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Homo Sapiens eyes - Dogs - Extinction of Neanderthal


norseman

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Pure Neanderthals were long gone before dog domestication.  But there is an a theory that once dogs were domesticated, they influenced our genetic make up and we know we influenced theirs.  So a feedback loop was set up in the evolutionary sense between humans and dog so that they co-evolved.  This is exactly how modern humans treated "culture" and how it influenced our evolution  SO in a real sense dogs became part of human culture and entered and responded as human culture.

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21 minutes ago, Henry Stevens said:

Pure Neanderthals were long gone before dog domestication.  But there is an a theory that once dogs were domesticated, they influenced our genetic make up and we know we influenced theirs.  So a feedback loop was set up in the evolutionary sense between humans and dog so that they co-evolved.  This is exactly how modern humans treated "culture" and how it influenced our evolution  SO in a real sense dogs became part of human culture and entered and responded as human culture.


That was what they thought. But dogs have been domesticated a lot longer. Which then begs the question? Were they the edge we had?

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No. Reproduction was the edge we had.  Short version:  Tropical species or tropical races of a species reproduce many times per year.  African sapiens are tropical animals and can go into reproductive phase once per month.  Northern animals usually reproduce once per year and that was probably the situation with Neanderthals.  Even a little reproductive edge matters.  This is pure evolution.  Wolves reproduce once per year.  Dogs come into heat twice per year.  There are hundreds of thousands of times more dogs and than wolves after only 15,000 years of dogs.

 

Yeah, I know all about paleo-dogs.  They may have existed but then gone extinct.  Modern dogs originated in Asia.  So if dogs where the big thing, why has genetic flow always moved from west to east in Homo?

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1 hour ago, Henry Stevens said:

No. Reproduction was the edge we had.  Short version:  Tropical species or tropical races of a species reproduce many times per year.  African sapiens are tropical animals and can go into reproductive phase once per month.  Northern animals usually reproduce once per year and that was probably the situation with Neanderthals.  Even a little reproductive edge matters.  This is pure evolution.  Wolves reproduce once per year.  Dogs come into heat twice per year.  There are hundreds of thousands of times more dogs and than wolves after only 15,000 years of dogs.

 

Yeah, I know all about paleo-dogs.  They may have existed but then gone extinct.  Modern dogs originated in Asia.  So if dogs where the big thing, why has genetic flow always moved from west to east in Homo?


There was little to no difference between Neanderthal and Sapiens reproduction. As African cousins we should have been at a disadvantage in Europe. We were not? Why? Technology. 
 

Not sure about your last point. No one is saying Sapiens brought African dogs with them.

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The story goes on and on about the edge that dogs gave us by hunting more efficiently, but it doesn't acknowledge that dogs helped to PROTECT us, too. They are superb warning systems. Therefore, if you are getting preyed upon, and your dogs alert you, you have time to defend yourselves. Also, they can hunt animals but also other bipedal hominids, leading you to their secret hiding places. Dogs definitely give you an edge.

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On 2/14/2021 at 10:49 AM, norseman said:


There was little to no difference between Neanderthal and Sapiens reproduction. As African cousins we should have been at a disadvantage in Europe. We were not? Why? Technology. 
 

Not sure about your last point. No one is saying Sapiens brought African dogs with them.

 

Evolution is ultimately about reproduction and bringing offspring to reproductive age.  African sapiens vs. Neanderthals or Wolves vs. Dogs are reproductive examples.  The history dogs is pretty clear.

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53 minutes ago, Henry Stevens said:

 

Evolution is ultimately about reproduction and bringing offspring to reproductive age.  African sapiens vs. Neanderthals or Wolves vs. Dogs are reproductive examples.  The history dogs is pretty clear.


Evidently not. Dogs were domesticated from Wolves much earlier than thought.

 

Which is a technological edge Sapiens could have used to ensured their offspring’s bellies were full when Thals offspring went hungry. Or as Madison suggests.... keeping offspring out of the bellies of Cave Lions and other predators.
 

Which plays into the theme of your post?

 

Im not following your logic. Dogs were bred from Wolves and Sapiens interbred with Thals. Obviously their reproductive cycles were very close. Modern Human DNA bears witness to this.

 

So it was something else. The Dog theory is just a theory. But one I find compelling. YMMV

 

 

 

 

 

 

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You are right Norseman, you don't understand any of my posts and I just don't know why. The molecular clock dated dog separation from wolves.  This is better than any fossil evidence since we do not know if fossil dog genes live today.

 

There is no technical edge sapiens had over Neanderthal.  Everything you can do in Aurignacian you and do in Mousterian.  The difference is reproductive biology in my opinion.  To put a fine point on it, this means sapiens women came into heat more times a year (12) than Neanderthal women who would have come into heat once a year following the pattern of northern mammals.  I have cited examples of northern vs. southern species in that argument.  Dogs come into heat twice a year, wolves once.  That 50% edge led to dog populations exploding as compared to wolves.  

