Neanderthals 'Hardly Differed at All' from Modern Humans

Science Daily ^ | 05/11/2010

[SeekAndFind]

How much do we, who are alive today, differ from our most recent evolutionary ancestors, the cave-dwelling Neanderthals, hominids who lived in Europe and parts of Asia and went extinct about 30,000 years ago? And how much do Neanderthals, in turn, have in common with the ape-ancestors from which we are both descended, the chimpanzees?

Although we are both hominids, the fossil record told us long ago that we differ physically from Neanderthals, in various ways. But at the level of genes and the proteins that they encode, new research published online May 6 in the journal Science reveals that we differ hardly at all. It also indicates that we both -- Neanderthals and modern humans -- differ from the chimps in virtually identical ways.

"The astonishing implication of the work we've just published," says Prof. Gregory Hannon, Ph.D., of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), "is that we are incredibly similar to Neanderthals at the level of the proteome, which is the full set of proteins that our genes encode."

Collaboration with a paleogenetics pioneer

Hannon, who is also an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and is well known for his work on small RNAs and RNA interference, was invited this past year to help examine Neandertal DNA by Dr. Svante Pääbo, a pioneer in paleogenetics, a field that employs genome science to study early humans and other Paleolithic-era creatures. In a separate paper, Pääbo's team today publishes in the same issue of Science the first complete genome sequence for Neandertal, an achievement that builds on work he has led since 2006 at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Genomics in Leipzig.

[colorado tanker]

I worry that we don't know as much about DNA as we think. I am beginning to think that there's more and we're missing something.

I agree completely.

[wendy1946]

Yeah, well, when evolosers see they can’t win one of these things i.e. when the other side has the good cards and its facts together, their last resort is always to turn it into a food fight.

[colorado tanker]

GGG threads are not for the evo/crevo wars. Part of the treaty.

[allmendream]

DNA codes for protein and has sequences that proteins specifically bind to.

Simple concept, and yet from it there is nearly infinite variation to make molecular machines (protein enzymes) that do everything living things do.

The big breakthrough in biology will be figuring out just how far down the rabbit hole you have to go as far as interlocking systems of control and regulation, some of which I am sure we have no idea about yet, just as we didn't know much about how much little micro RNA’s were doing until a couple decades ago.

[colorado tanker]

Thanks. The RNA example is something that was in the back of my mind too.

[Beowulf9]

Except they didn’t pay taxes and hate Obama.

[Little Bill]

DNA is a tool but exactly how that tool affects the system is largely a guess, as of now. When I was a kid Lyellian stuff ruled but it flunked because the premise didn’t match the results, the death of many reputations.

[allmendream]

Not quite. DNA is a code, and we know what the code means. It specifies one of twenty amino acids that combine to form little molecular machine proteins that do all the things necessary for life.

We know what it does, we know how it does what it does.

Just how complex the regulatory mechanisms are (make this protein now, that protein later, modify this protein by splicing out this region of RNA thusly, etc) we are still learning; but there is not some ‘great and secret show’ going on with DNA that we have no idea about, although there most likely are ways of regulating how when and where the DNA makes the protein that presently we have little idea of (much as micro RNA’s are changing our ideas of how transcription is regulated).

[Little Bill]

All that I said, citing the Lyell example, is that with our present knowledge this is how things work out and it may or may not be flawed. I won't argue with you on Biochemistry, ain't my interest.

What I am interested in is demographics and migrations in prehistory.

[Ditto]

And how much do Neanderthals, in turn, have in common with the ape-ancestors from which we are both descended, the chimpanzees?

Huh? I understood the theory was that humans, eariler humanoids, chimps and other apes all evolved from a common ancestor, not that humans evolved from chimps or any of the apes directly. They may be very distant 'cousins' but they are not direct ancestors.

[allmendream]

Oh I am sure there is more going on with DNA regulation than we know or really understand, but what DNA does and how it does it is really not at all mysterious.

DNA and the system to transcribe that code into RNA and then translate that into protein are both necessary and sufficient to describe the functionality of all living systems.

Speaking of demographics and migrations in prehistory, have you ever looked into Snorre Sturlasson’s account of the migration of the Aesir and Vanir from the Black Sea area to Denmark around the first century B.C.?

[gleeaikin]

“Neanderthal DNA is generally described as being about halfway between ours and that of a chimpanzee.”

Did you even bother to read the rest of the article? After examining 12,000 protein gene sequences in 50 living humans and one Neanderthal, they found only 88 differences and speculate that with 500 living humans and some other Neanderthal samples the differences might approach zero. The number of differences for chimps was far, far greater. Furthermore, in 50 years of following anthropology studies and discoveries, and taking some courses as well, I have NEVER heard that Neanderthal were halfway between us and chimps.

