ネアンデルタール問題(Olivia Judson)

承前*1

Olivia Judson “Kissing Cousins” http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/11/kissing-cousins/


Olivia Judsonは進化生物学者で、倫敦のImperial Collegeの生物学リサーチ・フェロー。
前半部は、1856年に独逸でネアンデルタール人の最初の化石が発見されて以来のネアンデルタール基礎知識。
最後の部分の〈ネアンデルタール問題〉ともいうべき疑問点を列挙している部分をメモしておく。
先ず、ネアンデルタールホモ・サピエンス関係を巡って;


All the same, the idea of Neanderthal ancestry brings a vividness to the distant past. Were the men exotic and sexy? What were half-Neanderthal, half-human children like? Were they extra-beautiful, as people with mixed ancestries often are? Did they have an unusual hungering for red meat? Did we learn Neanderthal customs, or languages?
また、ネアンデルタール人の絶滅を巡って;

And it brings a greater poignancy to that other mystery — why did the Neanderthals vanish?

Here, lots of ideas have been put forward — a sure sign that no one knows. Perhaps they died of mad Neanderthal disease, owing to a habit of feasting on one another’s brains. (This has been put forward as a serious hypothesis.) Perhaps they were victims of a changing climate. Perhaps they were “inferior” beings, unable to match our capacity for innovation in the face of adversity. Perhaps their populations became too small, and too sparse, for them to find mates. Or — and this is the most haunting possibility — perhaps they were eventually murdered by their puny cousins. That is, us.