Startling Proof that Neanderthals and Modern Humans Interbred!

[~Elizabeth~]

Touche. ditto. (Having a neandertal moment). Although, the dna would be among Africans too, if genetic Eve was implicated.

regards,

Hmm. Okay, then I give up.
Maybe there were two Eves. Maybe Lilith and Eve were sisters. Maybe Adam and Lilith had kids?
I read (wikipedia) that Adam and Lilith were created at the same time, were equal, but Adam wanted Lilith to be subservient to him, but she said no because they were equals. So she left Eden. Then God created Eve from Adam's rib.

[bob_chasm]

Reread what I wrote and look for the word "daughters".


Today is Mother's Day. Happy Mother's Day.

And the Neanderthal ydna died out by daughtering-out or Adam's descendants killed the Neanderthal men (sort of like colonialism in the Americas, but more extreme).

Touche. ditto. (Having a neandertal moment). Although, the dna would be among Africans too, if genetic Eve was implicated.

regards,

[Krootie]

Daughters??? Women are left out of history - more so back then. Anyone know the name of Noah's wife?? Can you imagine what her life was like!

I keep wondering what she cooked for meals.

[~Elizabeth~]

Hi Liz, I am thinkin, if Eve had a Neandertal second husband, then in addition to Adam's DNA, the Neandertal, second husband's Y DNA would be among us all too, but it isn't

regards,

Reread what I wrote and look for the word "daughters".
If the biblical Eve is our mtdna Eve, she must have had daughters, but Adam and Eve only had sons with each other. So she must have had another boyfriend/spouse and they had daughters.

Today is Mother's Day. Happy Mother's Day.

And the Neanderthal ydna died out by daughtering-out or Adam's descendants killed the Neanderthal men (sort of like colonialism in the Americas, but more extreme).

[bob_chasm]

maybe Eve had a second husband (after Adam died) and he was a Neanderthal, and they had daughters who passed on Eve's human mtdna.

Elizabeth

Hi Liz, I am thinkin, if Eve had a Neandertal second husband, then in addition to Adam's DNA, the Neandertal, second husband's Y DNA would be among us all too, but it isn't

regards,

[Kaiser]

Bearing all of this in mind, within the post-contact Eurasian population, most of the more advanced African characteristics were retained; the only Neanderthal traits that had a chance were those that were superficial & didn't compromise the carriers chances of being successful in a modern population (ie, natural selection discarded the more brutish traits).

Could it possibly mean that combined traits like receding forehead and small/missing chin and heavy brow and red hair in a modern population could hint at something Neanderthal?

Would the last refuge of the Neanderthals ie, Gibraltar, be a good candidate for hunting these traits in a modern population, assuming that Neanderthal-ModernHuman contacts lasted as late as 28,000 years ago?

[Kaiser]

Finally, I was thinking, this would mean, the only pure modern humans (unadulterated by "savage" neandertals) are modern day Africans (and I dont mean African Americans).

Quite logical. White supremacists would be squirming!

[~Elizabeth~]

The Neanderthal genome is only 60% completed. And that was compared to the genome of FIVE individuals. I wouldn't be surprised if some people are over 10% Neanderthal. My guess is that long distance runners and cyclists have the least amount of Neanderthal genes. And I think the highest amount would be found in discus throwers and heavyweight weightlifters. That assumption based on body type.
Maybe my height (shy of 5') comes from Neanderthal genes?

[~Elizabeth~]

If Adam and Eve were the modern humans, whose sons married Neanderthal women, maybe Eve had a second husband (after Adam died) and he was a Neanderthal, and they had daughters who passed on Eve's human mtdna.

Or, the biblical Adam and Eve were Neanderthals, since life supposedly started in the Levant. And their sons married humans. And Eve later married with a human/homo sapiens and they had kids. If it says that "the sons of Adam" married Nephilim (maybe the Nephilim were Neanderthals or humans), and not "of Adam and Eve", then maybe Eve had a second or third marriage that wasn't documented/recorded. I heard that in the original Jewish bible, Adam's first wife was Lilith. Eve was a second wife. But there is no mention of Lilith in the Christian version.
Regards,

Elizabeth

[T E Peterman]

Bob,

We agree that it was most likely Neanderthal men & modern women who produced children. Over the previous say million years (right up to say 30,000 BC), the Old World population was broadly divided into three (or more) distinct populations:

1. Africa (the primary source of modern humans)

2. Western Eurasia (the source of Neanderthals)

3. Eastern Eurasia (H. erectus: Peking Man, Java Man, etc.)

The African & western Eurasian hominids were presumably descended from H. heidelbergensis (aka Heidelberg Man) & DNA comparisons between Neanderthal remains & moderns suggest a common ancestor about 700,000 years ago. The African & western Eurasian populations experienced rather different development paths.

Over the last million years, the African climate kept switching from tropical to arid, perhaps in conjunction with the Ice Ages. The human population in Africa is believed to have had a number of near extinction experiences; a series of repeated population bottlenecks. As the population declined, natural selection discarded most of the gene pool, with the surviving genes amplified on the rebound; the African population was more likely to have evolved. This happened over & over.

