Trivia / The Neanderthal Parallax

• Science Marches On:
  • The research available at the time the books were written indicated that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens were genetically incompatible, which plays a pivotal role in the plot. New research shows the opposite: not only were the two species compatible, but there was significant interbreeding and modern humans carry some of that genetic legacy.
  • Dogs in the Neanderthal universe are physically indistinguishable from wolves. The reason given is that Neanderthals only selected for behavior and hunting companions, and did not care what their dogs looked like. Research with tame silver foxes has shown how selecting for tameness inevitably results in other neotenous traits (short legs, larger skulls, folded ears, curled tails), even without specifically breeding for them. With this in mind, Neanderthals would have had to actually put a great deal of work into breeding dogs that still resembled wolves in any way shape or form, and the primitive appearance of dogs would actually have had to be very deliberate.
  • The book's anthropologist character says there's no clear evidence for Neanderthals believing in an afterlife. Subsequently, this seems to be why Sawyer depicts them as uniformly having no concept of that or gods. Since then, anthropologists have concluded that they did deliberately bury their dead with tools intended for use in another world.