Finally – my very own race card!
Among the tale the genes tell: A few anatomically modern humans mated with Neanderthals, likely in North Africa or the Middle East as modern humans initially were moving out of Africa, the researchers say.
The team came to that conclusion after comparing the Neanderthal genome with those of five humans today: one each from Europe, Asia, and Papua New Guinea, and two from different regions of sub-Saharan Africa. They found that from 1 to 4 percent of the DNA in the genomes of people from Eurasia and the southwestern Pacific were inherited from Neanderthals. Neanderthal-derived genes failed to show up in the African genomes.
The results overturn what Dr. Pääbo calls the “hard out-of-Africa hypothesis” in which a small group of anatomically modern humans migrates from Africa “and replaced everyone else in the world without any admixture.” It’s entirely possible that African genomes also contain some other form of what Pääbo dubs “caveman biology” from more archaic hominins. “We just don’t know that yet,” he says.
But surely that tiny bit of Neandertal DNA is so low as to be irrelevant?
In the human brain, there is a set of three genes that generate more than 3,000 different genetic messages and these messages control how your neurons are wired together, he said. “That enables you to think and learn and all the wonderful things we like to do as humans.”
Before you comment, my dear leftie friends, let me remind you that in “knuckledragger”, the “k” is silent.
So Kate is a “Canuckle-dragger”.
And when did you give up bi-pedalism?
Further, where are our cave painting kits so we can make cool coloured postings on the “Intercave”?
Cheers
Hans-Christian Georg Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North”
Perhaps Jefferson, Adams and Lincoln were misinformed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_men_are_created_equal
Is there any good that can come from research that may show regional/ethnic predisposition to “caveman biology”???
ET
Where are you?
There is the theory that Neanderthals were of higher
intelligence than H. sapiens, by a little, and that
we outbred them.
Certainly the few people I know or know of who
seem from their appearances to have rather more
Neanderthal in them than most, are of superior
intelligence, as well as possessed of long arms.
I took the results Kate mentions to show there’s -very- little difference among populations in the modern world. 100 genes different between Neanderthal and modern man is a small (but telling, obviously) difference.
How many genes different between a sub-Saharan African and a North American Indian? Which ones? What doe they control? Nobody knows that.
My point here is that even between Neanderthal and Human the intellectual capacity difference is not -enormous-, they did interbreed and the kids got along in life well enough to pass the genes along, right? Therefore, I speculate the genetic predetermination of mental prowess is probably very small indeed. Making genetic differences between present human populations essentially moot with respect to determining a population’s mental capacity. Or even admitting that a population can be said to have a collective “mental capacity”.
Aka, there is no “smart” gene and no “dumbass” gene to explain why “those people” suck in school. Too bad, a functional dumbass gene would explain Lefties.
This reminds me … I need to buy a new pair of genes.
Well, at least it explains my affinity for sticks and stones.
Now, what percentage of the NDNA do I need to qualify for one of these “special consideration will be given to applicants from visble minorities” government jobs?
dwo said: “Is there any good that can come from research that may show regional/ethnic predisposition to “caveman biology”???”
Is there any good to come out of sticking one’s head in the sand and pretending it isn’t there?
“All men are created equal in the eyes of the law” is an appropriate organizing principle for the -government- of a free country, where the individual is sovereign. It is not a statement of reality or a wish that one might hope could some day come to pass.
People are -not- equal, obviously. Some are bigger than others, some smarter, some meaner, whatever. This fact says nothing about the utility of -assuming- equality before the law. Assumption of equality solves a lot more problems than the “special deal” multi-culti freak show we’ve been inflicted with these last thirty years.
“ET
Where are you?”
Home?
Actually this should be a blunt reminder of how close, genetically at least, we are to chimpanzees.
That cave in Croatia, if I recall correctly, yielded an important find…which ended the assumption that Neanderthal lacked a spoken language. Neanderthal skeletons with that fragile little hyoid bone…..vocal cords….
Yeah I too have concluded that Neanderthals are not really extinct…..
It is reasonable to speculate that Cro-Magnon is to a point a Human/Neanderthal Hybred. This Hybred vigour would explain why Cro-Magnon successfully occupied the rest of the world. A genetic advantage over the Sub-Sahara genome….perhaps an uncomfortable/inconvenient truth…..
This a political mine-field…..
Does this mean that Neanderthals had small penises?
Apropos of not much, it is interesting to find the
Neandertal on Google Maps and satellite. I suspect
the name is somewhat ironic – it is a small gorge,
which earned its present name because Joachim
Neander (originally Neumann) liked to ponder his
sermons there.
I saw a neanderthal eating a burger the other day.
Swear to god, the man looked the part of every modern illustration of one I’ve ever seen.
Aside from the clothes and stuff.
His wife or sister was of the same clothe too.
any lefties out there who have read robert j. sawyer’s hominids series?? about an alternate world where neanderthals live in lefty heaven?
