Posted on 08/17/2012 9:37:26 AM PDT by Pharmboy
Recent research strikes a blow to the theory that humans and Neanderthals interbred.
THE GIST Studies over the last two years suggest that Neanderthals vanished more than 30,000 years ago. This would mean that early humans and Neanderthals could not have interbred. enlarge
Over the last two years, several studies have suggested that Homo sapiens got it on with Neanderthals, an hominid who lived in parts of Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East for up to 300,000 years but vanished more than 30,000 years ago.
The evidence for this comes from fossil DNA, which shows that on average Eurasians and Asians share between one and four per cent of their DNA with Neanderthals, but Africans almost none.
But a new study by scientists at Britain's University of Cambridge says the shared DNA came from a shared ancestor, not from "hybridization" or reproduction between the two hominid species.
Common ancestor It begins with a common ancestors of Neanderthals and H. sapiens who lived around half a million years ago in parts of Africa and Europe.
Around 300,000 to 350,000 years ago, the European population and the African population of this hominid became separated.
Living in genetic isolation, the European range evolved bit by bit into Neanderthals, while the African range eventually became H. sapiens, which expanded in waves out of Africa from around 60,000 to 70,000 years ago.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.discovery.com ...
How do we know that these two species were genetically compatible? I tend to think they were due to traits in Europeans like red hair...unless that’s been debunked already.
From "Darwin's Ghost" by Steve Jones, page 322.
The first members of our own species, Homo sapiens, arose about a hundred and fifty thousand years ago as large, thick-skulled, but recognizable human apes. By the time the miseries of the ice ages were over we were, more or less, ourselves, with smaller brains in a thin skull on a slim and elegant body. Why we shrank is not certain. Perhaps, as in the dwarf mammoths on islands, shortage of food did the job, or perhaps a shift to a kinder society cut down the need for a sturdy frame."
Because the chimps were smarter. They get to hang out in trees and let humans feed them and say, ahhh what a cute little monkey. The dumb humans have to go to work and pay taxes.
Humans, usually female, mate with Neanderthals all the time nowadays.
In fact, Herto Man, a fully modern Homo Sapiens dated to 160 k years old and found in the Afar region of East Africa leads many to speculate that modern human go back 200k years. Reading the fossil record is quite like reading book with most of the pages missing. There are a lot of reasonable hypothesis, hanging around out there, each with its vocal supporters. As long as the support for one set does not intimidate research into other well founded ideas, this back and forth is healthy.
.... pretty women walking with gorillas down my street....
“Neanderthals did not have babies, how did they reproduce”
Lets call them “Pups”, or “cubs” then. Just not babies.
Understood. But what is the evolutionary explanation for the vast cognitive disparity between the human species and every other species on earth?
You mean chimps are democrats? They can't be smarter if that's the case. :-)
What popped into my head was, “He must be rich.”
Aha! A great question...some say divine creation, and others don’t really know, but they have their hypotheses. A top question in anthropology...
“...Gotta find a woman, gotta find a woman.....gotta find a woman....”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgktcySf_aw
Well, if Europeans were still wandering around in chainmail (or swinging on vines like chimps, for that matter) that would pose some different evolutionary questions. :-)
And Divine Creation doesn’t preclude the possibility of evolution.
Chimpanzees are well adapted to their environment. Their environment has changed little so they have changed little.
Some of our common ancestors stayed in the trees, others were driven out by some mechanism, perhaps they were crowded out into the grasslands, perhaps their local forests died out due to drought or some infestation.
The ones somewhat better adapted to looking over the grass to see predators and opportunities had more kids. The ones who happened to be better at holding and using tools had more kids. The smarter ones had more kids.
It doesn’t take all that many generations for a change in selection processes to change a population.
Mitochondrial DNA is only passed on by mothers.
Nothing saying a neanderthal couldn't be someone's babydaddy...
I gotta idea.
Let’s just ask God about it when we see His face.
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