Neanderthal News

[Minimalist]

Neanderthal women joined the hunt

I read that book.







I think it is in the Fiction Section of your library.

[NAeuroMUT]

While previous investigations concentrated on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), that due to strictly matrilineal inheritance and subsequent vulnerability to genetic drift is of limited value to disprove interbreeding, more recent investigations have access to growing strings of deciphered nuclear DNA (nDNA).

In July 2006, the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and 454 Life Sciences announced that they would be sequencing the Neanderthal genome over the next two years. At three-billion base pairs, the Neanderthal genome is roughly the size of the human genome and likely shares many identical genes. It is thought that a comparison of the Neanderthal genome and human genome will expand understanding of Neanderthals as well as the evolution of humans and human brains.[33]

DNA researcher Svante Pääbo has tested more than 70 Neanderthal specimens and found only one that had enough DNA to sample. Preliminary DNA sequencing from a 38,000-year-old bone fragment of a femur bone found at Vindija cave in Croatia in 1980 shows that Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens share about 99.5% of their DNA. From mtDNA analysis estimates, the two species shared a common ancestor about 500,000 years ago. An article appearing in the journal Nature has calculated the species diverged about 516,000 years ago, whereas fossil records show a time of about 400,000 years ago. From DNA records, scientists hope to falsify or confirm the theory that there was interbreeding between the species.[34]

Edward Rubin of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California states that recent genome testing of Neanderthals suggests human and Neanderthal DNA are some 99.5 percent to nearly 99.9 percent identical.[35][36]

On November 16, 2006, Science Daily published scientific test results demonstrating that Neanderthals and ancient humans probably did not interbreed. Scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the Joint Genome Institute (JGI) sequenced genomic nuclear DNA (nDNA) from a fossilized Neanderthal femur. Their results more precisely indicate a common ancestor about 706,000 years ago, and a complete separation of the ancestors of the species about 376,000 years ago. Their results show that the genomes of modern humans and Neanderthals are at least 99.5% identical, but despite this genetic similarity, and despite the two species having cohabitated the same geographic region for thousands of years, there is no evidence of any significant crossbreeding between the two. Edward Rubin, director of both JGI and Berkeley Lab’s Genomics Division: “While unable to definitively conclude that interbreeding between the two species of humans did not occur, analysis of the nuclear DNA from the Neanderthal suggests the low likelihood of it having occurred at any appreciable level.”

A new investigation suggests that at least 5% of the genetic material of modern Europeans and West Africans has an archaic origin, due to interbreeding with Neanderthal and a hitherto unknown archaic African population.[7] Plagnol and Wall arrived at this result by first calculating a "null model" of genetic characteristics that would fulfill the requirement of descendence from Homo sapiens sapiens in a straight line. Next they compared this model to the current distribution and characteristics of existing genetic polymorphisms, and concluded that this "null model" deviated considerably from what would be expected. Genetic simulations indicated this 5% of DNA not accounted for by the null model corresponds to a substantial contribution to the European gene pool of up to 25%. Future investigation - including a full scale Neanderthal genome project - is expected to cast more light on the subject of genetic polymorphisms to supply more details. Contrary to the investigation of mtDNA, the study of polymorph mutations has the potential to answer the question whether - and to what extent - Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens interbred.[37]

In November 2006, another paper was published in the U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, in which a team of European researchers report that Neanderthals and humans interbred. Co-author Erik Trinkaus from Washington University explains, "Closely related species of mammals freely interbreed, produce fertile viable offspring and blend populations." The study claims to settle the extinction controversy; according to researchers, the human and neanderthal populations blended together through sexual reproduction. Trinkaus states, "Extinction through absorption is a common phenomenon."[38] and "From my perspective, the replacement vs. continuity debate that raged through the 1990s is now dead".[39]

The most accurate molecular estimates currently available suggest that H. sapiens and H. neanderthalensis direct lineages (excluding genetic elements from interbreeding/absorption) diverged around 800,000 years ago.[40]

I grabbed this from Wikipedia. But I don't buy it for a minute. The reasons I do not are:

1. There was only one speciman tested, and only the mtdna is mentioned with no referance to the Y at all.

2. The traits from re-contructions can be seen in everyday life today. I have yet to hear, or read a satisfactory explanation for this other then inter-breeding.

