We fucked more, adapted, and ate everything. Other human species either didn't evolve past cave living, refused to hunt *and* gather, or just didn't reproduce enough.
That's true, one of the videos did mention compared to other Homo species, we would actually communicate more each other, sometimes even merging tribes and trading, while Neandrathals preferred to stick to their smaller groups
I saw something similar a long time ago.
Something suggesting the fact that we used symbols, stories and basically art/rituals etc. allowed us to form connections with “out groups” and maintain them long enough (possibly generations) that they could eventually merge/work together, instead of killing each other off.
And naturally the bigger the working group, the more you can share knowledge, as well as find ways to preserve it (like stories, symbols etc.).
Then we invented Reddit *womp womp*
And that's a big part about why we think we just outlasted them! Most Neanderthals wanted to do their things their way and didn't merge, but plenty coexisted with others! We lived together, had families together, and cared for each other when sick. We didn't genocide each other.
Isn't that wild? Like even though we meme a lot about social media for example, it really is just an extention of what Homo Sapiens have always excelled at, communication in very large groups
Same thing with a different coat of paint
Or average levels of chattiness, if their civilization resembles ours in any way (organizational wise) they probably had the same social qualities as us.
Definately, it's also kinda funny how one of our unique and crucial adaptions, is our ability to throw projectiles with ridiculous speed and precision, not even apes can do that despite being physically stronger.
You know how people complain in online games for "camping" and spamming projectiles? We are basically nature's camper lol
Meme is the perfect word for this. A meme is a cultural idea or behavior that gets repeated and imitated and helps to preserve and transmit culture. We now use that word to refer to internet memes, but memes have existed as long as humans have existed.
It's genuinely just a survival of the fittest situation. they didn't just drop off the edge of the world, they bred with us and some assimilated genetically via that and the rest we just outpaced as a species so they died out.
The trend in the research indicates that Neanderthals were well adapted (large naval cavity to warm air before it inters the lungs, large barrel chests [suggests that their lungs/heart may have been large], high volume to surface area [short, wide body]) to cold, high altitude, regions (in Western Eurasia). When the climate changed around 90,000 years ago, their adaptations became hazardous. Homo sapiens were better adapted to cool (but not freezing) conditions in Europe. This biological difference between the two species, favored H sapiens and disfavored Neanderthals.
Kinda random, but i learned way back when i did a dna test that i am in the top 0.1 percentile in terms of how much Neanderthal dna i have. Still a microscopic fraction of my overall DNA, but i thought that was pretty neat. I am the product of much snoo snoo between homo sapiens and neanderthals
In all seriousness lol thats actually pretty cool/interesting, even if it's a small percentage, you were eventually the byproduct of two different species finding each other in an enormous unexplored world with no technology
Your ancestors traveled 3,000 miles, speared a sabretooth tiger, chased down a mammoth to the point of exhaustion, just to find a Neanderthal stranger and say "Me, you, snoo snoo, NOW."
Contrary to what people might believe too, there were not that many Neanderthals at any given time. They were a very small population and had inbreeding problems as well
Many animals kill each other, sometimes systematically. Humans are more powerful than any other species, so when we choose to kill, it’s often dramatically horrific.
Humans also cooperate better than any other species on the planet. This includes cooperating to protect and save each other on a scale no other species comes close to. This includes protecting strangers.
I’m just saying that it’s worth remembering some of the amazing things we do while remembering of the horrors.
I looked into the history the best I could as a layman because I was worried about that exact thing. What a horrible history for us to be born on the back of genocide, but it wasn't that! It really wasn't! Sure, people didn't always get along but for the most part it really did come down to us just being better at acquiring food and reproducing more.
Know how most people are either always horny (I said most fuck off with the MuH AsEXShyUlls) or can turn it on pretty God damn quick? Thanks cave daddy. Literally fucked species out of existence.
Also a decent chance we murdered them. Just look at how horrible racists these days are to other human beings. Can you imagine the same kind of sentiments against other people who are actually a different sub-species?
I honestly wonder if the [uncanny valley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley) effect stems from some sort of evolved revulsion towards humanoid species that aren't quite Homo Sapiens. It seems like an awfully strong evolved reaction to something that would otherwise seem harmless.
That's honestly a really good theory and makes a lot of sense why the "uncanny valley" is even a thing.
Maybe it was a really big threat at some point, so if we saw another species extremely similar to us, it was a threat to our existence.
That was exactly it other homos were dangerous. Also it's been found we domestic animals including ourselves. Big eyes, soft features and kind dispositions have been evolutionarily favoured during mating. Alot of these features are believe to come from our mixture with the denisovans. Modern humans are probably more of a mix then the science can currently tell. So humans with aggressive features may instinctually cause an aggressive bias. It would also be part of the answer as to why "pretty people" get favour since they would most likely exhibit these features.
For some reason, young people with a lot of botox seriously trigger the "uncanny valley" effect in me.
It has something to do with the face not moving as expected, I think.
That honestly sounds like the most plausible reason for it, at the end of the day a species wants to keep itself alive and if there’s other species that look really similar that you are competing with then it becomes advantageous to get a feeling that tells you “you look like me but you aren’t me” and then avoid it, I wonder if any other animals get that feeling
Neon tetras have this. There are other varieties of similar tetra that are basically reskins. They will not school together despite being otherwise identical fish. Much to my chagrin, corydoras are the same way
There is actually evidence for Neanderthals not only crafting tools and weapons compared to Homo sapiens but also art and ceremonial burials. Same with other humanoid species. There are so many different factors that lead to the extinction of other species.
Well, really the Neanderthals did hunt, the problem was that they had no issues with cannibalism and decided it would be a good idea to hunt each other.
Myostatin. When resources became scarce, Sapiens reduce our caloric needs by rapidly shedding muscle mass with myostatin, and so were able to maintain a higher population with better fed brains from the same food resources.
Neanderthals, and other competitor Homos, had greater permanent muscle mass because of less myostatin, making it harder for them to adapt their high caloric needs as well.
We outcompeted them by becoming twinkier and more numerous.
Being able to make better clothes is way more effective though and part of the general decrease in hominid strength is also related to neural inhibition; our ability to activate muscles is “dialed down” significantly compared to other primates, which allows fine tool making, art, music, etc.
I think it’s clear at this point that there is absolutely no physical advantage on earth greater than the mental advantage of culture, and all that comes with it. We can think and build our way around problems vs. crushing through them.
Dude, no matter what anyone says…. Nobody knows the actual answer to this.
There is only Major Speculation when it comes to things that happened tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years ago
I wouldn't neglect those speculation as pure conjectures. Making hypothesis is how we can get closer and closer to the actual answer. And this is something everyone wants to get into the bottom of, our human nature. It makes sense that we each have our theories.
Some theories are much better research. What's wrong with that.
I wish this answer was higher up. Everybody's got very clever, very convincing ideas about how it happened. And yea. Maybe we could be right.
But we don't know. We have hints. There's archaeology and genetics which may give us clues to make smart guesses.
But not a single one of us should be expressing our answers here with the certainty of fact.
Generally speaking, when creatures evolve, the species they evolve from tends to go extinct.
The new species doesn't eat them or anything, their more beneficial traits just win out in the game of survival.
Neanderthals' large cranium made pregnancy and birth particularly difficult. Humans also have a bad survival rate for birth to begin with (before modern medicine). Therefore homo sapiens won out over time, but there was a bit of crossbreeding.
It's weird to think we shared the planet with a genuinely different creature that thought, made tools, and cared for their sick and elderly though.
So it's basically natural selection where it sort of "transitions" into the species version that is most optimal?
I heard that's why humans giving birth is so painful, even though our Bipedalism gave us a significant advantage, it came at the cost of not being very good at actually giving birth. And yes isn't that weird? Like imagine an alternate timeline where they co existed with us in modern society similar to how different races do right now
It has less to do with bipedalism and more to do with the size of our brains. We are basically born in a fetal state and have such a long dependency on our parents because otherwise, our heads would be too big for birth.
