fitting the 'hybrid theory'/ 'mothership altering DNA theory' with the fossil record of early humans (Neanderthals etc). is there space for such an outlandish theory in accepted science?

hi all,

so i just happened to find a copy of Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens book in front of me, which is a very readable recounting of the known history of humans - going through what the fossil record and archeological digs shows us, and into culture/history.

It's all very mainstream, so it doesn't go into the fringe topics we like here. But i was interested in knowing if there was a plausible way that the 'hybrid theory' (or some version of it) - which supposes that perhaps some superbeings tampered with our DNA/genome and that's what set us off on this loony path we're on.... ie that's perhaps why we're doing quite a bit more than our chimp/great ape cousins... and we seem to have run circles on other ancient humans that had a head start on us.

so i was wondering, is there space for this 'hybrid theory/DNA-altering mothership theory' in the fossil record/accepted history of ancient humans? And while the book skimmed over the 'why and what' and focused more on the results (abstract thought and story-telling, leading to culture) - it does leave space for those of us who like to entertain such ideas.

To quote Yuval Noah Harari;

“The appearance of new ways of thinking and communicating, between 70,000 and 30,000 years ago, constitutes the Cognitive Revolution. What caused it? We’re not sure. The most commonly believed theory argues that accidental genetic mutations changed the inner wiring of the brains of Sapiens, enabling them to think in unprecedented ways and to communicate using an altogether new type of language. We might call it the Tree of Knowledge mutation. Why did it occur in Sapiens DNA rather than in that of Neanderthals? It was a matter of pure chance, as far as we can tell.”

And to (badly) summarise an interesting book, it's thought that these genetic changes/mutations allowed us to create abstract thought and stories/myths, which enabled us to get to where we are today. And prior to this, there was an earlier group of homo sapiens (us) that left Africa (400,000 years ago?) and headed north, but didn't pull off everything we have today. They were apparently identical to us (give or take differences we now have in racial diversity), except that they didn't appear to have these genetic mutations that allowed abstract thought to flourish. It's then thought that somewhere in that 70,000-30,000 years ago period, homo sapiens had another shot... and this time blossomed... it's around the same time they begun inventing various early inventions and seemingly wiping out/interbreeding with other early human types (Neanderthals and Denisovans). And this time around, it appears something had radically changed in the homo sapiens.

Anyway, I thought this was interesting. The book in no way makes any wild claims about the 'hybrid theory' or that the mothership altered our DNA... but it does leave a space open we're we can speculate about it... ie we can accept the fossil record (or what we have unearthed so far) and that it doesn't automatically discredit the wilder theories we have. Something unusual did happen... was it the mothership? .... who can say! interesting stuff... !

Submitted April 11, 2022 at 11:05AM by low-freak-oscillator https://ift.tt/bmP8lIs