Go Ahead: Call Me A Neanderthal!

I bet you think that's an insult, a way to call me ugly, stupid, funny looking, and generally beneath your pristine selves.

I'll wear that name proudly. The joke's on you.

I've learned some things recently. We think Crow Magnon is who we are, who we've always been, and anything else is sub-human, a kind of ape animal. Scientists have been busy going through DNA, going through anthropological discoveries, and in many ways taking a really deep dive into this planet's inhabitants' history.

Lets start with other kinds of humans who walked the earth. So far there have been at least 4 distinct ones in prehistory. We're most familiar with Crow Magnon, whom we identify as, and Neanderthal, whom we ridicule. Yeah, we'll admit our ancestors in the dim past emerged from Africa and spread out across the land. We're the conquerors, the chosen ones, the... well, congratulate yourselves however you like. As far as you know, you're some pure strain, the apex of evolution. Cheer! Celebrate! Have a drink!

Are you done yet?

Way back around 70,000 years ago, humans did leave Africa, spread out... and died off. It happened again, a "bit" later, including the dying off part. And again. Apparently we weren't "all that". But in the examples of remains from those migrations, no scraps of the DNA markers that made us unique are left in modern DNA. Skip forward to about 40,000 ago. Neanderthals inhabited parts of Europe, and we had emerged again, this time into that area. Being human with some traits we still "exercise" as diligently as possible, we intermingled. You know, had carnal knowledge and all that.  We made babies together. Got the picture? 

Before you get all shocked, stop a minute to thank our hormones that those ancestors did, because it was the hybrids, if you will, that actually survived to go on and produce most of us. Somehow the Neanderthals died out and we took over. And once they were rediscovered in caves or whatever, we pegged them as stupid animals because now we were here and they weren't. Except they are. In us. And apparently because they were, we are. We survived when other "pure" strains didn't. The scientists haven't figured out yet just what we got out of the blend that made us hardier, or even if what we got from our blending was "just" cultural knowledge of how to survive the new climate and hunt new animals and collect new foods, and....  But it worked. Taking the population of Britain, as an example, there is about 2-3% Neanderthal in their DNA, if we are talking about those who dwelled there for thousands of years. 

Recent immigrants from around the globe have their own histories of course, and so far there is no confirmation of interbreeding in other parts of the globe with our other early human cousins. I have no idea if anybody's even looking... yet. Of course recent centuries have provided time for more migrations and interbreeding among cultures all over the globe. It remains to be seen whether there was also interbreeding among other human species, or whether the timing even worked to overlap them geographically to provide the opportunities. Hard to breed with somebody dead 30,000 years, right?

But just remember one thing. If it weren't for the Neanderthals, we Crow Magnon would not have survived as a species once we left Africa. We kept failing.  We needed something we got from them to survive, to thrive, and there is proof we shared DNA. So go ahead and call me a Neanderthal. I'll wear it proudly, and gratefully. My ancestors came that way, though exactly when isn't clear. Mitochondrial DNA proves it. When they got to where Neanderthals had lived or did live, they survived, they thrived, they interbred with those there, they moved on, and I'm here to tell the tale.