Artist's impression of a Neanderthal hunter. New evidence suggests the Neanderthals and modern humans interbred.
Credit: American Museum of Natural History
SYDNEY: Modern humans contain a little bit of Neanderthal, according to a new theory, because the two interbred and became one species.
The theory is the latest addition to the ongoing debate about what happened to this early species of human.
In a paper published this week in the U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of European researchers report a "mosaic of modern human and archaic Neanderthal features" in 30,000 -year-old human fossils from Romania.
Co-author Erik Trinkaus from Washington University explains: "[Some] closely related species of mammals freely interbreed, produce fertile viable offspring, and blend populations." This is what appears to have happened with Neanderthals and modern humans, he says.
Shorter and stouter than modern humans, but with larger brains, Neanderthals lived in Europe, central Asia and the Middle East for about 170,000 years before disappearing between 33,000 to 24,000 years ago.
Their extinction coincided with the migration of modern humans out of Africa and across Europe. Few mysteries in the history of human ancestry have been as hotly debated as what caused the extinction of the Neanderthals.
Some scientific theories have Neanderthals dying out because they were less well-adapted to the climate changes that occurred across Europe at that time. Others cite evidence of a more brutal end, in which Neanderthals were slaughtered by modern humans.
This new study helps to settle the controversy. According to the researchers, the populations probably blended together through sexual reproduction. "Extinction through absorption is a common phenomenon," says Trinkaus.
The human remains were found in Pestera Muierii ('Cave of the Old Woman'), an elaborate cave system in Romania. First uncovered in 1952, the fossils remained poorly dated and largely ignored until recently.
Using carbon dating techniques, Trinkaus and colleagues found that the remains were 30,000 years old. Their analysis of the bones revealed diagnostic skeletal features of modern humans, including smaller eyebrow ridges, very narrow holes where the nostrils join the skull, and a shin bone that is flat on one side and concave on the other.
However the mostly human skeletons also possessed distinct Neanderthal features; features that were not present in ancestral modern humans in Africa. These include a large bulge at the back of the skull, a more prominent projection around the elbow joint, and a narrow socket at the shoulder joint.
Further analysis of one skeleton's shoulder showed that these humans did not have the full set of anatomical adaptations for throwing projectiles, such as spears, during hunting.
According to the researchers, this mixture of human and Neanderthal features suggests that a complicated reproductive scenario existed as humans and Neandertals interbred. The hypothesis that the Neanderthals were simply replaced should therefore be abandoned, they suggest.
Trinkaus says we may carry some of the genetic legacy of the Neanderthals within us. However it would be difficult to determine which of us are more closely related to the Neanderthals: "there has been 30,000 to 35,000 years of human evolution since then," he says.
Eric Von Däniken
If we are to believe this, why not also believe Daniken's hypothesis that human evolution may have been manipulated through means of genetic engineering by extraterrestrial beings?
This would mean that that humans as we know them today are a mix Humans, Neanderthals AND ETs.
Kinda cool, huh?!
Neandethals and Modern Human
If there was interbreeding, most probably it happened on the areas where neandethals lived of which many caucasians lived today. For sure, neanderthal genetic inheritance in a very remote and hot climate african place might be considered as nil. Why not select people residing on those areas and study their DNA and compare it with those DNAs found with Neanderthals, ancestral modern humans.
Let's be honest about the
Let's be honest about the political correctness of this issue.
Is'n it a sweet liberal fairytale that we are all african. Our differences are only skin deep..... one big human family.
The brute, racist-fascist, carnivorous, mammoth hunting neanderthal beeing exterminated by the smart, multicultural, vegetarian, banana harvesting african prince.
Versus the the big brained aggressive Neanderthal and Cro Magnon interbreeding. Gainig the advantages of the two types, thinner built, highly intelligent (adapted to the harsh environment of the North) and aggressive. Hinting that there maybe a genetic reason for the caucasian dominace of the world.
Very soon we will know the answere when multiple specimens of Neanderthal genome will be sequenced and our knowledge of genes and their effect on behaviour and intelligence will be known.
Hate does have a survival function
Wow! You sure are a hateful person. The fact is, humans did emerge from Africa, and the fact is, genetically, we are more alike than different. The fact is, no one is saying that those who left Africa for the rest of the world were peaceful vegetarians. The fact that you would say that speaks a great deal about you as a person and how insider/outsider, us-them dichotomy is a part of our genetic endowment and a paleolithic survival strategy that has no place on a crowded planet.
Neanderthal is a human race not a different species
Neanderthal is a human just an extinct race of a human being absorbed in other human races !
The difference between Neanderthal and other races is just minor morphological changes in forehead and cranial volume
Neanderthal is not a different species
evolionists trying to exaggerate the case!!!
no difference between Neanderthal and the average human !!
Just look at the eyebrow
Just look at the eyebrow ridges and even the chin structure of nearly a third of the travellers in the Paris metro, mostly fair-skinned. No doubt about interbreeding. Even I have the Neanderthal bump at the base of my skull. Feel around.
concubines
If they mated it would have been a male human with a female neanderthal. For a couple of reasons. First of all, it is much more likely that humans took neanderthals as concubines, and I don't think women took male neanderthal as concubines. Also, it would have been easier for a neanderthal to give birth to a neanderthal baby than a human, I'm assuming. But, I don't think they did reproduce with each other.
