I recently got into a fight with my professor that the Neanderthal wasn't Human. we argued for hours and i had to say i was wrong or i wouldn't have ever gotten home.. but tomorrow i plan to show him some websites and pictures of neanderthal and homo sapien skulls...



Am i going too far?

Which one of you is saying which A.X...?

Be careful AX…

"Humans, or human beings, are bipedal primates belonging to the mammalian species Homo sapiens."

"Modern humans" are defined as the Homo sapiens species, of which the only extant subspecies is Homo sapiens sapiens."

"Neanderthal was a species of the Homo genus Homo sapiens neanderthalensis."

~rore

im the one saying that humans and neanderthal are a different species..



yes, but to say that we were both the same wouldn't be accurate would it?

We are not, we are of a different race then them, but not different species.

AX posts: “…but to say that we were both the same [species] wouldn't be accurate would it?”
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The definitions are clear here AX.
“A human is a member of the species Homo sapiens, including Homo sapiens sapiens (modern humans) and Homo sapiens idaltu. It may also refer to any member of the genus Homo.”
Which also includes Neanderthal… Homo sapiens neanderthalensis."

The term ‘race’ is really a ‘non-term’ nowadays and usually is used to mean 'ethnic group', and is actually a misnomer… ~rore

Its all semantics, but..

Neanderthals are classified as "human". They are not the same as you and I, and more than likely Homo sapien sapiens couldnt interbreed with them..but that doesnt mean they werent human.

They walked erect. They were capable of abstract thought. They had larger brains on average than modern humans.

AX.....based on rore's definitions....they are from the same genus (homo sapiens)....but are different species. (sapiens versus neanderthalensis)

Neanderthals died out 20,000 years ago.

We are Homo sapiens sapiens.
That Is, Our Genus is Homo Sapien, Our species is also Sapien.

Neanderthals are, Homo neanderthalensis.
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Him saying we are the same, is totally incorrect.....

Its like saying a Common carp is a gold fish.

read the original post. The professor is claiming neanderthals are HUMAN.

In anthropology, lacking anything better, it was decided that tool making and using decided "human-ness". Anything starting with "Homo" is considered human.. i.e. Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo sapien, Homo neanderthalis, Homo sapien sapien.

Neanderthals ARE(were) human. They are just a different KIND of human.

Their teeth were basically the same. There is nothing differentiating their walk. They had ceremonial burials. Lived in villages. Controlled fire. Built structures.

Again.. they arent Homo sapiens, but clearly they are human.

I also read.

"im the one saying that humans and neanderthal are a different species.."

Which they are.
Yeah, they do class a human(oid), But I was answering the above.

By Humans, I'm pretty certain AX means the modern humans. (But thats just from reading the thread.)

Well.. its possible they are talking past each other. Neanderthals are human, but obviously not modern humans.

p=344038: I recently got into a fight with my professor that the Neanderthal wasn't Human.

That’s a good question. And the debate among anthropologists is far from being over.

I can say that you’re both right…and wrong – at the same time.

At the very moment, the accepted concensus (‘trend’ would be more correct) is to make a distinct species, i.e. Homo neandertalensis – in this case the denomination Homo sapiens sapiens does not exist.

That being said, the old school still holds many supporters…and they all actively favor the same-species theory, i.e. Homo sapiens neandertalensis.

By the way, I support the same-species hypothesis…and for many reasons – of which the most striking are:

a) The transition from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens is as vague as the one from Homo habilis to Homo erectus. The transition is gradual.

Gradual again the transition from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens neandertalensis – transition which occurs in parts of the Old World – in other words a part of Eurasia from France to Uzbekistan.

c) Even though Homo sapiens neandertalensis did not invent plastic art, they did develop very rich cultures, with many ‘regional’ characteristics.

And last but not least…d) They practiced complex rituals such as…burials of the dead, with offerings and beds of flowers…

Xeno posts: I also read. "im the one saying that humans and neanderthal are a different species.."

Which they are.
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They are the same species XE… The species being Sapiens.

They ARE a different sub-species though… I.e.
Homo Sapiens (genus-species) Neanderthalensis (sub-species)…

Homo Sapiens (genus-species) Sapiens (sub-species)

We are of the same species but of a different sub-species.

Here is how current Scientific Classification breaks it down for Modern Humans… Hope this helps… ~rore
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Primates
Family: Hominidae
Genus: Homo
Species: Homo sapiens
Subspecies: Homo sapiens sapiens (Modern Humans)

For Neanderthal:
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Primates
Family: Hominidae
Genus: Homo
Species: Homo sapiens
Subspecies: Homo sapiens neanderthalensis (Neanderthals)

The accepted ‘trend’ derives essentially from analyses of fossil DNA extracted from one specimen of Homo sapiens neandertalensis. Tests have shown little similarity to the DNA of modern humans.

