Case closed.
Posted on 03/10/2003 5:30:34 AM PST by billorites
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Neanderthal was a squat, powerful hunter who dominated Europe for more than 100,000 years, but he disappeared forever when modern humans evolved in Africa and moved to the other continents.
There is no convincing evidence, says Richard G. Klein of Stanford University, that Neanderthals and modern humans ever mixed in substantial numbers, which means that when the Neanderthals died out, so did their genes.
"The Neanderthals may thus be regarded as a fascinating, but extinct, side branch of humanity," Klein writes in the journal Science.
This view, based on genetic and fossil studies, contradicts some studies that have suggested extensive interbreeding between the Neanderthals and modern humans. Those studies, based on a comparison of Neanderthal fossils and modern human bones, concluded that Neanderthal genes are a part of European heritage.
"I don't think that is widely accepted any more," said Klein. He said modern studies of mitochondrial DNA from Neanderthal fossils suggest that the modern humans and the Neanderthals had a common ancestor about 500,000 years ago. But he said the studies do not support the notion that there was interbreeding after modern humans evolved in Africa and invaded Neanderthal habitats, starting about 45,000 years ago.
"The Neanderthal was a highly successful species," said Klein, but the reasons they became extinct are still unknown. Some theories have suggested they were wiped out by diseases introduced by modern humans. Another theory is that modern humans had better minds and an organized culture that enabled them to outsmart the Neanderthals for limited resources of game and other food.
"There is little to suggest that Neanderthals could behave in a modern ... way," Klein writes in Science. "This inability may explain why they disappeared so quickly and completely."
Klein said modern humans may have evolved a gene promoting speech and language that the Neanderthals lacked, but this is a theory without substantial proof.
Henry Harpending, a University of Utah anthropologist, said he is unconvinced of either Klein's arguments or theories that there was interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans.
Harpending said the genetic evidence is only marginal and open to different interpretations.
"Right now, there's no compelling evidence for either point of view," he said.
Suppose that there was interbreeding of Neanderthal and Cro Magnon, but for some biological/physiological reason, only offspring of female Cro Magnon and male Neanderthal survived? The mitochondrial DNA would not detect this.
In other words, Europeans dominate the earth because we are bad a** quasi-Neanderthals in a state of inherited post-traumatic stress syndrome from surviving the Ice Age.
The whole thing was a hodge podge of anti-white racist pseudo-science, and has been promoted by some of the "white people are devils" fringe elements, but some of the points made about European bone structure being heavier than that of other races, our relatively larger amount of body hair, etc. were intriguing.
Or, it may just underscore the Biblical suggestion that a race of man existed long before any of our ancestors.
Just a thought.
The horror...the horror...
So, they mixed just a little? This is better than previous dispositions that they didn't mix at all.
It's obvious that the Neanderthals were killed off in war with the Cro-Magnons. There is a laughable denial in modern anthropology about the role of war in human evolution. It's laughable because Darwin wrote about this, it's been known for a hundred years. Those of us alive today are the genetic offspring of the successful war makers. Almost everything about our genetic make up is optimized for success at war. The Neanderthals had plenty of intelligence to find food, so the idea they couldn't find enough is silly. The reason for their extinction is that they weren't as good at war as the Cro-Magnons.
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