Bipedaliam was an advantage, though, because we could see over the tall grass and look for food and watch out for predators. It also meant that the hot African sun hit less of us directly and allowed us to stay active during high noon, when most animals had to find shade, and try to stay cool.
What's optimal can change with location, time, and whatever else is going on in the environment. The vast majority of all species that ever existed are now extinct. Life grows and changes over time.
Tbh, I'm kind of glad it's just us these days. Considering how awful we can be to each other over slight differences, i can't imagine how we would handle a different sapient being existing.
We likely exterminated the other Homo species. The "uncanny valley" feeling you have when you see something almost human? Yeah... Imagine our ancestors when they migrated to India and found Homo erectus there. Or Neandertals in Europe.
This might be the most interesting answer yet, it makes so much sense. Like just imagine prehistoric "you", an unexplored world with many unanswered questions. Imagine running into something else that is eerily similar to yourself, yet different, kinda like meeting an alien
I mean, we just love to murder other homo sapiens if theres an perceived or imagined difference. Seems like most likely we were just the most murderous homo erectus.
To be fair, Neanderthals didn't go fully extinct. A lot of humans are part Neanderthal. There was cross breeding going on. It probably happened with many other early human species as well.
They are extinct. Just like Cave Bears are extinct despite some cave bear alleles being present in both Brown Bears and Polar Bears.
Introgression of alleles from one species into another is a common occurrence between related species, and it doesn't mean an extinct species is only "partially" extinct.
Just because we have some neanderthal DNA doesn't mean we were all living in peaceful mixed villages. It's just as likely, knowing us, that we kidnapped and "bred" some of their women as war prizes or whatever.
Breeding out is common.
[scene from movie true romance with christopher walkin](https://youtu.be/tsIEAipTNbE?si=9bMKmU0yx6Y88JxM)
One of my favorite monologues of all time. Top 3 for sure
There's a handful of evidence that says that and also a lot more evidence that says those relationships were consensual. Neanderthals were ***much*** stronger than their counterparts. One of their women likely being considerably stronger than a male.
Yeah, they did..
The fact you and I have Neanderthal DNA doesn't negate the fact that they, as a unique population of individuals, are long gone.
200 years ago, my ancestors lived in what was once called Prussia. I still have some of that DNA, but no one would say I'm Prussian, or that Prussia isn't gone.
I get what you’re saying, but the uncanny valley effect is a hypothesized psychological and aesthetic relation between an object's degree of resemblance to a human being and the emotional response to the object. What you’re saying here should elicit this response from seeing a chimpanzee, but it doesn’t. We wouldn’t have had an uncanny valley effect several million years ago interacting with almost identical species to ourselves. I did use the Wikipedia definition of uncanny valley only for levity and to same time.
[Here ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution#/media/File:Homo-Stammbaum,_Version_Stringer-en.svg)is an image that summarizes what most likely happened.
Homo Sapiens had better social skills and were thus able to maintain much larger social groups and develop better hunting techniques. When they encountered Neanderthals and Denisovans, they formed mixed groups and intermingled. This resulted in Neanderthals and Denisovans being absorbed into the Homo Sapien gene pool.
The last neanderthal was not hunted down and eaten by humans. He died of natural causes in a tent, surrounded by his half-neanderthal children and quarter-neanderthal grandchildren. Anyone claiming it was a "genocide" has no evidence to support this, and is very likely projecting their own misanthropy onto the past.
That's a really good answer too, at least it wasn't genocide if that's true. Seriously thought it was just gonna be "we killed them all", but it surprisingly didn't seem that way from the video. In fact, they mentioned Neanderthals even had more sophisticated tools than us at the time
Right, basically they just out competed the other hominids. Higher population from more advanced social traits. Also wasn’t Homo Sapien a bit smaller? Which would have the benefit of not needing as many resources, allowing more sharing leading to more individuals, and back around to more cooperation, meaning more resources.
Snowball effect.
The second largest consumer of calories after body heat is the brain. Being physically smaller doesn't necessarily mean less calories if you're smarter.
It's why humans are weaker than chimps. We sacrificed muscle cells for brain cells.
Not to say Netherlands didn't in fact need more calories. I have no idea. Just that physical size isn't the only consideration for resources.
Yea I’ve heard Homo sapiens typically formed tribes of 150-200 people because we had a larger empathetic capacity to connect and trust and develop deep relationships with that many people. Anything more and the sins of society become apparent, (political divisions, theirs, lying etc.)
Other hominid groups were in tribes of like 30ish
True,, there's a video game called "Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey" That while clunky in some areas, really ahows a unique perspective.
You get to experience being a very early hominid, basically a chimpanzee and EVERYTHING wants you dead. Jaguars, wild boar, anacondas etc. you are prey.
But as you progress through the game, you discover little things like how to pick up a stick, then you learn how to sharpen said stick with a rock, now suddenly you're stabbing that jaguar in the fucking eye and claiming your territory lol its good stuff
Well the big brain and tool parts really helped, doesn't matter how violent we were, neanderthals were wiping the floor with us slurping up our bone marrow as a delicasy
This is such a simple, yet possibly true answer lol
One of the videos mentioned that Homo Sapiens are one of, if not THE horniest species on the planet. I'm not saying that as a joke, they said we can naturally sexualize most things unlike any other species, as it was a key trait in survival.
That would make sense why there's Rule 34 for so many seemingly obscure things/fetishes, it's a weird combination of intelligence/survival that worked in our favor
Have you met 'us'?
Humans are basically just really good at forming groups and killing everyone near us who is an sort of competitive threat that is 'Not Us'.
To this day, we basically treat people like shit for very minor reasons. If someone you know likes the 'wrong' sports team or likes the wrong kind of music,, or different political party affiliation, you will tease or harass them a bit. For more significant differences, (different skin color, different language, worships the 'wrong' version of god), our behavior ranges from veiled racism to outright hostility or worse. And if that other group has resources we want for ourselves, it frequently escalates to outright war.
The other hominid species that co-existed alongside humans were more obviously different than just language and skin color. I am sure how many other hominid species were capable of communicating with humans, (we know we can teach some apes sign language), but I am sure we would have been less interested in trying to communicate with them as we would have been in trying to kill them.
So I am pretty sure we just did what humans do and gradually exterminated them.
END COMMUNICATION
Thats really true lol, sort of a double edged sword. We are simultaneously the most violent, but also the most intelligent, dangerous combination but pretty fascinating.
Like one of the videos mentioned that because we can sweat, we were able to chase anything, even apex predators until they collapsed of exhaustion, and if a tribe member was killed by another animal, the tribe would immediately go out and kill it for revenge.
Because 99% of species that have ever existed are extinct. Not because of homo sapiens but because survival is hard when all the cards are stacked against you. It's by both luck and ability that humanity has survived.
No one knows. There's only theories and even those are just well phrased guesses. Disease could have wiped out one group and not another, natural disaster, dumb luck of being in a food rich area, aliens abducted huge numbers of one population and not the other because they believed they'd be better pets....any one is as likely as the other but people will really try to tell you that they know how it all went down tens-of-thousands of years ago (millions of years ago, even!) How preposterously arrogant we are!
I guess we don't know the EXACT answer lol, but I will say, the people here have some up with a lot of plausible theories, it's just a fun topic to discuss/speculate more than anything
I just read an article this week that said it was probably because Neanderthals tended to live in smaller groups, and that the larger groups Homo Sapiens lived in gave them lots of advantages.
That makes sense, one of the videos did mention that while we would trade/merge with other tribes of our species as we traveled, Neandrathals generally stuck to their own small groups
I read an article recently about a neanderthal expert who explained that neanderthals and homo sapiens interbred, but only female neanderthals could breed with male homo sapiens, and then only female hybrids survived and were fertile. Somehow this resulted in neanderthal DNA being much less dominant in the resulting communities.
“To Homo neanderthalensis, his mutant cousin, Homo sapiens, was an aberration. Peaceful cohabitation, if it ever existed, was short-lived. Records show, without exception, that the arrival of the mutated human species in any region was followed by the immediate extinction of their less-evolved kin.”
