Surviving neanderthals asb? (among other things)

Vuu

Banned
I'm thinking of something and I have a multitude of options, but the PoD is so far back that the consequences can literally be ludicrous (as well as relying upon unconfirmed theories which can probably never be confirmed or disproven). Now we know that the neanderthals dissappeared due to a multitude of factors (low population density, campi flegrei ashing over coincidentally their entire territory, intermixing and predation by modern humans as well as their own people (ah, the good ol' times when eating fellow sapients was a completely normal thing to do), neophobia and disease introduction) but it is perfectly plausible to have a group migrate to an isolated area (they did OTL) but adapt to the new situation and increase their densities, resulting in a neanderthal (at least 50% but preferably higher) population surviving to modern day. Would that be considered an evolution PoD and therefore ASB or not (and if not, what are the best locations to put them in)

And, are highly contested theories considered ASB too, even though they could have happened (talking about the solutrean hypothesis)
 
Seeing as even after 40.000 years most of us have small to significant fractions of Neanderthal DNA mixed in with out own, the greatest challenge would be to keep them genetically different enough to be recognised as genetically different.
While theories abound about why they disappeared we don't and can't really know. Maybe we simply bred them out of existence.
 
Like Kitiem3000 said, we're probably at least part neanderthal. A surviving population would probably get diluted through breeding long long before the modern era. Considering how adventurous humans are I can't think of a place to hide them without some level of regular outside interaction.

Probably not ASB but for purposes of the forum rules it probably is though. Was it ever decided what the actual cutoff was for the evolutionary/geological rule?
 
You must put it in the ASB forum by standards, and I think a completely separate Neanderthal specie would be ASB too, but a more Neanderthal humanity is not at all. Still I guess it would need a climate PoD
 
Closest I can get to non ASB by forum standards is that homo sapiens at the time decide not to leave Africa 70-50 k years ago and don't leave until much later; at a point where there is agriculture and humans are able to have captives and realise that those people or subshumans are not like us and are tamed, rather like dogs rather than fellow humans.

A "tamed" human subspecies that are Neanderthal descended but are bred like dogs to have desirable traits is pretty disturbing.

No geology, not directly evolutionary, climatogical or cosmological, though lots of evolutionary butterflies.
 
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Vuu

Banned
Yea i didn't exactly require a fullblood population, too difficult. They can be mixed as long as the admixture is majority neanderthal. Would probably be considered a part of the caucasian race through history

Trick being getting enough of them to a remote, hard to access yet livable (and preferably where agriculture can be invented) so their population can remain more or less separated. A big enougj population density is pretty much the only requirement
 
The best bet would be to somehow get them to Iceland before the Norse. This isn't totally ridiculous, given we know that archaic humans engaged in ocean journeys now with the discovery of very old stone tools in the Philippines. Unfortunately Iceland was basically completely covered in glaciers during the Ice Ages, and Neandertals didn't actually live even in tundra-style environments. So the only way for them to colonize Iceland is to first survive on mainland Europe up until about 10,000 years ago.
 
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I'm thinking of something and I have a multitude of options, but the PoD is so far back that the consequences can literally be ludicrous (as well as relying upon unconfirmed theories which can probably never be confirmed or disproven). Now we know that the neanderthals dissappeared due to a multitude of factors (low population density, campi flegrei ashing over coincidentally their entire territory, intermixing and predation by modern humans as well as their own people (ah, the good ol' times when eating fellow sapients was a completely normal thing to do), neophobia and disease introduction) but it is perfectly plausible to have a group migrate to an isolated area (they did OTL) but adapt to the new situation and increase their densities, resulting in a neanderthal (at least 50% but preferably higher) population surviving to modern day. Would that be considered an evolution PoD and therefore ASB or not (and if not, what are the best locations to put them in)

And, are highly contested theories considered ASB too, even though they could have happened (talking about the solutrean hypothesis)
Maybe closed isolated bottle necked "part-Neanderthal" populations surviving in tough mountainous enviroment pockets. Alps, Ural etc. ? At least Ötzi the Iceman had more percentage of Neandertal DNA than any human alive ! Only 5000 years ago.
 

Vuu

Banned
I was thinking that, or an island

I considered the Tarim Basin but maybe it's too big and the livable area is like a giant croissant, prohibiting cohesion. Tibet could work but no agriculture there

And islands can only be those that used to be mainland, and the trick is how to keep other humans to a minimum before the sea rises
 
Maybe closed isolated bottle necked "part-Neanderthal" populations surviving in tough mountainous enviroment pockets. Alps, Ural etc. ? At least Ötzi the Iceman had more percentage of Neandertal DNA than any human alive ! Only 5000 years ago.

