The powerfully built Neanderthals were first discovered in Germany's Neander Valley in 1856. Exactly who they were, how they lived and why they vanished remains unclear.
Research shows they contributed between 1 and 4 percent of their genetic material to the people of Asia and Europe. Riel-Salvatore rejects the theory that they were exterminated by modern humans. Homo sapiens might simply have existed in larger groups and had slightly higher birthrates, he said.
"It is likely that Neanderthals were absorbed by modern humans," he said. "My research suggests that they were a different kind of human, but humans nonetheless. We are more brothers than distant cousins."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/...
If anthropologist Julien Riel-Salvatore's research findings are anywhere near correct, Neanderthals were just another race of humans.
Like the diminutive hominoid "hobbit people," which recent data shows were quite adept at fashioning and using tools, the intelligence, quite different from IQ which only measures the ability to make the same errors as the authors of the tests, of both hominoids has been maligned and one may even be fully human. Anthropologists at first refused to believe people with such tiny brains as the Hobbit People had the intelligence to fashion and utilize tools. The far tinier brains of insects perform feats beyond the capability of humans. Honey bee scouts use a dance to inform the hive of distant finds of nectar through astral navigation. Imagine trying any such thing with humans. Humans use dance for a far different kind of honey find.
You might notice that skin pigmentation and eye color of either of these is of little consequence to any studying such species or races.
From its very beginnings race was about biology that has been twisted by mythologists into something quite different for their own dubious purposes.
Darwin on races of humans:
"Although the existing races of man differ in many respects, as in colour, hair, shape of skull, proportions of the body, &c., yet if their whole organisation be taken into consideration they are found to resemble each other closely in a multitude of points. Many of these points are of so unimportant or of so singular a nature, that it is extremely improbable that they should have been independently acquired by aboriginally distinct species or races. The same remark holds good with equal or greater force with respect to the numerous points of mental similarity between the most distinct races of man. The American aborigines, Negroes and Europeans differ as much from each other in mind as any three races that can be named; yet I was incessantly struck, whilst living with the Fuegians on board the Beagle, with the many little traits of character, shewing how similar their minds were to ours; and so it was with a full-blooded n e g r o with whom I happened once to be intimate."
http://answers.yahoo.com/...
Darwin's races of plants and animals seems to be mostly species, which were not well defined back then and, in truth, are not now. The great cats do interbreed occasionally and the offspring are, though rarely, fertile. They are not supposed to be fertile according to the manuals but such material is quickly obsoleted. Scientific truth is ephemeral unlike theological truth, which is eternal and always wrong.
Quite clearly Darwin was quick to point out that the described races of man of the time were different only in appearance and culture. Even relatively enlightened sorts, like Nate Silver, still hold with the imaginary white and black races beloved by sociologists.
"Am I white?" a Jew lady asked me in an email correspondence. The unfortunate woman was in a shelter from her African-American husband. She was very distressed by sociologists telling her, by her account of course, that black men were always abusive. She told me that claim was deeply hurtful to her because her in-laws had been very supportive.
I wanted to tell the woman I couldn't say anything about her pigmentation because being a Jew is a matter of faith and custom rather than race. Ashkenazi (European) Jews might even be called a race by themselves since their centuries-long refusal to mate outside their religion resulted in a distinctive disease profile. But Ashkenazi Jews are hardly the whole of Jewdom. African Jews naturally tend to have very dark skins as one might suspect. Diplomatically, I told the distressed woman that she was white though there is no such thing as a white race no matter how loudly sociologists and pollsters and FDA commissioners and other racists insist there is.
There is absolutely no justification in equating race with pigmentation today. There are no black and white races. The caucasian race is by no means a white race. In fact most caucasians have dark pigmentation since the inhabitants of South Asia are caucasians by any measure.
The black and white races, and red and yellow, are the manufacture of bigotry and enslavement of the mind as well as the body.
When Jesse Owens trounced the German supermen in the 1936 Olympics, learned scholars of the day writing in scientific journals decreed that Jesse Owens had the advantage of a negroid foot. But when one scientist chose to look at Jesse Owens' feet, he discovered they were caucasoid making Jesse Owens a caucasian.
Here is a picture of Jesse Owens overcoming the purported disadantage of his Caucasoid foot at the Olympics:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/...
Welcome to the caucasian race, Jesse. Hope the racist denials from those forked tongue palefaces do not make it too uncomfortable.
Best, Terry