Neanderthal genome reveals interbreeding with humans

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18869-neanderthal-genome-reveals-interbreeding-with-humans.html

"Any human whose ancestral group developed outside Africa has a little Neanderthal in them – between 1 and 4 per cent of their genome, Pääbo's team estimates. In other words, humans and Neanderthals had sex and had hybrid offspring. A small amount of that genetic mingling survives in "non-Africans" today: Neanderthals didn't live in Africa, which is why sub-Saharan African populations have no trace of Neanderthal DNA."


http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18869-neanderthal-genome-reveals-interbreeding-with-humans.html

I think we had a President and VP recently who both showed a marked resemblance.

Thanks.

Please don't insult the Neanderthals.

:+

He was a vegetarian and especially liked banana's.

a site that was up and running early in W's so-called *residential career, called "Bush or Chimp"?


It was a hoot, and the guy who owned it didn't even have to photoshop W's face onto any simian bodies...just displayed them next to each other.

The likenesses were amazing.

:7

You're right on Cue!...:rofl:

I wanna see the creationist/racist* heads exploding. :rofl:

_{* You know there's a strong correlation. Admit it.}

Who knows? I wouldn't compare them to bush/cheney

Imagination as in seeing things as they can be as oppose to how they are. For example Neanderthal stone tools remain basically the same until they come in contact with modern Humans, then you start to see different stone tools being used by Neanderthal (Changing tools is one of the key characteristics of Modern Humans, we can in fact date sites by the type of tool being used. Humans were always trying to improve their tools, disregarding what did NOT work, keeping things that were an improvement, you do NOT see this search among Neanderthals, Neanderthals kept using the same tools they had always used no adjustment to improve them thus stable rooks for most of the years Neanderthals were on this planet, stable as compared to rapid changes seen in Modern Humans tools).

Another area where we see this lack of imagination is the food the Neanderthals ate, it was almost always hunted game, and the same game throughout the year. If something would migrate through an area, the Neanderthals would ignore it (The classic example of this is Salmon runs in Europe, Modern Humans quickly learned of such runs, as do bears, and plan to be on the side of rivers that Salmon use during the time Salmon are swimming. The Neanderthals seem NOT to do this, it seems to be beyond their capability to understand that certain things occur during the year and plan for it, Neanderthal lived each day on a day to day basis, not thinking that it might be good to go to a stream and look for fish during the salmon spawning season.

Now, the same scientist who made the above observations also pointed out that the Neanderthals were NOT dumb, they just do NOT appear to be capable of any planning. When Neanderthals first came into contact with Modern Humans, Neanderthals kept doing what they had been doing, ignoring the new open areas that sprung up around their forest enclaves as the ice sheets melted (As the world warmed up, Europe turned to grasslands from ice and forests, with the forest actually growing smaller as the grass lands expanded, Modern Humans saw this as a new area to expand into and used they ability to adjust to do so, Neanderthals seems to have retreated into the more and more isolated forests to go after the game they had always gone after. Eventually the Neanderthals became so isolated from each other they died out to to lack of DNA diversity (Any creature needs diversity among its DNA, and more diverse the better it can survive).

bare arm and legged in minus blizzards and the like. the animous against neandertal people is legendary and until they even get that little bit right I would say the only lack of imagination is in the stupid people that portray them this way. if they can't get a basic fact straight that no one can run around like that in -40 weather than nothing else is worth speaking about. It may seem small potatoes to some but to those of us who live in weather like that its a major marker of stupid in the scientists who are working on this.

first, they couldn't communicate.

then, they found a hyoid bone.

conclusion: they can talk a bit but not much, it can't be complex and blah-blah-blah.

poison.

"Imagination" isn't relegated to one part of the brain, but is handled by different parts of the brain based on the things being imagined. In most areas, Neanderthal brains matched (or even exceeded) the size of our own.

There is one big difference though. The part of the brain that is used for both the imagination of complex topics (think higher math) and for long range planning is the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is an incredibly important part of the human brain, but was markedly smaller in neanderthals than it is in humans. Humans who have had their prefrontal cortexes removed tend to be short tempered and have great difficulties performing complex tasks. They also find it nearly impossible to perform long range planning. It's important to note that they are otherwise normal. They can be taught skills just like you or I, they can talk, walk, and do just about anything else an anatomically "normal" human can do. They simply lack the ability to conceptually visualize new ideas, or to plan future behaviors based on external clues.

The prefrontal cortex also appears to be very important in our conceptualization of "me". Our sense of self, as individuals seems to stem from somewhere inside the cortex. People without prefrontal cortexes seem to spend much less time thinking about their own well being as individuals, and instead simply see themselves as part of a group that "is".

Reading up on studies of people with prefrontal cortex injuries makes for an interesting afternoon. Because skull casts suggest that the neanderthal brain was largely similar to our own, with the exception of the much smaller prefrontal cortex, it's entirely plausible to assume that neanderthals lived lives much like modern humans without that portion of their brains. There is nothing inherently wrong with them, but a society based entirely on people with that particular limitation would advance only very slowly, and probably through chance more than invention.

