DW Documentary presents, “Who Were the Neanderthals?”,
posted Jan. 23, 2021. By Rob Hope and
Pascal Coissot (42 min), indeed a lesson anthropology.
Most of the time Neanderthals lived in a colder
climate than ours, even during Ice Ages.
Sea Level was about 400 feet lower than it is today. The film focuses on a site on Jersey Island,
off the coast of France, with a sea plain underwater.
Neanderthals were nomadic, carved weapons and spears
for food and animals for coats. They knew
how to adapt to land they had settled in. They would live in clans of a few
families. They had only some thousands
of people in all of Europe.
They would go extinct as a separate group about 40000
years ago.
They understood the value of “population exchange” for
genetic variety.
Modern humans, who were “black”, entered Europe 50000 years
ago and withdrew. Then they reentered
about 42000 years ago and co-lived in the same areas and sometimes
interbred. The National History Museum explains
that different species can, with some difficulty, sometimes interbreed (and
still be distinct enough to be more than a race). The Neanderthals seem to have been “white”,
and simultaneously more advanced human civilization (with more intellectual
problem solving ability and more language skills) started with those who (developing
near the Equator) were “black”. Gradually the Neanderthals were “replaced”
which sounds like a right-wing theory.
But living in a colder climate with less sun, natural selection still
favored lighter pigmented skin in time, in Europe and northern Asia. Even though humans from Africa were “culturally”
superior 50000 years ago, in the next period of history, living farther from
the equator and having seasons tended to encourage development of industrial
technology and military superiority – hence colonialism and slavery. Neanderthals
had significant differences in bone structure, in metabolism and cellular
immune function, which fit their environment.
When they interbred, some of these differences persisted and provided advantages
to modern humans. Neanderthals (“white”
probably) were more different genetically from today’s “whites” than today’s “whites”
are from today’s “blacks” (or other races), so skin color, in the grand scheme
of things, means very little except in adapting to sunlight levels.
Wikipedia embed of map of Europe during Ice Ages.
No comments:
Post a Comment