One of the many things that distinguish us from other primates, and all animals for that matter, is a very marked preference for the use of one hand/limb over the other. While some other species show signs of individual preference, around 95% of humans are right-handed.
But handedness goes beyond simply preferring one hand over another, and there is a very interesting story behind how we developed that trait. Check out PBS Eons’ episode on the subject to find out more.
Shown here is a right-handed Neanderthal craftsman using stone tools to butcher a carcass and clean the animal’s skin.
So, I’ve had a few people express that my penchant for calling my neanderthal ancestors uncle or granpa ‘Nandy’ is cute or unique, so I just want to clear up the origins of Nandy, because Nandy is actually the name given to a specific neanderthal by his excavators. This individual is Shanidar 1:
He was one of the earliest neanderthals found outside of Neander Thal itself, and is known for being severely disfigured and disabled, but lived to a very advanced age, for a hunter-gatherer. He was excavated in 1957, and was held at the National Museum of Iraq. Sadly, his current whereabouts are unknown, and he may have been destroyed in bombardments by Islamic State, leaving nothing more than casts of his bones.
Shanidar 1, or Uncle Nandy, is better known in popular culture as kind old shaman Creb from Clan of the Cave Bear, where he is lovingly portrayed as a father figure for the main character, a human foundling named Ayla. In the film version, he was portrayed with great empathy by James Remar. Because of this, Nandy is perhaps the most famous neanderthal individual known to us.
might have made this post a couple years ago but how far back along the evolutionary tree do you have to go before it’s bestiality to have sex with early hominids? I think australopithecus is too far but that’s just an upper bound
actually wait since humans are largely differentiated from our ancestors by neotenous traits maybe it would be pedophilia for an australopithecus to have sex with a human. and bestiality the other way. might have just discovered a new kind of crime
i think everyone in the homo erectus group is close enough to not be bestiality, so australopithecus is exactly the most human-like being for whcih it would still be bestiality. i googled some pictures of homo ergaster and like…yeah thats a dude
Yeah, fucking lucy is definitely bestiality. Australopithecines are just upright apes and don’t share many traits with anatomically modern humans. It’s still a point of contention if we really know that Lucy and her kind were actually our ancestors. Additionally, I HAVE to ask my professors this question now and i can already feel their brain doing backflips to answer
My prof finally got back to me, a pretty non answer imo
only on tumblr to people ask questions like “would it be ethical to fuck my primate ancestor from 400,000 years ago?”
The answer is no, mainly because you’re almost defiantly related
the unexpected answer we all ignored: it’s not bestiality, but it isincest
So this post travelled from “is sex with homo habilis bestiality” to “sex with homo heidlebergensis is incest” and I’m now curious as to where it can go next. Presumably “sex with homo sapiens is SIN” which… does seem to be where a lot of tumblr posts go, come to think of it.
I’m not sure if fucking an australopithicus would necessarily be bestiality. I feel like it might be monsterfucking.
Great post everyone
I have some real bad news for anybody here whose criteria for “is it incest if I fuck them” is like “we share any genetic material” because oh boy, well
I heard that modern humans are all, at most, 50th cousins- there was a genetic bottleneck in human history because they think there was a mass extinction event which left only 10,000 of us alive. So, good job, humans.
So what you’re saying is it’s LESS incestuous to fuck an australopithicus than a homo sapiens
Guys, the important consideration is the one we cannot know without a time machine. if you ask an australopithecine if they want to fuck, do they say “Yes” in a language that some kind of universal translator can comprehend? Or do they say “EEEE eee eeee ooo eee?”
If they have language and can and do say yes, it’s monsterfucking. If they don’t, it’s bestiality.
Tumblr: As usual, tackling the important ethical issues of the day.
Can we just at least agree that, in this day and age, fucking most of them would be necrophilia?
An international team of researchers, led by Dr. Asier Gomez-Olivencia of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) and including Binghamton University anthropologist Rolf Quam, has provided new insights on one of the most famous Neandertal skeletons, discovered over 100 years ago: La Ferrassie 1.
“New technological approaches are allowing anthropologists to peer even deeper into the bones of our ancestors,” said Quam. “In the case of La Ferrassie 1, these approaches have made it possible to identify new fossil remains and pathological conditions of the original skeleton as well as confirm that this individual was deliberately buried.
The adult male La Ferrassie 1 Neanderthal skeleton was found in 1909 in a French cave site, along with the remains of an adult woman and several Neanderthal children. Read more.
