the areas of OTL Romania were mass baptised by the Hungarians, and I'd assume in a no-Mongols situation that most of the confederation could become Catholic based on the haste of he progress they made.

 

[Hearkener]

We’re very closely related to Neanderthals, but not the same species, otherwise they would actually be considered an H. sapiens subspecies (or we would be considered an H. neanderthalensis subspecies) by scientists. Fertile hybrids across species are unusual, but not unheard of. Male ligers are sterile, but females aren’t and can reproduce with other ligers or with either parent species. According to Haldane’s rule, the heterogametic sex is sterile, but that doesn’t mean the homogametic one will be. For all we know it could have applied to Neanderthals

Also, humans of any species are both animals and apes, so saying Homo habilis is an ape is 100% correct, as are Neanderthals and modern humans. Saying H. habilis is an ape is nothing like comparing chimps and baboons, it’s like saying dolphins are a subgroup of whales, which they are. Behavior doesn’t define what is and isn’t in a certain group. Termites and ants have a lot in common behaviorally but termites are way, way, closer related to cockroaches than they are to any kind of hymenoptera. Humans, gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutans all share a common ancestor and are closely related, thus, they’re all apes, and all apes are animals (because they sure as hell aren’t plants, fungi, or bacteria unless everything I know about biology is wrong) and therefore, all humans, including you, me, Neanderthals, H. habilis, and every other lineage in the hominid family tree, are animals. It’s not “dangerous” it’s just what it is.

The scientific consensus is not nearly as firm as you make it out to be. Plenty of scientists and scientific institutions use H. s. neanderthalensis, such as, if my recollection does not fail me here, the Neanderthal Museum in Germany where the first skeletons were actually found. It's certainly possible that Haldane's rule applied to the offspring of modern humans and neanderthal humans, but a possible explanation is not equivalent to hard proof. We simply don't have enough data.
Yes, we are both animals and apes, just as we are also fish. But that argument is just biological semantics.

I doubt you could call early ancestors of humans like Homo habilis anything but a glorified ape given their culture and behavior was more apelike than human.

Arkenfolm says that we can't call H. habilis human because they behaved as apes, meaning modern great apes outside of Homo. He doesn't really use "human" in the biological sense, more in the philosophical, and by analogy questions the validity of calling any non-extant Homo a human being. The argument is demonstrably wrong. Even very early humans can clearly be behaviourally distinguished from chimpanzees, bonobos, orang-utans and gorillas, just on archeological finds alone.
Of course, no amount of behaviour turns an animal into anything other than an animal, but it means something to say that humans are in many ways different from all other known animals. The argument isn't purely biological, it has an ethical component to it. How would we treat a living Homo habilis? With the full dignity accorded to every human, I certainly hope. People can disagree, and that is fine and makes for a great discussion, but I do consider it dangerous to deny our closest relatives the capacity for humanity.

 

[Arkenfolm]

If two individuals can create fertile offspring, they are of the same species. Horses and asses can't, therefore they are seperate species. H. s. sapiens and H. s. neanderthalensis could, and therefore constitute two sub-species of the same larger species, Home sapiens. The biological definition of a human is a member of the genus Homo, so yes, H. habilis was a species of human. We don't know a lot about their culture and behaviour, but they made permanent tools and worked with stone, which no ape does. Saying they were basically apes is like saying that a chimpanzee is basically a baboon.
Further, H. s. neanderthalensis was very far from an early Homo. They cared for their dead and wounded, they wore body-paint and they knew fire. Apparently we were fine with mating with them, so likely they neither looked nor behaved like apes.
Personally I consider it dangerous to consider any human being an animal.

H. habilis is so different than later species that there's been proposals to classify it as Australopithecus. We know Australopithecus used tools, and it was probably smarter than modern apes based on its brain size. H. habilis is still very far below

And Neanderthals are very likely a different species (hence why many do not consider them part of H. sapiens) and it's debateable to what degree they were compatible with our own species because genetics do not show many male H. sapiens/female Neanderthal pairings compared to the inverse.

Arkenfolm says that we can't call H. habilis human because they behaved as apes, meaning modern great apes outside of Homo. He doesn't really use "human" in the biological sense, more in the philosophical, and by analogy questions the validity of calling any non-extant Homo a human being. The argument is demonstrably wrong. Even very early humans can clearly be behaviourally distinguished from chimpanzees, bonobos, orang-utans and gorillas, just on archeological finds alone.

We could never speak to H. habilis because very likely H. habilis did not have language. It seems likely H. habilis moved about and acted in a way more similar to a chimpanzee than any later human. While it wasn't an ape, it wasn't a human either. Early H. erectus or relatives like H. ergaster are probably the first vaguely modern humans since they seem to have the same morphology as H. sapiens, used similar technology, and lived a similar lifestyle compared to H. habilis. There's still a lot of debateable aspects like how intelligent they were compared to us.

It's a spectrum, and the question is where we draw the line as to affording them human rights as afforded to animal rights.

 

[Hearkener]

We could never speak to H. habilis because very likely H. habilis did not have language. It seems likely H. habilis moved about and acted in a way more similar to a chimpanzee than any later human. While it wasn't an ape, it wasn't a human either.

This is just not true. H. habilis was behaviourally very distinct from Chimpanzees in a number of demonstrable ways which I have listed before. Objectively, H. habilis was a species of human. All humans get full human rights, regardless of brain size or language use. Otherwise we might as well argue that severely brain-damaged people are not human, as they are incapable of speech or complex thought. Intelligence is a bad marker for humanity. And while we're at it, let's not pretend apes are so different from us that they should be put in the same legal category as shrimps and sponges.

 

[Siberian Tiger]

It would be cool to see a surviving continental Celtic people