They probably would have been enslaved. How depressing. I forgot about homo flores. But presumably there was never any contact between them and homo sapiens sapiens, whereas HSS and HSN coexisted in territory.
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CB: I know that "homo sapiens sapiens" is used, but to me it is an invalid usage, because the second "sapiens" makes it a sub-species, which would be a race. Biological races are not a valid category today, so could it be way back when ? There's no such thing as race in biology. Being of the same species ( the first "sapiens") implies ability to interbreed.
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Is the idea still being batted about that the Neanderthals did not die off so much as become incorporated into the European branch of homo sapiens sapiens through interbreeding, or has that theory been disproven? There must have been some exchanging of genetic material going on, given the ever-popular "take the women of the other tribe" strategy. Are the two species too far apart to produce viable offspring?
^^^ CB: Picking up on your last question, my second biology question ( I don't put this on Chris ,because I hear the term used as in Jared Diamond's book) is isn't it true that new species don't arise through interbreeding between different species because different species cannot produce fertile offspring. I say this because the definition of a species is the ability to produce fertile offspring, if two individuals mate and produce a fertile offspring , they aren't different species , so a new species could not arise by the mating of individuals from a different species.
I think the current favored position is that Neanderthals were a different species, and therefore could not produce fertile offspring with homo sapiens.