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Comment by throwaway4666 | Hacker News Reader

The distinction between Neanderthals, Denisovans and Homo sapiens sapiens is more or less a legacy from a time where we didn't know how fuzzy the definition of 'species' was. For all intents and purposes all three are the same species of full-fledged humans and there's scant evidence humans from either denomination would even treat each other differently.

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Well there are plenty of other cases where we are completely comfortable calling them distinct species, even though we know they can interbreed. The term "species" is certainly fuzzier than we were taught in school in the 70's, but it's not as if biologists have stopped using the concept.

Ring species are an interesting case to consider, in which A and B can interbreed, and B and C can interbreed, but A and C cannot. Gene transfer between A and C remains possible, but indirect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species

They were different species and any argument to the contrary rests on adherence to a rigid definition of species not even accepted by all biologists, let alone anthropologists.

>there's scant evidence humans from either denomination would even treat each other differently.

Are we supposed to believe it was a big egalitarian paradise?

>They were different species and any argument to the contrary rests on adherence to a rigid definition of species not even accepted by all biologists, let alone anthropologists.

There is no single definition of species. People who study bacteria have their own, so do people who study plants, birds, insects, and so on. Sure, Neanderthals and Homo sapiens sapiens, who coexisted and interbred in the same ecosystems, are different species. Whatever that means.

>Are we supposed to believe it was a big egalitarian paradise?

Lol what does that have to do with what I said?

> The distinction between Neanderthals, Denisovans and Homo sapiens sapiens is more or less a legacy from a time where we didn't know how fuzzy the definition of 'species' was.

Not at all; that time ended long before the distinction was drawn. In the case of Denisovans, hundreds of years before.

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