Posted on 12/14/2023 9:00:51 AM PST by billorites
Whether you’re a morning person has long been tied to personality, but new research suggests DNA inherited from our extinct Neanderthal cousins ups the chance we’re early risers.
Our circadian rhythms—the biological clocks inside our cells that time when we sleep and wake—are linked to countless genes. Now researchers say they have found that bits of genetic code passed down to some of us from Neanderthals relate to our sleeping habits in the present day. The study was published Thursday in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution.
“We’ve found many Neanderthal variants that consistently associate with a propensity for being a morning person,” said Tony Capra, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of California, San Francisco and co-author of the new work. “Their effects are in the context of hundreds of other genes, but it is suggestive there is something meaningful about this.”
Capra and his colleagues compared genes from people alive today and DNA from Neanderthals and another extinct relative known as a Denisovan to spot the pattern. Their findings suggest ancient interbreeding between these groups helped our ancestors adapt to changing environments as they spread across the globe.
This study shows that our genomes are a mosaic of different ancestries, shaped by thousands of years of evolution and mating, according to Serena Tucci, an assistant professor of anthropology and evolutionary biology at Yale University who wasn’t involved in the study, which she called “fascinating.” A Neanderthal woman re-created and built by Dutch artists Adrie and Alfons Kennis. Photo: Joe McNally/Getty Images
Even if some of these groups have been extinct for tens of thousands of years, she said, “somehow they still survive today in our genes. They left something behind that still influences our biology today.”
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
I link my early rising to fear....fear that the Big Ben Clock will shatter my sleep.
My being a morning person originated with my Army service and I’m still an early riser 50 years later.
4:30 to 8:30 pm.
Winter is a little different and the time change really messes with me.
Book V. 1. In the morning, when you find yourself unwilling to rise, have this thought at hand: I arise to the proper business of man, and shall I repine at setting about that work for which I was born and brought into the world? Am I equipped for nothing but to lie among the bed-clothes and keep warm? “But,” you say, “it is more pleasant so.” Is pleasure, then, the object of your being, and not action, and the exercise of your powers? Do you not see the smallest plants, the little sparrows, the ants, the spiders, the bees, all doing their part, and working for order in the Universe, as far as in them lies? And will you refuse the part in this design which is laid on man? Will you not pursue the course which accords with your own nature? You say, “I must have rest.” Assuredly; but nature appoints a measure for rest, just as for eating and drinking. In rest you go beyond these limits, and beyond what is enough; but in action you do not fill the measure, and remain well within your powers.Nothing quite like getting a two millennium old message nagging me "to get my lazy butt out of bed" to start the day.
I wonder where I got my night owl gene...
Me too. Night owl here, as well.
I would like to be a morning person, but it’s just never felt right to me. I don’t really get going until nearly noon.
Mornings are to be slept through and alarm clocks were conjured from the depths of hell.
I am NOT a morning person. Even after waking up for decades before 5 I couldn’t stand a bit of it. One of my biggest motivators to keep my ever shrinking business going is so I don’t have to use an alarm clock.
The early bird gets the worm. If Neanderthals didn’t get up when the animals did, he’d have starved.
Of course, the authors had to include “a greater risk for severe Covid, and more susceptibility to certain diseases” on the early riser list. Funny, too, they included “according to Serena Tucci, an assistant professor of anthropology and evolutionary biology at Yale University who wasn’t involved in the study, which she called “fascinating.”
But the second mouse gets the cheese.
"Coffee. Because Murder is Wrong."
I must have had some kind of gene re-arrangement; I was a total night owl until my early forties, and now in my seventies I’m up at dawn every day and in bed by 9pm.
In another example of me being an outlier I’m neither a morning person nor a night owl. I’m really a midafternoon person.
Or become breakfast for a cave bear.
So what does that make me as an evening person??!!
“I must have had some kind of gene re-rearrangement; I was a total night owl until my early forties.”
I got up early with my parents while living at home.
In college, I preferred the later classes and in my senior year opted for mid morning or early afternoon classes on Tuesday, Thursday and even on mid Saturday morning.
In our first year of marriage, my wife being a new RN got stuck with the shifts no one liked.
In my active duty time at sea in the Navy, I often had terrible mixed shifts in a 24 hour time period.
When I turned 40, I basically got up at 6:30 am and went to work semi normal hours. My wife started a little earlier and quit at normal times.
I took early retirement at 61 and didn’t work for a year. A doctor friend advised me to find my normal time and to stick with it.
My wife and I both got up at about 7 am and in bed by 9 pm.
I did consulting and could control where and when. Major Time changes due to working out of our timezone, just wiped me out. So I only worked in the Pacific and SW time zone until I took full retirement.
My wife continued to work 2-3 days a week with normal hours, they hired an office manager to do early and late scut tasks.
She has been in full retirement for about 10 years.
We get up at about 6-7 am and go to bed at about 9 pm.
If I’m faced with critical decisions, I often wake up at about 3:30, stay in bed and mentally address the issues.
Sometimes, I just get up and go to our family room, not to disturb her.
The 3:30 am being awake to think about issues is often an around the world reality.
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