I think it's important to note that prions take years to show symptoms when mentioning no known cases.

I also wonder if people who are less likely to send their hunted meat in for testing are also less likely to receive diagnosis in case of an infection for various social, financial and personal reasons? To clarify, I'm talking about people who for various reasons refuse to see doctors and when they finally encounter one might be misdiagnosed due to lack of prolonged contact or seeing limited number of doctors who might miss the symptoms due to the rarity and lack of experience.

That is a common definition, yes, but scientifically liquid is a state of matter. Fluid =/= liquid. Liquid is a phase, fluid is behaviour. You said liquid when you described fluid and while that is correct in common meaning it's unnecessarily confusing people when the difference is described.

https://www.thoughtco.com/definition-of-liquid-604558

https://www.thoughtco.com/definition-of-fluid-604466

Why wouldn't it? You just described standard jewelry making tools. The soldering part is a bit iffy in that you're not actually joining the two but merely holding them in place but the method is essentially the same to create a seam keeping gems in place. They're not even a little related to what OP was looking for, but that's exactly how gems are kept in place.

What exactly do you mean when you say fuse them together?

But what's the point then? Gluing them together or placing them next to each other would make for a much nicer final product. Maybe you could use some of the machines used in precision welding but those are designed for metals, so you would most likely need a custom one. In theory you can "melt together" any two objects that can melt but if the final result is completely irrelevant then what's the goal?

Either way, while I wasn't able to find studies that checked thermal stress in any gemstones I strongly suspect the crystals would crack if exposed to temperature gradients required to do that.

Sapphire melts in 2053°C, amethyst melts in 1650°C. That's problem number one.

Problem number two is: gems are only gems if they form large and relatively uniform crystalline structure while cooling down.^(*some exceptions apply but are not relevant) Otherwise they will look like obsidian, or rock depending on what happens to that structure. Melting destroys that structure so any area that was melted will undergo changes into a glass at best, and it's unlikely to keep the colour of the original.

Problem number three is: different gems have different crystal lattice that forms different shapes. You can't really make a smooth connection between those.

Problem number four is: different gems are made out of different things, they generally can't be mixed to make a hybrid gem but will make regular "rock" instead.

That means that from the start you would be limited to minerals that are made out of the same things, have similar melting points. Then you can't really cause them to recrystallize appropriately without very specific conditions which are going to be different for two different ones. Gems that can do what you're asking are just a single multicolored gem with different impurities in different locations. Two different ones can't do that because of the reason they are gems in the first place - if you mix them they lose what made them gems.

https://www.geologyin.com/2021/07/watermelon-tourmaline-what-is.html

Did you not read the question before answering or did you just feel like being obtuse?

We know of ancient humans and modern era apes and for the most part the time between births is regulated by the same mechanisms and the death before adulthood is at about 50%. Speculating that a species evolutionarily closer to us is somewhere between us and species that share a common ancestor with us and them both is a reasonable guess. Your speculation throwing out numbers like up to 60 children per lifespan (completely unheard of among any apes) while claiming that there is no possible way of knowing was a lot less reasonable than mine.

While you are absolutely right to point it out I didn't mean they were directly competing with humans but rather pointing out that constant breeding much above replacement rate would allow them to outcompete other groups. Since tendencies describe averages, if they had more than 6 children at the typical 50% mortality rate it would cause the population to grow fairly fast. Of course that comment probably stemmed from greatly overblown idea of infant mortality that person has.

Humans are somewhat unique in that we can have children at any time of the year. Pregnancy and live children cause hormonal and social behaviours reducing chances of another conception for a time - pregnancy and feeding are both very energy intensive. Infant and child mortality tends to be about 50% for most ancient humans, apes and most large mammals with some exceptions. 6 children over a lifetime is about the replacement rate with those numbers, and most populations tend to keep at mostly a steady population level otherwise they would run out of resources. Given that they did not outcompete humans by their sheer numbers, about replacement rate sounds like a very reasonable assumption to make.

So what exactly are you basing your assumption off of?

Your post is top voted yet it's pure speculation with a few facts thrown in not even relevant to your guesswork. Assumption of the 1 year between pregnancies is based off modern diet and even during modern times in societies that prefer large families is an exception rather than the norm. As another poster mentioned, humans typically take longer than a year and other apes tend to have longer, not shorter times. The 15-30 seems like a very high estimate to the point where there are no undisputed records of more than 44 and anything above 20 being quite literally unique events on a global scale. Theoretical limit is neither what OP asked for nor practical to consider given that it's virtually never achieved even in conditions of resource abundance. Those are outliers. For most ape species it seems that the child mortality is below 50% suggesting that the numbers you mentioned are not only unnecessary to maintain the species but also would be an huge unsustainable strain on the resources available. The number would feasibly comparable to pre-industrial humans and other apes, so at minimum three and unlikely to be more than 10.

https://www.eva.mpg.de/documents/Elsevier/Hill_Mortality_JHumEvo_2001_1556100.pdf

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjXzMS6j5T7AhXHxIsKHXFlBb8QFnoECA4QAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sciencedirect.com%2Fscience%2Farticle%2Fam%2Fpii%2FS0047248418301283&usg=AOvVaw3bRuYVEs9iCVTL0ywOLE-Q