I hate how we keep calling them different species…
The various types of hominds are more like the different “breeds” of dogs. Wildly different phenotypes, but they can still interbreed and produce fertile offspring. And they all (relatively) recently shared ancestors.
Horses and donkeys, lions and tigers, these arent necessarily more different phenotypes, but when they produce offspring they’re almost always sterile because of a difference in the number of chromosomes which occurs after insane amounts of time where populations are separated.
Eventually the different Homo groups would have become a different species, but not enough time had passed before the next waves out of Africa.
Calling Neanderthals, Denovidians, etc, different species is going to be the same as saying the races were different species 200 years ago.
I understand your sentiment but if my biology memory from uni is correct, one of the rules scientists use and not often mention is that you can’t breed with specimens that are now extinct. In other words because you can’t prove the outcome of a hypothetical hybrid there is enough room for doubt and calling it a species is correct.
Or maybe I’m arse pulling this one off. If someone can confirm/deny that’d be great.
We don’t need to watch a Homo Sapien bang a Homo Neanderthal to know if they could interbreed because modern humans have neanderthal DNA…
Some people have Denovasian too, and Denovasians had some Neanderthal as well.
Like, what more evidence do you expect to have before known written language? You want cave drawing version of pornhub to prove it?
We know because their genes live on in modern humans, interbreeding was possible.
we don’t neeeeed to…
Fun fact:
The reason cave paintings are blurry may be because a flickering torch combined with a shrinking amount of oxygen can lead to them appearing to move like a gif…
So, like, by a certain definition the vids may exist.
But it would be hard to clearly differentiate unless it’s like that gif of Futurama death by snu snu.
It’s not just due to extinction. If the two species are genetically compatible, but have incompatibilities when mating in the wild, they can be considered distinct.
Ie: Dogs vs Wolves, Galapagos finches
In the case of extinct hominids, this whole conversation tree is argued for years in a series of papers until research convincingly shows the distinction is sufficient to warrant labelling as a new species.
A joke i’ve heard among systematists is that there are lumpers, splitters, and then paleoanthropologists
Study and discovery of our ancient cousins is one of my favorite topics of interesting good news. I’ll note that they say this group should encompass Denisovans, a group that we barely know about. That means there’s still another group with whom we suspect crossbreeding whose fossils are still unknown to us. We have yet to name / identify them. Hopefully we’ll uncover them during my lifetime.
Science and archeology are pretty badass.