We also know that Neandertals at least visited, if not settled, islands in the Mediterranean (Aegean) which were never connected to the mainland, even during the Ice Ages.

Hence it's possible you could get a stable breeding population of Neandertals in the Belares, Sardinia, Sicily, etc. And also possible that the AMH do not immediately follow them. The neolithic farmers however, will settle these areas quite early, which would make it difficult to get the population to survive into historic times.
 
Have the Proto-Vasconic people that spread throughout Europe before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans end up just not being able to get across Gibraltar for one reason or another. Or just, overall, a far greater split between Neanderthals and Humans that make it so that interbreeding is less likely.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
The POD that get the Neanderthals to survive til today are two fold. You need something preventing interbreeding and regional competitive advantage. You probably need another interglacial or two for the genetic difference to accumulate enough so we can't interbreed. Then you need some advantage that modern humans lack and can't acquire via interbreeding. Then you need something like malaria and sickle cell genetic resistance to malaria to keep the human out of a region. It is actually easier to imagine Neanderthals developing more intelligence and better tools and not being able to displace modern humans in the malaria filled or African Sleeping sickness parts of Africa than the reverse.

I guess we could also imagine a gene as effective in helping with food gathering as the gene that allow indo-europeans to digest milk as an adult.

On a similar topic, some think the high-altitude gene of the Himalayan peoples came from Denisovians. I can actually imagine the Densovians who can't interbreed retreating to the Himalayan High Plateau and only being replaced in very modern times by determine Chinese dynasties.
 

Kaze

Banned
I was thinking that, or an island

I considered the Tarim Basin but maybe it's too big and the livable area is like a giant croissant, prohibiting cohesion. Tibet could work but no agriculture there

And islands can only be those that used to be mainland, and the trick is how to keep other humans to a minimum before the sea rises


Actually some communities in Tibet are genetically close to the Denisovan blood.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denisovan
 

Vuu

Banned
We also know that Neandertals at least visited, if not settled, islands in the Mediterranean (Aegean) which were never connected to the mainland, even during the Ice Ages.

Hence it's possible you could get a stable breeding population of Neandertals in the Belares, Sardinia, Sicily, etc. And also possible that the AMH do not immediately follow them. The neolithic farmers however, will settle these areas quite early, which would make it difficult to get the population to survive into historic times.

You just made my task ludicrously easy, as that implies that even that far back some sort of boats were possible (making that solutrean thing also possible). All we have to do is make some neanderthal band chief decide that some island looks nice to live on and remain isolated long enough to fill it up so that any modern humans get there, they'll be integrated successfully. After all, they don't need to be full neanderthal, only majority. Their survival to modern day ia eaaily handwaved by good leaders. This leaves us with 3 options: Cyprus, Corsica or Sardinia. Cyprus could be good, since it's furthermost away feom the phlegrean fieldsbwhich probably added to the causes of neanderthal extinction. Though Cyprus could also get the worst of the ashing because downwind afaik, and Corsica and Sardinia too close. Cyprus is also good as agriculture will probably be invented in the middle east again so they're close to be able to quickly adopt it
 
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What about the Caucasus? North of Armenia it seems to have been a bit of a backwater in global history up until the Alans set up their kingdom
 
The first thing that comes to my mind a remnant populations of Madiera and the Azors. If Neanderthals somehow end there is create stable populations later HS settlement might not be possible to the already existing population density until the time of age of exploration.
 
If Neanderthals settled on an island and had the mentality of the North Sentinelese they could still be around. It would have to be somewhere out of the way and not have some obvious resource that someone more advanced would want (oil, gold, spices ,etc)
 
If Neanderthals settled on an island and had the mentality of the North Sentinelese they could still be around. It would have to be somewhere out of the way and not have some obvious resource that someone more advanced would want (oil, gold, spices ,etc)

I could see a small community on some remote island entering into Greco-Roman mythology somehow (before their inevitable extinction by either violence, disease, or intermarriage with homo sapiens). Some of those small islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea might be best.
 
Unless the Neanderthal population is big enough, isolated enough(depends on population size, technological and culture), advanced enough then the population will be in danger of being displaced.
 
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