'Your Forefathers Were Not Neanderthals'

IOL ^ | 1-26-2004 | Maggie Fox

[blam]

'Your forefathers were not Neanderthals'

January 26 2004 at 02:30PM

By Maggie Fox

Washington - You may think your grandparents act like Neanderthals, but United States researchers said on Monday they had strong evidence that modern humans are not descended from them.

A computer analysis of the skulls of modern humans, Neanderthals, monkeys and apes shows that we are substantially different, physically, from those early humans.

New York University paleoanthropologist Katerina Harvati said Neanderthals should be considered a separate species from Homo sapiens, and not just a sub-species.

"We interpret the evidence presented here as supporting the view that Neanderthals represent an extinct human species and therefore refute the regional continuity model for Europe," she and colleagues wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Some anthropologists believe that Neanderthals, who went extinct 30 000 years ago, may have at least contributed to the ancestry of modern Europeans.

There is strong evidence that Homo sapiens neanderthalis, as they are known scientifically, interacted with the more modern Cro-Magnons, who eventually displaced them. Cro-Magnons are the ancestors of modern humans, Homo sapiens sapiens.

Some research has suggested they may have interbred to a limited degree, although this is hotly disputed in anthropological circles.

At least one study that looked at fragments of Neanderthal DNA suggested any Neanderthal-Cro-Magnon offspring did not add to the modern gene pool.

Harvati and colleagues combined modern computer technology and the tried-and-true method of determining species that uses physical comparisons.

They examined the skulls of modern humans and Neanderthals and 11 existing species of non-human primates including chimpanzees, gorillas and baboons.

They measured 15 standard skull and face landmarks and used 3-D analysis to superimpose each one on the other.

"From these data, we were able to determine how much variation living primate species generally accommodate, as well as measure how different two primate species that are closely related can be," Harvati said in a statement.

Their computer analyses showed that the differences measured between modern humans and Neanderthals were significantly greater than those found between subspecies of living monkeys and apes.

[greenwolf]

You have got to be kidding...

Sorry, but I've seen this in a couple too many places and heard it from people whose credentials are serious enough. Any claim that the horse lineage proves evolution is controversial to say the least.

[Victoria Delsoul]

Their computer analyses showed that the differences measured between modern humans and Neanderthals were significantly greater than those found between subspecies of living monkeys and apes.

Thanks Patrick. I feel better already.

[PatrickHenry]

I never considered you a Neanderthal!

[Victoria Delsoul]

LOL, thanks so much. :-)

[agrace]

bump for later read

[tpaine]

I do quite well reading FR, thanks.

A big part of me education is in listening to the little people here, bill..
Often, they make more sense than those who fancy themself students of "Aristotle and Aquinas".

[visualops]

Hunt doesn't seem to have gotten the word yet

What "word", from whom?

One article notes:

Link?

What should have happened was a steady increase in size, a steady decrease in toes, a steady increase in ribs, etc. There has never been found a horse with two and a half toes, or one and a half toes.

Whoever wrote that nonsense obviously doesn't understand anything non-linear.

George Gaylord Simpson:
The evolution of the horse family included, indeed, certain trends, but none of these was undeviating or orthogenetic. The uniform, continuous transformation of Hyracotherium into Equus, so dear to the hearts of generations of textbook writers, never happened in nature. Increases in size, for instance, did not occur at all during the first third of the whole history of the family. Then it occurred quite irregularly, at different rates and to different degrees in a number of different lines of descent. Even after a trend toward larger size had started it was reversed in several groups of horses which became smaller instead of larger. As already briefly noted, the famous “gradual reduction of the side toes” also is something that never happened. There was no reduction for the 15 or 20 million years of the history. There was relatively rapid reduction from four front toes to three (the hind foot already had only three toes). Many horses simply retained the new sort of foot without further change. In one group there was later another relatively rapid change of foot mechanism involving some reduction in size of the side toes, which, however, remained functional. Thereafter most horses retained this type of foot without essential change. In just one group, again, another relatively rapid change eliminated functional side toes, after which their descendants simply retained the new sort of foot. (Fig. 39)

In the history of the horse family there is no known trend that affected the whole family. Moreover, in any one of the numerous different lines of descent there is no known trend that continued uniformly in the same direction and at the same rate throughout. Trends do not really have to act that way: there are not really orthogenetic.

The Tribulation Force (Warning: the site has music), named after an organization from Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind novels, has a file listing a bunch of common out-of-context quotations taken from the writings of various scientists to give the false impression that the fossil record does not support evolution.

