doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com OT-anyone in family had their genetics tested?

Some here probably know that one of my children is a neuroscientist. Currently studying and writing about the evolution of the neanderthal brain.

Naturally I asked what happened to them.

I was told there were fewer around, and, slowly, they were subsumed into the HS genepool. The why is a guess, but it's a rapidly advancing field.

So, it's entirely possible that new revelations are just around the corner.

But, for now, the working hypothesis is just that they were diluted out.

Keith - yep, bison, moose, grizzlies survived but the Americas lost over thirty genera of large mammals (elephants, rhinos, giant ground sloths, armadillos the size of a VW, bigger buffalo, a bunch of large predators, including sabertooths, a very large bear and lions) within a few thousand years after humans arrived. We had a large mammal diversity comparable to Africa until that time. Same thing happened in Australia and New Guinea, including huge lizards and snakes. We wiped a lot of very large birds (e.g. moas in New Zealand, dodos on Mauritius), and large tortoises on many islands, as soon as we arrived. The process was slower in Eurasia, presumably because it took a long time for the human population to increase and the animals had some time to evolve behavioral responses. The story has been the same all over the world - when humans arrived, first the big stuff went, then a lot of smaller stuff especially on islands, due to things liked deforestation. Haiti and other Caribbean islands are prime examples.

You never hear about wingshooting vacations to Italy. Just sayin'

I don't watch much tv and don't subscribe to cable tv. So on my 20 hour drive to the Sandhills and the 20 hour return trip, I got my fill of Fox, CNN and MSNBC on satellite radio. Now here's the confession.....I thought you guys were getting carried away about CNN.

Please accept my apologies. I have never heard more outrageous BS being passed off as news and informed commentary. You spend 40 min listening to CNN in the evening and then Fox news seems INCREDIBLY balanced by comparison. It was shocking.

I didn't know that about your son. Fascinating. Seems like he must be the go to guy for questions like this. I'll have to tell my son (he's 14) about someone actually making a career of this stuff as he's fanatical about it.

Son? Daughter? Does it matter?

CZ - please let us know here when your family neuroscientist publishes - fascinating stuff.

It's all very interesting, and very open to debate and speculation. The arrival of humans in North America was very thin and spotty for many thousands of years before their population density, and the efficiency of their weapons, could conceivably account for many of these extinctions during the late Pleistocene and Holocene. Humans are indeed very efficient and relentless predators, but there was also advances and retreats of glaciation, the Quaternary extinction event, massive wildfires due to rapid climate change (which had nothing to do with scant human activity), worldwide volcanic activity, and even possible cosmic events like meteor impacts. The mere presence of charred bones in ancient fire pits could indicate hunting, or scavenging of animals that died from other causes, or more likely, both.

But having seen how quickly hunters legally made a healthy population of wild ringneck pheasants nearly extinct in my state after the killing of hens was permitted, I would never argue that man couldn't wipe out a species. Sad that our game commission could never acknowledge and rectify that error.

James, thanks for your observations on the disgusting propaganda machines we have here. Media bias has been bad for a long time, but it has gotten really insane since Trump was elected. When you have even Ted Koppel chiding CNN for their 24/7/365 anti-Trump diatribes, you know it's bad. But sadly, there are people who only listen to one side of it, and they will never give themselves the chance to consider that it may not be factual. I typically flip between different news networks to avoid commercials, and am no stranger to the totally different ways the same exact events are reported. It's obviously no accident.

When Trump calls them Fake News and the Enemy of the People, he is probably being much too kind to them. They actually think he has no business to call them out on their dishonesty, and place no blame upon themselves. What is really bizarre is that they still consider themselves journalists.

I typically don't say much about HER online because she's quite private. It just happened that she txted me today to say she was having a Neanderthal brain evolution article published in a high power factor journal. So it was an odd coincidence.
She's done work on Sinaesthesia as well. So, if anyone here sees colored letters when they type, or hear's blue notes in a song, get in touch via pm.