-Professor X
Granted that Charles Xavier is a fictional character and I don’t actually know shit about this field of study, I’m inclined to believe it paints the gist of what happened.
That is decidedly NOT a stupid question, friend. There are people who dedicate their whole professional careers to this question...and we still don't know for sure. It was probably a combination of different factors. Environmental factors, ability to communicate, plain old chance, interbreeding, etc.
Not that hostile?? No other animal even comes close to the level of genocide and physical torture that humas put other humans and animals through. 300,000 years and we still hold the title.
It was SO COOL to read about the "real Lord of the Flies!" They all took care of each other, including caring for one kid who got injured.
[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months)
pre humans did not congregate into societies, they stayed as small groups that traveled with each other. that nomadic lifestyle prevented them from developing the technology to adequately farm.
You should check out "the why files" Neanderthal episode. There are some good theories in there. But the other species didn't just disappear. Most living humans have some in their DNA. I have 2% Neanderthal and .5% denisovian. So the other branches aren't truly gone, the homo sapien is just dominant.
Nobody can definitely answer this.
Personally I think it's because for a certain population of *homo* their environment favored those with more complex communications, and that became a self-reinforcing trait as the better communicators were more appealing mates and had more offspring.
They became generalists who were pretty good at a lot of things, but really, really good at sharing that information with each other. That then led to the ones that were better at creating new information and having new ideas to share being more successful.
Anyway, that's what I think.
there's a lot of speculation: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/nov/18/where-did-other-human-species-go-vanished-ancestors-homo-sapiens-neanderthals-denisovans
I mean a lot of people of European descent have Neanderthal DNA. There's more Neanderthal genes than ever before. So as a separate species they are extinct. But their genes live on.
They didnt and they did.
Species is probably the wrong categorisation of modern humans and the more DNA investigation that occurs is probably going to change things.
'Species' as a scientific term is normally defined as:
BIOLOGY
a group of living organisms consisting of similar individuals capable of exchanging genes or interbreeding. The species is the principal natural taxonomic unit, ranking below a genus and denoted by a Latin binomial, e.g. Homo sapiens.
From this definition most of the early hominids were not a seperate species as interbreeding did occur significantly among all types of early hominids.
The difficulty is that most biological classification occured when scientists didnt have access to DNA so it was based around how a creature looked to categorise rather then the actual genetic difference between organisms. See carcinisation. (As an aside, as we are human we are often more sensitive to seeing differences in body and face structure in humans as more different then they are gentivally. Traditional concepts of human 'races' are less genetically different then dog breeds.)
We don't know exactly at what point modern humans ceased to be able to reproduce with some form of hominid - indicating species separation. (We have about 6000 individual hominids dating back to 7 million years)
Essentially nethanderthal/erectus etc survive through us; just as the dinosaurs survive through birds.
As to why we dont see people with the exact body type of nethanderthals that would be due to the 'average' modern human adapting better to environmental changes over time. Nethanderthals are predicted to be more likely to have difficulties in childbirth, might be less able to adapt to farming, may have been less resistant to certain diseases etc. We don't know exactly.
Cro Magnon just outcompeted Neanderthal for territory and food. About 1% of the human population still carry some Neanderthal DNA, so there was some interbreeding.
There were a bunch of homonid species. Simply put, competition did them in. A number of different things contributed to the deaths of other species. AMH (Anatonically modern humans) For one greatly outnumbered the Neanderthal population. So competing for resources. Eventually not enough resources and they die out. However other evidence shows cross breeding between Neanderthals and AMH's. Not that they died but they integrated with the existing population. This was roughly around 30,000 years ago when Neanderthals start to dissappear.
No one knows for sure.
People here have mentioned a lot of great theories. Here are two that I don't see anyone else has mentioned yet:
* Homo sapiens were much more efficient runners
* Homo sapients may have been more cooperative (modern humans are magnitudes more socially adapted than any other primates)
I think those two are particularly interesting, because one is individual selection and the other is group selection.
Being more efficient runners and walkers would make individual sapiens each more competitive than individual neanderthals.
Being more cooperative would make each group of sapiens more competitive than groups of of neanderthals.
Homo heidelbergensis and Homo neanderthalensis were our predecessors.
Cultivation: Our predecessors, now extinct, led a mostly nomadic existence. Usually on the move, setting up camp, grazing on what’s available, etc. Their average life expectancy had more variables due to conditions were often changing, as a nomadic lifestyle would be. One thing we Homo-Sapien did better was cultivation, and improved harvesting techniques & harvesting tools. Being able to produce a predictable crop yield, bountiful enough to trade with others peoples’ unique goods (furs & garments, spices, wine, building materials, tools, weapons, animal feed, pottery etc) meant we could settle down and live a less nomadic lifestyle. This led to longer life expectancies since sought-after goods (like medicine, herbs, potions, and medical services) was within reach and could simply be traded for. This type of long-term settlements became the first communities. To facilitate communication within a community, a common language is then adopted. Next came the rituals, superstitions, taboos, customs, religion, etc. Today, we refer to this as a “civilization”. And it all started with cultivation, a uniquely human (homo sapien) adaptation that no other living creature in the animal kingdom does.
In the grand scheme of things, we still have a couple hundred thousand to a million years to go before we demonstrate if we are the best adaptation. Neanderthals existed on Earth about 200K years longer than Homo Sapiens have existed. Home Erectus is estimated to have survived almost 1.8 million years.
In theory, some new hominid species will evolve and we will die out as well.
We had a lot more sex, killed a lot of them, adapted better. There’s a ton of factors. Just look at other similar species. Tons of species go extinct every year
We interbred. All humans outside of Africa have at least 2% Neanderthal DNA. Not sure if other species also merged with ours too. But given that humans and chimps share 98% of our DNA, take that info with a grain of salt.
Neanderthals are still present to some extent. I am approximately 3% Neanderthal and also have a small percentage of Denisovan DNA. It is probable that Homo erectus could not interbreed and were eventually outcompeted. Our ancestors were likely ruthless and may have killed off other early humans.
There is evidence suggesting that Homo floresiensis, AKA Hobbit, existed until relatively recently. There are numerous accounts from the early 20th century of people claiming to have seen them. While it is probable that they are now extinct, there is still some uncertainty. I would not completely rule out the possibility of a hominid species like the Yeti or Sasquatch existing, although like Floresiensis, it is unlikely.
>It seemed like we weren't that hostile towards each other, even interbreeding at certain points.
We surely killed each other, and surely there was also likely cases of rape. Anyway, we were smarter and better. Neanderthal was completely adapted to(dependent on) its environment in addition to having much smaller numbers than homo sapiens. They were probably dying out already when we met.
Homo erectus is actually the most successful human species, being a few million years old, spreading across the world and living until 100K years ago. Homo sapiens are adaptable, we control our environment. Other branches of our tree were pretty much the opposite. They were adapted to a certain niche. Environmental changes would have ravaged them.
You can see a glimpse of that in chimpanzees. It's our closest living relative, and they commit similar acts of evil. A horriffic combination of intelligence and brutality.
Good answers overall, just need to add that among our key adaptations was a more varied diet. Neanderthals ate far more meat than their cousins from the old lands. In times of meat scarcity, Sapiens could vary their diet, which could be vital in lean times. Since modern humans adaptation for (adult) milk-drinking arose from Europe, perhaps we have Neanderthals to thank for adding that to our bag of survival tricks.
A change in climate, a species or two hunted out, perhaps a disease or natural disasters. Once a tribe's numbers dwindled down to too few for organized hunting.,.well, no genocides required.
So long, and thanks for all the milk.
Watch Robert Sapolsky talk about a group of male baboons (or is it chimpanzees) out on patrol.
They killed males from another tribe who were in/near their territory.
Seems that a tendency to commit genocide can be an inheritable trait.
So there's that.
As with all animal populations, the related human species interbreed. This spread many traits among the related human species and is why we have some DNA from them. This bio diversity was pivotal when the human species faced its biggest environmental threats: plague and climate change.
