Do you believe, as I do, that Neanderthals get a bad rap because some people (scientists included) want to believe that cro-magnon was much more beautiful and much smarter and therefore they are obviously our only ancestors?
Is this based on the concept of eugenics? Scientists have not considered fossil remains of bones that have both the characteristics of Neanderthal and cro-magnon and like to claim that they were unable to inter-breed. What's up with this?
2006-12-16 02:48:03 · 8 answers · asked by Anonymous in Social Science ➔ Anthropology
i don't think that they were related closely enough to sapiens to have interbred, but i do agree that they get a bit of a bad rap. i think it's left over from centuries of western european anthropocentrism. we have always wanted our group of sapiens to be elevated and ultimate.
that being said, neandertal encephalization was lower than modern sapiens and their tool industry was pretty static over thousands of years. so they were more "primitive," but i don't think that the term should be used derogatively.
the research at the max planck institute to reconstruct the neandertal genome should prove interesting and maybe answer some of these questions.
2006-12-17 19:05:52 · answer #1 · answered by lb 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Anthropology isn't about feeling sorry for extinct species. Scientists just examine the evidence. In this case, evidence suggests that about 5% of our DNA came from Neanderthal. The rest came from Cro Magnon. Interbreeding was minimal.
2006-12-16 18:38:19 · answer #2 · answered by Labsci 7 · 0⤊ 1⤋
If I remember correctly from my Archaeology classes, there is evidence supporting that Neanderthals did not continue to develop or evolve. They reached a certain stage, stopped, and became extinct when they couldn't figure out how to deal with the extreme weather change. Therefore, we could not have evolved from Neanderthals because they weren't around to evolve from. I really dont think it has anything to do with whether or not archaeologists thought the Neanderthal was beautiful or not or that they get a bad rap. There is just evolutionary and archaeological evidence to prove that the Neanderthal wasn't as smart as Cromagon man.
2006-12-16 13:03:41 · answer #3 · answered by ms dont panic 4 · 1⤊ 1⤋
not all scientists believe that neandertals were unable to interbreed with humans, and not all scientists ignore the 'hybrid' type fossil remains... for examples, read up on some articles by Erik Trinkaus
the idea of neandertals as somehow 'less' than humans may have came from the first neandertal that was discovered, as he was quite elderly and his skeleton was disfigured...
neandertals and humans co-existed in europe for something like 40,000 years, so i think its totally possible that they interbred, though the dna analysis thus far suggests that there is no neandertal dna in the living human population...
2006-12-17 01:35:24 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 3⤊ 0⤋
Yes, they do get a bad rap and I believe they were more intelligence then made out to be, especially through media exposure (t.v. commercials....etc). Although, DNA(mitochondrial) evidence suggests they were different from Homo sapiens. Therefore, scientists have not been biased and have simply based there conclusions on well documented physical evidence.
2006-12-16 13:00:51 · answer #5 · answered by chris j 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Yes, it seems that they got a bad rap...
2006-12-16 15:41:40 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
You need to ask the Geico man!
2006-12-16 10:51:44 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 2⤋
Darwin said it all - survival of the fittest!!!!!
2006-12-16 10:56:46 · answer #8 · answered by utbsterry 1 · 0⤊ 3⤋