May I add that I have less hair as well?
if they call you a neanderthal
Know what you mean, Walter. And I lose a little each day. You can't imagine at the age of seventeen when my pal Mike the barber told me I was getting thin on top. He also threw in free of charge the fact that I had gray hairs.
When I got home I checked using two mirrors and verified it was true. Imagine the shock. I'm luckily not bald yet and the few gray hairs are no longer few.
bob
I was just 2 years older: I didn't want to go to the barber in the barracks, but went to a "fashion hairdressing salon". Afterwards, the barber took me aside - in my naivety I thought, he wanted to sell me what is called like the capital of England. But he showed me a great collection of toupets!
This happened exactly about that time:
"I'm a neanderthal man
You're a neanderthal girl
Let's make neanderthal love
In this neanderthal world ... "
I saw a cool special on A&E called 'Neanderthal' which suggested that Cro-Magnons pretty much wiped out the neanderthals in tribal wars. Maybe that explains things...
It would certainly have set a tone for the rest of human history.
I'm not sure how in vogue the exclusionary principle is in biology any more -- I keep meaning to ask my teacher, but it always slips my mind -- but it goes like this...
There were these mathematical models that are used to predict the dynamics of a population over time. They seemed to work out pretty well most of the time. One day a guy decides to use them to figure out what would happen to two populations in direct competition with one another -- trying to occupy the same niche. Invariably in the model, one or the other won out entirely. One species was wiped out, one flourished. This didn't seem right at all.
So this guy figures out a way to test it. He puts two species of microorganism (can't remember what kind, sorry) into a test tube filled with a nutrient broth and checks on the populations of each species over a number of generations. Without fail, one of them dies out and one of them survives. I read something published in 1979 which said that this model has pretty much held up wherever it's been tested.
Incidentally, another similar experiment was conducted, but this time there was a slight difference between the two species: one like to live at the top of the tube, the other at the bottom. They would cohabitate thusly for as long as the lab workers cared to replinish the nutrient broth.
All about the niches.
"Why Big Fierce Animals are Rare" went into this too, didn't it? (I've read it too long ago now to remember...)
If survival of the fittest is the model, let's face it, it will be the insects who shall inherit the earth. Perhaps we should not be so concerned with our own mortality and just live our lives while we can. The insects are already way ahead anyway....no point making it a worry.
To hell with insects. It's Bacteria, friend, make no mistake about it. There's more of them in your crisper drawer (by several factors of ten) than there have been human beings in the history of the world.
(Yeppers, Big Fierce Animals. Great book. I just worry that certain details in it might be slightly out of date.)
Good point patiodog...definitely the fittest of all.
No, the book you are thinking of is "The Fates of Nations" by Colinvaux. It is the application of 'population ecololgy' on human history, rather like overlaying a map of plant populations on that of the corresponding soil types. I can't recommend enough reading both of these works, they make the underlying forces of history very understandable.
Trivial note:All apes are tailless.That's what differentiates apes from monkeys.Also to my knowledge there are only two primates that can swin.Humans and macaques.I would tend to doubt that Neanderthals could do the Mark Spitz thing.Heavy muscles and short legs would be a great disadvantage.This is just an observation and not a clue to their demise.
Worfy, I read "Big Fierce Animals" but not "Fate of Nations." I like Colinvaux -- if the latter is more recent, I'll have to find it.
Unfortunately neither are 'recent'. FofN is 1980, here's an Amazon listing
Fate of Nations. His latest work is a pollen atlas of the Amazon, not exactly 'accessible' reading!
BTW folks, what's the problem with huge, ridged brows
anyway?
Nothin'. I like Worf. He's about my favorite (pre- Deep Space Nine, anyway. Just Next Generation.)
Colinvaux is quoted repeatedly in Big, Fierce Animals. Will have to look into fate of nations -- I am familiar with the soil type / nation building connection.
A similar sort of thing (very popular a few years ago, I think) is "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond, which basically goes to great lengths to demonstrate that Eurasian technological domination essentially came about because crops (and hence culture) can migrate along an east-west axis much more readily than along a north-south axis. Lots of interesting tidbits along the way, though it does get a bit repetitive about two-thirds of the way through.
Colinvaux WROTE Big Fierce Animals, no?
Worf: "I am NOT a merry man!"
Mr. Piffka has been reading something about the aquatic ape... a very bizarre idea that we are descended from swimmers. It reminds me of those Japanese monkeys who enjoy sitting in hot springs in the midst of winter.
Japanese Macaque or Snow Monkey, Nagano, Japan
