The problem of Cthulhu

David Duffy · 21 Jun 2007, 02:47 · from 2007-June.txt.gz

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From: David.Duffy at qimr.edu.au (David Duffy)
Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2007 12:47:48 +1000 (EST)
Subject: (urth) The problem of Cthulhu
In-Reply-To: <12103.67.142.130.38.1182389983.squirrel at brunians.org>
References: <ca7.11d9f10a.33ab2eec at aol.com>
	<12103.67.142.130.38.1182389983.squirrel at brunians.org>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0706211238590.16729 at orpheus.qimr.edu.au>

On Wed, 20 Jun 2007, brunians at brunians.org wrote:

>> In a message dated 6/20/2007 9:26:32 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
>> brunians at brunians.org writes:
>
>> Some  Neanderthal skulls got funny teeth. Supposedly unique to the
>> seperate species that didn't interbreed. Except a bunch of Maltese
>> people  have teeth like this.
>
>> I wonder if there has been any genetic testing of native Maltese to
>> determine whether there is any interesting DNA floating around.
>
> Dunno. The debate is mostly academics swearing at each other and
> denigrating each other's evidence, as near as I can tell.
>
> I don't engage too much in the debate. I got my ideas, they're not
> currently well-accepted, I believe that they will be pretty soon (though
> possibly not within my lifetime).
>
> To me, the question is basically whether Plato, Snorre Sturluson and the
> Mahabharata are more or less reliable than a bunch of twentieth and early
> twenty-first century theoreticians. That's a no-brainer.
>

The problem is that the scanty mitochondrial DNA evidence says they did 
not contribute to any modern human populations.  It seems not impossible 
to me that they could have interbred.  I don't know whether hobbits could 
interbreed with humans either, even though they may have coexisted more 
recently than Neandertals.

Slightly in the spirit of the subject line, has anyone else read Jeffrey 
E. Barlough's channelling of HPL and Dickens?


David Duffy.

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