Neanderthals

So....I'm still daydreaming about the subject of evolution. Or more to the point: Human/Dog coevolution. My web surfing today led me to this interesting post from The Sensuous Curmudgeon. The post describes a theory in which one plausibly important factor leading to the extinction of Neanderthals about 30,000 years ago, and the survival Homo sapiens who lived at that time, was the social partnership that humans formed with dogs (or with wolf ancestors of dogs). In this theory, dogs and humans shared cooperative survival strategies in which Neanderthals did not, or could not, participate, and this gave modern humans a competitive advantage. So, we may well have dogs to thank for the very survival of our species. I think that I'll go take a walk with my pooch now .....

Of all creatures the one nearest to man in the fineness of its perceptions and in its capacity to render true friendship is a bitch.
- Konrad Lorenz (1903 - 1989), ethologist and Nobel Prize winner
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