Science
Related: About this forumFirst Love Child of Human, Neanderthal Found
MAR 27, 2013
The skeletal remains of an individual living in northern Italy 40,000-30,000 years ago are believed to be that of a human/Neanderthal hybrid, according to a paper in PLoS ONE.
If further analysis proves the theory correct, the remains belonged to the first known such hybrid, providing direct evidence that humans and Neanderthals interbred. Prior genetic research determined the DNA of people with European and Asian ancestry is 1 to 4 percent Neanderthal.
The present study focuses on the individuals jaw, which was unearthed at a rock-shelter called Riparo di Mezzena in the Monti Lessini region of Italy. Both Neanderthals and modern humans inhabited Europe at the time.
From the morphology of the lower jaw, the face of the Mezzena individual would have looked somehow intermediate between classic Neanderthals, who had a rather receding lower jaw (no chin), and the modern humans, who present a projecting lower jaw with a strongly developed chin, co-author Silvana Condemi, an anthropologist, told Discovery News.
http://news.discovery.com/human/evolution/neanderthal-skeleton-provides-evidence-of-interbreeding-with-humans-130327.htm
MADem
(135,425 posts)dipsydoodle
(42,239 posts)freshwest
(53,661 posts)Loudly
(2,436 posts)How does a branch of uprights become genetically isolated from, and then abruptly re-encountered by, another branch?
Why isn't there interbreeding all along the way so as to make such a Stanley meets Livingston moment moot and indiscernible?
Methinks someone is trying to pull off another Piltdown.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piltdown_Man
quaker bill
(8,231 posts)Genetic drift might well have been infrequent and constricted to fairly small ranges. There could also have been social barriers, hard to fathom, but possible. Distance could serve as a physical barrier, as well as terrain over that distance. I would guess that any terrain that offered little opportunity for hunting or gathering for a distance would have been close to impenetrable.
Loudly
(2,436 posts)What would my peeps think of me.
iemitsu
(3,888 posts)the couple who bore this child weren't married? The headline suggests there was something "naughty" about the union.
roguevalley
(40,656 posts)they were discovered by scientists in the mid 1800's who wanted to prove that humankind came from Europe not 'Darkest' Africa. They were SEVERELY racist and when they displayed the bones, they mismounted them. The 43 or so year old specimen was missing part of an arm to injury, was deeply hurt and had arthritis. they hung him up stupidly, dressed him in skins without a thought that -70 weather would require, oh say PANTS AND SLEEVES! they made them look stupid because Neanderthals were inconvenient to their racist narrative. Consider this man's age and condition. He was cared for by his family and clan and lived an ungodly age for his time. That means they had values, character and love.
They were however a great deal to us and our current genetics. THey are being scoped out by the DNA people as the root of our immune system. Without their genetic cross breeding with us, we would be in trouble. The average european human has neanderthal DNA in their makeup. It is a fact that they did live together and propagate together because how the hell else would it get there?
They had language because they had a hyoid bone and their activities would require speech together. To assume it was rudimentary speech when their physique for speaking is not different from ours is stupid and bigoted. They hunted big fauna so they had strategies, could speak in delineated language together and were organized. Almost every skeleton found and there aren't many have broken bones because of hunting big fauna. They were smart. Their brains were bigger than our own by a lot and they probably carried their culture in their heads.
The fact that there isn't much material culture to be found could be accounted for the fact of sea rise because they lived in the north where most of the water was in glaciers. They were brilliant at living in the harshest climate in the world and did so for hundreds of thousands of years.
The first evidence that any human species thought about the world beyond their own lives comes from them. They have the oldest burials and in some of the graves they find pollen suggesting that they buried their dead with tenderness and regret. They have music because they've found flutes. If they put their thinking and thought on skins like American indians that would be lost to the elements. Because that might be so, people believe they had no culture. How can they live together for hundreds of thousands of years and have no culture?!
