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Anthropology

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Judi Lynn

(163,703 posts)
Wed Jun 5, 2024, 08:48 AM Jun 2024

The Continuity From Ancient Extinctions To Current Genocides [View all]


Tuesday, 4 June 2024, 10:41 am
Opinion: Martin LeFevre - Meditations

Did you know that at one time (not that long ago even as human evolution goes), there were perhaps half a dozen human species on earth?


For example, besides Neanderthals in Ice Age Europe, there were Denisovans in Tibet and Siberia, plus two dwarf species – Homo heidelbergensis and Homo luzonensis on Flores and Luzon respectively – living in close or distant proximity with “fully modern humans” about 100,000 years ago.

For many years the thinking in paleo-anthropology was that modern humans – Homo sapiens sapiens – wiped out and/or outcompeted Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, as well as other so-called primitive human species. But the current trend is to whitewash human rapaciousness, and blur the mammoth difference between the human adaptive pattern, which removed us from an ecological niche, and the rest of nature, which operates in terms of ecological niches.

Theorists are now saying things like, “the ancient DNA discovery of 50,000-year-old viruses points to an alternative explanation for Neanderthals’ demise: deadly infectious diseases carried by Homo sapiens.” How convenient.

Previous conventional thinking went to the other extreme: “The late 19th century German zoologist Ernst Haeckel proposed calling Neanderthals Homo stupidus to distinguish them from Homo sapiens (wise humans).

More:
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2406/S00004/the-continuity-from-ancient-extinctions-to-current-genocides.htm
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