Posted on 12/10/2007 11:35:58 AM PST by blam
Neanderthal-human hybrid 'a myth'
Monday, 10 December 2007 Jennifer Viegas
Discovery News
This 29,000 year old skull belonged to a hominid with slightly heavier eyebrows than an average person. But this is not enough to convince anthropologists it's evidence of a human-Neanderthal hybrid (Source: Dan Grigorescu)
Did modern humans interbreed with Neanderthals and, if so, did the mating result in a half-human, half-Neanderthal hybrid?
The answer is possibly 'yes' to the interbreeding but 'no' to the hybrid, according to the authors of a new study that is already making waves among anthropologists.
At the centre of the study, published online in the Journal of Human Evolution, and the current debate, is a 29,000 year old Romanian skull that is one of the oldest fossils in Europe with modern human features.
But those features aren't quite a perfect match with us, which has led some experts to suspect it was a cross between a Neanderthal and a modern human.
That's not so, according to study leader Dr Katerina Harvati, a senior researcher in the Department of Human Evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and adjunct associate professor of anthropology at the City University of New York Graduate School.
"It differs from living people only in subtle ways, and always well within the range of modern human variation," says Harvati, who worked with the Max Planck Institute researcher Dr Philipp Gunz and Professor Dan Grigorescu, from the University of Bucharest.
"It has, for instance, slightly heavier eyebrows than the average person, and is generally somewhat more robust than average," she adds, explaining that modern humans have gradually evolved to become more slight and slender than upper Palaeolithic people were.
Comparing skulls
She and her team took detailed 3D measurements of the Romanian skull, called Cioclovina calvaria, and compared these with a similar head shape analysis of Neanderthals, modern humans and fossils of other hominids found in Europe, Africa and countries bordering the eastern Mediterranean Sea.
The researchers also studied animal hybrids and developed an unprecedented list of proposed criteria for evaluating whether or not a fossil specimen is a hybrid.
The criteria include: greater or much smaller size than the parental species, on average; evidence for developmental instability; possible occurrence of rare attributes, such as having extra teeth or bone joints; and possessing an intermediate shape.
"Cioclovina did not meet any of these criteria - a strong refutation of the hypothesis that it represents a hybrid," Harvati says.
Single origin
The scientists support the 'single origin' model of human evolution.
This holds that modern humans evolved between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago in a single location, mostly likely Africa, with subsequent migration displacing archaic hominid populations, including Neanderthals, around the world.
The researchers, however, do not rule out that interbreeding may have taken place.
"Modern humans and Neanderthals are very closely related species, so it is possible that, like living closely related species of primates today, they could have interbred to a limited degree," she says.
"[If it occurred] it was probably a rare event and the result was not significant in evolutionary terms."
Backing
Dr Ian Tattersall, curator in the Division of Anthropology of the American Museum of Natural History in New York says he is "thoroughly in agreement" with the new study.
"The strenuous search for a Neanderthal-modern human hybrid has yet to turn up any evidence of such a thing."
Professor Eric Delson, chair of the Department of Anthropology at Lehman College, City University New York, also supports the conclusions.
"The results that Dr Harvati and colleagues obtained on the Cioclovina cranium agree well with the widespread opinion that Neanderthal-modern hybridisation was rare at best in Europe," he says.
Delson adds that, when combined with recent genetic studies that have found "indications of low to nonexistent" levels of Neanderthal genetic imprinting on modern humans, the new findings lead "us to reject widespread hybridisation and thus a major influence of Neanderthals on later human populations in Europe".
Cro-Magnons lived from about 40,000 to 10,000 years ago in the Upper Paleolithic period of the Pleistocene epoch. Cro-Magnon were anatomically modern, only differing from their modern day descendants in Europe by their more robust physiology and slightly larger cranial capacity.[3] They had a diet of meat, grain, wild carrots, beets, onion, turnip and other foods. Altogether they had a very balanced diet.Surviving Cro-Magnon artifacts include huts, cave paintings, carvings and antler-tipped spears. The remains of tools suggest that they knew how to make woven clothing. They had huts, constructed of rocks, clay, bones, branches, and animal hide/fur. These early humans used manganese and iron oxides to paint pictures and may have created the first calendar around 15,000 years ago[4].
The flint tools found in association with the remains at Cro-Magnon have associations with the Aurignacian culture that Lartet had identified a few years before he found the skeletons.
The Cro-Magnons must have come into contact with the Neanderthals, and are often credited with causing the latter's extinction, although morphologically modern humans seem to have coexisted with Neanderthals for some 60,000 years in the Levant[5] and for more than 10,000 years in France[6].
...
