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ORIGINAL: Musicmystery
But the article points out that, using Neanderthal DNA, we found it in homo sapiens. It does not discuss looking for homo sapiens DNA in Neanderthal, which, presumably, would be quite a challenge.

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ORIGINAL: LadyAngelika
Now I'm not a genetic scientist by any stretch of the word, but what I'm wondering is, if the Neanderthals gene was so strong that it flowed towards humans but stayed unaffected in the reverse, how did it die out? They seemed like a pretty resourceful bunch!

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ORIGINAL: A Draft Sequence of the Neandertal Genome
It has been shown that when a colonizing population (such as anatomically modern humans) encounters a resident population (such as Neandertals), even a small number of breeding events along the wave front of expansion into new territory can result in substantial introduction of genes into the colonizing population as introduced alleles can "surf" to high frequency as the population expands. As a consequence, detectable gene flow is predicted to almost always be from the resident population into the colonizing population, even if gene flow also occurred in the other direction (83). Another prediction of such a surfing model is that even a very small number of events of interbreeding can result in appreciable allele frequencies of Neandertal alleles in the present-day populations. Thus, the actual amount of interbreeding between Neandertals and modern humans may have been very limited, given that it contributed only 1 to 4% of the genome of present-day non-Africans.

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ORIGINAL: LadyAngelika

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Asked if the findings show differences between Africans and non-Africans, Paabo replied that people who want to present data in some sort of racist perspective would find a way to do so. He said, one way to look at this data could be to say people outside Africa are more primitive, while another way could be to say there is something beneficial about being part Neanderthal.

So that is why they focussed half their article on this minor issue that has been criticized [due] to lack of sampling? This could be misconstrued as a hidden agenda on behalf of the individual reporting the news. Either that, or it's just sensationalism rearing it's ugly head.

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ORIGINAL: Icarys

How much of this is actually proven with hard scientific facts outside of bones, tools and dna?

I'm legitimately curious here

~George

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ORIGINAL: Sanity


Awesome post Caius, and I thank you for your expert contribution to the thread. In my defense of the predation neanderthal post I noted that the theory is "way out there" and so I thought that was understood.

That the interbreeding was brutish, of course it was and I can't understand why anyone would assume differently...

Thomas

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Well, those really are the big three categories. Or rather, more broadly, remains, artifacts and genetics are. There are additional methods for contextualizing all of this information, such as carbon dating or, let's take for example, coprolite (basically a fossilized stool) which, depending on how far back you are trying to look, can be used to determine the veracity of things like the claims of cannibalism in the present story theory. When looking at the evolutionary history of a species there's often really very little else to work with that their genetics and the fossil record but each of those pools of resources contains many sub-disciplines that can feed us, piece by piece, a fairly clear picture. Bones alone tell us so much the physiology, health, diet, injuries/lifestyle risks, species contemporaries, and environments of the animal that left them behind. Applying this science to practical human needs is pretty much the only reason real academics keep anthropologists around. :D Adding in the remains of tools, structures and other hallmarks of human engineering, even of the most rudimentary sort, opens up a whole new toolkit, no pun intended, that we don't have for any other species.

So it's not just self-obsession that has provided such detail to our excavated past, we are lucky in that the way that we have lived since becoming the species we basically are today has left behind just masses of evidence. And then there's arguably the most important factor: context. When you're able to develop a theory that conforms closely to something that was previously predicted or unearth a fact that coincidentally happens to explain something else that was previously a mystery, it helps establish a framework for meeting the burden of proof. Connecting these mutual underpinnings of theory is the only way to apply the empirical process to truly mammoth tasks like the one in question. It's like a puzzle -- putting a piece in a perfectly shaped location is good, but it certainly doesn't hurt if it's also the exact right color. I hope that makes sense without sounding overly basic and condescending. What I mean to express is that the three afore-mentioned fields, their sub-disciplines and their methods really do add up to an awful lot of facts, facts which are found to agree with each-other with telling regularity.

Now mind you, this doesn't mean we don't have huge gaping holes. For example, we don't even know for sure how exactly humanity and neanderthals were related, aside from their occasional interbreeding. Which came first, who the common ancestor is, how much of the modern human was fully formed when Neanderthals came on the scene...this is all highly contentious stuff still. But as for the issue concerning the competitive edge Cro-Magnon man had over his Neanderthal cousin, we can say with some certainty that Homo sapiens was the Cassius Clay to the Neanderthal's Sonny Liston; Neanderthals had the muscle, but they were out-moved, out-thought, and out-fought at every turn.