Here is one of them, which I will reproduce in full:

TEXTBOOK DECEIT, GEORGE G. SIMPSON, “The uniform, continuous transformation of Hyracotherium into Equus, so dear to the hearts of generations of textbook writers never happened in nature.” LIFE OF THE PAST, p.119

Of course the impression that they are trying to give is that George Gaylord Simpson, a great paleontologist, has rejected the fossil series showing the evolution of the horse. He did no such thing. He was not trying to debunk that the fossil record supports evolution, nor was he trying to debunk notions of horse evolution shown in the fossil record. This quote, from a 1953 book, is flagrantly out-of-context.
When one bothers to check what Simpson actually wrote, one finds that Simpson was talking about in the quote the creationists quoted to an old discredited notion called orthogenesis. Orthogenesis was an idea that was popular in the late nineteenth and very early twentieth century but has been rejected by scientists since no one could provide a viable mechanism for it and more importantly the evidence showed it to be wrong. Orthogenesis is the notion that evolution proceeds in straight lines. This can refer to the idea that evolution proceeds straight from species A to species B without any side branches. More importantly, it refers to the idea that an evolutionary lineage changes steady, uniform way with no reversals. Sometimes, but not always, it was imagined that species were evolving steadily towards a goal. Usually this trend was supposed to be caused by some “mysterious inner force” (to use Simpson’s words) of the species that compelled it to evolve. Some supporters of orthogenesis would say that once a trend got started in a lineage that it would unchangingly continue until extinction occurred.

[qam1]

Sorry, but I've seen this in a couple too many places and heard it from people whose credentials are serious enough. Any claim that the horse lineage proves evolution is controversial to say the least.

Can you give me some of their names and credentials?

[Little Bill]

There are no Little People on FR, I know to many of them, in person, they are all interesting and unique.

Getting back to the original question, the Out of Africa thing is dead and will be pronounced so in a short period, it does not compute.

I noticed in your tag line that you have discovered the Federalist papers, you never made any reference to them three or four years ago in your arguments, note: Jefferson didn't write an of them.

[Doctor Stochastic]

I can look up in the night sky and fully realize that night sky implies a very old universe. However, that doesn't mean the universe is very old. God set up a system with physical laws, the very real implication of which is that the universe must look old. The supernatural governs natural reality in a way that natural reality cannot observe outside of faith.

How does this differ from the Postmodern rejection of science? Both Creationists and Postmodernists claim special knowledge that is superior to scientific inquiry and this special knowledge is to be preferred in the case of conflict?

[Pharmboy]

I think the mtDNA evidence is the most compelling.

Coincidentally, I know the author of the article.

NEANDERTHAL: NO RELATION
By Sean Henahan, Access Excellence

---

University Park, Pa. (10 July 1997) New evidence from mitochondrial DNA analyses indicates that the Neanderthal hominid was not related to human ancestors.
Using refined and expensive genetic techniques, U.S. and German researchers extracted mitochondrial DNA from Neanderthal bone. These studies showed that the Neanderthal DNA sequence falls outside the normal variation of modern humans.

"These results indicate that Neandertals did not contribute mitochondrial DNA to modern humans," says Dr. Mark Stoneking, associate professor of anthropology at Penn State. "Neandertals are not our ancestors."

The findings will cause of reconsideration of the current consensus that Neandertals became extinct only 30,000 years ago and co- existed for some time with modern humans in Europe. The new research indicated that Neandertals and modern humans diverged genetically 500,000 to 600,000 years ago. While the two species may have lived at the same time, Neandertals did not contribute genetic material to modern humans, the researchers report.

The team analyzed bone from a Neanderthal specimen found in the eponymous valley. This is the first time researchers have been able to extract useful DNA fragments from such a specimen.

"The ability to extract DNA from ancient bone is dependent on many factors, including preservation, temperature and humidity," says Stoneking, a faculty member in Penn State's College of the Liberal Arts.

The researchers devised an innovative technique using overlapping short strands of DNA to obtain a mitochondrial DNA sequence of 378 base pairs. The researchers ran multiple extractions and amplifications. to ensure that errors caused by damaged DNA were not incorporated into the sequence and that modern human DNA did not contaminate the samples. At the same time the researchers ran a parallel extraction and amplification of the DNA.

To begin amplification, the researchers used two human primers -- small pieces of DNA that match the beginning of the sequence to be amplified.

"The first two human primers we chose worked," says Stoneking. "It turns out this was a lucky choice."

To check that the amplified DNA was really Neanderthal, the researchers prepared primers based on their extracted sample and ran them on numerous human DNA samples.

"The Neandertals primers did not amplify any human DNA," says Stoneking. "Most human primers would probably not work on Neanderthal DNA."

The researchers compared the Neanderthal sequence with 2,051 human sequences and 59 common chimpanzee sequences. They found that the differences in Neanderthal DNA occurred at sites where differences usually occur in both humans and chimps.

"The changes reflect the evolutionary pattern typical of mitochondrial DNA sequences of living humans and chimpanzees, not that of random damage or degradation," says Stoneking.

When the researchers looked at the Neanderthal sequence with respect to 994 human mitochondrial DNA lineages including Africans, Europeans, Asians, Native Americans, Australians and Pacific Islanders, they found the number of base pair differences between the Neanderthal sequence and these groups was 27 or 28 for all groups.

"While Neandertals inhabited the same geographic region as contemporary Europeans, the observed differences between the Neanderthal sequence and modern Europeans do not indicate a closer relationship to modern Europeans than to other contemporary human populations," says Stoneking.

