Posted on 08/04/2007 9:42:20 AM PDT by Renfield
A human skull from a Romanian bear cave is shaking up ideas about ancient sex.
The Homo sapiens skull has a distinctive feature previously found only in Neandertals, providing further evidence of interbreeding between the two species, according to a new study.
The human cranium was found during World War II mining operations in 1942, in a cave littered with Ice Age cave bear remains.
Recently the fossil was radiocarbon dated to 33,000 years ago and thoroughly examined, revealing the controversial anatomical feature.
The otherwise human skull has a groove at the base of the back of the skull, just above the neck muscle, that is ubiquitous in Neandertal specimens but has never been seen in the remains of a modern human, argues study leader Erik Trinkaus, an anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
"I was frankly quite surprised to see it when I was looking at the specimen," Trinkaus said. "My first reaction was, that shouldn't be there."
Writing in the August issue of Current Anthropology, Trinkaus and his colleagues say that the skull supports interpretations of other remains found in France, Romania, and the Czech Republic that also have "archaic" or unusual features suggesting interbreeding.
Ancient Debate
Archaeological evidence shows that humans and Neandertals (often spelled Neanderthals) both lived in Europe for several thousand years after the arrival of modern humans about 35,000 years ago. (Learn more about human migrations.)
But the relationship between the two species is hotly debated.
Many researchers believe that modern humans killed off or simply outcompeted Neandertals until the latter went extinct.
Trinkaus and others, however, have suggested that Neandertals became absorbed into Homo sapiens. (Related: "Neandertals, Modern Humans Interbred, Bone Study Suggests" [October 30, 2006].)
Cave man ping.
Didn’t somebody put out a song in the 80s called “I Like Em Big and Stupid”?
http://www.guntheranderson.com/v/data/ilikethe.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Like_’em_Big_and_Stupid
It’s a Kilngot.
A KLINGON!
:Op
I saved a sh*tload of money by switching my car insurance to Geico. :-)
Way back when the only people who existed were troglodytes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlRXQEA0yj0
Troglodyte..........
Troglodyte (Jimmy Castor Bunch)
What we’re gonna do right here is go back, way back, back into time.
When the only people that existed were troglodytes...cave men...
cave women...Neanderthal...troglodytes. Let’s take the average
cave man at home, listening to his stereo. Sometimes he’d get up,
try to do his thing. He’d begin to move, something like this:
“Dance...dance”. When he got tired of dancing alone, he’d look
in the mirror: “Gotta find a woman gotta find a woman gotta find a
woman gotta find a woman”. He’d go down to the lake where all the
woman would be swimming or washing clothes or something. He’d look
around and just reach in and grab one. “Come here...come here”.
He’d grab her by the hair. You can’t do that today, fellas, cause
it might come off. You’d have a piece of hair in your hand and she’d
be swimming away from you (ha-ha). This one woman just lay there,
wet and frightened. He said: “Move...move”. She got up. She was a
big woman. BIG woman. Her name was Bertha. Bertha Butt. She was one
of the Butt sisters. He didn’t care. He looked up at her and said:
“Sock it to me sock it to me sock it to me sock it to me sock it to me
sock it to me sock it to me sock it to me!”. She looked down on him.
She was ready to crush him, but she began to like him. She said:
“I’ll sock it to ya, Daddy”. He said: “Wha?”. She said:
“I’ll sock it to ya, Daddy”. You know what he said? He started it way
back then. I wouldn’t lie to you. When she said
“I’ll sock it to ya, Daddy” he said “Right on! Right on! Hotpants!
Hotpants! Ugh...ugh...ugh”
Some women today still breed with Neanderthals, not a theory but a fact. Never could understand why.
Enlighten me, oh female freepers...
And yet DNA analysis consistently rules out any Neandertal contribution to modern populations.
A hypothesis consistent with both the skull and the DNA analysis would be that Sapiens-Neandertal hybrids were not fertile. They occurred, but were like mules.
(Oop oop, oop oop, oop oop, alley oop.)
There’s a man in the funny papers we all know
He lived way back a long time ago
He don’t eat nothin’ but bearcat stew
Well, this cat’s name is alley oop.
He got a chauffer that’s a genuine dinasour
And he can knuckle your head before you count to four
He got a big ugly club and a head full of hair
Likes great big lions and grizzley bears.
He’s the toughest man there is alive
Wearing clothes from a wildcat’s hide
He’s the king of the jungle time
Look at that cave man go.
He rides through the jungle tearin’ limbs off of trees
A knockin’ great big monsters dead on their knees
The cats don’t bug him ‘cause they know better
He’s a mean motorscooter and a bad go getter.
Aw, there he goes, hahaha, just look at him go
He sure is hip ain’t he
Like he’s all the way up town
Nobody puts alley oop down.
Up there on his chauffer driven a dinasour
Mess with him baby and he’ll knucke your head before you count to four
Like a, like, like always he’s still one hundred per cent, baby...
Looks like Chelsea Clinton after her plastic surgery.
Race And Human Evolution: A Fatal Attraction
In this book, Milford gives a pretty good explanation of why we're not seeing the Neanderthal DNA in tests of Modern Humans.
The ginger gene. 7 of my parents’ 8 grandchildren red hair. It has faded in some of them as the have reached adulthood for two of them still have very red hair. My daughter’s hair has turned brown. She’s the adopted one. But my second son who was not adopted into the family, was a towhead and still has distinctly blond hair, no red in it. In the group photos of the cousins as kids, he would be the one people thought was adopted. This photo looks a lot like my daughter. Even her daughter whose birth father was from Columbia, has hints of red in her dark brown hair and blue eyes.
“Recently the fossil was radiocarbon dated to 33,000 years ago”
But...but I though the earth was only a thrid (or so) of that age.
(sarcasm)
As the GEICO Neanderthal goes away whistling ......
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