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Actually, the authors did look for gene flow in the other direction but found no evidence for it in the DNA they sequenced. Specifically, they note "all or almost all of the gene flow detected was from Neandertals into modern humans." Given the location and date of the specimens, that's not particularly surprising; the fact it wasn't detected doesn't necessarily mean it didn't happen, though. In fact, the authors explicitly state: "It is important to note that although we detect a signal compatible with gene flow from Neandertals into ancestors of present-day humans outside Africa, this does not show that other forms of gene flow did not occur."

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ORIGINAL: Icarys

My name isn't George BTW..it was a little joke..so much of my humor is missed :>

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ORIGINAL: Caius

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ORIGINAL: Icarys

My name isn't George BTW..it was a little joke..so much of my humor is missed :>

Ah, I get it.  Because you're the curious type?

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ORIGINAL: calamitysandra

Just a quick addendum to Jens great explanation of some of th theories.

Homo was the genus the Neandertaler belonged to, not Homo Sapiens. The version Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis is outdated. It stems from the early estimation, that the Neandertaler was only a subspecies of Homo Sapiens.
Today we suppose that Homo Neanderthalensis and Homo Sapiens are two different species, both descendant from Homo Erectus.


Edit to add:

If you ever find yourself in Germany, somewhat in the vicinity of Cologne or Düsseldorf, a visit to the Neanderthal Museum and the real actual Neanderthal, is quite worth it.

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ORIGINAL: BoiJen

It's theorized that Homo sapien sapien (modern man) and Homo spaien neanderthalensis (neanderthal) shared at least a little bit of space. Their sex organs were basically the same in shape and function so breeding was theoretically possible. What likely killed the neanderthals out was viral infections introduced to them by modern man, who had a different immune system than neanderthals. The genetic compatibility between the two species of homo sapiens has been a question that's been researched and unanswered for a while...until this report is my guess.

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ORIGINAL: BoiJen

Neanderthals were tribal as was man. They could not, however, communicate with one another verbally because of how the muscles and bones in their throats and noses were formed differently. Neanderthals were unable to make vowel sounds at all so the monkey like "ooo...ooo!" was physically impossible for Neanderthals to make. Communication between the two species of man had to be in physical action or writing/drawing of some kind. Modern man was more aggressive in nature and had a larger frontal lobe than Neanderthal man as well. Meaning Modern man's ability to form tools, use them more effectively, and over all adapt was more developed than that of Neanderthals.

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ORIGINAL: BoiJen

Finally, despite Sanity's personal view of history, a great deal of historical evidence from all of Neanderthal history that can be found and the majority of early modern man history points toward a matriarchal structure. Most anthropologists attribute this to the female's ability to give birth and the lack of fundamental medical understanding of the process of sex, pregnancy and labor that comes with not knowing anything about their own medical abilities. Basically, early modern man and Neanderthals both were amazed that the females could make more of the species.

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ORIGINAL: BoiJen

And if anyone thinks that genes get bred out because of who's on top during sex, you simple have no basic understanding of how genetics works. I only have high school to go off in terms of genetics and I know better than that.

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ORIGINAL: BoiJen

I got all of this from watching too much Discovery channels and being a crazy internet link clicker with access to scholarly databases. Start with Discovery, research their sources...go from there and you'll end up where I'm at right now....with a bunch of relatively useless information floating around in your brain.

boi

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ORIGINAL: Musicmystery


So go back to your war and rape fantasies. I'm still more interested in the genetics.

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ORIGINAL: Sanity

You're giving out very mixed messages Caius.

Here you wrote, "That interbreeding probably took place was assumed, and for the present purposes we'll say now confirmed and that was probably a very brutish affair, even by prehistoric standards."

Here you wrote, "...there seems to be something of a subtle implication, at least in the way the popular media resource was handling the story, that we inherited rape (almost half-culturally and half-genetically) from this bitter theorized struggle with Neanderthals. But many of our closest surviving relatives amongst primates rape, as do in fact a strong portion of complex animals, so there's no reason to believe it hasn't been with us from the beginning. "

Here you wrote, "...I'm sorry but "we with the penises were all so amazed by the same biological process we saw taking place in the natural world all around us that we decided to hand over all the authority we had so violently defended for the entirety of the history of our genus" just doesn't sell it to me...

...all empirical evidence suggest a scenario in which we inherited a social structure organized around competitive males, one of whom was typical dominant over the whole group evolving slowly into more monogamous pairings by early modern man but still favoring men in leadership roles through simple brute violence...

And now with your latest post you seem to be trying to distance yourself from all of that.

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ORIGINAL: Sanity
Looks as though actual scientists have what you so disparaging described as "war and rape fantasies"  Tim.

Leaves you looking a bit "willfully ignorant" doesn't it.

That, or just plain ignorant...

Or, as I've mentioned before, just a troll.

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ORIGINAL: Musicmystery
So go back to your war and rape fantasies. I'm still more interested in the genetics.