Where does a man begin and animal ends?

Minniehh

Banned
Theoretically if all of our evolutionary ancestors survived to this day, Neanderthals, Erectus, Habilis and others where would we, if we would at all make a cut off point saying this is an animal and this is a human being? Would we try to isolate them or put them into preservations or try to civilize them? What changes could happen from it?

This does not mean they are as spread as us or Neanderthal europe for example. Merely that they survive in numbers that are genetically viable to this day
 
Slavery is likely, and much more 'justified' in many cases. On the other hand species like Neanderthal, with the same 'tech level' could have an advantage in some colder climates and could maintain independence. Think Neanderthals of Ellsmere Island.
 

SwampTiger

Banned
I would less expect slavery as isolation. IOTL the last Neanderthals retreated to southern Spain. What if they moved into the Baltic basin? Then a retreat into the Scandinavian peninsula. Could we see a surviving Neanderthal population, remaining as more than memories of giants, trolls and dwarves in Nordic epics.
 
I would less expect slavery as isolation. IOTL the last Neanderthals retreated to southern Spain. What if they moved into the Baltic basin? Then a retreat into the Scandinavian peninsula. Could we see a surviving Neanderthal population, remaining as more than memories of giants, trolls and dwarves in Nordic epics.
Neanderthals were more of specialists and relied upon physical strength than dexterity. No the traits that will excel in Scandinavia.
 
Eh, tbf we dont know a ton about Neanderthals. For all we knowz they could adapt and be fine in our world, but have a wildly different culture.
 
Given we interbreed with them why wouldn't they be integrated into the various human cultures or vice versa

That would be OTL, more or less. Neanderthal populations went down in numbers, but in the end they didn't go extinct so much as get absorbed into the much larger sapiens population. It would still be a very slow process, though, since most neanderthal-sapiens hybrids were either stillborn or sterile. It took nearly ten thousand years of coexistence in some regions before one species displaced the other.
 
As a purely philosophical point I'm in the genus homo = human camp.

In this scenario, there's been potentially tens of thousands of years of interaction, with all the potential baggage that entails, effecting how we view them.

Hell, you've radically changed paleoanthropology as a discipline, with all that that entails- changes to our understanding of human evolution and how we're related to these other species etc.
 
Slavery is likely, and much more 'justified' in many cases. On the other hand species like Neanderthal, with the same 'tech level' could have an advantage in some colder climates and could maintain independence. Think Neanderthals of Ellsmere Island.

Is this a reference to something?
 
Guys Neanderthal weren’t stupid they just drew the short stick like all the other former human species out there they had equivalent intelligence to us
 
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The status of non-human hominids would be determined by several factors, intelligence, disposition and the ability to interbreed with homo sapiens.
Intelligence in the ability to interbreed with homo sapiens would make friends, allies and relatives in the homo sapiens population.
A friendly disposition towards homo sapiens would also create sympathies in the homo sapiens community. A hostile disposition towards homo sapiens would create a hostile attitude in return.
Humanity might be out by hostile towards non homo sapiens the time and the factors listed above could increase or decrease that hostility.
 
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I suspect our definition of "human" would become more divorced from that of "person". Think how myths have obviously nonhuman sapients that were still considered people.
We'd probably have something like "beasts, beastpeople, nearhuman/parthuman, human" with the last 3 of the 4 coming under "people".
 

SwampTiger

Banned
The Baltic forests of 40,000 years ago were similar to central France 140,000 years ago. Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis would have been relatively comfortable in that environment. There is evidence the decline of HSN was due to a decline in fertility and infant survival over the last 10-20 centuries of their existence. The last HSN population in southern Spain was not limited to mega fauna for subsistence. I would expect Neanderthals would have survived quite well in the Scandinavia of the post glacial period. Our understanding of their hunting and gathering strategies are becoming clearer with use of newer bio-chemical methods for determining food remains in teeth, and remains of foods in campsites.

Evidence of socialization and seasonal meeting patterns would allow these folks to acclimate with their Homo Sapiens Sapiens neighbors. Do we have any evidence of the survivability and fertility of HSS and HSN offspring? I have seen evidence of hybrids surviving into early adulthood.
 
Theoretically if all of our evolutionary ancestors survived to this day, Neanderthals, Erectus, Habilis and others where would we, if we would at all make a cut off point saying this is an animal and this is a human being? Would we try to isolate them or put them into preservations or try to civilize them? What changes could happen from it?

