Human Hybridization

It's now widely believed that early Homo sapiens crossbred with Neanderthals. Here's an article speculating on why interbreeding may have happened:

Human Hybridization

Offspring from mates of two different species often display "hybrid vigor." This author also suggests (using the example of mules) that a hybrid may have higher intelligence than either ancestral species.

These factors show that interbreeding may bestow advantages on the offspring; however, they don't explain why individuals would be motivated to mate with other-species partners. Mistaken identity? As a last resort when members of their own species aren't available? From positive attraction?

In one of my favorite novels, CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR, Cro-Magnon (Homo sapiens) child Ayla, adopted by Neanderthals, grows up to bear a Cro-Magnon-Neanderthal baby. Her pregnancy results from rape. Like the rest of the clan, the father of her child considers her ugly, or at least odd-looking, and he rapes her to assert dominance, not from desire. Because human babies are born less developed than Neanderthals, Ayla's adopted people think her infant son is deformed. At birth he can't even hold up his head! As he matures, of course, he outstrips his Neanderthal kinfolk in many ways. (As a child, Tarzan in the original novel fares similarly among the apes, who at first take a dim view of she-ape Kala's adopting a hairless, frail creature that will obviously never be able to care for itself. Burroughs' series, by the way, assumes that his "great apes"—definitely not gorillas, which are shown as lesser animals, so the great apes must be a "missing link"—are related closely enough to human beings to interbreed, as seen in Tarzan's visits to the ruined lost city of Opar.) In later books, Ayla learns that other hybrid children exist, usually conceived by rape of Neanderthal girls by gangs of Cro-Magnon men. She speculates that her son may have to look for a mate among these crossbreeds, since both types of human beings often view "children of mixed spirits" as abominations.

James Tiptree's story "And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side" postulates that human beings have a powerful exogamous drive. We're drawn to exotic partners because, in prehistory, marrying out of the tribe kept the genes circulating. A girl's elopement with a boy from the strange people on the other side of the mountain gave evolutionary benefits to her descendants. In Tiptree's story, this impulse has gone wild and become a liability as human beings traveling among the stars pursue the irresistible attractions of exotic aliens, with whom no fertile mating is possible.

Science fiction teems with fascinating human-alien hybrids, such as Spock. In most cases, the writer and reader simply agree to suspend disbelief in inter-species crossbreeding, with no inconvenient mention of incompatible genes. Larry Niven's well-known essay "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" uses Superman and Lois Lane to highlight how improbable this crossbreeding would be. To make such characters biologically plausible, the author would have to assume the galaxy was purposely "seeded" with life from a single point of origin or perhaps that meteors transported DNA through interstellar space.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Doomsday Romance

Margaret Carter wrote below:
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This week the History Channel aired a two-hour special called LIFE AFTER PEOPLE, which explored how the world would change if the human race vanished.

(snipped)

It's not surprising that wood-frame buildings would succumb quickly to rot, termites, and lightning-set fires. But I was shocked to learn how much less “permanent” steel and concrete are than I'd thought. Moreover, modern concrete is less durable than the type used by the ancient Romans, quite a humbling thought. By a thousand years after our extinction, most of our cities would have become unrecognizable as such.

(snipped)

I'd expected books to hang around for alien archaeologists to read, though. Not so, unless they're fortunate enough to be stored in a desert climate and protected from sunlight. Ironically, the stone and clay tablets of our remote ancestors will last longer than any of our advanced information technology.
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And Rowena Cherry added:

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I also saw the program before it, which was about doomsday predictions from different civilizations all over the globe. Apparently, everyone agrees that the world will end in 2012.

Yesterday, I saw a news item about the ice caps now being thought to melt entirely in the summers in five years' time...which will take us to either the summer of 2011 or of 2012.

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I (Jacqueline Lichtenberg) missed the History Channel LIFE AFTER PEOPLE and prior show. Normally, that kind of show doesn't attract me because the underlying editing thrust is to prod the viewer into believing "the worst" or "the horror of it all" -- or other alarmist agendas disconnected from reality by carefully leaving out salient facts (which I might happen to know -- which implies things I don't know being edited out presenting a false picture).

But both Margaret and Rowena are exactly correct to be monitoring what these shows are purveying. This kind of media slant is indeed where we get our unending flood of "crazy ideas."

And it's relevant because of all the viewers who believe the nonsense. Shows and books like this gave me much of the material used in the Sime~Gen novels -- the portrait of a nearly forgotten Ancient Civilization from before the Sime~Gen mutation pretty much fits the History Channel sketch Margaret has presented here.

However, I have more faith in the human spirit, in love, in loyalty, dreams, and the immortality through children.

If all humans were kidnapped by some galactic slave traders (who neglected to destroy Earth's ecology by stealing water and minerals, too), yes, Nature would reclaim our mighty works rapidly indeed. Escapees from interstellar slavery who returned (provided they could find the planet) wouldn't recognize it from ancestral tales.

Imagine being kidnapped along with most all humans from Earth just to provide genetic material for some huge hybridizing cloning operation!

But I can't see slavers getting us all! Some would remain, scattered here and there.

The remnants would rebuild -- something. And I like to assume what they'd build would be better in some way.

Referring to the series of 20 posts I did last year on Tarot, think about what happens when the physical structures and knowledge (buildings and electronic files) decay.

The IMAGE of all that we have done remains embedded in the astral plane (Akashic Record). Physical action of the people who remain as they rebuild civilization would recreate much of what we've got now -- but it would look different.

There is a theory in esoteric circles that WE have rebuilt Atlantis and are busy self-destructing as they did. (I used that theory in the two novels, MOLT BROTHER and CITY OF A MILLION LEGENDS).

I think the driving force that makes such repetitions of past forms (errors and triumphs) happen, or makes us feel or think that such a recreation could happen, is the Soul Mate.

The Alien Romance field has elevated the Soul Mate story to something that can explore vistas of spirituality far beyond what can be reached in a mundane setting.

When two such Souls from different species find each other, their main occupation will be bringing down more Souls to this plane of existence, building family, tribe, nation, civilization -- hybridizing souls. And we all know about hybrid vigor.

For me, THERE -- in the story of the rebuilding of civilizations -- is where the passion, pyrotechnics, and hairy politics prevail. There is where the really profound alien romances happen.

QUESTION: do all species throughout all the galaxies have the cyclical rise and fall of civilizations -- or is that rise and fall a property of human nature?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/