Posted on 10/12/2006 11:22:03 AM PDT by blam
Fossil remains show the merging of Neandertals, modern humans
By Neil Schoenherr
The early modern human remains from the Pestera Muierii (Cave of the Old Woman), Romania, which were discovered in 1952, have been poorly dated and largely ignored. But recently, a team of researchers from the Anthropological and Archaeological Institutes in Bucharest, Romania, and from WUSTL has been able to directly date the fossils to 30,000 years ago. The fossils prove that a strict population replacement of the Neandertals did not happen.
"What these fossils show is that these earliest modern humans had a mosaic of distinctly modern human characteristics and other characteristics which align them with Neandertals, suggesting some combination of modern humans dispersing into Europe and interacting with and absorbing the Neandertal population," said Erik Trinkaus, Ph.D., the Mary Tileston Hemenway Professor of physical anthropology in Arts & Sciences.
"These fossils have the potential to shed light on several issues regarding early modern Europeans."
The team's research will appear online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The human remains from the Pestera Muierii present a basically modern human-derived pattern, which is evident in discrete traits and metric aspects throughout the sample. It therefore joins the sample of human remains from the sites of Pestera cu Oase and Pestera Cioclovina in southeastern Europe, Mlade in Central Europe, and Brassempouy, La Quina Aval and Les Rois in western Europe in filling out the anatomy of the earliest of modern humans in Europe.
Yet, as with many of these other Early Upper Paleolithic modern Europeans, the Muierii fossils exhibit a number of archaic and/or Neandertal features.
These data reinforce the mosaic nature of these early modern Europeans and the complex dynamics of human reproductive patterns when modern humans moved westward across Europe.
Geneticists are doing their best to sequence Neanderthal DNA. They have made some good progress.
But your comment is meaningless. It appears that the branch leading to modern humans split off from Neanderthals some 350-400,000 years ago.
We are not descended from Neanderthals, but share a common ancestor.
(And note I did not resort to name calling as you did.)
Lots of things published in peer-reviewed scientific journals have turned out to be utter hogwash.
We have evolved from hunters to agrarians to cubicle sitters, which means our physical makeup has had a tendency to change. Not necessarily better.
The main point is that it is WE who evolved.
Evolution is simply survival. Survival comes from what we are made of. Eukaryotes. They are our makeup.
Yes, they have, but I have an academic background in physical anthropology and find myself reasonably able to sift through that hogwash, unpleasant though it may be at times.
In Milford Wolpoff's book, Race And Human Evolution, he says that all the features that are used to describe Neanderthals can be found in Modern Humans today. For example, he said that the brow ridges used in describing Neanderthals can be found in the Australian Aborigines alive today...some Aborigine brow ridges are more severe than Neanderthals. Other features are found in other human populations alive today. So....
read later
Source? Hard to believe since the DNA shows that humans are related to Chimpanzee's, and less so to another sort of Chimp and less so yet to gorillas.
Fred, Betty and Pebbles=all have pupils
Barney, Wilma and Bam Bam=no pupils
Therefore,
Robin Williams is the missing link.
Bet you couldn't distinguish my skull from that of a neanderthal. I have bony flaps over my dental nerves, protruding eye ridges, an overly large skull, and too many teeth. ;)
Thankfully, I don't plan to do that. :)
I prefer my corpses to be at least 50,000 years old!
On a more current note, as you imply, external characteristics only give a small hint - no reputable physical anthropologist that I know, would make such an inference.
""""Now tell me a fossilized Nikolai Valuev wouldn't be dug up and referred to as a giant human-neanderthal hybrid""""
Hybrid? He has got to be the missing link - That guy has no forehead!
Nebraska Man can be found in Memorial Stadium on Saturdays.
I am aware of the morphological similarities. Some of those are more a function of ruggedness and size than lineal descent. If you look, males tend to have more of those traits than females.
I think though that the recent DNA evidence is more convincing than morphology. It suggests that there was no close relationship of modern humans with Neanderthal, and that the split was some 350-400,000 years back.
That fellow's skull does indeed have archaic features...in fact, I wonder if he doesn't have a Bigfoot somewhere in his ancestry...(search "Zana" on google for more info....)
I'd be real careful about calling this guy a Neanderthal!
Heck, I can't keep up with all the name changes for dinosaurs. What happened to the Brontosaurus?
Women like neanderthals worldwide. They just make different noises that mean the same little things:)
Hence the expression "Neanderthal Ugly" to describe an unfortunate coupling fueled by too much alcohol...
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