Homo Sapiens Sapiens
Homo Sapiens Neanderthalenis

and killed the rest - men, women, children. hell, that's what we'd still do today if there wasn't "civilization".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8660940.stm

Diagram shows the point that this group with Neanderthal ancestry includes those from Papua New Guinea (and thus Australian Aborigines too, I'd presume) - which is why they place this around the Middle East, at Homo Sapiens sapiens first expansion from Africa. This is not just Neanderthals breeding with modern humans as they die out in Europe.

when I had my dna done there was an .08 percentage of aboriginal australian in there...man, someone in my family was a neanderthal hahahaha

Even the article suggests that this is more speculation then anything else i.e

"assuming it's the same size as the human genome – the actual Neanderthal genome is only about 3 billion letters long. More than a third of the genome remains unsequenced."

Notice the above mention the biggest two possible errors, first is their assume the Neanderthal Genome is the same size as the Human Genome. If that is NOT true, Modern Humans and Neanderthal could have interbreed, but the progeny of such a pairing would be like modern mules, infertile (Or in the rare cases where mules are fertile and are breed, produces another mule OR a Horse, if male or a donkey if female, remember in a mule the father is a Donkey, the mother a horse i.e. no mule genes in the horse prodigy, no Horse genes in the horse prodigy). Thus you could have interbreeding but no long term switch in genes.

The second problem is that 1/3 of the Neanderthal Gerome has NOT been sequenced. In that 1/3 we may see that no genes creeped in the Human Gene Pool (or conclusive evidence that it did).

A possible third error is the presumption that Neanderthal could NOT have interbreed with Humans south of the Sahara. While no direct contact would have occurred do to the locations, but this ignored that even 50,000 years ago people moved about among other humans including moving among people in Africa (It was NOT just a one way street out of Africa as the articles seems to imply). Given that other research indicate that all modern humans are descendant from one female who lived about 140,000 years ago () and from one male who lived about 60,000 years ago, movement back to Africa is not only possible but more chance then not happened. Thus the conclusion that sub-Sahara Africans have no Neanderthal DNA could be in error.

More on Human Population Bottlenecks:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene_human_population_bottleneck_in_Africa

Just pointing out the possible errors in this study, a good study but lets keep in mind the limitations of the study.

the strong possibility with this new study, and others and with DNA EVEN IF we do not YET have a full Neanderthal genome.

"first is their assume the Neanderthal Genome is the same size as the Human Genome."

Given the physical similarities of the two species and the comparatively short period available for their genomes to differentiate following the split from a common ancestor, it is highly unlikely that extremely large differences exist between the human and neanderthal genomes. Even chimpanzee's, with far more remote shared ancestors and radically different physical forms, share a genome largely similar to our own, differing in length by only about 700k base pairs after roughly 7 million years of divergence. The ancestors of Neanderthals diverged from our family tree only about 400,000 to 500,000 years before the first humans arose in Africa, so the expected differentiation would be only a fraction of that.

"In that 1/3 we may see that no genes creeped in the Human Gene Pool "
I fail to see the relevance of the remaining DNA to the matches that have already been found. Even if no additional matches are found in the remaining DNA pairs, a lack of matches would mean nothing for the matches that have been discovered thus far.

"While no direct contact would have occurred do to the locations, but this ignored that even 50,000 years ago people moved about among other humans including moving among people in Africa (It was NOT just a one way street out of Africa as the articles seems to imply). "
While I'm a fan of the Out-In-Out theory, I think it's highly improbable that Neanderthal DNA would have had any signifigant impact on African DNA. We know that the Pleistocene bottleneck occured approximately 60,000 years ago, and that all modern humans (or nearly all, anyway) are descended from humans that survived this bottleneck. While humans did move out of Africa and into Eurasia shortly afterward, the bulk of the human population remained behind in Africa. Even if a neanderthal/human hybrid had returned to Africa at that point, the odds of the hybrids genes spreading heavily throughout the population are slim unless there was a signifigant reproductive advantage to the new genes. Fossil records show no change to African populations around that time, and the genetic advantages that Neanderthal traits would have provided to Eurasian settlers during that glacial period would have provided no reproductive advantage to Africans, who lived in a much warmer climate. Because all Eurasians are descended from an extremely small settler population (potentially as few as a dozen), it would have been easy for a relatively small injection of Neanderthal DNA to be carried into a much larger subsequent population.

The article doesn't mention this, but it should also be noted that the locations and timelines proposed by these researchers fits nicely with the research on Haplogroup F, which arose on the Arabian peninsula about 50kya and is the root haplogroup for nearly all Eurasian population groups, but which is almost nonexistent in sub-Saharan Africa. It's is entirely possible that any Neanderthal crossbreeding occurred within the same group that we already suspect was the founding population for later Eurasian peoples. The real test of the theory would be to run this comparison against people who test as descendents of Haplogroup C who do not test as also being members of F. Because Haplogroup C is descended from the first Out of Africa wave almost 10,000 years before Haplogroup F left, any evidence of F/Neanderthal crossbreeding should be entirely absent from those population groups. It is rare to find a Eurasian who is not a member of both groups, but some isolated population groups do still exist. If these borrowed genes are not present in members of Haplogroup C, it would largely confirm their theory. If the genes are present in Haplogroup C, it doesn't negate the possibility of interbreeding, but it would mean that their timelines are very far off.

