Survival of Homo sapien

When we discoursed over the survival of Homo sapien, there is no way we can leave out Cro-Magnon and Neantherdal. Whether you believe in God or not, it is preposterous to deny the existence of dinosaurs, neither do the hominids, who exist concurrently with our ancestors during the ice age. How do we know this? The answer is from the fossil remains. A conservative preacher may try to convince you that devil leaves the bones there to confuse your faith but if we let such kind of reasoning infiltrate our intelligence, we may give way to more brainy manipulation. Just because it goes contrary to our spiritual beliefs doesn't mean it was wrong.

Psychologically, we recognized this cognitive bias, which happens when a person favors over a piece of information that supports their existing biases or beliefs. We, humans, are curious about certain truths but equally petrified of being refuted. Thus, often, we are there to guard our ideology not because of our reasoning but because of our argumentative nature and foremost, our egoism. However, one who likes the truth has to accept that Neantherthal and Cro Magnon are not just wild animals running their lives on their instinct solely but they are like us. Based on decadal digging and archeological findings, we found that these hominids have their spoken languages, cultures, and even religions, as they have developed burial rituals long before Homo sapien does. They have learned to decorate the tombs of the deceased with flowers and jewelry.  

It is largely thought that Homo heidelbergensis was the common ancestor of Neanderthals, Denisovans, and modern humans (sapien) before populations became isolated in Europe, Asia, and Africa, respectively. Anatomically, Neantherthal is far stronger while Cro-Magnon is much smarter than modern humans, then what ensured our survival after all? To date, we're the only extant of Homo found living today whereas the others have gone vanished. Based on archeological facts and ample social science evidence, sapiens have prevailed due to certain community lifestyles. Even today, we can still see the trace of our behaviors in certain ethnic groups. 

Biologically, Europeans have a larger percentage of genome sequences from both Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon. It can be seen by average European larger body sizes and poor flexibility relative to Asian who has no problem resting in an Asian squat. You may find most Europeans couldn't hold the squat for more than thirty seconds due to heavier pelvic bones and less stretchy talofibular ligament. An anatomy study on Neatherdal fossil remains found that Neatherdal has superior pubic ramus that is extremely long, and the size of the pelvic inlet is comparable to that of modern Homo sapiens. Also, Neatherdal typically lives in a small community group to ensure the sufficiency of food resources provided to each group member but sapien prefers a larger community group so they may defend themselves from invaders. As we all can witness, we constantly strive in warfare as far as our written history is recorded. However, fossils evidence of an intra-war is scarce among Neatherdal and Cro-magnon communities.

Numerous early DNA sequencing have suggested that Asians and Africans may have the purest sapiens genome whereas Europeans shared the most genomic fragments with Neanderthal. Although recent studies tried to show that East Asians may have more significant genomes from Neanderthal but this may be far from the truth but rather to serve certain agendas. As we know, Neanderthal loses the warfare to sapien which led to their extinction as soon as sapien invented the spear-throwing techniques and settled in larger community groups. So do the Cro Magnon, they may be highly intelligent but so do they love to live in a tiny group to ensure food security. Their rational and a sense of intelligent superiority if they have noticed may have led to their destruction in the hand of a much weaker and intelligent inferior species. As history tends to copy itself, we have witnessed a similar sapien-like invasion of nomad Mongols in Europe in the 13th century. Mongols have a much smaller body size than Europeans but they have savaged the middle age on horseback, with their supreme arrow shooting skills. Isn't this sound familiar? For a hint, sapiens once drew the last close relative of hominids from the earth's surface with their lighter, shorter throwable spear and a larger community that tends to work in great cohesion. Today,  globally, Europeans still prefer to live in a smaller family group of three, rather than an average of five Asians have.

It was only until very recently, that the European economy supersedes that of Asians in recent two hundred years due to a sudden expansion in fuels and natural resources availability as a collective effect from the world wars. However, the latter build-up of the Asian economy may very likely demonstrate the collaborative impacts from a larger community once again. A more elaborative language with a much effective communication toolset may once more bloom the Asian economy thus the military competency. Regardless of our percentage or genomes variety, we're definitively sapiens today and with global coverage of modern education and ethics code, none of us should honor savage murder over one another like we used to. However, if war is inevitable due to a few outliers, there may be a thing or two we can ponder on from our survival stories, which are the power of effective 1)  communication and 2) corroboration from a larger community.

  Till then!