Reading Rambo

I really love Neanderthals.


This has been a slow-growing love, possibly owing its beginning to the Field Museum's exhibit on the cave paintings of Lascaux, which made me realize what a condescending dick I'd been to People of the Past. I was astounded to learn they had needles and thread and candles. This was almost 20,000 years ago. I'd assumed they just walked around grunting and hitting each other with rocks. But no! They had hats. I don't know why hats are a major sign of civilization, but they are.

I've discussed before how frustrating it is that all this took place in our prehistory. We barely know anything. And what we think we know is probably wrong. A book I have on Cro-Magnon man from like two years ago says modern humans and Neanderthals probably never interacted, and then we find out that basically everyone whose ancestors emigrated from Africa has 3-5% Neanderthal DNA, meaning our ancestors totally did it with Neanderthals.


It bugs me that how our civiliz…

So this article came out, which isn't really groundbreaking at all, but it happens to have been published the day after I watched part of the NOVA special "Becoming Human," so it's been on my brain anyway.

I was checking out a book a while ago called Cro-Magnon: How the Ice Age Gave Birth to the First Modern Humans, and it was all "Oh dude, our ancestors probably didn't even LOOK at Neanderthals. No way. 'Cause they would've been like, RIDICULOUSLY ugly."

This book was published in 2010. And what came out this year? DNA Shows Humans Found Non-Humans Irresistible

That's right. Your lady ancestor, at some point, sidled up to a Neanderthal gentleman and said "Hey. How's it goin'?


Because all non-Africans ('cause the Africans stayed put instead of traipsing around becoming the Don Juans of prehistoric Europe) have 1-4% Neanderthal DNA. So the above scenario DEFINITELY happened. Which is disheartening NOT because of my huge Neanderth…

I was doing my morning round of internet linkage, and I stumbled across this: Human ancestor ate bark like a chimp.
Now that's just embarrassing.
But maybe it was just that one hominid. Like, everyone else was like "WHAT ARE YOU DOING -- ARE YOU EATING *BARK*?" And he was like "I DO WHAT I WANT." And then the other monkey-people shunned him, and that's why he died alone, with bark stuck in his teeth. Or MAYBE he hilariously ran into a tree while chasing after a prehistoric roadrunner, and that's how bark got there. Way to make sweeping assumptions, SCIENTISTS.
I'm not having our ancestors disgraced by that one idiot. That'd be like super-advanced people millions of years from now finding a dude clutching Kim Kardashian's book and being like "Well, looks like the people from five million years ago were assholes." And HOW DO WE DEFEND OURSELVES? WE CAN'T.
...ok, after reading the article more carefully, it looks like they think at …