This does not mean they are as spread as us or Neanderthal europe for example. Merely that they survive in numbers that are genetically viable to this day
Hybrid populations would be interesting. Even 5000 years ago there allegedly had been people with higher Neanderthal- DNA than modern humans. Ötzi the Iceman's DNA shows this.
 
where would we, if we would at all make a cut off point saying this is an animal and this is a human being?
.

a) it would vary according culture b) Like many things, cut off would be depending appearances.

So one culture could define 'human' as = white skin, taller than 150 cm, didn't have protruding brow, no hairy face, etc. While another culture define 'human' as mammals who could walk with two feet.
 
I suspect that if a relict population of Neanderthals or Denisovans were found on some remote island or deep in some mountain range or jungle or something during the Age of Discovery, the discoverers, and society at large, may not even immediately understand them to be fundamentally different than the rest of humanity. They would from a distinctive appearance, certainly, but not radically different than that of anyone else in the world. It may take a while for the scientific community to start to suspect that something was up.

“Hey, isn’t it a little odd that these guys have really weird skeletons?”
 
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I mean, technically we’re all animal and all human (homo sapiens sapiens is just a particular species of human which is part of the Animal Kingdom)... this question really smacks of humanism and human (specifically Homo sapiens sapiens) exceptionalism. To create a cutoff line between “human” and “animal” would be a false distinction because, in short, there is none.

But to get to the point, if more than one species were to survive and effectively compete, that would be interesting. If it was difficult for Homo sapiens sapiens to communicate with and coexist with each other IOTL, and a difference in skin tone and a slight difference in facial features was enough to generate massive discrimination, atrocities, and conflict, then who knows what different species will attempt to do to each other? Means of communication for each may be fundamentally different, as well as cultures, tastes, living conditions, advantages/disadvantages (maybe neanderthalensis is stronger and cold resistant while sapiens is more agile and heat resistant). They won’t just begin with slight differences that can be merged and forged into larger cultures, communities, and civilizations; it is likely that social and biological differences will present a real challenge. I wonder what the outlook of such humans would be. Now that our cousins are all dead, we can safely declare our superiority as the only sapient species on the planet. Imagine living on a planet where there are whole groups, communities, and nations that are just as advanced, powerful, and intelligent as your own, or close enough to truly challenge you, but that cannot make children with you, cannot effectively convey certain ideas to you or vice versa, that could, due to brain structure, have a vastly different fundamental conception of the world as compared to you, vastly fundamentally different cultures, ideas, and societies as compared to yours. I can’t describe how different it would be compared to our world, but think of it like this: every book you’ve read, every song you’ve listened to, every work of art you’ve admired—they’re all from minds that are built in almost the exact same framework as yours. Even minor differences can cause such extreme things as genius or psychopathy. A malfunction in one gene, FOXP2, and its protein means you can’t speak. One gene. People of all cultures and ethnicities have essentially the same brain structures, the same methods of speaking, the same emotions and emotional/mental needs, and many of the same critical genes that define personality, behavior, and communication. If there were to be a group of minds that were, as a rule and not an exception, even slightly different in these regards, it would be amazing and terrifying. Art, literature, and culture would be unrecognizable, for starters. Cuisine and sports too.

Oops. I missed the point. Umm, well, in that universe, I guess all Homo sapiens (not just Homo sapiens sapiens but their cousins too) could be considered at a similar enough level in... well... everything to be “human”. However, it would be factually incorrect to say that, say, Homo erectus is not human. Anything under “homo” is by definition human. And all humans are a part of the animal kingdom.
 
Umm, Homo Sapiens Sapiens were quite the invasive species, in order to have different humanities, you would have to isolate the different humanities long enough for them not to be absorbed by us, say have erectus or habilis get to australia, or have neandethal survive in america and retreat south until it populates the continent, there you could get different humanities that would developp different culture (Neanderthal used to bury the dead of his community, and had jewellery of some sort). The point is, when you reach the age of discoveries, and the "europeans" of this timeline reach the america, they would probably decimate them just with their diseases (or the other way around if they get to us first), then you could imagine that in those hundreds of years the guys would have evolved, becoming more intelligent or stronger and probably starting their own civilisations, a world like this would truly be alien to us. And we shouldn't that some of them were really different compared to us, notably Homo Gautengengis, who is believed to retain some arboreal caracteristics and wouldn't have been considered fully human, perhaps considered as a beast for circus.
 
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