But if 1-4% of Eurasian genes are from Neanderthals while Africans' are not, how can that be true?

But basically this paper made several presumptions, that if true, provides the 4% figure, but one of those presumptions is that no one moved BACK to Africa after about 50,000 years ago. Just on its face that is a false presumptions, while even today, most people live within 20 miles of where they work even in the US (Which is by far the most mobile population on earth, most other populations rarely move 20 miles from where they were born), history is full of people who moved world wide even before the days of steam. Marco Polo's trip to China for example. Some traders from Rome reached China at about 300 AD (Called themselves "ambassadors" from Rome, but even the Chinese of the time period saw them as traders trying to make the best deal possible for the goods they wanted).

In American you have the body of what appears to have been a Caucasian from 9300 BC in Kennewick Washington State. (Please be careful some of the sites using the Kennewick are Mormons trying ot prove the book of Mormon AND white supremacist who want to show whites were in North American before the Native Americans):
http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf109/sf109p02.htm

One theory of Clovis points is based on the fact that the spear points most like the Clovis can be found in Europe NOT Asia during the time of people moved into North America. The Native Americans rapidly adopted it for it was superior to the Asiatic points they had been using when facing Mammoths and other large animals.

For more on Clovis points:
http://www.bayjournal.com/article.cfm?article=2975
http://books.google.com/books?id=Qn9p9fc4kIUC&pg=PA86&lpg=PA86&dq=Clovis+Points+Maryland&source=bl&ots=jsw4YCMa_h&sig=qgkte3jPOX5GIBiOnH4Acx-Y91I&hl=en&ei=OzPjS7SUJIP88Aa3kPmdDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CEQQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=Clovis%20Points%20Maryland&f=false

Another example is the found a few decades back of a Mail coat of Armor among the burial objects of an Eskimo of about 1300 AD (And the reports of Eskimo off the coast of Scotland during the first years of the "Little Ice Age:. Now the Armor may be the result of trade, but that still means some sort of intercommunications.

I give the above to show people have and did move around in ancient times, thus you not only had movement from Africa but into Africa. This tends to keep the gene pool very broad (And I will avoid the potentially sexist observation that women seem to prefer a man with the greatest difference in genes from her own family, which would encourage interbreeding).

Thank you very much.

:D

Neanderthal NEVER were in North America, just Europe and the Mid-East:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal

I think we all remember George W. Bush.

I pointed out to my husband, who has a prominent brow ridge, that his eastern European ancestry may have included Neandertals. He also lacks higher ability to plan for future events. Doctors call that ADHD.

As he points out, he also grunts, is hard-headed and farts. However, I believe that to be strictly a male characteristic (unless you catch females who think nobody is watching).

where they say the local population is decended from the cave-painters that lived there a brazillion years ago. And he's got that brow ridge. And he's super hairy, if that counts.

So your protohumans were superior to my hubby's. For instance, we wanted to see Avatar when it first came out. It's a big deal for us to go to a movie. In his mind, if we get there when the movie starts, we'll get a ticket. He could have gone early and gotten a ticket but he doesn't think that way. About anything. Once he had this grand idea to take me to London. Without money. Or reservations. We'd just go, you see.

So cave painting, with its colors and perspectives takes some planning. The hairy part had me LOL!

:rofl:

They're certainly not human beauty queen material, but if you're in a tribe of 25 men and 24 women, and you pull the short straw, they're a lot more attractive than a life full of lonely nights and sticky palms.

the mixing of the DNA with another species must have invigorated us ,both mentally and physically , possibly.

it did?

A couple of choice bits out of the stew of fail you have presented.

First: Civilization didn't get started for about 20 thousand years after this possible mixing. A bit late there.

Second: What makes you think there weren't any early civilizations in Africa? There were.

Third: Why in the world would physical vigor influence development of civilization? "That guy is strong, I bed he could figure out how to grow these plants giving us the ability to support larger populations and the stratification of society."



For god's sake think before you post, this is borderline racist. Frankly calling it borderline is being kind.

That's disgusting.

And no Neanderthal skeletons have been found in Sub-Saharan Africa.

even a caveman could do her!

If (big if) viable offspring could have been produced.

I think the idea that all contact between Neanderthals and modern humans had to be violent is more due to the cultural conditioning of the anthropologists, archaeologists and TV presenters. One of those things that tells me more about the person making the supposition than it does about historical reality.

Today there are people who dislike and fear anything different and people who are fascinated by it. People who love to meet and "experience" other cultures... and I ain't talking about the food and the architecture. Why would our ancestors have been any different?