Just let me be myself…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqnWNMsWdqM
Syncro
The Neanderthals are still with us. They hang out in Mosques.
“A few anatomically modern humans mated with Neanderthals…”
The researchers now believe that beer-goggles have been around some forty thousand years longer than was previously thought.
Phantom – in the face of this additional evidenc, that bit about
“I speculate the genetic predetermination of mental prowess is probably very small indeed. Making genetic differences between present human populations essentially moot with respect to determining a population’s mental capacity.”
sounds evon mor like speculation and wishful thinking – not supported by the observed results in the field.
IQ test results show differences between populations. Now the human genome shows differences between populations and even shows a source of the differences.
How long can one stick to wishful thinking when faced with facts to the contrary?
What’s the ‘ET’ call about? Whew, I’ve been gardening; quite the task.
So, what’s the point of this research – of a sample base of FIVE (5)? That non-Africans have more Neanderthal genetic factors? So? We still haven’t fully defined the Neanderthals – and the textbooks are speculation not fact.
What is interesting is the cognitive nature of these different species – Neanderthal and Homo Sapiens. As I’ve said, our cognition enables us to develop a non-genetic socially learned and stored knowledge base. No other species does this.
As Phantom points out,
” I speculate the genetic predetermination of mental prowess is probably very small indeed. Making genetic differences between present human populations essentially moot with respect to determining a population’s mental capacity. Or even admitting that a population can be said to have a collective “mental capacity”.
That’s what’s interesting – the human capacity to think. Thinking is an individual action; while knowledge is a group-based action. That means that even if the individual is trapped in a group embedded in dogma, that individual has the capacity to escape the dogma and think critically.
Oh, this is just a whole pile of BS. Perhaps some “scientists” just made up this crap to get attention.
Further, this, to me, actually helps to diminish Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, and would tend to point a bit more towards crossbreeding-between-hominids leading to what they’d call “evolution”.
Other than that… WHO CARES, ANYWAY? So what? Of what consequence is this?
I don’t see the point of paying “scientists” to look into such irrelevant things… I think the money’d be better spent studying Leftist Mental Disorder to hopefully, one day, discover a treatment…
Let’s add the caveats, shall we?
First, this is a popularization of a conference presentation – not exactly proper peer review. The researchers have yet to publish their results.
Second, the “true story” is appears somewhat different, as the source Nature News article reports:
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100420/full/news.2010.194.html
The relevant information:
“The researchers …stud[ied] genetic data from 1,983 individuals from 99 populations in Africa, Europe, Asia, Oceania and the Americas. … analyzed 614 microsatellite positions, … created an evolutionary tree to explain the observed genetic variation …. best way to explain that variation was if there were two periods of interbreeding between humans and an archaic species….Using projected rates of genetic mutation and data from the fossil record, the researchers suggest that the interbreeding happened about 60,000 years ago in the eastern Mediterranean and, more recently, about 45,000 years ago in eastern Asia.”
So, the more likely explanation is two population bottleneck events.
However, must raise grant dollars somehow, eh?
(Disclosure: I also chase grant dollars)
Hmm. Funny how ET and I were having similar thoughts at the same time… weird, eh! I, too, am thinking that it’s “scientists” engaging in speculation. After all, a lot of “scientific fact” is founded on speculation based on observation. Speculation based on observation isn’t “fact”, really, and we know this from seeing for ourselves the debunking of the IPCC “scientists'” “sound science”.
subversible, I’ll make it worse.
In a talk he gave to the SF lit club at my alma mater, Sawyer said explicitly that he conceived of the peaceful, bisexual, hippy-dippy Neanderthals as “idealized Canadians” and the violent, xenophobic, intolerant humans as “idealized Americans”.
Oh, yes, and the reason he had the Catholic female protagonist raped at the beginning of the first book was to provide a compelling reason why she wouldn’t just hop into bed with the Neanderthal scientist at the first opportunity. Because, apparently, being an observant Catholic and an entirely different species wasn’t enough.
The study of anthropology, I’ve found, tells you a lot more about anthropologists than anything else.
I have come around to the view that the ape evolved from the leftist university student around 1972.
This is so very, very cool!
I think, furthermore, that this speculation by these researchers is about as beneficial and consequentially dangerous as the speculation by Nazi “scientists” who uttered the nonsense about “Aryan Master Race”, which gave the Reich political thinkers an invalid basis upon which to push their evil eugenics agenda.
I think that such speculation as this is dangerous and is best being strongly discouraged. I see no need whatsoever, no benefit at all to humanity, to engage in such research. Perhaps it should be discouraged to use, especially, taxpayer dollars for the purpose of financing such “research”, given the precedented consequences of the speculation emerging therefrom.
