And what should they call it? The Browridge series?
Anyway, here’s the latest plot from New Scientist, “Why Neanderthals were always an endangered species”:
For much of their 400,000 year history, Neanderthals were few and far between, a new analysis of genetic material from several of the extinct, ancient humans now suggests.
It’s difficult to put a number on the population of a species based on DNA alone, but less than a few hundred thousand of the archaic humans roamed Europe and Asia at any one time, says Adrian Briggs, an evolutionary geneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. “There never were million and millions of Neanderthals,” he told New Scientist.
I didn’t know homo sapiens was that numerous in those days either, actually ….
Now, here’s another recent plot line advanced: “Human evolution: Neanderthals as snacks.” Yeah, we supposedly ate them. I don’t see this story line working for Harlequin, but maybe a vampire fiction house.
It sure gives new meaning to gassy claims like “There’s a little bit of them in us, you know.”