random tangent on ancient history but why didn't humans get a foothold in Europe until 20-40,000 years ago?
Yet we made it to Australia 65,000 years ago and the Americas over 120,000 years ago?
Neanderthals were BEASTS, absolute wrecking balls, we loovvvve to think they didn't eat us but we base that on no evidence. Neanderthals were faster and stronger than us, by A LOT. They didn't like to eat each other, but did on occasion. They liked to hunt humans at night and would raid our villages. It's why we humans never made it into Europe / western Eurasia until the younger drias cateclysm by and large 12k years ago, could be closer to 25k, eliminated the Neanderthals' larger food sources and they retreated to the mountains globally along with Denisovans, likely becoming what we now know as Bigfoot and the Yeti. They would often eat the human men and rape the women, and leave, and the women having male babies would have no hybrid gandbabies, as the male hybrids were all infertile. But the women having female neanderthal-human hybrids after that were indeed capable of producing fertile matriarchical lineages that resulted in some people, including some black African folks, having literal 2-4% Neanderthal DNA, often evidenced by the sharp-ish "bump" on the back of the head often called the "Neanderthal bump," one that I have, for example, and my family also did a DNA test and confirmed we are indeed about 2.6% Neanderthal by DNA.
So fascinating to consider the vast majority of human history has been basically us sneaking around the edges of tropical Neanderthal/Denisovan territory, tiptoeing around the edge, inhabitting what land we can, until their way of life and the big game it relied on all died out with the Younger Dryas cateclysm, likely a series of asteroids hitting a glaciated northern hemisphere.
Same reason they had to build the city of Atlantis on the Azores islands, if they had built it in Europe at that time, they would have been eaten by Neanderthals(?!) but alas with the Azores being at a triple plate junction, and the glaciers melting due to asteroid impactors, we saw a sudden rise in global sea level, and thus rise in sea weight on seafloor, pushing down harder and at those triple plate junctions like the Azores, the island dropped over 1,000 feet in elevation in one big series of earthquakes.
It really is super offensive to proud white people to suggest Neanderthals practiced cannibalism or ate humans, it's so funny. Look, we know polar bears are the most aggressive type of bear. It's just a fact.
Ever heard the bear identification phrase,
"if it's brown lay down, if it's black fight back, if it's white goodnight.." (??)
Yes, polar bears are like that. They will chase and hunt for days. It's not because they're racist honkies either, it's because they're polar animals and food is scarce in that ecosystem. Same dymamics apply to create why we see Scandinavian families will mayyyybe offer you a water when you visit (this was my fam growing up LOL) but when you visit a Mediterranean family they offer you a 5 course feast and are offended if you don't partake. These are cultural artefacts that represent food scarcity in the local ecology, and it's the same factors that cause Neanderthals to be more aggressive, and white people too. It's best to accept these realities and account for them, seeking balance on higher vibrations and planes of existence, better that than denying our history and pretending that Neanderthals were the pot smoking vegetarian hippies we liberal whiteys idealize our parents to have been in the 60s and 70s. lolll if that was true we'd be seeing human fossils in Europe over 200k years ago and we simply just do not.
And the ultimate takeaway? Neanderthals have been killing us human men and raping our women for maybe 100,000 years, and we've had a pause of that for 30-10k years, or have white people just replaced Neanderthals, and now it's white men killing other men and raping their women? Kiiiiind of explains a lot of a lot. (no white men aren't extra murderous and rapey*batman smack* yes they fucking are! above is why)
