Posted on 08/22/2006 10:25:51 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
People of European descent may be 5% Neanderthal, according to a DNA study that counters the view that modern humans left Africa and replaced all other existing hominids. The same study, published in the latest issue of the journal PloS Genetics, also says West Africans could be related to an archaic human population... "Instead of a population that left Africa 100,000 years ago and replaced all other archaic human groups, we propose that this population interacted with another population that had been in Europe for much longer, maybe 400,000 years," says Vincent Plagnol... Using statistics and computer modelling, the researchers focused on linkage 'disequilibriums', or sections within genes that did not make sense if only modern human matings are considered... The scientists are not certain which early human group could have contributed to West African DNA, but both Europeans and Africans in the study showed about the same 5% archaic contribution. Neanderthals are believed to have originated in Africa around 400,000 years ago, but they left and then settled in Europe, hence the apparent lack of interaction with modern humans in Africa. Alan Templeton, professor of Evolutionary and Population Programs at the University of Michigan, has also conducted DNA studies and comes to similar conclusions... New technologies are being developed to sequence nuclear DNA from fossils, so in the near future, scientists may learn more about how modern human genes compare with those of archaic humans, like Neanderthals.
(Excerpt) Read more at abc.net.au ...
I don't understand how they concluded Neanderthal man only lived in forests during the ice age. It was my understanding that there was a tundra like climate below the glacial ice line then forests.
Most of the game is ALWAYS in the open plains area and the idea that a human being could sneak up on a deer and get close enough to stab it to death often enough to feed himslef is laughable. And one would EXPECT the muscles in the right arm and hand to be stronger if you were throwing a spear or using an atl-atl.
My guess was they killed and ate mammoths just like Homo sapiens. The film admitted that one deer pnly provided enough meat for two days - so why bother when you had big hairy meat market stalking around waiting to be outsmarted and butchered?
Yes
:')
New Evidence of Early Humans Unearthed in Russia's NorthStone tools, animal bones and an incised mammoth tusk found in Russia's frigid far north have provided what archaeologists say is the first evidence that modern humans or Neanderthals lived in the Arctic more than 30,000 years ago, at least 15,000 years earlier than previously thought... The tusk was carbon-dated at about 36,600 years old. Plant remains found among the artifacts were dated at 30,000 to 31,000 years... The discoverers said they could not determine from the few stone artifacts whether the site was occupied by Neanderthals, hominids who by then had a long history as hunters in Europe and western Asia, or some of the first anatomically modern humans to reach Europe... If these toolmakers were Neanderthals, the findings suggested that these human relatives, who became extinct after 30,000 years ago, were more capable and adaptable than they are generally given credit for. Living in the Arctic climate presumably required higher levels of technology and social organization... If they were modern humans, then the surprise is that they had penetrated so far north in such a short time. There has been no firm evidence for modern humans in Europe before about 35,000 years ago. It had generally been thought that the northernmost part of Eurasia was not occupied by humans until the final stage of the last ice age, some 13,000 to 14,000 years ago, when the world's climate began to moderate.
by John Noble Wilford
September 6, 2001
Yeah, well, I couldn't resist! ;-)
So is it only Professor Reiner Protsch von Zieten's dating of the Neanderthals that is called into question, or is it all other Neanderthal bones that have been found as well?
That would explain a lot, I'm hairy and ugly.
I'm not too sure that these new "dates" have held up; I think von Zieten had some other issues, legal ones, related to the sale of some bones. That's just from memory though, don't take my words as is. :')
Heavy brow ridges would probably protect the eyes from severe winter weather. From recent FR postings I have come to the conclusion that Neanderthals were mostly blue eyed redheads, which was the coloring most sensitive to the production of Vitamin D in the skin in a severe cold weather situation. Africans moving north were not really able to thrive until the appearance of the blond gene which also favors Vitamin D formation. Good Vit. D, good bones, good pelvis structure, successful childbirth, and the smarter guys win.
Long ago, I strongly suspected that my husband had Neanderthal genes. Scottish ancestry, pale blue eyes, red hair, heavy brow, receeding chin, massive bones, short legs, long torso, and a warrior temperment. Now I am virtually certain. He died recently from Alzheimer's Disease, and I have a hypothesis about that.
I am calling the Alz. gene(s) the "altruist gene", because it would cause a person with it to wander off looking for food and not make it back, leaving more food for the young, and favoring their survival. I noticed that my husband would excape out the front door when he was hungry and I was in the kitchen trying to get a quick dinner on the table. I have theorized that in stable, warm settled communities that there should not be as great an incidence of Alz., but that it would be more common in outpost societies with severe climate and food scarcity. I looked for studies on the incidence of Alz. and found one study in south India, and another in a major African city that has existed for a long time. The incidence of Alz. in those places was about 1/4 that of the US. A study of Alz. among Blacks in Cleveland showed a similar frequency to the rest of the US. Many slaves were captured from small village in the jungle, where survival conditions were probably more severe than in large African towns.
The finding of human presence along the arctic ocean around 26,000 ya is not surprising, there are also finds from 32,000ya. They have recently discovered that major painted caves in Europe date from 32,000ya, not 24,000ya as previously believed. Actually temperatures had leveled off during those years, and then dropped rapidly until 18,000ya when the glaciers started to melt.
Perhaps Alzheimer's is genetic, but it may be aggrevated by a sedentary life style and highly processed food diet.
I had red hair and blue eyes as a baby. Later they changed color. One of my greatgrandparents had red hair.
Neanderthals may not have been as bellicose as modern man.
I think the jury has to be out on that one. The luxury of intraspecific combat may not have been a positive one in a climate where survival was so tenuous.
Heavy brow ridges would probably protect the eyes from severe winter weather.Heavy brow ridges would probably protect the eyes from bright sunshine.
In my husbands case, he was not sedentary. He taught in an inner city high school, and was moving around constantly. He swam several times a week, lifted weights. I got us into health food and vitamins 35 years ago. His only problem was that for about 20 years he was a very heavy beer drinker, but stopped in 1990. There does seem to be some correlation between beer drinking and Alzheimers, but not wine drinking.
Now how did I miss this thread? LOL
and who can forget...
Scientists: Bison in Illinois earlier (aren't you relieved?)
South Carolina homepage (thestate.com) | Tue, Aug. 30, 2005 | Associated Press
Posted on 09/03/2005 10:17:31 AM EDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1476377/posts
Evidence of early humans in Russia's north.
Not too long ago I think I read about discoveries of human habitation along the northern Siberian coast that dated around 30 or 32,000 years ago. This coincides with recent conclusion that artistic cave painting in Spain and/or France was also around that age rather than 24,000 years old.
The climate during that period was somewhat milder than it had been earlier. Subsequently, there were several major drops in world temperature around 28kya, 24kya and 22kya if I remember correctly. I have correlated the 22kya dip with the explosion of the volcano Sakara-Jima (sp?) in Japan which left a 15 mile diameter crater. The current volcano of the same name is on one edge of this crater. Temperatures continued to drop until the meltdown 18,000 years ago.
I constantly scratch my balls!
Do I qualify????
I think there's an old FR topic about the frozen north humans...
Do you really? Hey, at least it isn't someone else's, say, a congressional page, or a congressman...
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