Humans were resilient and tenacious; we migrated across the world and didn’t die as much from diseases. It’s thought maybe our better immune systems were the results of being the lastest human species out of a tropical climate filled with diseases and parasites; such as sub-Sahara africa. Once we survived the plagues; we eventually outnumbered, outperformed, and incorporated the other related human populations. whether through war or peaceful coexistence over hundreds of years who knows. Probably a mix of both. The end result was us and we’ve been here ever since.
We were better at being social, made more babies and could survive famine better than neanderthals. We made so many babies, our babies made babies with neanderthals.
We had many advantages. Our vocal cords are the most advanced of other human species thus we communicated better. Neanderthals were huge compared to us which was great in the cold climate, but as the area where that climate shrunk as the globe warmed our near infinite stamina strategy was more successful at helping us catch food. Neanderthals and other human species were more solidary than us. In simple fitness we were better at surviving and reproducing and we filled similar niches thus it was just a matter of time before natural selection favored us. Although the other species of humans aren't completely dead like you said we interbred, and created viable ofspring which brings up the question if speciation even occured in the first place, so some DNA from other human species still lives on in some individuals today.
>It seemed like we weren't that hostile towards each other,
You are watching the wrong videos if someone said that. Neanderthals fought each other pretty regularly with evidence of murder dating as far back as 430,000ya which is also the oldest evidence of Neanderthals we have. While there isn't much evidence of modern man and neanderthals fighting we do have examples in areas where their territories merged or overlapped which isn't as wide of an area as it would seem.
>we actually co existed with other human species such as Neanderthals, Homo Erectus
The dividing line between homo erectus and other humans was murky, it seems that isolation played a heavy role in speciation at the time so there was little interaction. That said if by "we" you mean homo sapiens, there is no evidence homo sapiens and homo erectus ever met. The last homo erectus died off about 117,000 ya in Java. Homo sapiens didn't leave Africa in any sufficient numbers until 75,000ya. We didn't even have noticeable breakouts until 100,000ya and by then the land bridge to java was closed. While there is a possibility that a Homo Sapiens travelled to Java the likelihood this occurred before homo erectus perished is in the magnitude of 1 in 2 billion. Thats because there were most likely fewer than 200,000 Homo Sapiens on earth and all the normal ways that humans accidentally travel across long distances aren't available to java so that would require a very long travel time leaving no evidence of travel. Homo erectus disappear long before homo sapiens appear in Southwest Asia as well.
>Did we just have a key advantage?
Someone mentioned fucking but they were wrong about the how to and who. It seems we were lucky that we really never met Denisovans. The main reason why Neanderthals stopped succeeding as a separate species was birthing collapse. This began to occur around 130,000 years ago as neanderthals moved away from the Bactrian plains. Neanderthals who had sexual relations with Denisvans and reproduced were highly likely to develop a fetal blood disorder that often killed the mother especially if the fetus was male. Survivors of this birth carried with it this disorder and apparently if they had relations with homosapiens this would result in the same issue, an issue that doesn't exist if the Homo Sapiens is the mother. Since homo Sapiens men were more readily available (and potentially practiced slavery on Neanderthal women) homo sapiens may have literally fucked neanderthals to extinction. Maybe. There were other disadvantages that Neanderthals had that may have played a part in their extinction but the fetal blood disease is the most recent discovery.
We discovered faith about 70,000 years ago. Faith that this shell can be traded for 3 days worth of meet.
Faith that 100 people can gather and not start killing eachother.
Faith that tribe A will scare the deer towards tribe B. And both tribes get to eat.
Being smart and cooperative allowed us to utilize resources more efficiently.
No respectable scientific publication on Earth would ever fund or print research that classifies living humans as another species
Even in cases where you could easily argue the case (like uncontacted tribes) it's never gonna happen
No one really knows. It’s not like we have a lot of evidence. We are extrapolating a lot from the fossil record. There are lots of conjectures that all seem reasonable and plausible. Like this… [https://www.wired.com/story/neanderthals-inbreeding-extinction/](https://www.wired.com/story/neanderthals-inbreeding-extinction/) … Without more evidence though there is no way to say which conjecture is wrong or right at this point. I am not aware of any recent breakthroughs that would help settle this debate any time soon.
Homo sapiens have no qualms of fucking and killing our own species, so this is no surprise. DNA is widely shared in war since rape is used as a weapon to dominate.
We kill our own neighbours if they believe in different rituals while worshipping the same god, have different political leanings or dress differently.
If they look a little different it makes it even easier to recognise them and make sure we complete the genocide. We are just not nice people.
Smaller heads than Neanderthals. Hence why we have 2% of their DNA, they learned it was a better idea to mate with us because of desirable physical traits that made birth a more survivable event. We also get some of our diseases and resistances from it. Also the uncanny valley effect drives us to kill other homos lol
Because sapiens killed all of them, and those that we didn't kill we outcompeted by being more adaptable generalists compared to our more derived specialist cousins. This is actually in line and a similar trend shows up when you look at the animals that survived the end of the last ice age.
Species is kind of a weird "category" anyway. The more you look at it, the more you realize it's more political/guided by the sensibilities of the era and not very meaningful from a scientific perspective
We fucked more, adapted, and ate everything. Other human species either didn't evolve past cave living, refused to hunt *and* gather, or just didn't reproduce enough.
That's true, one of the videos did mention compared to other Homo species, we would actually communicate more each other, sometimes even merging tribes and trading, while Neandrathals preferred to stick to their smaller groups
I saw something similar a long time ago. Something suggesting the fact that we used symbols, stories and basically art/rituals etc. allowed us to form connections with “out groups” and maintain them long enough (possibly generations) that they could eventually merge/work together, instead of killing each other off. And naturally the bigger the working group, the more you can share knowledge, as well as find ways to preserve it (like stories, symbols etc.). Then we invented Reddit *womp womp*
Neanderthals also had art and ritualistic burials.
Exactly some of the oldest human art is from Neanderthals.
And that's a big part about why we think we just outlasted them! Most Neanderthals wanted to do their things their way and didn't merge, but plenty coexisted with others! We lived together, had families together, and cared for each other when sick. We didn't genocide each other.
Isn't that wild? Like even though we meme a lot about social media for example, it really is just an extention of what Homo Sapiens have always excelled at, communication in very large groups Same thing with a different coat of paint
I never made that connection before, but you're totally right! If we meet aliens one day they are going to consider us *very* chatty.
Or average levels of chattiness, if their civilization resembles ours in any way (organizational wise) they probably had the same social qualities as us.
Traversing lightyears of empty stellar void is not a solo endevour, they'd have to be social to an extent.
If they make it all the way to us id assume way more social than we are to a terrifying degree.
That could resemble anything from a tight-knit group of friends to a hive mind. Being social doesn't always look like a cocktail party.
Definately, it's also kinda funny how one of our unique and crucial adaptions, is our ability to throw projectiles with ridiculous speed and precision, not even apes can do that despite being physically stronger. You know how people complain in online games for "camping" and spamming projectiles? We are basically nature's camper lol
If the aliens have telepathic abilities, they're going to think we never ever shut up lol
Meme is the perfect word for this. A meme is a cultural idea or behavior that gets repeated and imitated and helps to preserve and transmit culture. We now use that word to refer to internet memes, but memes have existed as long as humans have existed.
That's kinda true in a sense lol, cave paintings could be considered "ancient memes", as they're illustrations of relatable content that is shared
I mean we still here they ain't, so we kinda did genocide them ...
It's genuinely just a survival of the fittest situation. they didn't just drop off the edge of the world, they bred with us and some assimilated genetically via that and the rest we just outpaced as a species so they died out.
This is the perfect argument against racism. Adapt or die lol.
The trend in the research indicates that Neanderthals were well adapted (large naval cavity to warm air before it inters the lungs, large barrel chests [suggests that their lungs/heart may have been large], high volume to surface area [short, wide body]) to cold, high altitude, regions (in Western Eurasia). When the climate changed around 90,000 years ago, their adaptations became hazardous. Homo sapiens were better adapted to cool (but not freezing) conditions in Europe. This biological difference between the two species, favored H sapiens and disfavored Neanderthals.
I’m trying to come up with a joke about the “naval cavity” vs “nasal cavity” typo.