A 2003 study on Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA, published by an Italo-Spanish research team led by David Caramelli, concluded that Neanderthal man was far outside the modern human range, while Cro-Magnon people were not just inside but well in the average of modern Europeans. mtDNA retrieved from 2 Cro-Magnon specimens was identified as Haplogroup N. [6] Haplogroup N is found amongst modern day populations of the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia and its descendant haplogroups can be seen amongst modern Europeans, Eurasians, East Asians and Native American populations. [Source]
I don’t think that’s a hybrid. I think that’s pure Leftist Hog, Massachusetts born and bred.
“Cro-Magnon was a type of modern man; all hominids apparently including the neanderthal were glorified apes. We are not related to any of them in any fashion.”
What? We are definitely related to Cro-Magnon (less so with Neanderathals).
Chimpanzees are far more distant—they belong to a different genus (Neanderthals definitely belong to the genus Homo, whether or not they are the same species as modern man). I think the current estimate for when the ancestors of chimps and the ancestors of people diverged is on the order of 5 million years ago (it could be somewhat more) whereas the Neanderthal/Modern man split would presumably be less than 200,000 years ago, if modern man arose between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago.
DNA researcher Svante Pääbo has tested more than 70 Neanderthal specimens and found only one that had enough DNA to sample. Preliminary DNA sequencing from a 38,000-year-old bone fragment of a femur bone found at Vindija cave in Croatia in 1980 shows that Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens share about 99.5% of their DNA.
From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal
From mtDNA analysis estimates, the two species shared a common ancestor about 500,000 years ago. An article appearing in the journal Nature has calculated the species diverged about 516,000 years ago, whereas fossil records show a time of about 400,000 years ago. From Wikipedia:
I always assumed he was from the Nosferatu clan.
You people had better rethink this. The Neanderthals and their hybrids are alive and well. They run the Mainstream Newsmedia. They dominate American universities. And millions of them keep the sociopaths and other assorted self-serving nutcase Democrat politicians in power.
I'll go a little farther than that; Pan Troglodytes and P. Paniscus ought to be in two different genuses.
We and Cro-Magnon are basically the same thing. Neanderthal DNA on the other hand is described as about halfway between ours and that of a chimpanzee. In other words, the neanderthal was simply a more advanced ape than anything presently around. It’s generally accepted that this eliminates the neanderthal as a human evolutionary antecedant since we could not possibly have interbred with neanderthals, and all other hominids are further removed than the neanderthal. That basically says apes and hominids are one family of creatures, and we are another and unrelated family.
This is not true. Behavioral studies have clearly shown that H. academis americensis is descended from the Howler monkey.
Agreed. However, I was speaking to the amount of DNA shared.
Agreed. However, I was speaking to the amount of DNA shared.
Hey, go to the window. I’m waving
We and Cro-Magnon are basically the same thing.
This part is correct.
Neanderthal DNA on the other hand is described as about halfway between ours and that of a chimpanzee. In other words, the neanderthal was simply a more advanced ape than anything presently around.
This is not correct. Neanderthal is classified in genus Homo, as are we. And, other than ourselves, Neanderthal is the next most modern and advanced species in that genus. No serious scientists classify Neanderthal anywhere near the apes.
It’s generally accepted that this eliminates the neanderthal as a human evolutionary antecedant since we could not possibly have interbred with neanderthals,
Neanderthal is not an ancestor but not for the reasons you give. The lines that eventually led to Neanderthal and modern humans split some 500,000 years ago.
... and all other hominids are further removed than the neanderthal. That basically says apes and hominids are one family of creatures, and we are another and unrelated family.
Not so; modern humans are descended from archaic humans, and before that from Homo erectus and Australopithecus. Somewhere late in the erectus stage the lines split, putting modern humans and Neanderthals on different paths. That is exactly the opposite of what you are claiming.
I would be interested in the source of your claims.
I thought they were howler monkey/Neanderthal hybrids.
Show's how much I know. (But then, I'm a product of the U.S. educational system.)
How that fossil found on the island of Flores in the East Indies (south of Celebes/Sulawesi and west of Timor) fits into the picture, I'm not sure. There are a number of fossils that are even further removed from us than the Neanderthals, but still classed as Homo--Homo habilis, for instance. I don't think they tried to make any connection between "Java Man" (Homo caffeinatus?) and Homo florensis (or whatever they are calling the little guy).
The old logical fallacy of "exception is the rule" shows its ugly head again.
Java man was one of the smallest-brained and probably smallest-bodied of the H. erectus groups, and on that basis would make an ideal candidate for an ancestor to H. florensis.
There are a few problems with that though, including the idea that modern humans evolved only once, in Africa, and spread outward from there.
As far as I know, they have not announced any DNA from H. florensis yet. They should be able to get some with a bit of work, and that would go a long way toward answering some of these questions.
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