The proto-Neanderthal population is thought to have broken into a number of isolated populations early on, with many branches that survived to the time of contact with the African population. Some of the isolated branches may have experienced bottlenecks, but the Neanderthal population as a whole didn't.

The differences between the Neanderthal skeleton & that of the modern human are significant; enough that a trained paleoanthropologist or taxonomist can easily tell which is which. Some suspect that Neanderthals were red-headed (I read this a few years ago). Neanderthals may have had a fair complexion. They were a lot more robust than African populations (protruding brows, not much of a chin). Neanderthals may have been hairier than Africans. Modern Europeans are slightly more robust than Africans & are a bit hairier. The moderns from Africa are thought to have been capable of speech; Neanderthals were probably in a condition of proto-speech at best & may have had some difficulty with linguistic displacement.

Bearing all of this in mind, within the post-contact Eurasian population, most of the more advanced African characteristics were retained; the only Neanderthal traits that had a chance were those that were superficial & didn't compromise the carriers chances of being successful in a modern population (ie, natural selection discarded the more brutish traits).

There remains the question of how many Neanderthal-modern couplings actually occurred. Considering the nature of the Neanderthal population, this might be easier to determine than some might expect. If the Neanderthal portions of modern DNA all suggest a MRCA from the same time period, this would suggest only one coupling. If some Neanderthal alleles suggest a MRCA that lived say 70,000 years ago & other Neanderthal alleles suggest a MRCA that lived 70,000 years ago, but the two alleles themselves suggest a MRCA that lived say 150,000 years ago, we would definitely have proof of multiple couplings.

Timothy Peterman

[bob_chasm]

Neanderthals were presumably stronger & more robust than the gracile moderns. So, it was probably Neanderthal men mating with modern women. Depending on when this happened, the moderns may have had better weapons than the Neanderthals & may very well have killed the Neanderthal males shortly after they sired the next generation. 9 months later, the babies (half Neanderthal & half modern) were no doubt lovingly raised by their mothers.

If the modern population was low enough (say 1,000 in the whole Middle East), with maybe 20 or 30 children born every year, if just one or two in that first generation were half Neanderthal, it would have left a stunning impact on the Eurasian gene pool.

Timothy Peterman

Hi Tim,

To me it seems unlikely that it was neandertal women with modern man. The offspring would have had neandertal mtdna and it would have survived in modern populations. However, if it was the other way around (neandertal man with modern woman), then the female offspring could marry into modern human populations without a trace of neandertal y or X lines.

To those asking about the bible, it does describe the children of Adam marrying nephilim.

Genesis 6:1-4
When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. Then the LORD said, "My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days will be a hundred and twenty years."

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days - and also afterward - when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.


Finally, I was thinking, this would mean, the only pure modern humans (unadulterated by "savage" neandertals) are modern day Africans (and I dont mean African Americans).

regards,

bob.

[~Elizabeth~]

I found this link on a news page about Neanderthals, it's about another archaic human species that lived at the same time and disappeared 30,000 years ago (bones found in Siberia).

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/biology_evolution/article7074975.ece

[~Elizabeth~]

A while back it was said that humans and Neanderthals couldn't have had offsping because they didn't have the same number of chromosones (or something).

Are the scientists really sure this time? No one is saying the 1% to 4% is just "noise"? When I had a dna test from one company that said I was 17% Native American, some people said it was wrong, or just noise, and said for me to look at the 'confidence intervals' (which are 9% to 25% Native American). And another test from another dna company says I have zero.

Neanderthal admixture. What about alien-human-Neanderthal hybrids also. Did the aliens wipe out the Neanderthals? Why didn't the Neanderthals live in Africa? And what about Middle Earth or fairy folk? And how does this Neanderthal news fit with the bible? Did humans learn language from the Neanderthals? What about the first people, Adam and Eve, having only sons who found wives? Were Adam and Eve and their sons from Africa and their wives from the Neanderthals in the Middle East?

[T E Peterman]

Neanderthals were presumably stronger & more robust than the gracile moderns. So, it was probably Neanderthal men mating with modern women. Depending on when this happened, the moderns may have had better weapons than the Neanderthals & may very well have killed the Neanderthal males shortly after they sired the next generation. 9 months later, the babies (half Neanderthal & half modern) were no doubt lovingly raised by their mothers.

If the modern population was low enough (say 1,000 in the whole Middle East), with maybe 20 or 30 children born every year, if just one or two in that first generation were half Neanderthal, it would have left a stunning impact on the Eurasian gene pool.

Timothy Peterman

[Kaiser]

Interestingly, the study says that just a few matings would have been enough for the 4% Neanderthal DNA material that has been traced in Human genes. Wonder how it was: Human man 'took' Neanderthal girl or the other way round, or both ways? Who knows, if these were forcible matings or consensual? Intriguing stuff.

Also, I guess, soon we'd be able to determine the percentage of Neanderthal DNA in our genes. Would be fun to tease around about the 'savage' content in ones genes.

Calls for a new Hollywood flick too!