[gleeaikin]

Your posted link contains a lot of interesting information. One suggestion is that interbreeding of modern humans and Neanderthals may have occurred around 60,000 years ago. My speculation is that the great Toba megavolcano around 74,000 year ago killed off so many of both groups, that they were glad to breed with anything humanoid they ran across. Scientists have suggested that only 5 to 10,000 humans survived this catastrophe.

[gleeaikin]

The first inaccuracy in this comment is the statement that Cortez took an Aztec princess as his consort. This is false, he discovered a captive Tlaxcallan princess along the coast. Her people were deadly enemies of the Aztecs who were in the habit of waging war on them and taking them home for dinner (cannabilism). Subsequently, 200,000 of her people helped the fewer than 200 Spaniards begin his "systematic annihilation". Given this profound error in his first paragraph, I can't even begin to imagine how many errors were in this piece. Also, no date is given, so it is entirely possible some of his errors were based on lack of newer information.

[gleeaikin]

My late husband was an American Scot. I always thought he showed definite signs of Neanderthal blood, and now the science is showing that he probably did. Red hair, pale blue eyes, pink, sun sensitive skin, faint brow ridges, weak chin, long torso, short legs, massive bones, hairy body, crystaline teeth, warrior temper and temperment.

[gleeaikin]

You may think that Downs Syndrome humans are a throwback to Neanderthal, but you would be wrong. DS humans have a severe chromosomal abnormality that does not relate in any way to Neanderthals.

[gleeaikin]

To base the time of occupancy of a cave on the number of tool pieces found is absurd. Tools were valuable, and would have been carried away with the owners on their hunting trips and other travels. The tools actually found in a cave would represent those lost in the dirt, or those thrown away because they were too damaged or small to be of further use. This would be like basing estimates of the human money supply on the amount of money found in an abandoned house.

[wendy1946]

To base the time of occupancy of a cave on the number of tool pieces found is absurd.

That's right. Unfortunately, the misinterpretation of strata and the time it would take for them to form is pretty much all that the standard estimates of the antiquity of Neanderthals are based on; the tool counts provide a way out of that.

[wendy1946]

Did you even bother to read the rest of the article?

I've read LOTS of articles on the subject. All indicate that Neanderthal DNA was halfway between ours and that of an ape; that we could no more interbreed with Neanderthals than we could with goats or horses; that we are therefore not in any way descended from Neanderthals and are unrelated to them.

There is the further consideration which should be obvious but which evolutionites refuse to consider which is that all other hominids were further removed from us THAN the neanderthal and that, if we couldn't be desdended from the Neanderthal, then we could not be descended from any of the others either.

If you wanted to go on thinking we were descended from hominids, you would have to produce some new hominid, closer to us in both time and morphology THAN the neanderthal, and the works and remains of that guy would be all over the map and very easy to find had he ever existed.

The Neanderthal was basically a very advanced, extinct ape, the most advanced member of the same family of creatures as chimpanzees and gorillas. We are another and separate family of creatures.

[BroJoeK]

wendy1946: "Some of the tyrannosaur blood cells have been found INSIDE bones, and the possibility of that material being contaminated by extraneous iron is ZERO.
Exhaustive studies in the last year have demonstrated conclusively that the soft tissue finds are real, and there is ZERO possibility of any of that stuff surviving 65,000,000 years."

1. Do you know that bacteria can survive for hundreds of millions of years -- in a state of suspended animation in underground in salt deposits?
   Just give them warm water and food, and they immediately revive, thrive and live-on -- as if nothing had happened since they "went to sleep" hundreds of millions years before.

   Point is: under the right conditions organic matter can survive indefinitely.

2. Do you remember the movie "Jurassic Park"?
   Its premise was that dino-blood extracted by mosquitoes had been preserved in amber -- preserved well enough for scientists to recover enough DNA to recreate the original dinosaurs.

   Point is: that was sci-fi, of course, but the idea that ancient DNA might be preserved in amber is not really so far fetched.

3. Are there other possible methods where organic material from the age of dinosaurs might survive? Yes, but all such -- like the salt and amber -- would have to effectively seal the organic material from outside influences.

4. So, regarding dino-stuff, what exactly was found?
   
   • Some collagen, which is organic material produced by living cells, but is not itself cellular -- meaning no DNA there. Collagen defined:
     
     "any of a class of extracellular proteins abundant in higher animals, esp. in the skin, bone, cartilage, tendon, and teeth, forming strong insoluble fibers and serving as connective tissue between cells, yielding gelatin when denatured by boiling"

   • "Blood vessels," meaning fossilized impressions of blood vessels colored by possible remains of hemoglobin. But some of it could just as well be remains of the bacteria which consumed the original dino-stuff.
     Point is, even if it is dino-stuff, then we are talking about substantially degraded remnants of the original living material, not the living material itself -- and no DNA.

All of which is to say that, long term preservation of dino-stuff is theoretically possible, but nothing found so far contained dino-DNA, and much of it cannot even be certainly identified as their organic remains.

So, once again I think you've jumped to unwarranted conclusions way, way too quickly.