I don't suppose many of our ladies on here want to admit it, but we all know what happened to the neanderthal. It was their women.

You see, those promiscuous little tarts were attracted to the prettier Homo Sapiens, & kept running off with them.

The neanderthals started a crash cloning program, but they ran out of breeding pairs, before it was perfected.

If you doubt the truth of this, just go for a wander around any of our institutions of higher learning. If you fail to see the expression of neanderthal genes in these places, you must have your eyes shut.

I get it, Hasbeen - you're saying that it was a similar scenario to when the American servicemen turned up in Britain during the Second World War - Homo Sapiens turned up with a never-ending supply of stockings and chocolate, and the Neanderthal men just couldn't compete.

C.J.
Interesting that you pointed out that Homo Sapiens and Neanderthal man were thee same species. There is a lot of literature about what happened when Homo Sapiens reached Europe but considering the two sub-species were so closely related, I wonder where Neanderthal man originated. Seems strange to think that the two developed along such similar lines and yet were separated by such distance.

It would have taken a strong will for a Neanderthal to resist the temptations of homo sapien Raquel Welch. Assimilation seems most likely. :)

Yes, that sort of thing Poirot.

Pelican, I'm quite sure that any Homo Sapien cave man, who had a Raquel Welch in his cave, would have put more than a little effort into "protecting" her from the advances of overly friendly neanderthals. No, it had to be the women running off.

Although, perhaps you have hit on the reason for the neanderthal disappearance. I don't think they were quite as advanced as the polynesians who developed a system allowing "wife raids" to be conducted without loss of face, or life, [almost].

Hasbeen,
Actually I'm not that sure that Raquel Welch would have been so alluring to the Neanderthals.
You are assuming (projecting) our/your sujective perspective of beauty on them.
(careful old fella, sex has caused the demise of extraordinary number of old men)

One only needs to look at choices in the Highlands of PNG or some of the coastal tribes that tattooed the most 'attractive' excessively.
It seem that their preference 'most desirable was often for the most functional. Strong able to carry the burdens dig fields able to find foods like fungi, edible tubers etc. (perhaps CJ can add more information)

Wife raids were often to bring in new blood more children. More wives children higher status (quantity not quality).
The ancient Greeks court women painted their faces white with bright red lips (yetch).

A very common pattern throughout the world in history and anthropology is men going on raids, killing neighbouring men and abducting their women.

Steven Pinker in "How the Mind Works" says this:
"Access to women is the limiting factor on males' reproductive success. Having two wives can double a man's children, three wives can triple it, and so on. For a man who is not at death's door, no other resource has as much impact on evolutionary fitness [ie tendency of genes to replicate]. The most common spoils of tribal warfare are women. Raiders kill the men, abduct the nubile women, gang-rape them, and allocate them as wives. Chagnon discovered that Yanomamo men who had killed an enemy had three times as many wives and three times as many children as those who had not. Most young men who had killed were married; most young men who had never killed were not...."

Pinker quotes Numbers; "Moses said.... Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him [ie to ensure you're not getting some other man's child]. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves".

Or how about this charmer from Deuteronomy: "... thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword [smite, smite]: But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle and all that is in the city... shalt thou take unto thyself."

Deuteronomy again: [After you have killed all her family and abducted her] "let her bewail her father and her mother a full month [very charitable] and after that thou shalt go in unto her, and be her husband, and she shall be thy wife."

I imagine there was a fair bit of this stuff going on back when the Neanderthals disappeared.