Posted on 08/12/2009 11:42:29 AM PDT by decimon
They have found that a gene in modern humans that makes some people dislike a bitter chemical called phenylthiocarbamide, or PTC, was also present in Neanderthals hundreds of thousands of years ago.
The scientists made the discovery after recovering and sequencing a fragment of the TAS2R38 gene taken from 48,000-year-old Neanderthal bones found at a site in El Sidron, in northern Spain, they said in a report released Wednesday by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC).
"This indicates that variation in bitter taste perception predates the divergence of the lineages leading to Neanderthals and modern humans," they said.
Substances similar to PTC give a bitter taste to green vegetables such as Brussels sprouts, broccoli and cabbage as well as some fruits.
But they are also present in some poisonous plants, so having a distaste for it makes evolutionary sense.
"The sense of bitter taste protects us from ingesting toxic substances," the report said.
(Excerpt) Read more at physorg.com ...
The neanderthal was too far from us for us to be descended from him and Heidelbergensis was further. DNA tests would show that; it seemingly hasn’t occurred to anybody that dna tests on Heidelbergensis materials would be possible.
“The neanderthal was too far from us for us to be descended from him and Heidelbergensis was further.”
—I think you’re misunderstanding what is meant when scientists say that Neandertals are not our ancestors. They don’t mean that in the sense that Neandertals did not give rise to Homo sapiens - that part is already clear since the Neandertal species is no older than our species. What they mean is that if one had a family tree going back 30, 40, 50 thousands years ago, you won’t find any great granparents where one is a Neandertal and the other a Cro-Magnon.
So what it currently looks like from the dna evidence, is that when the Homo sapien and Neandertal lineages split (presumably from Homo heidelbergensis), the two lineages stayed split and didn’t interbreed. Thus the dna evidence currently backs those that argue that Neandertals should be categorized as a separate species, or at least a subspecies.
The point is, the mtDNA sample from Homo Heidelbergensis (thought to be an antecedent of Neandertal) was so tiny that it told literally nothing, it was a GIGO study. Regarding breaking the chain, there is no chain to break, those 1990s results could do nothing and did nothing to the evolution model of human descent.
Here is a good YEC summary for Neanderthals being fully human; that is, that they descended from the same biblical human kind (as opposed to the evo-notion that they are a separate species that branched off before we became fully human):
http://creation.com/national-geographic-unveils-wilma-the-neandertal-lady
Why are you seeming to lay at the feet of the creationists this concept that Neanderthals are halfway between chimps and humans when it started with the scientists?Creationists cherry-pick scientific studies and/or misinterpret or misrepresent them. I've never claimed otherwise.
in general, creationists don't believe that man evolved from some ape like ancestor to begin with, so Neanderthal couldn't possibly be half way between chimp and man. It just might be more similar to man than chimp, but it can't be halfway between something (chimp) and nothing (since man didn't evolve).That doesn't make any sense -- the mtDNA of living humans was used in the comparison with the Homo Heidelbergensis mtDNA. Basically by saying "nothing (since man didn't evolve)" you are saying that there are no living humans.
I don’t know too much about Virchow. I just looked him up, and all the accounts I have (albeit) skimmed through claim he is regarded as a great anatomist and the “father of pathology.” Is there a reason why you keep going out of your way to associate his name with stupidity or nuttiness?
If creationists are “clinging”, then they are clinging to the obvious...namely, the Temple of Darwin still hasn’t found any transitionals after all these years. And that includes Neanderthals, which are proving to be fully human, just as creation scientists predicted.
How far back does the "Man" "kind" go? All the way back to Homo habilis?
Your paper started out with a falsehood....that Neanderthal's brain was bigger. Sapien's brain is, on average, 5 cubic inches larger.
From a biblical perspective, Neanderthals were descendants of Adam and Eve.
Where in the Bible does it say "Adam begat neanderthal?" or ANYTHING like neanderthal? I see, in Genesis, Cain BUILT A CITY...that is not neanderthal behavior. So Man went form "building cities" to living as primitives that could only make a spear and an animal skin shelter?
(warmer water, most of it from beneath the ground, provided the energy for the extra precipitation needed to get massive volumes of water out of the oceans and up onto the continents as huge sheets of ice)
This guy doesn't know squat about the formation of massive ice sheets.......and that is not the claim of the Bible. The waters receded, they did not create massive ice sheets.
The walls of caves are made up of rock with mostly marine fossils deposited by the Flood, so they are clearly post-Flood humans
False conclusion and baseless nonsense. Why would MARINE animals die from a flood? Or if they didn't...how exactly did Noah keep all these marine animals alive on the Ark? Shark? Whale? Clams? Octopus? Hint: marine animals would not have died...so they would not have fossilized FROM the Flood. Can't say I see that part in Genesis.
Carl Wieland obviously knows just enough "science" to be dangerous.....but not enough to make a valid argument to those that have the ability to think past the baseless claims and false conclusions.
That’s easy. The Bible says that God created each kind to reproduce after itself. Thus, any species that are capable of interbreeding with another species (whether in the wild, or in the lab) descended from the same created kind.
It doesn’t say that Adam begat Neanderthal. It says that Adam and Eve begat human beings. And since the Neanderthal were fully human, they obviously descended from Adam and Eve.
And you might want to read a little more about creationist theort with respect to the (one and only) ice age before attempting to insert your other foot in your mouth. I’m not saying your mouth isn’t big enough, but why go to all the trouble when you’re just going to have to pull them out again?
As for the marine animals deposited in the cave walls, if the world is only 6-10 thousand years old, how else do you suppose they got there if not for Noah’s flood?
Is this proof that G. Bush, the Elder, is related to the Neanderthals? As I recall, he stated he hated Brussels Sprouts.
As do I (grunt grunt)
Where have you been? The elder Bush is half human and half extraterrestrial lizard. He and his kind do some Moloch thing at the Bohemian Grove.
Wasn’t it broccoli?
Whatever. We neanderthals weren’t namby-pamby vegetarians. We liked red meat—homo sapiens was tasty, just like pterochicken.
And soup. They invented soup. And hats and clothes (probably because of those mild winters during the glaciation). And according to some, the flute.
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