3. If they did not inter-breed into extinction, then what happened? The Mother ship came down rescued them? That makes a great deal more sense then some of the other hypothies I have heard. Just because there is no fossal or genetic evidence at the moment, does not mean it did not happen. One specimen only prooves the case of one specimen, not the race.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Nean ... _child.jpg

Take a look at some Russians sometime. Given, this is an Artists conception we see in the photo. But I think even the most skeptical will agree that when one compares this photo with any of a number of photos of North Asian Russians, there are striking similarities.
My wife is of Tartar desent. Her facial features are very close to the child in the photo. She even has deep red hair. If I were not so inept at this posting thing, I would share a photo of here and I to prove it.
By the way. She has no knob on the back of her skull. I do, and I am of the R1b haplo group. We will be testing her shortly, and I will post our findings.

[Rokcet Scientist]

Well, all I can say is: if they didn't interbreed, I don't believe for a second that was because they didn't try enough!



They probably screwed their interracial heads off!

[Beagle]

Of course I believe they interbred RS. Today, humans are only prevented by certain moral and societal constaints from having sex. There is no evidence of those things existing in the Paleolithic era.

So - more like - if it feels good, do it.

I love civilization, I really do, but it has it's drawbacks.

[Minimalist]

That's a profound philosophy, right there.

[Rokcet Scientist]

There is no evidence of [moral and societal constraints] existing in the Paleolithic era.

There is no evidence of those existing today either.

[daybrown]

There is no evidence of [moral and societal constraints] existing in the Paleolithic era.

There is no evidence of those existing today either.

No, but the pretense is why they try to say that Europeans are not HNS hybrids.

I sent in my DNA and found out that my Y chromosome has been in France for 30,000 years. I'm saving up for the mtDNA, but odds are that it will say that my maternal ancestors didnt show up until 10,000 years later.

who were they having sex with in the meantime?

[Rokcet Scientist]

I sent in my DNA and found out that my Y chromosome has been in France for 30,000 years.

You ought to get out more, Daybrown!

[Cognito]

who were they having sex with in the meantime?

Unless there was a HN female in the woodpile, most likely mtDNA U5a.

[Digit]

who were they having sex with in the meantime?

In days of old, when men were bold, and women were not invented, the men drilled holes in telegraph poles. And walked away, contented.
Anon.

[daybrown]

the world comes to me RS. Somebody sent me the link to the dnaancestryproject. I ordered the swabs online, put them in the mailbox, then logged on later for the data.

Same deal with Neanderthals. I get links and refs to books that get sent. Then too, friends like to go for a drive in the mountains, and while they are out, they stop by. Sometimes, they even bring the books back. ;-}

I dont doubt that many of my ancestors, should they stop by, would look around at these woods and feel right at home. Deer, Elk, Bear, squirrels, rabbits, & wild boar would all be familiar. Many of the herbs & plants they knew have also been imported. The 2nd growth timber, cleared off for rail road ties during WWII, have the canopy now at 50-75ft, which is enuf to choke off a lot of brush so you can again ride thru the woods on horseback.

The bad news is that bark beetles killed the two tallest pines in the yard. the good news is that the trees oozed pine tar before they died. I collected a pint of the stuff. I now see how you can bed an arrow or spear point on a wood shaft with that stuff, which gets stronger as it ages. After 4 months, its like epoxy.

Another oddity, which academics know nothing of, is that when the sap leaks out, mixed with the beetle sawdust shit, it ferments giving off a very pleasant pheremone to attract more beetles. I've smelled this perfume in the woods for years, but never knew what it was. But the Neanderthals surely knew. Just one whiff they knew would supply them with tar for dozens of spears, but also perfumed lamp fuel.

They try to show us the way early times looked, but nobody tries to reconstruct the way it felt, sounded, or smelled.

[Beagle]

http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/evo ... _2007.html

For those interested in the Neandertal debate, and like long scientific blogs, this one fro Hawks is great.

Genetic introgression and Neandertal.

[Minimalist]

No hybrid, say these two.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/ ... pic=latest

Did modern humans interbreed with Neanderthals and, if so, did the mating result in a half-human, half-Neanderthal hybrid?

The answer is possibly 'yes' to the interbreeding but 'no' to the hybrid, according to the authors of a new study that is already making waves among anthropologists.

[kbs2244]

Mules ?

[daybrown]

No hybrid, say these two.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/ ... pic=latest

Did modern humans interbreed with Neanderthals and, if so, did the mating result in a half-human, half-Neanderthal hybrid?

The answer is possibly 'yes' to the interbreeding but 'no' to the hybrid, according to the authors of a new study that is already making waves among anthropologists.

The problem with all these DNA studies is the sample size. With a species that was so thinly distributed and inbred for so long, I doubt whether the DNA we have is really representative. All we can say is that a particular HNS line was not hybridized the way they think. Which is too narrowly.