Further Review Overturns Neanderthal Art Claim

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

The visual here, from Todd Woods, is to scale and helps make sense of it.

@swamidass

“the RTB model” persists in classifying these obvious humans [Neandertals] as animals. In direct contradiction to Rana’s previous claim to the contrary, they now say that human/Neandertal interbreeding does not falsify their model.
http://toddcwood.blogspot.com/2010/05/neandertals-in-bizarro-world.html

What I do not precisely understand is how they are certain that humans must be Homo sapiens . Why not just say that there is a sharp line somewhere , but we can’t say for sure where. After all (vis a vis Woods), the genetic data is unclear where the line is:

It certainly is not clear how to draw the line for species there, and Neandertal are much more like humans than chimpanzees (despite’ Rana’s analogy).

It is reasonable to call humans a “chronospecies”, which makes sense of this:

@pevaquark

But starting with some hominid common ancestor when did ‘non-humans’ become ‘human?’ I don’t think there’s an answer to that question nor its complement: going backwards then, when did ‘humans’ stop being ‘human’?

At the same time, it is possible there was a discontinuity along the lineage. There are strong opinions in science across the spectrum. Rana is not an outlier in where he draws the line.