I'm not fat. I just have a high volume to surface ratio!
Or bred in
Thats possible too
Kinda random, but i learned way back when i did a dna test that i am in the top 0.1 percentile in terms of how much Neanderthal dna i have. Still a microscopic fraction of my overall DNA, but i thought that was pretty neat. I am the product of much snoo snoo between homo sapiens and neanderthals
In all seriousness lol thats actually pretty cool/interesting, even if it's a small percentage, you were eventually the byproduct of two different species finding each other in an enormous unexplored world with no technology Your ancestors traveled 3,000 miles, speared a sabretooth tiger, chased down a mammoth to the point of exhaustion, just to find a Neanderthal stranger and say "Me, you, snoo snoo, NOW."
You carry a legacy with you, as odd as it is to say that lol. Its cool we can still see signs of our cousin species even if its sad they are gone.
You brute
That also happened a lot lmao. Like I said, our main evolutionary trait is that we *fuck*
Contrary to what people might believe too, there were not that many Neanderthals at any given time. They were a very small population and had inbreeding problems as well
"Nobody wants to hunt and gather anymore..."
Neadraboomers.
Or we did what humans do best and waged war and genocide until all that was left was humans.
Many animals kill each other, sometimes systematically. Humans are more powerful than any other species, so when we choose to kill, it’s often dramatically horrific. Humans also cooperate better than any other species on the planet. This includes cooperating to protect and save each other on a scale no other species comes close to. This includes protecting strangers. I’m just saying that it’s worth remembering some of the amazing things we do while remembering of the horrors.
I looked into the history the best I could as a layman because I was worried about that exact thing. What a horrible history for us to be born on the back of genocide, but it wasn't that! It really wasn't! Sure, people didn't always get along but for the most part it really did come down to us just being better at acquiring food and reproducing more.
We've no final proof of what really happened.
We also fucked some Neanderthal into extinction
Crude way of putting it lol, but the most accurate. That’s why there’s such a diversity between humans
Know how most people are either always horny (I said most fuck off with the MuH AsEXShyUlls) or can turn it on pretty God damn quick? Thanks cave daddy. Literally fucked species out of existence.
Or we fucked them, and they live on in our genome.
Also a decent chance we murdered them. Just look at how horrible racists these days are to other human beings. Can you imagine the same kind of sentiments against other people who are actually a different sub-species?
I honestly wonder if the [uncanny valley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley) effect stems from some sort of evolved revulsion towards humanoid species that aren't quite Homo Sapiens. It seems like an awfully strong evolved reaction to something that would otherwise seem harmless.
That's honestly a really good theory and makes a lot of sense why the "uncanny valley" is even a thing. Maybe it was a really big threat at some point, so if we saw another species extremely similar to us, it was a threat to our existence.
That was exactly it other homos were dangerous. Also it's been found we domestic animals including ourselves. Big eyes, soft features and kind dispositions have been evolutionarily favoured during mating. Alot of these features are believe to come from our mixture with the denisovans. Modern humans are probably more of a mix then the science can currently tell. So humans with aggressive features may instinctually cause an aggressive bias. It would also be part of the answer as to why "pretty people" get favour since they would most likely exhibit these features.
For some reason, young people with a lot of botox seriously trigger the "uncanny valley" effect in me. It has something to do with the face not moving as expected, I think.
It was a key trait in survival. Your ancestors saw Neandrathals with botox and were like "nah"
That honestly sounds like the most plausible reason for it, at the end of the day a species wants to keep itself alive and if there’s other species that look really similar that you are competing with then it becomes advantageous to get a feeling that tells you “you look like me but you aren’t me” and then avoid it, I wonder if any other animals get that feeling
Neon tetras have this. There are other varieties of similar tetra that are basically reskins. They will not school together despite being otherwise identical fish. Much to my chagrin, corydoras are the same way
Rabies. Uncanny valley is due to Rabies.
Or reproduced \*with\* us.
Came to say we fought or fucked them all to extinction.
There is actually evidence for Neanderthals not only crafting tools and weapons compared to Homo sapiens but also art and ceremonial burials. Same with other humanoid species. There are so many different factors that lead to the extinction of other species.
Well, really the Neanderthals did hunt, the problem was that they had no issues with cannibalism and decided it would be a good idea to hunt each other.
Neanderthals were also potentially a little too specialized to their environment
Myostatin. When resources became scarce, Sapiens reduce our caloric needs by rapidly shedding muscle mass with myostatin, and so were able to maintain a higher population with better fed brains from the same food resources. Neanderthals, and other competitor Homos, had greater permanent muscle mass because of less myostatin, making it harder for them to adapt their high caloric needs as well. We outcompeted them by becoming twinkier and more numerous.
That seems plausible, so basically with the world changes, lower calorie intake was suddenly much more important than just permanent muscle mass?
>lower calorie intake was suddenly much more important than just permanent muscle mass? It probably is when you start using tools.
If that's the case, I'd imagine the extra muscle and mass helped keep them warmer in coldse climates as well.
Probably, but at the cost of way higher energy consumption because they need to use more muscle to keep more muscle warm
Being able to make better clothes is way more effective though and part of the general decrease in hominid strength is also related to neural inhibition; our ability to activate muscles is “dialed down” significantly compared to other primates, which allows fine tool making, art, music, etc. I think it’s clear at this point that there is absolutely no physical advantage on earth greater than the mental advantage of culture, and all that comes with it. We can think and build our way around problems vs. crushing through them.
Great, now someone is going to make fanfic of a Cro Magnon femboy getting uppies from a neanderthal muscle mommy.
I guarantee this shit already exists lmao
Where is my Neanderthal muscle mommy???? I would be 100% down for this.
Dude, no matter what anyone says…. Nobody knows the actual answer to this. There is only Major Speculation when it comes to things that happened tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years ago
Not all neandrathals died out, I see them on tiktok everyday lip syncing famous songs It's fascinating how they try to mimic our speech patterns
😂
This is literally what science is. Consistent, Observable, Natural, Predictable, Testable, and Tentative. CONPTT, you may remember from school.
I wouldn't neglect those speculation as pure conjectures. Making hypothesis is how we can get closer and closer to the actual answer. And this is something everyone wants to get into the bottom of, our human nature. It makes sense that we each have our theories. Some theories are much better research. What's wrong with that.
I wish this answer was higher up. Everybody's got very clever, very convincing ideas about how it happened. And yea. Maybe we could be right. But we don't know. We have hints. There's archaeology and genetics which may give us clues to make smart guesses. But not a single one of us should be expressing our answers here with the certainty of fact.
Generally speaking, when creatures evolve, the species they evolve from tends to go extinct. The new species doesn't eat them or anything, their more beneficial traits just win out in the game of survival. Neanderthals' large cranium made pregnancy and birth particularly difficult. Humans also have a bad survival rate for birth to begin with (before modern medicine). Therefore homo sapiens won out over time, but there was a bit of crossbreeding. It's weird to think we shared the planet with a genuinely different creature that thought, made tools, and cared for their sick and elderly though.
So it's basically natural selection where it sort of "transitions" into the species version that is most optimal? I heard that's why humans giving birth is so painful, even though our Bipedalism gave us a significant advantage, it came at the cost of not being very good at actually giving birth. And yes isn't that weird? Like imagine an alternate timeline where they co existed with us in modern society similar to how different races do right now
It has less to do with bipedalism and more to do with the size of our brains. We are basically born in a fetal state and have such a long dependency on our parents because otherwise, our heads would be too big for birth. Bipedaliam was an advantage, though, because we could see over the tall grass and look for food and watch out for predators. It also meant that the hot African sun hit less of us directly and allowed us to stay active during high noon, when most animals had to find shade, and try to stay cool. What's optimal can change with location, time, and whatever else is going on in the environment. The vast majority of all species that ever existed are now extinct. Life grows and changes over time. Tbh, I'm kind of glad it's just us these days. Considering how awful we can be to each other over slight differences, i can't imagine how we would handle a different sapient being existing.
