DNA? We have met Neanderthal and he is in us.

[Yvsa]

Has anyone besides me seen the references to Neanderthal DNA being found in modern humans?
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/about-us/news/...f-neanderthal-reveals-interbreeding66724.html

This part is especially interesting to me....
"Professor Chris Stringer, the Natural History Museum’s human origins expert, comments on the research and explains, 'This research suggests that the genomes of people from Europe, China and New Guinea lie slightly closer to the Neanderthal sequence than do those of Africans.
'The most likely explanation for this finding is that the ancestors of people in Europe, China and New Guinea interbred with Neanderthals (or at least with populations that had a component of Neanderthal genes) in North Africa, Arabia or the Middle East, as they were exiting Africa, but before they spread out across the rest of the world."


So what do y'all think about this? Personally I'm glad they're still around in whatever fashion.:thumbup:

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[Esav Benyamin]

I don't like linking Wikipedia, but this is a discipline fairly safe from political or cult meddling.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_heidelbergensis

Homo heldelbergensis was the ancestor of those two renowned human species: Homo neandertalensis and Homo sapiens. Evidence of neandertalensis DNA in sapiens may actually be "heidelbergization" of those populations after they left Africa.

There would still be genetic mixing of African and out-of-African sapiens, but the African genetics would have less of the late-heidelbergensis, almost-neandertalensis DNA of the populations that moved outward.

But why would they have picked up so much of the heidelbergensis -- or neandertalensis -- and the Africans didn't? Possibly because they picked up only a small amount but then went through a genetic bottleneck after they left, which we are aware of from other evidence, and thus neandertalensis and sapiens are both descended from a genetically small sample.

I believe Prof. Stringer is aware of all these possibilities, and probably many more, being as good at this business as anyone around.

 

[Steely_Gunz]

Interesting thread I love this sort of stuff in the Cantina:thumbup:

While I know next to nothing about any of this, I do recall that one hypothesis of why HSS and Neanderthal may have intermixed is due to raiding parties where women were the spoils of war.

It would be easy to preclude that the brutish and powerful Neanderthal simply stormed and smashed his way into a peaceful camp of HSS and took what he wanted. However, I have heard that it was more than likely OUR common ancestors that did the raiding of THEIR camp. With our larger brain and more adaptive skill set, we simply "out thunk" them. For all of their strength and toughness, they couldn't keep up with our cunning and our ambushes.

Going beyond the genetics to a philosophical angle, if this postulation has any merit, what does this say about us as human beings at the core? Can we really change and evolve via culture (to borrow from Danny), or will we simply ALWAYS be a species that has the urge to take what we want?

Sorry, it's the psychologist in me The ol' Nature vs. Nurture chestnut.

Carry on learned friends:thumbup:

 

[Lycosa]

We're all human beings. That's all I need to know. This stuff does make interesting conversation though. The American Indians say that they were always here in North America. Science tell us they came from Asia. I'll believe the Indians.

 

[Esav Benyamin]

YOU are begging the question. You see us as a species that has the urge to take what we want, and use this to speculate how we behaved towards neandertalensis, and then took your own speculation to show that we are a species that has the urge to take what we want ...

Circular reasoning.

In fact, populations of neandertalensis and sapiens were both extremely sparse, and would rarely have met. This was always one of the arguments against interbreeding.

More likely, we outbred them by taking better care of our children, and raising them to behave more intelligently. That would increase our population.

At the same time, neandertalensis populations were suffering the same fate as their natural prey, when many giant Ice Age mammals died out. Each of them required a higher caloric intake than each of us. Their harsher lifestyle and heavier musculature may also have sortened lifespans. Not a good combination for maintaining population density, especially in a species that wasn't densely populated to begin with.

Interbreeding? If it took place? Far from The Rape of the Sabines, it was just as likely to have been a cooperative enterprise between basically quite similar humans in a very empty world.