 

There is no "edge" sapiens had as depicted on TV.  There is no "spark of humanity" that sapiens had that Neanderthals did not have.  Dogs were domesticated in Asia 15,000 years ago and have no relationship with Neanderthal fitness or lack thereof because of the temporal gap between them.  I

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1 hour ago, Henry Stevens said:

You are right Norseman, you don't understand any of my posts and I just don't know why. The molecular clock dated dog separation from wolves.  This is better than any fossil evidence since we do not know if fossil dog genes live today.

 

There is no technical edge sapiens had over Neanderthal.  Everything you can do in Aurignacian you and do in Mousterian.  The difference is reproductive biology in my opinion.  To put a fine point on it, this means sapiens women came into heat more times a year (12) than Neanderthal women who would have come into heat once a year following the pattern of northern mammals.  I have cited examples of northern vs. southern species in that argument.  Dogs come into heat twice a year, wolves once.  That 50% edge led to dog populations exploding as compared to wolves.  

 

There is no "edge" sapiens had as depicted on TV.  There is no "spark of humanity" that sapiens had that Neanderthals did not have.  Dogs were domesticated in Asia 15,000 years ago and have no relationship with Neanderthal fitness or lack thereof because of the temporal gap between them.  I

There is so much to address in this post...

 

Let's focus on this: you are saying that Neanderthal women only ovulated once a year, because other species in the same geographic area only went into heat once a year?

 

 

On 2/14/2021 at 3:58 PM, Madison5716 said:

The story goes on and on about the edge that dogs gave us by hunting more efficiently, but it doesn't acknowledge that dogs helped to PROTECT us, too. They are superb warning systems. Therefore, if you are getting preyed upon, and your dogs alert you, you have time to defend yourselves. Also, they can hunt animals but also other bipedal hominids, leading you to their secret hiding places. Dogs definitely give you an edge.

All of these reasons that you posted would help ensure that more homo sapien children survived and grew into adulthood.

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On 2/14/2021 at 1:49 PM, norseman said:


There was little to no difference between Neanderthal and Sapiens reproduction. As African cousins we should have been at a disadvantage in Europe. We were not? Why? Technology. 
 

You are exactly right.  

 

Neanderthal women MAY have had more difficulties in the act of childbirth itself, but their higher levels of progesterone would have resulted in fewer miscarriages and a higher number of children born during their lifetime.  

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And too, there were not billions of either Neanderthals or Cro-Magnon. Most population estimates are pretty low actually. For N the number was around 70,000 max in all of Europe. Initially Cro-Magnon was about 11,000 around the time of entry and agricultural development. But a paper I read, even though it's about 9 years old now, said the Cro-Magnon population caught up with Neanderthal's and eventually surpassed the N's by   5-1 and then 10-1. But this was over the course of 30,000 years or so. Also, one of the indicators that Neanderthal came from a small group was their DNA didn't show much in the way of mutations like one might expect from a large gene pool.  

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On 2/16/2021 at 2:35 PM, BlackRockBigfoot said:

You are exactly right.  

 

Neanderthal women MAY have had more difficulties in the act of childbirth itself, but their higher levels of progesterone would have resulted in fewer miscarriages and a higher number of children born during their lifetime.  

 

Modern humans appeared during the Gottwig Interstadial, a brief warm period 45,000 years ago.  So when things returned to cold, why didn't they die out?  Simple, sapiens adapts primarily with technology, not genes.  It is not that sapiens had better technology, it is that sapiens used technology to adapt.  So sapiens used the needle and had better fitting skin garments allowing them to survive even though they were less well adapted to that environment.  Neanderthal culture was very, very conservative and traditional.  A Neanderthal spent his life trying to imitate the idle hand ax or point whereas sapiens spent their lives trying to invent new tools to make their lives easier.  

 

In the same way, during Upper Paleolithic times, humans, both sapiens and Neanderthals, were preserving food better and making survival a bit easier.  With these relaxed conditions, this new environment, sapiens' reproductive ability actually meant that sometimes humans could breed and raise children any time of the year.  But if you are only fertile once a year, this means nothing.  So sapiens took advantage of better technology while Neanderthals could not.

 

As for your statement about difficulties in child birth, Neanderthal women had a much wider pelvis than sapiens women so there would have been less difficulty.  The actual distance between the pubic bones was greater.   Additionally, Neanderthals carried a gene making conception easier and this gene was passed on to European women and exists today.  So, if I am correct, not only were sapiens women able to conceive more often but when they absorbed this conception gene from Neanderthals, they became better more efficient at it.

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46 minutes ago, Henry Stevens said:

But if you are only fertile once a year, this means nothing

 

I think this is what I'm not understanding all that well.

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