[history_matters]

Origin of Man theories are also going through quite a war over the Neanderthals. (Let's not forget the "ginger" gene.) So as a fair-skinned redhead with freckled arms, I am especially interested in the revisionists work disputing the claims of diminished brain capacity, wanton violence and cannibalism. I find it tremendously fascinating that the evidence we have shows that Neanderthals buried their dead with complex burial rituals and great care long before their hominid cousins.

I have a strong suspicion that if the DNA of many a redhead were mapped, some scientists would find themselves revising their theory that Neanderthals died out and did not intermarry.

[blam]

(Welcome to Free Republic, history_matters. This article may interest you.)

Redheads 'are neanderthal'

BY A CORRESPONDENT

RED hair may be the genetic legacy of Neanderthals, scientists believe.

Researchers at the John Radcliffe Institute of Molecular Medicine in Oxford say that the so-called “ginger gene” which gives people red hair, fair skin and freckles could be up to 100,000 years old.

They claim that their discovery points to the gene having originated in Neanderthal man who lived in Europe for 200,000 years before Homo sapien settlers, the ancestors of modern man, arrived from Africa about 40,000 years ago.

Rosalind Harding, the research team leader, said: “The gene is certainly older than 50,000 years and it could be as old as 100,000 years.

“An explanation is that it comes from Neanderthals.” It is estimated that at least 10 per cent of Scots have red hair and a further 40 per cent carry the gene responsible, which could account for their once fearsome reputation as fighters.

Neanderthals have been characterised as migrant hunters and violent cannibals who probably ate most of their meat raw. They were taller and stockier than Homo sapiens, but with shorter limbs, bigger faces and noses, receding chins and low foreheads.

The two species overlapped for a period of time and the Oxford research appears to suggests that they must have successfully interbred for the “ginger gene” to survive. Neanderthals became extinct about 28,000 years ago, the last dying out in southern Spain and southwest France.

(I believe that we are Neanderthal, we are them. We did not die out)

[medved]

Research on neanderthal DNA showed it to be "about halfway between ours and that of a chimpanzee". No way we could interbreed with, or conceivably be descended from them. Moreover, that says the chain of evolution is broken at the top, and not at the bottom. To believe modern man evolved, you would have to come up with some plausible ancestor, i.e. some hominid CLOSER to us THAN the neanderthal and, since neanderthal works and remains are all over the place and since this closer hominid would have to stand closer to us in both time and morphology THAN the neanderthal, his works and remains should be very easy to find. In real life, no such thing has ever been found, no such creature ever existed.

That leaves three possibilities, none of which resemble evolution in any way, shape, or manner:

• Modern man was created from scratch.
• Modern man was imported from somewhere else.
• Modern man was genetically reengineered from the neanderthal, much as one makes fancy kit cars from old VWs.