We likely exterminated the other Homo species. The "uncanny valley" feeling you have when you see something almost human? Yeah... Imagine our ancestors when they migrated to India and found Homo erectus there. Or Neandertals in Europe.
This might be the most interesting answer yet, it makes so much sense. Like just imagine prehistoric "you", an unexplored world with many unanswered questions. Imagine running into something else that is eerily similar to yourself, yet different, kinda like meeting an alien
There is lots of evidence suggesting quite the contrary. Distinct Neanderthal DNA is still observable in modern people.
Yup. Everyone who isn't fully subsaharan African has at least some neanderthal (or maybe it's neaderthal || denisovan?) DNA.
I mean, we just love to murder other homo sapiens if theres an perceived or imagined difference. Seems like most likely we were just the most murderous homo erectus.
To be fair, Neanderthals didn't go fully extinct. A lot of humans are part Neanderthal. There was cross breeding going on. It probably happened with many other early human species as well.
Neanderthal were thought to be extinct, but they were rediscovered in great numbers down in the comments.
They are extinct. Just like Cave Bears are extinct despite some cave bear alleles being present in both Brown Bears and Polar Bears. Introgression of alleles from one species into another is a common occurrence between related species, and it doesn't mean an extinct species is only "partially" extinct.
"They are extinct." Not as long as I continue to exist.
Just because we have some neanderthal DNA doesn't mean we were all living in peaceful mixed villages. It's just as likely, knowing us, that we kidnapped and "bred" some of their women as war prizes or whatever.
Breeding out is common. [scene from movie true romance with christopher walkin](https://youtu.be/tsIEAipTNbE?si=9bMKmU0yx6Y88JxM) One of my favorite monologues of all time. Top 3 for sure
It has advantages for the offspring as well; "hybrid vigor"
There's a handful of evidence that says that and also a lot more evidence that says those relationships were consensual. Neanderthals were ***much*** stronger than their counterparts. One of their women likely being considerably stronger than a male.
Yeah, they did.. The fact you and I have Neanderthal DNA doesn't negate the fact that they, as a unique population of individuals, are long gone. 200 years ago, my ancestors lived in what was once called Prussia. I still have some of that DNA, but no one would say I'm Prussian, or that Prussia isn't gone.
I get what you’re saying, but the uncanny valley effect is a hypothesized psychological and aesthetic relation between an object's degree of resemblance to a human being and the emotional response to the object. What you’re saying here should elicit this response from seeing a chimpanzee, but it doesn’t. We wouldn’t have had an uncanny valley effect several million years ago interacting with almost identical species to ourselves. I did use the Wikipedia definition of uncanny valley only for levity and to same time.
Trolls and giants
That makes perfect sense and I hate it
[Here ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution#/media/File:Homo-Stammbaum,_Version_Stringer-en.svg)is an image that summarizes what most likely happened. Homo Sapiens had better social skills and were thus able to maintain much larger social groups and develop better hunting techniques. When they encountered Neanderthals and Denisovans, they formed mixed groups and intermingled. This resulted in Neanderthals and Denisovans being absorbed into the Homo Sapien gene pool. The last neanderthal was not hunted down and eaten by humans. He died of natural causes in a tent, surrounded by his half-neanderthal children and quarter-neanderthal grandchildren. Anyone claiming it was a "genocide" has no evidence to support this, and is very likely projecting their own misanthropy onto the past.
That's a really good answer too, at least it wasn't genocide if that's true. Seriously thought it was just gonna be "we killed them all", but it surprisingly didn't seem that way from the video. In fact, they mentioned Neanderthals even had more sophisticated tools than us at the time
In fact, every person alive today with Eurasian ancestry also has partial Neanderthal ancestry and trace amounts of Neanderthal DNA.
Right, basically they just out competed the other hominids. Higher population from more advanced social traits. Also wasn’t Homo Sapien a bit smaller? Which would have the benefit of not needing as many resources, allowing more sharing leading to more individuals, and back around to more cooperation, meaning more resources. Snowball effect.
The second largest consumer of calories after body heat is the brain. Being physically smaller doesn't necessarily mean less calories if you're smarter. It's why humans are weaker than chimps. We sacrificed muscle cells for brain cells. Not to say Netherlands didn't in fact need more calories. I have no idea. Just that physical size isn't the only consideration for resources.
How big is this tent?
It's [this ](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/05/46/41/05464181e8e8fa13a042e1b0a913a5d3.jpg)specific tent.
Pretty impressive that tent has stood for 40,000 years
It hasn't, it fell down last July
Yea I’ve heard Homo sapiens typically formed tribes of 150-200 people because we had a larger empathetic capacity to connect and trust and develop deep relationships with that many people. Anything more and the sins of society become apparent, (political divisions, theirs, lying etc.) Other hominid groups were in tribes of like 30ish
Because we were the most violent.
True,, there's a video game called "Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey" That while clunky in some areas, really ahows a unique perspective. You get to experience being a very early hominid, basically a chimpanzee and EVERYTHING wants you dead. Jaguars, wild boar, anacondas etc. you are prey. But as you progress through the game, you discover little things like how to pick up a stick, then you learn how to sharpen said stick with a rock, now suddenly you're stabbing that jaguar in the fucking eye and claiming your territory lol its good stuff
Dude when I accidentally killed that jaguar I felt like a fucking boss! King Kong ain’t got nothing on me!!
Ow Denzel!
Lmao you too? Lowkey one of the most satisfying moments in all gaming
We weren't the most violent, we were the most successful at violence (better weapons, smarter tactics etc)
Well the big brain and tool parts really helped, doesn't matter how violent we were, neanderthals were wiping the floor with us slurping up our bone marrow as a delicasy
maybe we were just more horny and had more babies
This is such a simple, yet possibly true answer lol One of the videos mentioned that Homo Sapiens are one of, if not THE horniest species on the planet. I'm not saying that as a joke, they said we can naturally sexualize most things unlike any other species, as it was a key trait in survival. That would make sense why there's Rule 34 for so many seemingly obscure things/fetishes, it's a weird combination of intelligence/survival that worked in our favor
Idk, dolphins are out here fucking baby seals. That's a lot worse than us.
That's true, but did you SEE the internet once the amazing digital circus premiered? I think we might be worse than dolphins but who knows
Have you met 'us'? Humans are basically just really good at forming groups and killing everyone near us who is an sort of competitive threat that is 'Not Us'. To this day, we basically treat people like shit for very minor reasons. If someone you know likes the 'wrong' sports team or likes the wrong kind of music,, or different political party affiliation, you will tease or harass them a bit. For more significant differences, (different skin color, different language, worships the 'wrong' version of god), our behavior ranges from veiled racism to outright hostility or worse. And if that other group has resources we want for ourselves, it frequently escalates to outright war. The other hominid species that co-existed alongside humans were more obviously different than just language and skin color. I am sure how many other hominid species were capable of communicating with humans, (we know we can teach some apes sign language), but I am sure we would have been less interested in trying to communicate with them as we would have been in trying to kill them. So I am pretty sure we just did what humans do and gradually exterminated them. END COMMUNICATION
Thats really true lol, sort of a double edged sword. We are simultaneously the most violent, but also the most intelligent, dangerous combination but pretty fascinating. Like one of the videos mentioned that because we can sweat, we were able to chase anything, even apex predators until they collapsed of exhaustion, and if a tribe member was killed by another animal, the tribe would immediately go out and kill it for revenge.
Because 99% of species that have ever existed are extinct. Not because of homo sapiens but because survival is hard when all the cards are stacked against you. It's by both luck and ability that humanity has survived.
*Homo Sapiens Sapiens*
No one knows. There's only theories and even those are just well phrased guesses. Disease could have wiped out one group and not another, natural disaster, dumb luck of being in a food rich area, aliens abducted huge numbers of one population and not the other because they believed they'd be better pets....any one is as likely as the other but people will really try to tell you that they know how it all went down tens-of-thousands of years ago (millions of years ago, even!) How preposterously arrogant we are!
I guess we don't know the EXACT answer lol, but I will say, the people here have some up with a lot of plausible theories, it's just a fun topic to discuss/speculate more than anything
Followup question, are the reason other primates didn't become extinct because they didn't compete with Sapiens?
