For a class I took in college on human evolution, we read the novel
Dance of the Tiger. Its basically a fictional account of those "Hominid Wars". It was an enjoyable read. Its kinda follows a classic format:
quote:
Dance of the Tiger is a short novel, published in English in 1980, by palaeontologist Björn Kurtén that deals with the interaction between Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons. Set 35,000 years ago in Scandinavia, during a thaw in the great Ice Age, the novel follows a Cro-Magnon named Tiger as he tries to defeat Shelk, a tyrant and a hybrid (Neanderthal-Cro-Magnon), the man who killed his father. With his family and much of his tribe dead, Tiger meets, interacts, and allies himself with groups of Neanderthals. He eventually marries a Neanderthal woman....
Neanderthals are depicted as white-skinned, while Cro-Magnons are dark.
...
The author himself says "The book is not intended to be a 'theory about interaction between Neanderthals and Modern Humans', it is just a fictive description of one possible scenario among several that might have taken place".
...
Cro-Magnon children and adults are portrayed as having smooth brows and small faces; the characteristic features of childhood act as "innate releasing mechanisms" for feelings of affection.
To the Whites, the Blacks were godlike, tall and eloquent, with a speech as varied and flexible as that of the birds. And there was something else. No White could look at the clear brow of a Black without feeling a mysterious tenderness, such as a child might evoke in the heart of his parents. (Kurtén, p. 33, 5th printing, paperback)
Kurtén postulates that this attraction led to intermarriage between the two people, which produced sterile offspring. He emphasizes the possibility of Neanderthal extinction through inter-breeding rather than through violence. He also presents social differences between the two groups, presenting the Cro-Magnon people as more aggressive, practicing slavery and choosing violence to solve social problems. The Neanderthal society, based on a matriarchal system, is drawn as peace loving with elaborate social rituals designed to resolve problems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dance_of_the_Tiger
So the Neadertals were big dumb white guys that spoke like cavemen (the author uses the same language for both groups for ease of reading, but the whites speak in "broken-english" with grunts n'stuff). The Cro-Magnons were intelligent and beautiful black people that were plainly "better" than the Cro-Magnons. There's some interbreeding going on that leads to sterile offspring. The jist of the story is that we out bred them rather than out fighting them. It goes into the details of the interactions between a handful of individuals within the groups. It was worth reading as a fictional novel, and it wasn't very long either. I don't think its worth 25 bucks, but here's a link to amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/...e-Tiger-Novel-Ice-Age/dp/0520202775
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