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oldhippychick wrote
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Tough for me to say much about the article. I'm not a scientist and I never ventured beyond an Associates degree, so I don't have the education to argue (not through college or through my vast and undisciplined reading). I think I know what he's saying, but I'm not qualified to challenge it.
My own feeling from what I've read is that neanderthalensis likely just fell victim to competition from a more adaptive species (us). The evidence that has been disseminated in layman's terms that I can understand seems to indicate that there was very little, if any, cross-breeding between Neandertals and Homo sapiens sapiens.
I have an older brother that I used to refer to as "the Neandertal". (Not in his presence, of course.) He's just not put together like any human I've ever met. Although he never lifted weights, he was inhumanly strong with a gigantic barrel chest and thickly muscled arms. Also hyper-violent and prone to bashing other people in the head when provoked (and he was never bested in a fight, as far as I've ever heard). I haven't seen him in over twenty years and have no desire to do so. But his presence often made me wonder if some Neandertal traits had resurfaced in him 40,000 years after the fact.