And raiders are apt to rape the women of the defeated group, or take them as "wives", slaves, etc.

Probably. But the point I was trying to make (needlessly, as it turns out) was that information would have spread very, very slowly, too much to effect all the gene pools.


It isn't known whether it's possible or not. Genetics isn't that simple, there may be a specific gene or set of genes that wasn't compatible. Even among humans, it sometimes happens that two individuals are not mutually interfertile. Amount of genetic difference plays only part of the role, the specific types of those genes also matter. What you say makes logical sense, but that's not evidence. Without living Neanderthals to examine, it's an open qustion.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

True.

Were Neanderthal-Sapiens hybrids possible, I'd suspect that after 10-30K years since any genetic stamp of the interrelationship would be almost entirely blended.

Link

There is a lot of overlap in the 350K-130K-50K-30K cycle. If the wiki is correct, one possible thing to look for is a shared trait that is more common among Europeans than Asians. Although this might be the proverbial needle in a stack of needles.

__________________
Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life.
- Goethe

Jump in with both feet!
- Me, indulging my inner eight-year-old

*** *** ***

"Are you a mad-hatter that just types what he wishes, or have you actually any physics training?"
Occam's Ghost to Grant Hutchison.

We have absolutely no evidence that humans and Neanderthals could breed, why assume 1) they could, 2) there were two tribes in a position to intermix 3) they would. We can see say it might have been possible. And even if it was, we have no evidence that the offspring could reproduce (rendering the original reproduction invald... since the genetic variation resultant would've died off)

This sentence doesn't make sense to me. Why would being able to reproduce make them die off?

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Human and Neanderthal have child, we'll call it "Bubba."

Bubba meets a nice cave girl (of either specie) and courts her how all ancient romances went ("OOHGA OOHGA!! We do naughty naughty!"), they go about their business.

Bubba's firing blanks, so no child happens.

End result: Genetic variation from interbreeding doesn't happen. The two specie may not have been able provide viable reproducing offspring.

Same thing happens with Mules / Donkeys / Horses.

True for interbreeding Horses, Donkeys and Zebra - but not always for every mammal; see my example above re: canidae.

Considering there's no other Homos running around, we don't know whether a Sapiens-Neanderthal breeding would produce a mule or not.

On the other hand, given what we do know about the variety of human behaviour (see e.g. the internet) I think we'd be safe to say that Bubba's parents were not the only human-neanderthal attempts at procreation.




Even unattractive people find mates... Bubba's definately got a chance.

__________________
Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life.
- Goethe

Jump in with both feet!
- Me, indulging my inner eight-year-old

*** *** ***

"Are you a mad-hatter that just types what he wishes, or have you actually any physics training?"
Occam's Ghost to Grant Hutchison.

Is there proof, at this point, that Homo-Sapien and Neanderthal interbred?

"In a nutshell, Wall and Kim found big discrepancies in the the Neandertal contribution to modern European ancestry."
-- Anthropology.net
-- February 6, 2008
-- Improving Ancient DNA Purification with Ion-Exchange columns

My point is, it's a leap of faith to assume the two different homos could reproduce together, and that even f they could, their offspring would be fertile.

It's also a leap of faith to assume they can't; we have different phenotypes, but as we don't have any complete Neanderthal DNA to examine, we don't know how genetically similar we are.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

We do know that the fragments we've got so far are too different from our own counterpart segments to have been mixed in the same gene pool recently. The amount of similarity there is (only about twice as much as with chimpanzees) is only consistent with common ancestry, not with interbreeding.

There's also another way to look for genetic signs of interbreeding. The amount of variation on a given gene in the population tells the gene's age (the time elapsed since the original version of the gene that all modern versions are derived from) because mutations that don't affects its functions accumulate over the generations. A gene that's exclusive to this species starts its clock a couple of thousands of centuries ago or less, whereas one that at least some (or all) versions of came from another species starts its clock much longer ago, at the time of last common ancestry between the two species... so the former would have much less variation in the modern population than the latter. But there are no genes showing that much variation in modern humans; they're all recent, indicating exclusivity to this species. (I did read about one or a few that seemed variable enough to possibly be significantly older and thus at least partially of external origin, but that was years ago and I haven't heard of it since then, which makes me suspect it turned out not to be the case... and that was in eastern Asia anyway, not in or near Europe, so even if that were from interbreeding, it would be with a species nobody seems to eagerly want to say we've interbred with like they do with neanderthalensis: erectus!)

Interesting logic. We don't know that we can't so perhaps we can. I think it would be more realistic to say that until we know if we can, that the argument can't really be settled in any reasonable fashion.

No, that's not at all what I said.
Here, read again: Did you see that world "also"? I put it in bold to make sure you saw it.

What I said was exactly what I meant. Both assumptions are leaps of faith. You need to stop reading in what I didn't write.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Wait, let me write that down.

The possible neanderthal/ homo sapiens hybrid was found in Portugal,
article below:
http://www.freeessays.cc/db/4/alx57.shtml (31KB?)
Not read it myself yet but I remember one was found.

regards, left-handed ginger scorpio. :-)

__________________
Life is its own god.

Can you please ask the voices in your head to keep the noise down?

I think that accurately answers that question.

http://www.christinamwilliams.com/Bu...eanderthal.htm

Several years ago, I had a co-worker who had a very prominent brow ridge and a disproportionately large lower jaw. I'm not saying he had Neanderthal in his ancestry, but he looked very much like the lay perception of what one should look like!

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

Hey Kaptain K, don't talk about me like that!

Yeah, I had my wrist x-rayed not so long ago. It really rubbed in how Neanderthal my bones are. My easy life means I don't have the hands of someone leading a hunting and gathering existance, but there's a caveman inside of me.