Posted on 05/01/2007 6:30:29 PM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
(Scientist says modern humans, earlier species found camaraderie, and sometimes a mate, in each other)
Researchers have long debated what happened when the indigenous Neanderthals of Europe met "modern humans" arriving from Africa starting some 40,000 years ago. The result was the disappearance of the Neanderthals, but what happened during the roughly 10,000 years that the two human species shared a land?
A new review of the fossil record from that period has come up with a provocative conclusion: The two groups saw each other as kindred spirits and, when conditions were right, they mated.
How often this happened will never be known, but paleoanthropologist Erik Trinkaus says it probably occurred more often than is generally imagined.
In his latest work, published last week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Trinkaus, of Washington University in St. Louis, analyzed prehistoric fossil remains from parts of Europe. He concluded that a significant number have attributes associated with both Neanderthals and the modern humans who replaced them.
"Given the data we now have, it would be highly improbable to argue there is no Neanderthal contribution to the early European population that came out of Africa," Trinkaus said. "I believe there was continuous breeding between the two for some period of time. Both groups would seem to us dirty and smelly but, cleaned up, we would understand both to be human. There's good reason to think that they did as well."
The conclusion, one of the strongest to date in this debate, remains controversial, and it has potentially broad implications. It suggests, for instance, that humans today still should have some Neanderthal genes. It also means that the unanswered question of why the Neanderthals died out is even more puzzling, because under this scenario they were quite capable of living successfully alongside the more modern newcomers.
But Trinkaus says the fossil record is the best information available, and it increasingly points to an "admixture" theory - that Neanderthals who had lived in Europe for about 400,000 years shared the land and, to some extent, their genes with the migrants from the south who began arriving 40,000 years ago.
Theory questioned
As with all theories regarding the Neanderthals, there are problems with the one that Trinkaus and others are advancing. So far, analysis of modern humans' DNA has turned up no identifiable Neanderthal genetic material. Instead, it points to a common East African male ancestor from about 100,000 years ago and a common East African female from 170,000 years ago. Because the sampling remains limited, evolutionary geneticists generally do not say their findings settle the matter, though an ongoing mapping of the Neanderthal genome by European researchers may change the equation.
Chris Stringer, a paleontology researcher at the Natural History Museum in London, said the genetic evidence has kept him "on the fence" regarding Trinkaus' theory of more widespread interbreeding. He said Neanderthals and modern humans from Africa would be considered distinct "homo" species, making interbreeding less likely but not impossible. Under stressed conditions, he said, zebras and horses will mate, as will lions and tigers, so related humans might have done the same.
But one genetic trait of modern Europeans makes him doubt there was any major Neanderthal input - the fact that most humans today are genetically ill-adapted to cold weather. Only some native Indian populations, as well as people in the north of Eurasia and aborigines in Australia, who experience deep cold at night, have good genetic defenses to cold.
Because Neanderthals lived in Europe for hundreds of thousands of years, through ice ages and frigid conditions, they would have become genetically suited to such conditions, Stringer said. The fact that Europeans are not, he said, suggests that any Neanderthal contribution to their makeup is limited.
bump to the tune!
Not one word.
> It also means that the unanswered question of why the Neanderthals died out is even more puzzling,
That’s easy. The Neanderthal gene is recessive. We all got it, but don’t “express” it usually.
I have been telling Mr. Fairview for 25 years that he is a proto-hominid.
I think they are talking about you - ping.
teenylaugh
Actually, I was married to a Gear Head in a previous life. That was 10X worse...all of our money was always tied up “in parts” and junk cars in various states of dis-repair. ;)
I call my dogs, “Quad-Pedal Canines.”
They call me “She Who Stands Upright, Giver of All Foodstuffs.” When I leave in the morning for work, I tell them, “Mommy’s off to the Dog Food Mine!” :)
But I can change....
If I have to....
I guess.
Guilty as charged.....
:-P
I thought of you when I got this email ...perhaps you’ve already seen it ... funny stuff!
When our lawn mower broke and wouldn’t run, my wife kept hinting to me
that I should get it fixed. But, somehow I always had something else to
take care of first, the truck, the car, playing golf - always something
more important to me.
Finally she thought of a clever way to make her point. When I arrived
home one day, I found her seated in the tall grass, busily snipping away
with a tiny pair of sewing scissors. I watched silently for a short
time and then went into the house. I was gone only a minute, and when I
came out again I handed her a toothbrush.
I said, “When you finish cutting the grass, you might as well sweep
the driveway.”
The doctors say I will walk again, but I will always have a limp.
Moral to this story : Marriage is a relationship in which one person is
always right, and the other is the husband.
I was always convinced that my redheaded, light blue eyed husband had Neanderthal genes (a point agreed to by the scientists who believe that the redheaded celts of Britain have such genes). His was Scottish ancestry. He also had a prominent brow ridge, a weak chin, short legs, long very strong torso, and very thick body hair, including on one shoulder. He was smart, but was dislexic, a dramatic mimic and teacher, and a warrior.
Both our sons had some reading disability, especially the fairer complexioned one. I wonder if any scientists have checked into the possibility of a gene or genes for dislexia, and whether or not they are more common in these same redheaded people who they believe have the N genes.
My husband also developed Alzheimers. Before he lost his capacity to walk well, he took to escaping from the house when he was hungry and before I could get dinner on the table. This leads me to hypothesize that the wandering in Alzheimers may be a genetic pro survival gene. If the no longer very useful elderly wandered off looking for food during periods of starvation, especially at night when their families might think they went out to pee, they would die and no longer need to be fed, leaving more food for their offsprings. I think this would be more likely in primative sparsely populated areas of the globe. I checked on the rates of Alzheimers in two long populated urban areas of India and Nigeria, and found that the rate of Alzheimers was 1/4th the rate in the US. Hope to do more research on this area of spectulation.
Sorry about your husband.
And you have an interesting theory.
Thanks.
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