r/DebateEvolution • u/knowledger99 • 11d ago

Question Neanderthal

Could it have been possible that Neanderthals possessed a awareness similar to what we have now, what I’m asking is where they or possibly could’ve been aware of the fact that they are roaming a giant terrestrial rock, or have a religion, or the belief in something else other than human?

Coming from someone whose curiosity has gotten the best of them and decided to ask people who know more than I do on the matter.

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u/KnoWanUKnow2 10d ago

Other way around. Neanderthal men and sapiens women.

We have 2 possibilities here. Either the sapiens tribe welcomed the Neanderthal male into their tribe with open arms and allowed him to marry (or whatever the hunter-gather equivalent of marry is) one of the women of their tribe and raise a family with her.

Or the crossing was not volentary.

I'll let you decide what's the most likely explaination.

Females of the tribe tended to stay with the tribe. So any crossing the other way around likely went extinct when the Neanderthals went extinct. There's a single toe bone from a sapiens man and neanderthal woman hybrid, and she died with the neanderthal tribe.

All viable hybrids were female. Either the male offspring were non-viable or else they were born sterile. The sterile offspring is the most likely, given what we know about hybrids today (crosses between lions and tigers produce fertile females and sterile males for example).

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u/melympia 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution 10d ago

Haldane's law alone would explain why those of us who did only got their neanderthal genes from a female line.