The World of Emperor Gon of Carthage
"Neanderthals"
Emperor Gon of Carthage
October 22, 2001
Neanderthals
Part 8
8. Blond hair
 There's another important point in the discussion regarding the extinction of the Neanderthals. Remember that the Neanderthals were a specialized population that succeeded in adjusting themselves to the climate of the Ice Age. Adjustment to the cold weather cannot be discussed without mentioning body hair.
Think about it. The most distinctive feature that results from adjustment to the cold is highly-developed body hair. Long-haired mammoths and long-haired rhinoceros were roaming the land during the Ice Age. On the contrary, the elephants and rhinoceros of tropical regions have little fur. The difference between having and not having body hair and fur it is not a matter of primitive or modern but merely a difference between whether such creatures had adjusted to a cold climate or to a tropical one.
In other words, the difference between the Neanderthals and modern men starts from whether each population adjusted to cold temperatures or to hot temperatures. The Neanderthals who became distinctive after adjusting to the extremely cold climate of the Ice Age, as a matter of course, should have developed thick body hair. They are the Neanderthals of the European origin! Their bodies must have been covered with blond hair.
Modern men have no body hair not because they invented clothes, but because they are the population that had adjusted to the tropical climate. On the contrary, their usage of clothes enabled them to migrate out of the tropics and spread throughout the world even without body hair. Modern men who had once acquired the usage of clothes no longer needed their body hair to grow, in any climate. Accordingly, even the Mongoloids who must have adjusted to the cold climate have no body hair.
This one difference gave birth to a larger one. Modern men with artificial body hair--"clothes"--were able to put it on or take it off depending on the climate. The Neanderthals, on the other hand, could not remove the thick coat of hair they had, however hot the climate had become. The difference in the capacity of environmental adjustment then became prominent. Such a difference must have become a big disadvantage in surviving through the struggle for existence.
The three already mentioned causes must have intertwined in a complex way, leading the Neanderthals to extinction.
Translated by Rie Ishida
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