If you believe they were half naked shambling idiots who walked around in sub zero weather with bare arms and legs, had no language and no regard for much then you perpetuate the racist stereotypes that the discoverers created in their zeal to make humankind European rather than 'subhuman beings' from Africa. They couldn't stand Neanderthal because he was US and he was inconvenient to their theories of the superiority of the white man. This thinking continues even among scientists to this day. The bar for proving neaderthal theories is gigantically high and even in the most modern depictions, they still have them staggering around ugly, unkept and wearing nothing on their arms and legs even in freezing weather. Contrast that with the moment when they first see modern humans -you and me- and the moderns are wearing sewn clothes with adornments and hair styles that make sense because OBVIOUSLY they are our forerunners and they had to be, right?
I live an arctic life here in Alaska. They would have DIED if they were living that way. They were good people because they were us, our beginnings too and I honor all of my ancestors. I OWE them. They deserve respect and because a lot of us have ancestry from them, love. I love them because they were survivors, lived their lives in a world so harsh that very little survived as well and they live on in me and many others.
Fuck the racists that made them a joke. They aren't. Check the new research on them. You will be amazed at how great a people they were.
iemitsu
(3,888 posts)were needs to be revised.
Modern scholarship, archaeological artifacts, the DNA information all point to a much more dynamic character, than the brutish model we have had planted in our imaginations.
I suspect that, just as with other mammals, humans with mixed backgrounds were the stronger and better adapted folk.
Loudly
(2,436 posts)Ichingcarpenter
(36,988 posts)will reveal if its either a pittdown composition or a hybrid.
The picture we have so far is that the Neanderthals are sort of opportunistic, good at hunting middle- to large-sized mammals. They have a territory in which they probably go through a cycle of habitation in different places, basically when one place is exhausted they move to another one. What we don't see with Neanderthals is long-distance exchanges with other groups. What we see with modern humans in the same areas is different. For example, we find shells in Germany coming from the Mediterranean or from the French Atlantic Coast. It means there was a network of people. So, the question is, what kind of relationship did a Neanderthal have with his brother-in-law? Humans did not just live with their families and their neighbors, but they knew they had a brother-in-law in another village, and that beyond the mountain there is the family of their mother, or uncle, or something like that. There is a large network of groups that, if necessary, could help each other. I think this is where we would like to go to find differences between Neanderthals and modern humans
Newly analyzed remains suggest that a modern human killed a Neanderthal man in what is now Iraq between 50,000 and 75,000 years ago.
The projectile weapon is the key since it was never used by the Neanderthals.
http://www.livescience.com/7794-human-stabbed-neanderthal-evidence-suggests.html
I await the DNA tests of the bones to verify the claim of a hybrid but it will be interesting to see the results
since we still don't really know of our interactions and its in controversy in the last couple of years.
eShirl
(18,709 posts)Riddle me THAT.
tclambert
(11,122 posts)from those lustful Neandertal men.
Warpy
(112,950 posts)since our species is not only characterized by wandering, it's also hypersexual and interested in trading anything and everything with other groups.
Recent Neanderthal forensic reconstructions have shown people who were a little funny looking, but they were people and wouldn't be stared at on the subway at rush hour. Likely our remote ancestors off on a walkabout would be even less fussy about their appearance than we are.
Bob and Pete (both homo antecessors) are sitting down on a northern African plain one afternoon, about 1.6 million'ish years ago. Pete stands up and says "F*#k you Bob!", and walks off away from the setting sun with his wife. Pete hated Bob so much he walked to France over land from eastern Africa. Bob died and his family was so upset so they waited for few 10's of thousands of years to go looking for Pete, but now glaciation and the more modern day Mediterranean Sea is in their way... "Damn it!" Bob's family yells. "That piece of sh&t still owes us 8 bucks."
Bob's family had to wait for the last glacial period to end before they could head up to France and collect the 8 bucks. When they finally got there they were so pissed some slept with Pete's great great, great, etc... grandson's wives.
Fin
ReRe
(10,653 posts)Is this the missing link? The difference between Democrats and Republicans? Hmmmm?
Warpy
(112,950 posts)so I'd expect Republicans to have missed a lot of the genes they gave to the rest of us.
jybarz
(34 posts)Just said it.
eShirl
(18,709 posts)from Clan of the Cavebear (a.k.a. "enclave of the bear clan"
libodem
(19,288 posts)I poured through those wordy mf'ers and then never found the last book. Oh, the sedge grass....
The Wizard
(12,772 posts)Senator Ted Cruz.
AverageJoe90
(10,745 posts)LMAO.