The researchers used phylogenetic tree reconstruction -- a method that uses mitochondrial DNA to place individual groups in relative relationship -- to check the results of their pair- wise DNA comparisons. The trees show that the Neanderthal sequence branches before the divergence of the various human mitochondrial DNA lineages, but after the split from chimpanzees.

This phylogenetic tree also shows that the first three branches of humans are of African origin, with only the fourth branch showing non-African sequences.

"The branching pattern indicates that the ancestor of the mitochondrial DNA gene pool of contemporary humans lived in Africa," says Stoneking of Penn State.

"I really looked for holes in the methodology, but I just couldn't find any. It seems to be an authentic sequence and certainly as far as I can tell the most rigorous ancient DNA study I've ever seen," says evolutionary biologist and ancient DNA researcher Blair Hedges of Penn State.

The researchers caution that the current results are derived from only one individual and note that DNA may be difficult to extract from other specimens. Even if theNeanderthals did not contribute mitochondrial DNA to modern humans, it is still possible that they contributed other genes, they emphasize.

The research appears in the June 11, 1997 issue of Cell.

[tpaine]

A new FReeper, 'writer 33', commented that "the U.S. Constitution defines a conservative".

Pretty odd that you noticed in my tag line that you have discovered the Federalist papers, seeing there's no reference to them.

And why do you "note" that Jefferson didn't write any of them? Did someone say he did?

[Little Bill]

Never argue with a Libertarian. ... Knowledge has never been known to enter the head via an open mouth. ... -Baltasar Gracian

[Virginia-American]

...I swear you creationist are the same as Liberals...

Ain't it the truth!

Ooooh, it makes me feel bad that I'm related to apes.

At the time of the Scopes trial, the Evo side was aligned with Yankess, pointy-headed professors, and *Republicans*, whereas the creo side was aligned with the D*m*cr*ts.

Is there any way to get the D*ms to adopt the creos as another minority, push their speculations the same way the Afrocentric nonsense is pushed?

[realpatriot71]

You appear to be picking and choosing which parts are literal.

Actually, I'm making a distinction. The differences you pointed out do not make a difference one way or the other as far the relationship of "man to God and God to man" which is really the heart of Christianity. It doesn't matter if bat equaled bird to the Hewbrew writers, what mattered was the relationship. Destroying the creation story is not only not taking the Bible literally, it is completely marring the image of God as the loving creator of life and man. It destroys the reason for man's existance as desrcibed by the Bible, and this is why the Genesis story needs to be taken literally. I pick and chose nothing.

Already seen it, already proven -- the earliest Bible stories come from a polytheistic culture and that is reflected in the writing. Attempts to reconcile this with the latter monotheistic culture is what results in the apparent inconsistencies in Genesis.

As I already pointed out, the Bible describes exactly this occuring, only it also follows the history of the Monothesistic worshipers of the only Holy God, the Creator. I already told you that all apostate religion began after the flood from the decendants of Ham (Cush and Nimrod). When the language was scrambled at the tower of babel, humanity separated from a single central point, taking with them not only a different language but the same apoastate religion. The decendantds of Shem were always Monotheistic in relationship with God, and Abram (Abraham - the father of the Jewish Nation), was monotheistic. All religions branching from Abraham have been monothesistic, Including Islam (Apostate, but Interesting . . .Hmmmmm). So the people who wrote the Bible were clearly montheistic, but living among polytheists, as all other rleigions are polytheistic, and then at the heart of all these religions, panistic or anamistic, meaning One "god" or Spiritual force of Eternal Life Force (Again apostate but interesting, hmmmm). Even humanists are heart are monotheistic, because, "I am God," right? Think about it.

[tpaine]

Whatever.

[ZULU]

Not really. Chihuahuas and Great Danes are not, strictly speaking, subspecies. They are different domestic varieties of Canis familiaris and both belong to the same species.

An example of two subspecies interbreeding and producing viable offspring would be, say, the Eastern Kingsnake,
Lampropeltis getulus getulus interbreeding with the California Kingsnake, Lampropeltis getulus californiae and producing viable hybrid offsping, which they can do. As a matter of fact, they have even crossed two different genera to produce viable offspring, like Elaphe (Ratsnakes) and Kingsnakes (Lampropeltis). Given these are not mammals, but reptiles. Nevertheless, the idea that Homo sapiens sapiens and Homo sapiens neanderthalenses (or Homo neanderthalensis, if you prefer)were incapable of interbreeding and producing viable offspring,is, to my mind, not logical.

[ZULU]

Since that is the case, arguments that the DNA of neanderthals difers from that of modern man, therefore they could not have interbred or even contributed genetic material to the modern human gene pool, is, to my mind, not a correct analysis.

Thanks for the link.

[Junior]

We cannot observe either in action.

Actually, there are numerous instances of observed speciation (a tenet of evolution). But, of course you've known of this, but can't bring yourself to admit it...

[biblewonk]

I know as little about pre-1850 thought as you but today evolution is the religion of the world. It is exciting for us biblewonks to discover that it is not at all new to God but just the latest trend in idolatry.