But Moira, some insects are generally perceived as cute, such as ladybugs, while others — earwigs, cockroaches — produce revulsion. I suppose we can chalk that up to the power of the human imagination to project neotenic qualities onto small, rounded things even when they are, objectively speaking, quite unlike human infants.

H. sapiens, neanderthalis, and erectus were all contemporaries, along with maybe one or two other distinct hominid species. H. erectus was, based on current fossil evidence, the most widespread hominid prior to us, getting as far as Australia, so the fact that scientists now believe it was not an ancestor is really quite shocking.

First, the most repulsive and frightening monsters are always the ones that are almost, or partly, human… that is the ones that look enough like us to be judged by human standards of appearance, but not enough to “pass” as acceptable.

Secondly… in an ecological context, your worst enemy isn’t necessarily a predator, especially for humans who are prone to fighting back! Your competitors can be a much more serious threat, and more so the closer they are to your preferred niche. And the Neanderthals certainly shared that first set of major adaptations that shifted us from “ape” to “hominin”….

David – There’s good evidence that we might have actually been more tolerant of others in premodern times, especially before the advent of cities and agriculture, but I take your point. I’ve often had the same thoughts.

Fred – This is outer space.

Lucy – That’s a very interesting story. Thank you. Just the other day, I read a paper by one anthropologist suggesting that hairlessness and lighter skin colors, neither of them features with any adaptive advantages, might be the result not simply of mate selection but also of selective infanticide. But that still doesn’t answer the question: where does the revulsion to hairiness and darkness come from? What lead Homo sapiens to don clothing in the first place? These are still fundamental mysteries, in my opinion. It’s not as if we’re instinctual killers, as Konrad Lorenz and his epigones used to preach. We’re scavengers, for Christ’s sake. Prey. Tiger bait. Perhaps it’s that instinctual fear that we can’t quite exorcise. Fear and hatred are, after all, pretty tightly linked. I’m not sure a true predator would feel anything akin to hatred.

Until well into the historical era, most of humanity had trouble recognizing other races as human, if not other tribes! I sometimes wonder if the story of Cain And Abel might represent a species memory of our treatment of our brother-species. Also note that even today, all the great apes (AFAIK) and a goodly number of primates are threatened, if not barely short of extinct.