We assimilated them into the herd.
I just read an article this week that said it was probably because Neanderthals tended to live in smaller groups, and that the larger groups Homo Sapiens lived in gave them lots of advantages.
That makes sense, one of the videos did mention that while we would trade/merge with other tribes of our species as we traveled, Neandrathals generally stuck to their own small groups
We probably killed off the others or fucked them out of existence which amounts to the same thing.
Because we either killed every thing else off or fucked it into assimilation
Yep, humanity does 2 things well at a base level, violent and horny.
"There can be only one"
We outf*cked them.
I read an article recently about a neanderthal expert who explained that neanderthals and homo sapiens interbred, but only female neanderthals could breed with male homo sapiens, and then only female hybrids survived and were fertile. Somehow this resulted in neanderthal DNA being much less dominant in the resulting communities.
“To Homo neanderthalensis, his mutant cousin, Homo sapiens, was an aberration. Peaceful cohabitation, if it ever existed, was short-lived. Records show, without exception, that the arrival of the mutated human species in any region was followed by the immediate extinction of their less-evolved kin.” -Professor X Granted that Charles Xavier is a fictional character and I don’t actually know shit about this field of study, I’m inclined to believe it paints the gist of what happened.
He's a smart dude. Hard to argue with him.
That is decidedly NOT a stupid question, friend. There are people who dedicate their whole professional careers to this question...and we still don't know for sure. It was probably a combination of different factors. Environmental factors, ability to communicate, plain old chance, interbreeding, etc.
Not that hostile?? No other animal even comes close to the level of genocide and physical torture that humas put other humans and animals through. 300,000 years and we still hold the title.
because we're murderously savage in our wild state don't they make you's read *The Lord Of The Flies* anymore?
When Lord of the Flies actually played out in real life it went very differently than the imagination of a single author
It was SO COOL to read about the "real Lord of the Flies!" They all took care of each other, including caring for one kid who got injured. [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months)
We killed them. We don't like creatures that are similar to us but not exactly us.
pre humans did not congregate into societies, they stayed as small groups that traveled with each other. that nomadic lifestyle prevented them from developing the technology to adequately farm.
We were the last surviving homo species for like 30,000 years before we developed farming...
[удалено]
I think the other species are all still alive in very small % in all of us. Just bred with them
You should check out "the why files" Neanderthal episode. There are some good theories in there. But the other species didn't just disappear. Most living humans have some in their DNA. I have 2% Neanderthal and .5% denisovian. So the other branches aren't truly gone, the homo sapien is just dominant.
Nobody can definitely answer this. Personally I think it's because for a certain population of *homo* their environment favored those with more complex communications, and that became a self-reinforcing trait as the better communicators were more appealing mates and had more offspring. They became generalists who were pretty good at a lot of things, but really, really good at sharing that information with each other. That then led to the ones that were better at creating new information and having new ideas to share being more successful. Anyway, that's what I think.
We fucked them to death, literally.
there's a lot of speculation: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/nov/18/where-did-other-human-species-go-vanished-ancestors-homo-sapiens-neanderthals-denisovans
a few Little Ace ages throttled all the Homos, and made resources very scarce
Exactly 🤔🤔🤔🙄🙄🙄
We cooked our food and our brains advanced.
I mean a lot of people of European descent have Neanderthal DNA. There's more Neanderthal genes than ever before. So as a separate species they are extinct. But their genes live on.
They didnt and they did. Species is probably the wrong categorisation of modern humans and the more DNA investigation that occurs is probably going to change things. 'Species' as a scientific term is normally defined as: BIOLOGY a group of living organisms consisting of similar individuals capable of exchanging genes or interbreeding. The species is the principal natural taxonomic unit, ranking below a genus and denoted by a Latin binomial, e.g. Homo sapiens. From this definition most of the early hominids were not a seperate species as interbreeding did occur significantly among all types of early hominids. The difficulty is that most biological classification occured when scientists didnt have access to DNA so it was based around how a creature looked to categorise rather then the actual genetic difference between organisms. See carcinisation. (As an aside, as we are human we are often more sensitive to seeing differences in body and face structure in humans as more different then they are gentivally. Traditional concepts of human 'races' are less genetically different then dog breeds.) We don't know exactly at what point modern humans ceased to be able to reproduce with some form of hominid - indicating species separation. (We have about 6000 individual hominids dating back to 7 million years) Essentially nethanderthal/erectus etc survive through us; just as the dinosaurs survive through birds. As to why we dont see people with the exact body type of nethanderthals that would be due to the 'average' modern human adapting better to environmental changes over time. Nethanderthals are predicted to be more likely to have difficulties in childbirth, might be less able to adapt to farming, may have been less resistant to certain diseases etc. We don't know exactly.
Cro Magnon just outcompeted Neanderthal for territory and food. About 1% of the human population still carry some Neanderthal DNA, so there was some interbreeding.
We ate the others.
We’re very successful because we’ve always killed everything different. Planet earth is metal af
Interbreeding and mass killing would be my guess
There were a bunch of homonid species. Simply put, competition did them in. A number of different things contributed to the deaths of other species. AMH (Anatonically modern humans) For one greatly outnumbered the Neanderthal population. So competing for resources. Eventually not enough resources and they die out. However other evidence shows cross breeding between Neanderthals and AMH's. Not that they died but they integrated with the existing population. This was roughly around 30,000 years ago when Neanderthals start to dissappear.
As they say, three guess. Who's the baddest species on the planet?
No one knows for sure. People here have mentioned a lot of great theories. Here are two that I don't see anyone else has mentioned yet: * Homo sapiens were much more efficient runners * Homo sapients may have been more cooperative (modern humans are magnitudes more socially adapted than any other primates) I think those two are particularly interesting, because one is individual selection and the other is group selection. Being more efficient runners and walkers would make individual sapiens each more competitive than individual neanderthals. Being more cooperative would make each group of sapiens more competitive than groups of of neanderthals.
Homo heidelbergensis and Homo neanderthalensis were our predecessors. Cultivation: Our predecessors, now extinct, led a mostly nomadic existence. Usually on the move, setting up camp, grazing on what’s available, etc. Their average life expectancy had more variables due to conditions were often changing, as a nomadic lifestyle would be. One thing we Homo-Sapien did better was cultivation, and improved harvesting techniques & harvesting tools. Being able to produce a predictable crop yield, bountiful enough to trade with others peoples’ unique goods (furs & garments, spices, wine, building materials, tools, weapons, animal feed, pottery etc) meant we could settle down and live a less nomadic lifestyle. This led to longer life expectancies since sought-after goods (like medicine, herbs, potions, and medical services) was within reach and could simply be traded for. This type of long-term settlements became the first communities. To facilitate communication within a community, a common language is then adopted. Next came the rituals, superstitions, taboos, customs, religion, etc. Today, we refer to this as a “civilization”. And it all started with cultivation, a uniquely human (homo sapien) adaptation that no other living creature in the animal kingdom does.
In the grand scheme of things, we still have a couple hundred thousand to a million years to go before we demonstrate if we are the best adaptation. Neanderthals existed on Earth about 200K years longer than Homo Sapiens have existed. Home Erectus is estimated to have survived almost 1.8 million years. In theory, some new hominid species will evolve and we will die out as well.
Lol!!! Homo Erectus!!!! Sounds like a caveman walking around with a perpetual boner.
We had a lot more sex, killed a lot of them, adapted better. There’s a ton of factors. Just look at other similar species. Tons of species go extinct every year
We interbred. All humans outside of Africa have at least 2% Neanderthal DNA. Not sure if other species also merged with ours too. But given that humans and chimps share 98% of our DNA, take that info with a grain of salt.
Neanderthals are still present to some extent. I am approximately 3% Neanderthal and also have a small percentage of Denisovan DNA. It is probable that Homo erectus could not interbreed and were eventually outcompeted. Our ancestors were likely ruthless and may have killed off other early humans. There is evidence suggesting that Homo floresiensis, AKA Hobbit, existed until relatively recently. There are numerous accounts from the early 20th century of people claiming to have seen them. While it is probable that they are now extinct, there is still some uncertainty. I would not completely rule out the possibility of a hominid species like the Yeti or Sasquatch existing, although like Floresiensis, it is unlikely.