We know their cerebral capacity (their braincase was ≈1600 cc).

We know that the shape of their brain was different from the shape of our brain, and thus that the cerebral areas were differently developed.

We know their lithic industry (the Mousterian of the middle Paleolithic).

We know that they were able to make metaphysical concepts – and even symbolic ones.

All the rest is a matter of conjecture.

But…

When they began to celebrate their deads, the men from Sima de los Huesos (Anteneandertalians) were also beginning to attain what makes us all humans – conscience about their humanity.

That took place some ≈330,000 years ago. We all come from there…

you are correct xeno.. I am reffering to modern man.. i should have noted that in my earlier posts..

Something unrelated, but where does Homo sapiens idaltu fit into the evolution of man?

Some versons of writing it have the Homo Neanderthalensis, and some as Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis.
There is debate. But the true evidence points towards them being separate species.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evoluti...eanderthalensis

Xe posts: “…evidence points towards them being separate species.”
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I took the ‘true’ out of your comment Xe only because…

I am of a mind to think there is a distinction between the two species myself but not enough evidence for me to state conclusively as such…

My main point in posting what I did to AX was to let AX know what mainstream science is using as a classification method and this is what is being taught in basic anthro… so to speak.

No sense in pissing one’s professor off (and maybe failing a course) unless one has indisputable facts to the contrary of mainstream thought… ~rore

I think the big problem here is if they are a different species, then where did it come from? The history is very interesting. However 90% of why it is so is not even recognizable to the scientific world. 60% is not recognizable to this forum. And so the fact is they are different, but why will not be answered for some time. And people hate that. :mad:

In regard to Homo sapiens idaltu and the evolution of man, here's a summary of the original Tim White's article:



Fig.1: The Herto BOU-VP-16/1 adult cranium in lateral, frontal, three-quarter, posterior, superior and inferior views. Scale bar, 1 cm.



...The Herto hominids, although clarifying evolutionary questions, raise taxonomic issues. Widely scattered, often poorly dated, and morphologically diverse Middle and Upper Pleistocene hominid crania from the eastern hemisphere have been assigned to various taxa. In addition to the difficulties inherent in partitioning lineages, several of the available species names are based on inadequate type specimens (such as H. heidelbergensis, Schoetensack, 1908; H. helmei, Dreyer, 1935; and H. njarasensis, Reck and Kohl-Larsen, 1936). Because the Herto hominids are morphologically just beyond the range of variation seen in AMHS, and because they differ from all other known fossil hominids, we recognize them here as Homo sapiens idaltu, a new palaeosubspecies of Homo sapiens. The available evidence from comparative anatomy, multivariate analysis and cladistic considerations suggests that H. rhodesiensis (Bodo and Kabwe) was ultimately ancestral to H. sapiens idaltu, which in turn was ancestral to Homo sapiens sapiens (AMHS).

The Middle Awash valley of Ethiopia has now yielded a succession of hominids spanning the past 6 million years. Within this study area, and within the genus Homo, there exists a chronologically ordered succession of increasingly derived hominids: from Daka (1M years ago) to Bodo (500K years ago) to Herto (155K years ago). When considered with the evidence from other sites, this shows that modern human morphology emerged in Africa long before the Neanderthals vanished from Eurasia.

Ethnographic and osteological evidence from several cultures documents the post-mortem manipulation and curation of human remains as part of mortuary practices13. For example, some New Guinean crania show cutmarks, decoration and polishing reminiscent of traces seen on the Herto hominids14. The earliest indications of cultural modification of hominid remains are the disarticulationrelated cutmarks present on the early Homo specimen Stw-53 from Sterkfontein15. The Middle Pleistocene Bodo cranium, which is much earlier than the Herto hominids, gives the earliest evidence of non-utilitarian mortuary practice in the hominid fossil record, but the cutmarks it bears seem to be related to defleshing and not decoration16. The diverse bone modifications marking the three most intact Middle Awash Herto hominid crania indicate post-mortem defleshing with stone tools in the Upper Pleistocene, in an archaeological context straddling the Acheulean and MSA. Polishing and intentional scraping modifications evident on two of these crania indicate that the Upper Herto hominids may have manipulated the crania of their dead in mortuary practices whose dimensions, context and meaning might be revealed only by further discoveries.

Taxonomy:

Order Primates L., 1758
Suborder Anthropoidea Mivart, 1864
Superfamily Hominoidea Gray, 1825
Family Hominidae Gray, 1825
Homo sapiens idaltu subsp. nov.


From: Tim D. White, et al., Nature 423 (6941), pp. 742-47; J. Desmond Clark, et al., Nature 423 (6941), pp. 747-52.