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Lol I've been watching gorilla videos recently and it's such a trip how close they are to us, and that that we had much closer relatives.It's definitely interesting. It's also interesting to wonder about what interbreeding might have happened way down the line of our lineage. And like you said, all the various subspecies that may have existed. Just looking at primates it's awesome to see how similar they are to us, it's crazy to think of how other hominids were living and interacting with all of their surroundings.
Knowing how disasters of the past have brought species to the brink of extinction throughout history, I'd guess the most likely scenario for the Neanderthals going extinct and us moving forward had to do with a larger number of us being in the right place at the right time.
As a corollary to this idea, we know that North America lost 80% of it's large mammal species at the end of the last ice age. We know Asia lost about 50% or around about there...and then comes the interesting part...Africa, specifically the rift valley region (and Central Africa), lost only 10% of it's mammals OVER 100 lbs in body weight. What does that tell us?
Whatever happened to cause the greatest extinction event in the time that modern homo sapien sapien human has existed on this planet happened specifically and with great severity in North America, with trailing effects then hitting South America, Asia and Africa in that order regarding severity.
It's pretty clear it was fragments of a disintegrating comet specifically that probably directly impacted the ice sheets over north america (it's actually seeming like this happened 2 times within a 1000 years which is scary and shows it was likely the same material passing again the second time, a second pass) but that's the thing...Animals in Africa weren't directly in the vacinity and North American animals were...blind luck. Shit, we had bigger lions than Africa, we had a short faced bear which was probably the apex land predator in the world, all kinds of coolness stolen from us. Now Africa thinks it's hot shit...jk.
Anyway, I digress...I'd say it's likely that the same sort of thing happened with Humans and Neanderthals.
Exactly. It reminds me a lot of Guns, Germs, and Steel. A lot of people's success in history has been entirely circumstantial and just being in the right or wrong place can mean everything.