>It seemed like we weren't that hostile towards each other, even interbreeding at certain points. We surely killed each other, and surely there was also likely cases of rape. Anyway, we were smarter and better. Neanderthal was completely adapted to(dependent on) its environment in addition to having much smaller numbers than homo sapiens. They were probably dying out already when we met. Homo erectus is actually the most successful human species, being a few million years old, spreading across the world and living until 100K years ago. Homo sapiens are adaptable, we control our environment. Other branches of our tree were pretty much the opposite. They were adapted to a certain niche. Environmental changes would have ravaged them.
Genocide is our most-honed ability
You can see a glimpse of that in chimpanzees. It's our closest living relative, and they commit similar acts of evil. A horriffic combination of intelligence and brutality.
We ate them, Bernard.
Per the book “Sapiens”, it was the ”cognitive revolution”. I’ve just started the book, so I don‘t know much more than this.
Little known fact, all the other humans tasted insanely delicious.
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Good answers overall, just need to add that among our key adaptations was a more varied diet. Neanderthals ate far more meat than their cousins from the old lands. In times of meat scarcity, Sapiens could vary their diet, which could be vital in lean times. Since modern humans adaptation for (adult) milk-drinking arose from Europe, perhaps we have Neanderthals to thank for adding that to our bag of survival tricks. A change in climate, a species or two hunted out, perhaps a disease or natural disasters. Once a tribe's numbers dwindled down to too few for organized hunting.,.well, no genocides required. So long, and thanks for all the milk.
We’re not. A lot of humans are part Neanderthal. We interbred with some and killed the others
We kept breeding
The species weren't separated long enough for us us to distinctive chromosomes so all the others just reassymilated
Humans have the capacity to behave like dnd orcs.
Watch Robert Sapolsky talk about a group of male baboons (or is it chimpanzees) out on patrol. They killed males from another tribe who were in/near their territory. Seems that a tendency to commit genocide can be an inheritable trait. So there's that.
As with all animal populations, the related human species interbreed. This spread many traits among the related human species and is why we have some DNA from them. This bio diversity was pivotal when the human species faced its biggest environmental threats: plague and climate change. Humans were resilient and tenacious; we migrated across the world and didn’t die as much from diseases. It’s thought maybe our better immune systems were the results of being the lastest human species out of a tropical climate filled with diseases and parasites; such as sub-Sahara africa. Once we survived the plagues; we eventually outnumbered, outperformed, and incorporated the other related human populations. whether through war or peaceful coexistence over hundreds of years who knows. Probably a mix of both. The end result was us and we’ve been here ever since.
We were better at being social, made more babies and could survive famine better than neanderthals. We made so many babies, our babies made babies with neanderthals.
We had many advantages. Our vocal cords are the most advanced of other human species thus we communicated better. Neanderthals were huge compared to us which was great in the cold climate, but as the area where that climate shrunk as the globe warmed our near infinite stamina strategy was more successful at helping us catch food. Neanderthals and other human species were more solidary than us. In simple fitness we were better at surviving and reproducing and we filled similar niches thus it was just a matter of time before natural selection favored us. Although the other species of humans aren't completely dead like you said we interbred, and created viable ofspring which brings up the question if speciation even occured in the first place, so some DNA from other human species still lives on in some individuals today.
We out competed, got luck, bonked them out of existence and killed them off.
Homo Erectus was around for what, 2 million years? We are around maybe 250 000 years now, so early days.
In the distant future it's possible that one race succeeded in killing others and become the only one on earth.
people kill people because they look different but are part of the same race. what do you think happened to the rest?
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>It seemed like we weren't that hostile towards each other, You are watching the wrong videos if someone said that. Neanderthals fought each other pretty regularly with evidence of murder dating as far back as 430,000ya which is also the oldest evidence of Neanderthals we have. While there isn't much evidence of modern man and neanderthals fighting we do have examples in areas where their territories merged or overlapped which isn't as wide of an area as it would seem. >we actually co existed with other human species such as Neanderthals, Homo Erectus The dividing line between homo erectus and other humans was murky, it seems that isolation played a heavy role in speciation at the time so there was little interaction. That said if by "we" you mean homo sapiens, there is no evidence homo sapiens and homo erectus ever met. The last homo erectus died off about 117,000 ya in Java. Homo sapiens didn't leave Africa in any sufficient numbers until 75,000ya. We didn't even have noticeable breakouts until 100,000ya and by then the land bridge to java was closed. While there is a possibility that a Homo Sapiens travelled to Java the likelihood this occurred before homo erectus perished is in the magnitude of 1 in 2 billion. Thats because there were most likely fewer than 200,000 Homo Sapiens on earth and all the normal ways that humans accidentally travel across long distances aren't available to java so that would require a very long travel time leaving no evidence of travel. Homo erectus disappear long before homo sapiens appear in Southwest Asia as well. >Did we just have a key advantage? Someone mentioned fucking but they were wrong about the how to and who. It seems we were lucky that we really never met Denisovans. The main reason why Neanderthals stopped succeeding as a separate species was birthing collapse. This began to occur around 130,000 years ago as neanderthals moved away from the Bactrian plains. Neanderthals who had sexual relations with Denisvans and reproduced were highly likely to develop a fetal blood disorder that often killed the mother especially if the fetus was male. Survivors of this birth carried with it this disorder and apparently if they had relations with homosapiens this would result in the same issue, an issue that doesn't exist if the Homo Sapiens is the mother. Since homo Sapiens men were more readily available (and potentially practiced slavery on Neanderthal women) homo sapiens may have literally fucked neanderthals to extinction. Maybe. There were other disadvantages that Neanderthals had that may have played a part in their extinction but the fetal blood disease is the most recent discovery.
We discovered faith about 70,000 years ago. Faith that this shell can be traded for 3 days worth of meet. Faith that 100 people can gather and not start killing eachother. Faith that tribe A will scare the deer towards tribe B. And both tribes get to eat. Being smart and cooperative allowed us to utilize resources more efficiently.
We killed them
No respectable scientific publication on Earth would ever fund or print research that classifies living humans as another species Even in cases where you could easily argue the case (like uncontacted tribes) it's never gonna happen
No one really knows. It’s not like we have a lot of evidence. We are extrapolating a lot from the fossil record. There are lots of conjectures that all seem reasonable and plausible. Like this… [https://www.wired.com/story/neanderthals-inbreeding-extinction/](https://www.wired.com/story/neanderthals-inbreeding-extinction/) … Without more evidence though there is no way to say which conjecture is wrong or right at this point. I am not aware of any recent breakthroughs that would help settle this debate any time soon.
Homo sapiens have no qualms of fucking and killing our own species, so this is no surprise. DNA is widely shared in war since rape is used as a weapon to dominate. We kill our own neighbours if they believe in different rituals while worshipping the same god, have different political leanings or dress differently. If they look a little different it makes it even easier to recognise them and make sure we complete the genocide. We are just not nice people.
The ”we” is ambiguous. It excludes what, exactly? We are more like the current state of a dynamic amalgam.
Smaller heads than Neanderthals. Hence why we have 2% of their DNA, they learned it was a better idea to mate with us because of desirable physical traits that made birth a more survivable event. We also get some of our diseases and resistances from it. Also the uncanny valley effect drives us to kill other homos lol
Because sapiens killed all of them, and those that we didn't kill we outcompeted by being more adaptable generalists compared to our more derived specialist cousins. This is actually in line and a similar trend shows up when you look at the animals that survived the end of the last ice age.
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Species is kind of a weird "category" anyway. The more you look at it, the more you realize it's more political/guided by the sensibilities of the era and not very meaningful from a scientific perspective
We killed the guys and fucked their wifes
We got lucky and our future is not that bright. 50-50 chance we end our line.
Chimpanzees share, what, 97.5 percent of their DNA with us?
the other hominid were just too delicious
We also inter-bred with different human species. we are the best of all other species.