A little theory of minor consequence
I've been extremely interested in the concept of Neanderthals and Humans breeding recently. I started thinking on it mostly to try and explain why there seem to be a portion of our population that cannot use logic or reason to further themselves.
I wonder whether Neanderthals lacked, or were not as strongly developed in these areas and, as a subsequent result of inbreeding, passed this trait down through crossed gene pools
There has clearly been an ability for humans throughout our history to successfully apply logic, reason and introspection to increase our quality of life, however these abilities have never seemed to be something available to all human beings. I question how such an important process in the evolution of the human mind, and thus the human world, can seem to be utterly diminished in some people. Its lack of presence in some is quite clear throughout human history, right up to today. Little to no understanding of action and reaction and cognitive flexibility has led to horrible crimes throughout our history that go against the basic morals of human society - which have no less been developed by that other human beings using that same process of logic and reasoning that is missing in the perpetrators of said crimes.
This clear difference is something quite befuddling to me. I am a youth worker by trade and I see a startling inability to use these most important functions in many of the teenagers and young adults I work with. However, I also see this same problem within the adults around me in my personal life, the community around me and the reported world at large.
If it is nurture as opposed to nature, why is it that some people never learn to utilise these skills effectively? Why have people throughout history made the same mistakes repeatedly?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/07/980707073901.htm
I for one am strongly in favour of the interbreeding theory and I eagerly await the results of further scientific enquiry. If anyone has any information and further reading for me on this topic, or anything relating to my theory please send to marackuss@yahoo.com.au
Cheers,
JM
Who says Neanderthals were less able...
As a someone who has reddish hair, freckles, "strong" nose, sloping forehead, longer than normal arms and short stumpy legs under a slightly barrel chested chunky body that can not throw worth a damn or run real fast (but has no problem wearing tee shirt and shorts in the snow, even going barefoot in the snow sometimes...) and has a strong brow ridge, with high I.Q. and Oh Yeah, thick bones... I had no trouble attracting a mate with fragile modern traits like a high forehead and light bones. "Strong" built males are attractive to females...
I also have what my dad called "farmers hands". Very large hands with round / blunt fingertips that barely fit on a typewriter key. I must take care in shaking hands not to crush frail hands from India, Middle East, Asia, etc. I don't even feel it when the other guy is grimacing and starting to slump... Long arms (2 inch advantage in Golden Gloves weight class!) with big hands worked well in boxing. They also work well in computer programming with care in typing, I just can't floss worth a damn... We won't go into the fact that at 50+ years I still have my wisdom teeth other than to mention that my "modern" type wife never developed any...
I can easily see a case where Neanderthal males were seen as especially strong and attractive to modern females... just look at what sells in the movies! BTW, the evidence seems to point to a more aggressive and combative lighter built modern with a violent streak vs a more peaceful and isolated heavy built Neanderthal busy fighting nature. That would also match with my tendency to just want to be left alone by a modern society bent on combat and hyperactivity... If there is any weakness here, it's just in not understanding how to practice deception and guile as well. Traits moderns ought not to take pride in having in abundance.
So I see no problem with a thesis that Neanderthal females didn't interbreed as much as Neanderthal men (so the mitochondria are all modern) while Neanderthal traits where eventually diluted into a mostly modern base. It would explain a great deal about the physical differences between modern Europeans and everyone else. I look at the recent reconstructions of Neanderthals and see what look like family and friends. Sigh.
BTW, anyone who grew up on a farm can tell you that if it's possible to mount, one critter will try mounting another. Heck, more than once farm kids have watched the bull trying to mount the tractor... and we won't talk about sheep... Even in nature. I've seen a sparrow trying to get some Finch action. Then there is George Carlin's picture of his dog doing the cat...
And the species barrier isn't very strong. There are a very large number of odd crosses that happen. I've seen a fertile mule with her offspring. There are population spectra where each region can mate with a neighbor, but the two most remote ends can not viably cross. It's the norm during species formation. Unintended crosses are a pain in the neck for folks trying to keep seed pure for vegetable gardens. Lettuce crosses with the wild form of proto lettuce despite thousands of years of separation. Modern corn (maize) seems to be the product of an accidental cross of two different species of grass about 5-8k years ago. The idea that moderns and Neanderthals lived in the same areas for a few tens of thousands of years and never got in each others pants is just broken.
The notion that a few thousand Neanderthals would be absorbed into a repeating flood of out-of-Africa moderns until their genes were left afloat in the gene pool as a regional variation seems to account for all the known facts while being simplest. And no, no one has to be better than the other for this to happen. One population just needs to be larger. See the present work being done to save the American Elm by preserving some of it's character in a repeated crossing with disease resistant Chinese elm. How long were these two species separated? And is the hybrid that looks American but with Chinese metabolism really an American Elm? Or Chinese? And which is "better"?
no way!!!!
its found that Neanderthals never interbred from a DNA test and that they became extinct due to Homo Sapients (humans)