re: #38 Tigger2005

Was it the Cro-Magnons kidnapping and raping the hulking low-browed hairy Neanderthal women, ya think, or the other way around? And why am I suddenly reminded of Peter Boyle and Madeline Khan in Young Frankenstein?

Gosh, that’s a toughie. Orangutans have a well documented propensity to forcible penetration of human females. Human males have been known to busy themselves with donkeys, sheep, etc. etc. and it seems beyond belief that they would have passed on Neanderthal females, given the opportunity.

If Neanderthal males were anything like human or orang males, they too would have had, shall we say, catholic taste in females. And who can say whether it would have gone beyond the brute physical stage? Offspring are more likely to survive if cared for by a pair-bonded couple, and only offspring that live to puberty count in this game. Humans are well known to develop deep Platonic attachments to individuals not of our own species, after all, while true love easily spans the widest racial gaps now found in our species.

There must have been a lot of that, with our two related species living alongside each other for thousands of years, and viable offspring in at least a few cases. And some of those, evidently, mated with other humans.

We probably also hunted and ate each other, as we have done within our own species at least until very recently. This didn’t end with the Aztecs, and it didn’t end with the Khmer Rouge, and unfortunately we probably haven’t seen the last of it.