That’s very eloquently put Tim. Most of us seem determined to put as much distance as possible between us and the rest of nature.

I mentioned Stringer because he has at least altered his 80s stance regarding Neanderthals, whereas too many of the people in the Human Spark have stuck rigidly to their ‘stoopid caveman’ guns in spite of continual emerging evidence to the contrary.

At one point in the Human Spark, there was some conjecture as to how far back in time – 80-100 kya for example, you could take a human, educate them in the modern world and make them eligible for employment. If we did that to the Neanderthals, they’d go through Law School and then spend their entire working lives suing us for defamation of character.

Good luck with the book.

While Dr. Stringer has modified his views on Neandertals — somewhat — in the years since I was first “introduced” to him via a Nova
documentary I saw some years ago, about the rise of “modern” humans, he still tends to think they of Neandertals as being “different” although he appears to now concede that these “differences” may have been far subtler than he was originally willing to believe. So I, personally, do not think he would have been the best addition to The Human Spark as far as “counterweighting” all this silly stuff about how “dumb” Neandertals were supposed to have been. There are, however, worse people who could have appeared there. I didn’t see the show, so I don’t know who they put on. But even in sober academic journals, you see this kind of “Neandertals were dumb and we had nothing to do with them” stuff, and the authors of these are themselves paleoanthropologists and prehistoric archaeologists. After that, a lot of this kind of “thinking” gets filtered onto “documentaries like The Human Spark, and from there, this is where people get the idea that calling someone a “Neanderthal” means they are regressive, dumb, backward-looking, conservative, etc. Which, the more I look at it, the more it seems to be an insult to Neandertals. Incidentally, I’m writing some “romantic science fiction” set in medieval England, that does everything can to “bust” these kinds of stereotypes.
Anne G

re ‘cognitive consistency’

Having just watched the first episode of The http://www.pbs.org/wnet/humanspark/episodes/program-one-becoming-us/video-full-episode/395/ on the PBS site, I was amazed at the mental constipation on display throughout this inept presentation, which I think goes a long way to explaining the current impasse regarding the interbreeding debate .

Time and again we see the anthro/archaeo TV elite telling us that Neanderthals lacked innovation, any notion of symbolism, creativity etc, pointing out supposed behavioural differences that in many cases and upon closer examination, simply fail to materialise, such as palaeo-diet variability, technological know-how and personal adornment, amongst others.

Same old faces, peddling the same old twaddle in what will one day probably become known as the Lower Doculithic, the exponents of which will eventually become extinct due their lack of wider research and balanced presentation, pushed over the brink by an over-reliance on low production values.

Where were people like Prof. Chris Stringer to add some counterweight to the many ludicrous assertions made throughout, or indeed comment from any number of other researchers whose work has clearly shown aspects of ‘modernity’ amongst the derided archaic humans who actually laid all the cognitive groundwork – language being a particular skill-set whose origins clearly date back long before AMH?

My point being is that if qualified archaeo/anthros are allowed to appear time and again in these documentaries, and spout rubbish similar to that as in The Human Spark, with barely a hint of meaningful question or argument, how can anyone possibly expect there to be reasoned opinion amongst the viewing population to whom this sort of tripe is routinely spoon-fed?

This is the sort of documentary nightmare that I’ve been complaining about for years – what might have been acceptable in the 80s or 90s due to a comparative lack of research, results and data, has no place here in 2010, or whenever Hum.Spk. was made – there’s no excuse for this type of shoddiness, and the sooner we get a new generation of enlightened researchers to represent and portray the human story, so much the better for us all.

The last 10 minutes however were much more interesting, and would have made an ideal start for a greatly more revealing documentary on the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic, which instead of trying to find spurious differences between ourselves and ancestors, would concentrate instead on the many similarities we share – it’s too bad that commercial considerations mean it’ll probably never be made.

So no, it doesn’t surprise me at all that people have difficulty embracing the concept of AMH and Neanderthals interbreeding – let alone other archaic species of humans, and other members of the animal kingdom at large doing the same thing – as long as people are determined to ask the wrong questions by looking only for differences to explain fallacies and contradictions, this debate will simmer on for a while yet.

I’m not really surprised. Lots of people are pretty resistant to any information which might change their viewpoint at all. It’s called “cognitive consistency”.
Anne G

Convincing people may be the hard part. On my e-list palanthsci@yahoogroups.com, there is one person who argues and argues about this. He “difference-mongers” a great deal, without even realizing where the “difference-mongering” is coming from.
Anne G