[OT] Cro-Magnons Exonerated in Case of the Missing Neanderthals

[Quadibloc]

It seemed to me, from what we used to know of ancient Europe, obvious that
anatomically modern humans exterminated the Neanderthals, even if
scientists were reluctant to admit this was virtually certain.
But it turns out their reluctance was justified!
A new massive DNA study on older human remains has upended what we
thought we knew about ancient Europeans.

I'd give a link, but in looking at stories about this, my browser tends to freeze,
and, as well, when I resolved that, they were so old I had to search for them,
they were no longer in my current feed.

While the story's headline is that some ancient Europeans we thought
had been wiped out by the Ice Age actually did survive in Spain, still
earlier humans were still confirmed as being wiped out.

There was also a supervolcano in Italy added into the mix.

But in any case, it now appears that the Neanderthals, together with
modern humans, were wiped out by an earlier part of the Ice Age,
and then Europe was resettled by the Epigravettians who entered
Europe from the Middle East through the Balkans.

John Savard

[pete...@gmail.com]

Then how do modern humans have small amounts of Neanderthal
DNA, if the populations that mixed were all wiped out?

I have a bit under 3%, putting me in the top percentile of 23andMe
customers.

pt

[Charles Packer]

Yes, the scholarly to-and-fro on this topic is continuous to
the point of TMI. The "new massive DNA study" referred to by
Quadibloc must be the one published in Nature within the last
month. I read Nature's commentary on it and have already forgotten
the gist of it, but don't recall that it "upended" much, if anything.

[Charles Packer]

On Fri, 03 Mar 2023 09:41:55 -0800, pete...@gmail.com wrote:

Well hey, the study referred to by Quadibloc is in this
week's Nature. I must have seen a reference to it sometime earlier
in the news media, not in Nature itself. And this week's Science
has a commentary aimed at the layman that does indeed use the word
"upend" in its headline. It's also a piece of journalistic
puffery, if you compare it to the abstract of the actual study,
which makes no claims of being astounding.

Here are the links to the articles, both of which are open-access:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-05726-0

https://www.science.org/content/article/ancient-dna-upends-european-
prehistory

[Default User]

Quadibloc wrote:

>It seemed to me, from what we used to know of ancient Europe, obvious
>that anatomically modern humans exterminated the Neanderthals, even if
>scientists were reluctant to admit this was virtually certain.
>But it turns out their reluctance was justified!

Regardless, it never required modern humans to slaughter the
Neadertals. In some forests in England, gray squirrels are replacing
native reds. They don't kill them, in fact they rarely interact. It's
just that the grays are able to out-compete their rivals.


Brian

[Robert Carnegie]

To note, humans get billing above grey squirrels in
<en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_squirrel#Enemies_and_threats>
Also, a virus is mentioned, which greys tolerate better.