Not even a kiss??
For some reason, I always have this belief that the Neanderthals and us did some money business 50,000 years ago and the wild sex parties under the starry sky contributed to the diversity of the modern human race. I guess this may just be my wishful thinking after all. Isn't it nice that our ancestors were open-minded libertines who embraced the Neanderthals with amour? But really who am I kidding? Just look at us now, their decedents, to see how xenophobic, racists, war-thirsty and intolerable we are. I should have known better. Based on the newly draft of the Neanderthal Genome, there is no significant trace of Neanderthal genes in our genomic pool, which suggests that the party probably didn't happen. What happened 30,000 years ago, when they first encountered in Europe, was likely to be spear-throwing instead of love-making. Alas, that just depresses me.
Another thing I believed was that Neanderthal could speak, or at least, sort of babble, because naturally they would want to talk dirty with our ancestors at the foreplay. Well, at least the new genome draft hasn't ruled that out. Their speaking gene FOXP2 displays similar mutations as in human, which doesn't prove but at least supports the possibility that they might be able to talk, but I guess in this case, they were probably screaming for their life from our attack instead of telling us how much they adored our tender gaze.
Perhaps, our destructive nature was determined a long time ago when we encountered the Neanderthal, when we decided to make war, instead of love, with them.
2 comments:
Somehow interspecies love affairs seem a little weird and wrong. Like dating teen wolf, or the cavemen guys from Geico. Those guys were cool though.
What a coincidence! I was just about to call and ask you about the whole Neanderthal genome thing. And I would've embarrassed myself by proposing the same exact theory to you as well. Or maybe I never ever thought about this--that's probably more accurate. ;-)
-Jeremy
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