Comment by shakna
> We have no evidence of warfare between the species.
Thats not correct.
We have a neanderthal slain by spear, at a time and place where it was only carried by modern humans. [0]
This isn't a singular event. We have a history on injuries consistent with war, on both sides.
Yes, we "sheboinked". We also took women as prizes of war and raped them. As humanity has continued to do for most of their history.
Sure, the story is probably more complex. Some tribes at war, others at trade. Some who intermingle, and others who raged. That's... Just history of a people. That's normal.
But we absolutely have a history of war between the species.
[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00472...
Thanks for the reference, and I don't want to overstate my case. I'm certainly not claiming that there was no conflict between varieties of humans, after all, Homo Sapiens has plenty of conflict with itself. Oetzi, for example, died of arrow wounds.
The cited article certainly is evidence of conflict. The Neanderthal's bone lesion was consistent with the kinds of bone lesions on pig carcases from projectile weapons, so perhaps even interspecies conflict. Maybe.
But the original claim, that Homo Sapiens conducted some kind of uncanny valley-fueled genocide of every other variety of human, is not supported by the article. "Injuries consistent with war" are also injuries consistent with with not-war. I mean, if we had a single example of a neanderthal bone with an arrowhead in it....but we don't.
// We also took women as prizes of war and raped them //
There is absolutely no evidence of this. You've got to remember, every single Neanderthal fossil we've ever found could fit on a large dining room table. They lived light on the land, and left hardly a trace.
There probably was only on the order of 10k Neanderthals alive at any one point, and that population was spread over all of Europe and half of Asia. The vast majority of Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals would go their whole lives, generations, without even seeing a member of the other species.
We can speculate, but that's all it is, speculation. Theories of the "uncanny valley" and raids by women-raping, spear-throwing humans are fanciful, and say a lot more about what our psychological hang ups are. Cf. with historical speculations about Neanderthals as brutish and stupid. Any theory which gets too far ahead of the evidence has a very short shelf life.