From: Marc Verhaegen
Message: 228
Date: 1999-11-11
Piotr said: It is obvious that the development of language offered its users a selective edge in the further evolution of the genus Homo. H erectus and H. neanderthalensis lingered on until quite recently (ca. 30,000 yrs before present, i.e. after some 70,000 yrs of coexistence with H. sapiens in Eurasia), perhaps occasionally interbreeding with H. sapiens; but they eventually died out. Other less known and less securely defined species (H. heidelbergensis, H. antecessor) never achieved much evolutionary success. Fully-fledged linguistic skills are often supposed to have been the difference that mattered, because in other respects there is no obvious advantage that H. sapiens could have over its cousins....Some remarks (I agree with the rest). H.antecessor is extremely well-know & well-defined, in fact, it's the Homo with the most fossils (Spain, ca.500,000 ya), but whether it should be called a separate species is less clear. It might well have been very close to the ancestors of the neandertals & perhaps of heidelbergensis (yes, heidelbergensis is less-defined), probably after those lineages split for our ancestors. We just don't know whether H. heidelbergensis or H. antecessor ever achieved "much evolutionary success". There are a lot of anatomical differences (cranial & postcranial) between sapiens & neandertals which have nothing to do with linguistics capacities, so it's premature to say that the absence of language accounts for disappearance of the neandertals. --Marc