WI: Humans go extinct instead of the Neanderthals.

The POD is that the lineage of bipedal apes in Africa goes extinct, perhaps due to a minor asteroid impact in the AMH era. The lineages survive elsewhere, namely Neanderthals, Erectus, and the hobbits. What likely course does this human-less world take? I know this would butterfly away history as a concept, but I'm mainly curious in how the natural history of Earth would develop with our lineage extinct and the archaics surviving.
 

Hnau

Banned
The Neanderthals are the most prepared after Humans to take up civilization-building. I would think that first they'd spread out, throughout northern Eurasia, displacing the homo erectus population and having various knock-on effects. The Neanderthals were found as southward as Israel, so I can see them spreading and adapting to the Fertile Crescent as well as the Chinese river plains, if not the Ganges Valley.

Some 40 to 80 thousand years from this year, I believe they'll begin their agrarian revolution, after having adapted for a slightly more temperate climate.
 

Nietzsche

Banned
Hm. I don't really think they'd be too different from humans in terms of general society is concerned. Probably developing along recognizable lines..
 
The ice age that started up when the humans started to move in on the neanderthals would still be in effect, and if the asteroid is used as the POD it is much more severe. They would migrate south, keeping with the low tundra habitat. Megafauna makes a major comback as the woodlands die out, so Mammoths and the like are still around for a while. I'd see a major bottleneck as the neanderthals move south, they were already at roughly 100,000 individuals, so they'd probably drop to 500-10,000-50,000.

With the expanded glaciation, they would eventually make a rebound, and reach a larger population than pre-glaciation levels. They would remain at status quo for a couple millenia, until the glaciers recede. At that point they would have to do what our simian ancestors did, run from habitat to habitat as the niche dies out. Instead of island jungles in savanah, it would be island taiga in steppe. Most will go north, but a few will adapt to the warmer conditions and become taller, less robust, faster, etc.. Resembling modern humans, but with different facial structure and size.

The neander-humans would be much stronger than us, slower, shorter, stockier, but less so than original neanderthals, imagine a race where the average is an NFL linebacker.

Culturally they would be similar, but be far more stationary than us, a remnant from their roots. They'd move either when it is absolutely necessary, or to follow a food source, like Native Americans and bison. They would be a bit more peaceful than us, again because they are immobile so they would keep the same power structure to keep the peace, whereas humans have fluid leadership from the nearly constant moving and hunting. Their intellegence would be a bit lower than us on average, but close enough so they have many individuals who rival our own gifted people. Their Einstien would be our Bill Gates.

They would develope a bit slower than us, but would basically follow our path. When nations are developed war would be much less common, used after diplomacy fails, but it would be far more brutal, due to their sheer physical strength, this may be factored out when long-range warfare becomes the standard, around the Renaissance for us.

Of course, the various adaptations may change their mental functions or ease of anger but I don't want to go insane.
 
I think the world would basically be similar to the last warm spell during the Ice Age. Neanderthals lacked the creativity to go anywhere as they were.

Given a few hundred thosand years to evolve, and a few severe events to reduce the population to the most adaptive individuals, we could see something develop.

Without humans, the Hobbit might well have gotten off its island. I could see it adapting, the different environments and ecologies from island to island might encourage that. Given some watercrossing capabilities and they might well be ahead of the Neanderthals already.

In 300 000 years or so, we might see the much smaller, far more developed Hobbit exterminate a rather stationary Neanderthal.
 
One thing that I'm surprised nobody mentioned is the effects of the Glacial Maximums on regions such as Australia and the Americas. In the absence of humans, and Neanderthals still in all likelihood stuck in their full range, would the megafauna still survive into the era of the Holocene Interglacial? They seemed much too adapted to cold to survive. Would the megafauna go extinct anyhow, without human interference when the interglacial started? Or, might the expansion of the hobbits into Australia have performed the same destruction the Aborigines did and a possible Neanderthal expansion into North America have done what the Indians did? Or, would places like North America and Australia have spent virtually all of the history of humankind alone as a species of bipedal apes the same unchanged paradises of animals?
 
Lacking hunting, I suspect the megafauna would have survived climatic changes. It made it through other warm spells during the ice ages, after all.

How effective a hunter the Hobbit would have been in australia is pure speculation, of course. But I do love the idea of them getting a continent to play with.

As for the Neanderthals, when last seen, they were far less effective hunters than the humans who first arrived in North America. To get to North America, they'd have to improve, of course.

So it is hard to say. I still can't get over why the Neanderthals didn't spread any futher east than they did.
 
As for the Neanderthals, when last seen, they were far less effective hunters than the humans who first arrived in North America. To get to North America, they'd have to improve, of course.
The big advantage that humans had over Neanderthals and Hobbits when it came to hunting megafauna was that they had ranged weapons. That meant that they could go after the really big stuff with virtually no risk to themselves. By going in close, Neanderthals and Hobbits were putting themselves on the line if they did not get a quick kill. In fact because they only use stabbing spears, they were probably ambush hunters.
 
I dont know about you, but the inevitable Gieco commercials would be entertaining.

"Its so easy, a Human could do it."
 
I dont know about you, but the inevitable Gieco commercials would be entertaining.

"Its so easy, a Human could do it."
yes and then we'd get a horrible sitcom about these freakishly tall relatively hairless extinct relatives of ours:D:D:p:rolleyes:
 
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