Cooking made humans more intelligent and sociable. Discuss.
http://www.neatorama.com/2010/05/05/anthropologist-cooking-made-humans-more-intelligent-sociable/
I have come around to the view that the ape evolved from the leftist university student around 1972.
Posted by: Peter O’Donnell at May 7, 2010 3:49 PM
Oh, thank goodness… this means that I’m not an ape with roots as a leftist university student in 1972, ’cause I was, at the time, already conceived in the preceding year. Unfortunately, everyone younger than I, well, sorry, but “scientists” are going to be receiving money to speculate that you’re a bunch of monkeys who evolved from a bunch of brainwashed hippies…
So ET and Canadian Sentinel, what makes a conclusion or a finding that agrees with your world view a fact and what makes a conclusion or a finding that does not agree with your world view a speculation?
Are you suggesting that the world as we know it is an illusion and that nothing is real?
“I speculate the genetic predetermination of mental prowess is probably very small indeed. Making genetic differences between present human populations essentially moot with respect to determining a population’s mental capacity.”
Humans share 99% of their DNA with mice. It’s hard to tell the difference with the naked human eye.
The Pumpkin Genome is 75% similar to Human.
This, like most studies, was about the grant money and not much else.
This is what people who have a lot of education, but no marketable skills in the real world, do.
When the grants dry up, the memoir writing begins, but may never be finished.
If I remember correctly, the Neanderthals flourished in cold, harsh conditions. So this is good new because it will make it easier for some humans to survive the next ice-age. The rest will have to huddle around ancient windtower ruins and pray to Aeolus.
Osumashi Kinyobe – there’s recent related work out there saying that we are an unusual carnivore in that we have a small mouth – so cooking was important for us to get maximal nutritional extraction (same take on the different point).
Now, not to get everyone all weirded out, but surely there must be brain variations in different parts of earth, just as there are physical variations. Neural circuitry is poorly understood. Savants and those with synesthesia are expanding our understanding of the mind.
There is tremendous biological/physical variation that goes beyond phenotype in humans. For example, Kenya’s Rift Valley has produced most of the world’s great marathon runners. I’m sure if you took height and age matched Russians or Japanese or Norwegians they could never compete with these men.
We know very little about the heriditary aspects of neural wiring. James Burke makes the great point that some humans are far more curious than others. I think that exploration of this field would be very interesting.
I don’t believe it. See one of these Ape men stories every month, & every time its the big breakthrough. With every one eventually proved a hoax, or just another Monkey. Besides the Bible talks about genetic pollution by the Fallen Angles.
Hence flood, than the purging of Canaan by Israel to rid the Planet of the danger of complete breakdown, like before the flood of human viability as a species. The Bible says they where before the flood & After. David fought one with 4 other brothers. The Angles that participated where told where put in a hell as far as the other one, in darkness & chains.
So what else is there to do on a cold winter night ?. Seriously, the dogma that there was NO intermixing has been around for a while and I am glad that the smug certainty of my Biology lecturer has been punctured.
I think they should check the Basque people in Spain. Where did they come from anyway?
tim in vermont – the Basques are the remnants of a pre-Indo-European population; very interesting, but hardly Neanderthals.
So…does this explain the origins of hairy backs?
Are muzzies pre-neanderthal? politicians?
I met piles of people definitely caveman/girl types without much doubt and not a problem atall. But put a bunch of controlfreaks together and you can see easily the divergent strain that can drag us down.
For those of you who have been drawn into the trap!
The article stems from the Christian Science Monitor….. have you EVER read the CSM?
EVER??
Good one Kate.
Erik Larsen, even our bodies now tell vegans that we were made to digest meat. The article I alluded to suggests we prepared it nicely.
Harry points out; “The Pumpkin Genome is 75% similar to Human.”
I’LL be the judge of melons…;)
Hey, with my neat new DNA I’m going to start acting like the permanently offended cavemen in those Geico adds – um, except, of course, for that whole voicemail message at Freedomworks thing.
I think Obama is the missing link, explains his lack of a birth certificate. Just read the comments at the Grope and Fail about Tabers last attempt at urnialism, these are hilarious, must be a big overtime bill every month for Grope employees to take extra time to send in comments, no one else on this earth could be stupid enough to write this stuff, ah wait, Toronto people are that stupid.
bartinsky, I think Obama is the missing link, explains his lack of a birth certificate.
I’ve had enough, time to club my wife and go to bed: even a cave man can do it.
I guess this explains why us white guys can’t jump!
Orlin, don’t do it!
Osumashi Kinyobe
I learned that over 40 years back in Ag School—nutrician….
Humans require 3-4 specific amino acids that are difficult and possibly impossible to obtain from non animal sources. However 1 egg or a glass of milk each day does the trick.
Anyone claiming to be a complete/total vegan is lying or has adopted that life style less than 2-3 weeks…..
as I said yesterday. now I can stop shaving my knuckles.
hairy hands may be the European Fro.