This pandemic set me pondering.
Remember how when Europeans, mainly Spanish, first arrived in South America they bought diseases like the common cold with them? (Also afflictions like syphilis.)
The pandemic decimated the local populations, weakening them and making it easier for the invaders to conquer the territory.
Well,
Do you think that about 40 thousand years ago, the arrival of homo sapiens caused deadly epidemics in each Neanderthal community they encountered?
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Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.Possible, but you have to remember that in those days when populations were very low and dispersed, disease was probably not so common or such a great driver of history as it became after the agricultural revolution. Also, that modern humans and Neanderthals lived side by side for quite a long time.
Modern humans and Neanderthals also interbred, so that we still carry Neanderthal genes, so in a sense you could say that they are not extinct at all, it is just that their share of the gene count has declined. That could have happened for many reasons, such as sexual selection, women, (it would mainly be women ) thought that men with more modern genes and less Neanderthal were more hansom and desirable, so that the Neanderthal share of the gene pool lessened over time.
Fernapple
Level 9
Apr 18, 2020
3
Women had no choice! The stronger male was in control. The sex was probably non consensual. Only mitochondrial DNA could cast a light on who shagged whom.
@Petter No, women had a lot of choice, in small hunter gatherer groups especially, community power and matiachy are big things, the caveman doing his courting with a club image is a nineteenth century idea which was wrong in just about ever aspect. Non consentual sex is to a large degree a problem of civilization. And in any case I did say 'mainly ' , males do take play a role in sexual selection too, just not so strongly.
Maybe it’s a virus from interplanetary visitors with Wuhan taking the blame.
As you say like Europeans in SA or War of the World in reverse.
Geoffrey51
Level 8
Apr 17, 2020
2
I’ve been wondering just the same! And how could we know, viral DNA doesn’t last long.. Yes, it’s had me thinking (the kind of uninterrupted thoughts one can have when single) - all those mysterious ‘dead end’ branches of the Hominid Tree. Isolated, extremely inbred, consuming raw meats, with too few genetic variations to survive a random Coronavirus… This may definitely have happened before!
What’s also been haunting me ..is how much humanities spent on methods of killing our own … while the real danger was only a wild meal away 
-- need a fuckin diversion - if litterally ~
Varn
Level 8
Apr 17, 2020
2
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