Fossil Remains Show The Merging Of Neandertals, Modern Humans

Washington University ^ | 10-12-2006 | Neil Schoenherr

[blam]

Fossil remains show the merging of Neandertals, modern humans

By Neil Schoenherr

The early modern human remains from the Pestera Muierii (Cave of the Old Woman), Romania, which were discovered in 1952, have been poorly dated and largely ignored. But recently, a team of researchers from the Anthropological and Archaeological Institutes in Bucharest, Romania, and from WUSTL has been able to directly date the fossils to 30,000 years ago. The fossils prove that a strict population replacement of the Neandertals did not happen.

"What these fossils show is that these earliest modern humans had a mosaic of distinctly modern human characteristics and other characteristics which align them with Neandertals, suggesting some combination of modern humans dispersing into Europe and interacting with and absorbing the Neandertal population," said Erik Trinkaus, Ph.D., the Mary Tileston Hemenway Professor of physical anthropology in Arts & Sciences.

"These fossils have the potential to shed light on several issues regarding early modern Europeans."

The team's research will appear online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The human remains from the Pestera Muierii present a basically modern human-derived pattern, which is evident in discrete traits and metric aspects throughout the sample. It therefore joins the sample of human remains from the sites of Pestera cu Oase and Pestera Cioclovina in southeastern Europe, Mlade in Central Europe, and Brassempouy, La Quina Aval and Les Rois in western Europe in filling out the anatomy of the earliest of modern humans in Europe.

Yet, as with many of these other Early Upper Paleolithic modern Europeans, the Muierii fossils exhibit a number of archaic and/or Neandertal features.

These data reinforce the mosaic nature of these early modern Europeans and the complex dynamics of human reproductive patterns when modern humans moved westward across Europe.

[Coyoteman]

100?

[RobbyS]

I think you are resisting the obvious. Most of what we know, certainly our world view, we owe to others. Speaking of the available literature, most mavericks don't get published, don't get hired, don't get tenure.

[Coyoteman]

I think you are resisting the obvious. Most of what we know, certainly our world view, we owe to others. Speaking of the available literature, most mavericks don't get published, don't get hired, don't get tenure.

In most cases its richly deserved.

But if their ideas are supported by data, they get through eventually. Evidence always wins out.

Out for the night.

[RobbyS]

But if their ideas are supported by data, they get through eventually Usually posthumously. It took two generations for the evidence to prove Galileo right. Schlaft gut.

[SunkenCiv]

and my usual...

The Neandertal Enigma
by James Shreeve

Frayer's own reading of the record reveals a number of overlooked traits that clearly and specifically link the Neandertals to the Cro-Magnons. One such trait is the shape of the opening of the nerve canal in the lower jaw, a spot where dentists often give a pain-blocking injection. In many Neandertal, the upper portion of the opening is covered by a broad bony ridge, a curious feature also carried by a significant number of Cro-Magnons. But none of the alleged 'ancestors of us all' fossils from Africa have it, and it is extremely rare in modern people outside Europe." [pp 126-127]

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Blam.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
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[SunkenCiv]

I get it also, it's a new thing, presumably to keep everyone from going hog wild with the humorous and allegedly humorous keywords. Next we need a keyword filter, or a clickable list of common keywords plus the box, and maybe a spellcheck. :')

[SunkenCiv]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1303035/posts?page=62#62

[Dustbunny]

Logical.

[Dustbunny]

ROFLOL....... love it

[Fred Nerks]

Nikolai Valuev...now there's a living fossil!

[Straight Vermonter]

You really should post a pic! LOL

[Straight Vermonter]

It's quite possible that an isolated population of Neandertal and modern humans interbred, and that this population left fossils that are discussed in the current paper, but that this population died out and did not leave descendants to present day, while other "unhybridized" modern humans of the same period thrived and left us as descendants.

Would it have been at all possible that this interbreeding of human/neanderthals produced only sterile offspring like mules?

[Tallguy]

There is a German geneticist who has begun the sequencing of the Neanderthal. Preliminary results suprised him in that he expected to see more overlap with modern humans. His conclusion: separate species.

[tomzz]

Every DNA study so far has flatly ruled out any contribution of neanderthals to the genome of modern man. We simply aren't related to apes or hominids.

[Stultis]

It still points up that no scientist human is an objective observer.

However science, yes including "evolution," has -- for instance by encouraging adversarial debate and rewarding the falsification of prevailing theory -- achieved a higher level of collective objectivity than probably any other area of human inquiry.

[Coyoteman]

Every DNA study so far has flatly ruled out any contribution of neanderthals to the genome of modern man. We simply aren't related to apes or hominids.

You keep making the same simple mistake, thinking that if we are not closely related to Neanderthal that we have no link to earlier hominids.

There was a split some 350-400,000 years ago, and our line went one way while Neanderthal went another. That fact that we are not closely related to Neanderthal does not mean we have no antecedents!

[RobbyS]

However, scientists tend to break their arms patting themselves on the back for their accomplishments, forgetting that they themselves are not immune to the famous deadly vices. They work quite comfortably with the likes of Hitler and, on a more mundane level willing to lie, cheat and steal just steal just like the milkman. As for Popper's notion, I find Heisenberg's uncertainly principle a more practical guide. Once we start measuring, we move the bar. The further we look into space, the less we see at one time.

[RobbyS]

I am willing to stipulate a split, but was it really that long ago? Are you thinking in terms of a thousand generations of "genetic drift" or something like that? Maybe it came suddenly as a result of isolation and inbreeding?

[ZULU]

Now I know why I don't find those insurance commericals on TV so funny either.