Given the recent news of a discovery suggesting that Neanderthals may have been more advanced than previously thought, it’s time to revisit the possibility that Neanderthals were out-competed by proto-Sapien Cro-Magnons because the former were missing some valuable, survival trait other than intellectual horsepower.
We humans may have evolved to have tighter Game. Reader Feta explains:
I don’t know if this study has been discussed here before, but take a look if it has not:
“The Neanderthal correlation”
“No, I found that Neanderthals lacked genes linked to successful socialization and management skills. They could count perfectly well, but they couldn’t deal with groups. Socialization genes came from Sapiens”
Does this imply that alphas are the advanced “monkey” in the classic evolution pic? Betas/gammas usually are not bad with logic, but don’t fair well when it comes to “Sapiens characteristics” (i.e.,socialization)? If this is what the study says, then Game is an attempt to jump a great distance ahead in the evolutionary process.
Yes, that’s implied. When Neanderthals and Sapiens simultaneously occupied the same territories, it was the socially awkward beta nerdo Neanderthals who, despite their numeracy and great strength, succumbed to the Sapiens who had the tight Game (i.e., social skills) to form cooperative militias that could take out Neanderthals, monopolize their megafauna prey, and… wait for it… even bed Neanderthal women!
Game, far from being solely the primitive manipulations of sex-obsessed cads, was the next step in human evolution! Game can save species on the brink of extinction.
I like the coda to that article linked by Feta:
“You’re trying to tell me …” I said, but my mental censor blocked the idea.
“That human mathematical intelligence came from Neanderthals? That’s what the data say. The Cro-Magnons had the social skills. But that isn’t all.”
I stared at her. I couldn’t tell that to the research council.
As usual, she couldn’t read the warning look on my face. “The hybridization was successful in the Stone Age, but the environment has changed. I found that modern culture selects for socialization but against the Neanderthal traits for mathematics and intelligence,” she said, and looked down. “I don’t know how you’ll survive when our genes are gone.”
It’s possible then that Neanderthals picked up some beneficial “Game genes” from interbreeding with Cro-Magnons, but the intervention was too little too late to save them from the race annihilation we currently can see happening in Sweden, Britain, Germany and swaths of America.
Theory: too much sexual or cultural selection for Game genes will corrode the modern civilization that fewer Game genes helped create. When social savvy genes crowd out math and high impulse control genes… welp there go your highways, sewage treatment plants, and circuit boards.